News
MEA Reserves 5 Aircraft In Turkey As Conflict Precaution
Flights continue as normal, but Middle East Airlines staff are on standby in case more of the fleet needs to be relocated.
Lebanese carrier Middle East Airlines (MEA) has chosen to relocate 5 of its 24 aircraft to Turkey as hostilities mount in Israel and Gaza.
So far, scheduled flights have not been affected by heightened regional tensions, despite Palestinian militants from Hamas clashing with IDF forces in what is now the deadliest conflict since 2006.
A spokesperson from MEA said the planes had been moved to Istanbul airport over the weekend and would remain there for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, the remaining 19 aircraft in the fleet are operating normally.
Middle East Airlines staff are also on standby to implement an emergency plan to move the rest of the airliners if the situation worsens.
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“It’s a plan in case of an emergency. God willing, we won’t need it,” explained the MEA spokesperson.
Back in 2006, the Lebanese carrier diverted all its planes from Beirut airport at the start of the month-long 2006 war, which was responsible for the deaths of 1,200 Lebanese citizens. The airport was later bombed, rendering it inoperable.
News
Google Releases Veo 2 AI Video Tool To MENA Users
The state-of-the-art video generation model is now available in Gemini, offering realistic AI-generated videos with better physics, motion, and detail.
Starting today, users of Gemini Advanced in the MENA region — and globally — can tap into Veo 2, Google’s next-generation video model.
Originally unveiled in 2024, Veo 2 has now been fully integrated into Gemini, supporting multiple languages including Arabic and English. The rollout now brings Google’s most advanced video AI directly into the hands of everyday users.
Veo 2 builds on the foundations of its predecessor with a more sophisticated understanding of the physical world. It’s designed to produce high-fidelity video content with cinematic detail, realistic motion, and greater visual consistency across a wide range of subjects and styles. Whether recreating natural landscapes, human interactions, or stylized environments, the model is capable of interpreting and translating written prompts into eight-second 720p videos that feel almost handcrafted.
Users can generate content directly through the Gemini platform — either via the web or mobile apps. The experience is pretty straightforward: users enter a text-based prompt, and Veo 2 returns a video in 16:9 landscape format, delivered as an MP4 file. These aren’t just generic clips — they can reflect creative, abstract, or highly specific scenarios, making the tool especially useful for content creators, marketers, or anyone experimenting with visual storytelling.
Also Read: Getting Started With Google Gemini: A Beginner’s Guide
To ensure transparency, each video is embedded with SynthID — a digital watermark developed by Google’s DeepMind. The watermark is invisible to the human eye but persists across editing, compression, and sharing. It identifies the video as AI-generated, addressing concerns around misinformation and media authenticity.
While Veo 2 is still in its early phases of public rollout, the technology is part of a broader push by Google to democratize advanced AI tools. With text-to-image, code generation, and now video creation integrated into Gemini, Google is positioning the platform as a full-spectrum creative assistant.
Access to Veo 2 starts today and will continue expanding in the coming weeks. Interested users can try it out at gemini.google.com or through the Gemini app on Android and iOS.
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