Slovakia has approved a constitutional amendment to limit the rights of same-sex couples.
The country’s parliament on Friday approved the change, which states that male and female will be the only recognised genders, and that school curricula must respect the cultural and ethical positions set out in the constitution.
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The amendment was approved with the minimum necessary 90 votes in the 150-seat lower house with the help of some conservative members of the opposition.
The vote marks a sweeping change for the European Union (EU), as a national law takes precedence over EU law, potentially posing a challenge to the functioning of the 27-nation bloc.
Nationalist Prime Minister Robert Fico has billed the constitutional change as “a dam against progressivism”.
After the vote, Michal Simecka, leader of the strongest opposition party in parliament, Progressive Slovakia, said the amendment “will hurt the people of Slovakia and call into question Slovakia’s place in the EU and its legal space”.
After the amendment was proposed in late January, Fico framed the need for it as a way of upholding “the traditions, the cultural and spiritual heritage of our ancestors” to construct a “constitutional barrier against progressive politics” and restore “common sense”.
“There are two sexes, male and female”, defined at birth, the proposal states – an echo of United States President Donald Trump’s inauguration speech.
“Sex cannot be modified except for serious reasons, according to procedures that will be established by law,” it continues.
The amendment also authorises adoption only for married couples, with rare exceptions.
Slovakia’s constitution already defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, following an amendment from 2014, when Fico was also prime minister.
It also states that Slovakia’s “sovereignty” regarding “cultural and ethical questions” should override EU law.
MP Maria Kolikova, of the centre-right Freedom and Solidarity party, warned that the constitutional change could jeopardise EU funds for Slovakia and undermine its membership of Europe’s top rights organisation, the Council of Europe.
In a statement on Wednesday, the Council of Europe’s Venice Commission warned about “the need for the definitions of ‘national identity’ and ‘cultural and ethical issues’ not to create a conflict with the existing international obligations of the Slovak Republic”.
The legal advisory body also cautioned “that entrenching a strict binary understanding of sex in the Constitution should not result in justifying discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in subsequent legislation or state measures”.
Amnesty International also criticised Slovakia’s amendment, saying the changes targeted LGBTI+ and reproductive rights.
“This is devastating news. Instead of taking concrete measures to protect the rights of LGBTI+ people, children, and women, our parliament voted to adopt constitutional amendments that put the constitution in direct conflict with international law,” Amnesty Slovakia chief Rado Sloboda said in a statement.
Since his return to power in 2023, Fico has faced a series of protests in his 5.4-million-strong country over this drive to curb rights. He has tightened his grip on what he deems “hostile” media and replaced leading figures in the country’s cultural institutions.
According to Iranian state media, Tehran and Moscow have reached a $25 billion contract to construct four nuclear power plants in southern Iran.
The United Nations Security Council is scheduled to vote on Friday on a resolution that China and Russia support and calls for at least six months delay in imposing international sanctions on Iran under the so-called “snapback mechanism” over its nuclear program.
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The deal, according to Iran’s IRNA news agency, includes the construction of four brand-new homes on a 500-hectare (1, 235-acre) lot in the Hormozgan Province, which is located across the Gulf from the United Arab Emirates and Oman.
5GW of electricity would be produced by Generation III power reactors, according to IRNA.
No number was provided when Rosatom, the country’s state nuclear agency, announced on Wednesday that it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran regarding the construction of small nuclear power plants in Moscow.
In Bushehr, in the southern city of Iran, one nuclear power plant is currently operational, despite experiencing power shortages at times of high demand. It has a capacity of 1 GW, which was also constructed by Russia.
Iran and Russia have close ties. In June, Moscow categorically condemned US and Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.
Iran was on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons, Israel claimed at the time, without providing any proof. Tehran has long been suspected of using its nuclear energy facilities as a cover by Western nations.
Iran insists that this is not the intention. Tehran will “never attempt to build a nuclear bomb,” according to President Masoud Pezeshkian, who reiterated this week’s statement at the UN General Assembly.
Russia has also criticized the UN’s decision to reimpose sanctions on Iran and supported diplomacy to keep the 2015 nuclear deal in place.
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Microsoft has announced that it has withdrawn some of its services from the Israeli army, following an investigation that raised concerns that Israel may be violating the company’s terms of service by using its artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud services to spy on millions of Palestinians throughout Gaza and the West Bank.
The decision on Thursday followed a joint investigation by the United Kingdom’s Guardian newspaper and Israeli publications +972 Magazine and Local Call, which revealed in August that the Israeli army was using Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to conduct mass surveillance of Palestinians amid Israel’s brutal onslaught on Gaza, which has killed more than 65,000 people in less than two years.
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Microsoft has, in recent months, fired or reported several employees to the police over protests about the use of its software by the Israeli army in Gaza. In August, four employees were fired. Several others have quit the company in protest over Microsoft’s ties to the Israeli army, which they said were enabling the devastation in Gaza.
The tech company consistently denied those claims, but, following the investigation, it announced it had commissioned an external review of its communications on Israel by Washington, DC law firm, Covington & Burling LLP, and another, unnamed technical consulting firm.
Here’s what we know:
What has Microsoft announced about its AI services in Israel?
In a blog post directed to employees on Thursday, Microsoft’s vice chairman and president, Brad Smith, revealed that an external review of the company’s communication records and financial statements had prompted Thursday’s decision, as elements supporting its findings were found to be true. Smith did not detail the specific evidence, but stated that it related to the Israeli army’s use of Azure and Microsoft’s AI services.
“We therefore have informed IMOD of Microsoft’s decision to cease and disable specified IMOD subscriptions and their services, including their use of specific cloud storage and AI services and technologies,” Smith wrote, referring to the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
“We have reviewed this decision with IMOD and the steps we are taking to ensure compliance with our terms of service, focused on ensuring our services are not used for mass surveillance of civilians,” he added.
This marks a major shift in Microsoft’s stance on this issue. In May, following similar findings reported by The Associated Press news agency that the Israeli army’s spy agency, Unit 8200, was using Microsoft services for mass surveillance in Gaza, the company said it had conducted internal reviews of its records.
While it acknowledged that advanced AI and cloud computing services had been sold to the Israeli military to aid in its efforts to locate and rescue Israelis captured by Hamas on October 7, Microsoft said it found no evidence its services were being used to target or harm people in Gaza.
In his statement on Thursday, Smith said the review of its services to the Israeli military was ongoing, but that the decision to restrict some services had been made because Microsoft’s terms of service “prohibit the use of our technology for mass surveillance of civilians”.
Why has Microsoft changed its stance on this issue now?
Simply, the company says it did not know what the Israeli military was using its services for.
Smith said the August news report had revealed information that Microsoft itself had not been privy to because of customer privacy regulations.
The company has reiterated several times that it had no way of knowing how the Israeli army was deploying Microsoft technology due to these privacy policies.
A Palestinian reacts as he inspects the site of Israeli strikes on houses at the Shati refugee camp, amid an Israeli military operation, in Gaza City, September 26, 2025 [Ebrahim Hajjaj/Reuters]
Which AI or Surveillance technologies have been withdrawn?
Smith said only specific Microsoft service subscriptions had been blocked from the Israeli military, and that Israel would still be able to use other Microsoft products for the country’s own cybersecurity.
He did not specify which particular products were disabled, or if specific units in the Israeli military had been barred from using them.
However, he did mention that there were issues relating to how the Israeli army uses its Azure storage servers based in the Netherlands, as well as Microsoft’s AI services.
What is Microsoft’s Azure, and how has it been used in Gaza?
Microsoft’s Azure platform provides a host of cloud-based services, including near-limitless digital storage and powerful AI capabilities that, among many things, allow for compiling, transcribing, translating and analysing vast numbers of phone calls.
The Azure platform was the main subject of the August news investigation, which revealed that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella met with Yossi Sariel, the then-head of Israel’s military spy agency, Unit 8200, in late 2021 at the company’s headquarters in Seattle to discuss collaborating on the storage of large volumes of ‘”sensitive” Israeli intelligence, using Azure.
Unit 8200 is the Israeli military’s elite cyberwarfare unit responsible for clandestine operations, including collecting signal intelligence and surveillance. Sariel has driven the unit’s use of AI, and was awarded by the Israeli military in 2018 for his work on an “artificial intelligence and anti-terrorism” project.
After the Seattle meeting, Unit 8200 built a mass surveillance tool that it has used to sweep, record and store millions of phone calls made by Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank since 2022, according to the authors of the investigative report. Sariel resigned in September 2024 over the unit’s failure to predict the October 7 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.
While Israel has long intercepted calls in the occupied Palestinian territory, the new AI-powered system bolstered that tactic immensely, allowing intelligence officers to capture and store millions of phone calls and texts and for a much longer period, the news investigation revealed.
The AP, earlier in February, also reported that the Israeli military’s use of Microsoft products surged after October 7. The Israeli military used gigabytes of cloud storage and huge amounts of AI-enabled language translation services for mass surveillance, cross-checked with in-house AI systems to decide on who should be targeted in air attacks, the AP reported.
Did Microsoft really not know what Azure was being used for?
Although Microsoft’s position is that it had no knowledge of how Israel was using Azure, leaked Microsoft documents and interviews with 11 Microsoft sources showed that Unit 8200 was storing Palestinian communications on the platform, the joint expose noted.
Sources from Unit 8200 also told the reporters that those capabilities have helped the Israeli army to target people in deadly air attacks on Gaza and in its military operations in the West Bank. The Israeli military tracked “everyone, all the time”, one Unit 8200 source was quoted as saying in the investigation.
“The whole arrangement from the beginning, from 2021 … was between the head of 8200, a unit that is known for doing surveillance on Palestinians, and the very top officials of Microsoft,” journalist Meron Rapoport, who was involved in the investigation, told Al Jazeera on Friday.
Demonstrators march in support of Palestinians in Gaza near the Microsoft Build conference, during the ongoing Israeli war on Gaza, to call for the termination of Microsoft’s Azure contracts with Israel, in Seattle, Washington, US, on May 21, 2024 [File: David Ryder/Reuters]
How significant is Microsoft’s decision to withdraw its services?
Tech analysts are sceptical about how much Microsoft’s decision will affect Israel’s surveillance operation in Gaza and the West Bank. It is unclear how Microsoft will ensure that the Israeli army, as a whole, no longer has access to Azure, its AI services or other Microsoft products that could be used to continue mass surveillance and conduct deadly attacks or other operations.
Hossam Nasr, one of the more than a dozen Microsoft employees who were fired or arrested for protesting the company’s involvement in the Gaza war, told AP on Thursday that the recent move was an “unprecedented win”, but ultimately not enough.
“Microsoft has only disabled a small subset of services for only one unit in the Israeli military,” said Nasr, an organiser with the group No Azure for Apartheid, which includes other former Microsoft employees. “The vast majority of Microsoft’s contract with the Israeli military remains intact.”
How have Israeli and US officials responded?
Responding to Microsoft’s move, an unnamed Israeli official was quoted by AP as saying the decision would do “no damage to the operational capabilities” of the Israeli army.
How has Israel surveilled Palestinians in the past?
Al Jazeera has documented the adverse physical and mental impacts of constant Israeli surveillance on Palestinians, including the use of CCTV and a facial recognition system called Red Wolf that is deployed in parts of the occupied West Bank.
The programme is used at military checkpoints in Hebron and occupied East Jerusalem, where Israeli settlers have moved to scan the faces of Palestinians and add them to a database, without their consent. The system aids the Israeli military in its discriminatory policies of banning Palestinians from using certain road networks that are only open to settlers.
Similar tactics have been deployed by the Chinese government to surveil Uighur Muslims, rights defenders noted.
Palestinians have long claimed that Israel, which produces and sells spyware to several countries, uses them to test its products. Israeli cybersecurity company NSO Group came in for widespread criticism in 2021 over its flagship software Pegasus, which clients were using to target opposition political members, activists and journalists – including some working for Al Jazeera, according to a media investigation.
Clients of the spyware were not revealed, but they included governments and were reportedly clustered in Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, India, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
In May 2023, Amnesty International concluded that Israel was increasing its surveillance in Hebron and East Jerusalem, and was using Red Wolf to “entrench” its system of apartheid.
“This surveillance is part of a deliberate attempt by Israeli authorities to create a hostile and coercive environment for Palestinians, with the aim of minimising their presence in strategic areas,” the rights organisation said.
A member of the Irish rap group Kneecap has been cleared of a terror-related charge by a court in London.
Due to a technical error in the way the charge against the Belfast-based rapper was brought, chief magistrate Paul Goldspring said on Friday that the case against Liam Og O hAnnaidh should be dropped. Critics have cited the case as an example of a clampdown on free speech, which has since become extremely heated.
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O hAnnaidh, 27, who was initially accused under the Anglicized name Liam O’Hanna and who performs under the stage name Mo Chara, was charged after the six-month suspension for the charge, which the magistrates’ court can only handle.
The judge remarked, “The charge is unlawful and null, and this court has no authority to hear it.”
O hAnnaidh was detained in May for holding a Hezbollah flag at a concert in London in November 2024.
It has been illegal to support the group since the United Kingdom declared Hezbollah a “terrorist” in 2019 in the United Kingdom.
O hAnnaidh claimed that the group’s performance was a result of the fact that the flag was thrown on the stage. The band has referred to the legal process as “witchhunt.”
On June 28, 2025, Revellers in Pilton, Somerset, United Kingdom, gather to perform at the Glastonbury Festival (File: Reuters).
O hAnnaidh applauded the court’s decision following the ruling. He claimed that it demonstrated the band’s failure to tarnish Palestinian support.
In front of a crowd of supporters gathering outside the court, he said, “We’re right and you’re wrong, so it was always about Gaza, about what happens if you dare to speak up.”
We will work with the Crown Prosecution Service to understand the potential effects of this ruling on us and how that might affect the way these cases are handled in the future, according to a Metropolitan Police spokesperson.
Michelle O’Neill, the first minister of Northern Ireland, welcomed the decision. She wrote on social media that “these accusations were part of a deliberate attempt to silence those who speak out against the Israeli genocide in Gaza.”
In response to statements made in support of Palestinians during Israel’s conflict in Gaza, Kneecap has been accused of glorifying terrorism by various nations.
The group has been barred from entering by Hungary and Canada, and some of their concerts have been canceled by Germany and Austria.
Kneecap has accused critics of trying to silence the band because of its support for the Palestinian cause throughout Israel’s ongoing conflict in Gaza, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 65 000 people and destroyed much of the area since it started in October 2023.
