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Pakistan has bombed Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, and other cities as fighting spread following attacks by Afghan forces against Pakistani military positions along their shared border earlier.

Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Kabul, Nasser Shadid, reported early on Friday that a bombing raid targeted the Afghan capital at 1:50 am local time (21:20 GMT), followed by a second air raid.

Afghan anti-aircraft guns opened fire after the first raid and continued firing after the second, according to Shadid.

An Afghan government source confirmed to Al Jazeera that an air strike had hit Kabul, and Pakistani warplanes also hit a military base in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan.

A federal judge in the United States has ruled that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) broke the law by disclosing confidential taxpayer information “approximately 42,695 times” to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

In a decision issued on Thursday, US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly found that the IRS had erroneously shared the taxpayer information of thousands of people, in apparent violation of the Internal Revenue Code.

The ruling cited IRS Code 6103, one of the strictest confidentiality laws in federal statute, which largely prohibits the disclosure of tax return information without consent.

Kollar-Kotelly said that the IRS violated that law “approximately 42,695 times by disclosing last known taxpayer addresses to ICE”.

“The IRS not only failed to ensure that ICE’s request for confidential taxpayer address information met the statutory requirements, but this failure led the IRS to disclose confidential taxpayer addresses to ICE in situations where ICE’s request for that information was patently deficient,” she wrote.

Her finding is based on a declaration filed earlier this month by Dottie Romo, the chief risk and control officer for the IRS, which revealed that the IRS had provided the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with information on 47,000 of the 1.28 million people that ICE had requested.

In most of those cases, Romo said, the tax agency gave ICE additional address information in violation of privacy rules created to protect taxpayer data.

The government is appealing the case, but the Thursday ruling is significant because Romo’s declaration supports the decision on appeal.

Kollar-Kotelly, meanwhile, called the Romo declaration “a significant development in this case”.

What agreement does the IRS have with ICE?

The case is the result of a growing effort under the administration of President Donald Trump to consolidate government data, alarming rights advocates who fear an erosion of taxpayer privacy.

Part of that data has been used to carry out Trump’s campaign of mass deportation, a key pillar of his second-term agenda.

On April 7, the IRS entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Homeland Security to help with “non-tax criminal enforcement”.

That agreement, however, was widely understood to be the groundwork for the identification and deportation of immigrants in the US through taxpayer data.

The Center for Taxpayer Right sued the government over the disclosure, citing protections instituted after the 1972 Watergate scandal revealed how former President Richard Nixon misused tax data during his term.

“This nation already once experienced a President who sought to collect tax information on his political allies and enemies in the White House for use for favor and punishment,” the centre wrote in an initial complaint.

“Following the Watergate era, Congress clearly and unequivocally acted to protect the American people from these intrusions.”

It argued that taxpayer data is uniquely sensitive and “in grave jeopardy” of being shared broadly across the government.

Nina Olson, founder of the Center for Taxpayer Rights, said after Thursday’s ruling, “This confirms what we’ve been saying all along: that the IRS has an unlawful policy that violates the Internal Revenue Code’s protections by releasing these addresses in a way that violates the law’s requirements.”

Representatives from the IRS and the Department of the Treasury did not respond to The Associated Press’s requests for comment.

Currently, the data-sharing agreement allows ICE to submit names and addresses of immigrants inside the US illegally to the IRS for cross-verification against tax records.

The deal, signed by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, led the then-acting commissioner of the IRS to resign.

There are several ongoing cases that challenge the agreement between the IRS and immigration authorities.

Earlier this week, a three-judge panel for the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit declined to issue a preliminary injunction for the immigrants’ rights group Centro de Trabajadores Unidos and other nonprofits as they sue the federal government to stop implementation of the agreement.

In declining the preliminary injunction request, Judge Harry T Edwards wrote that the nonprofit groups “are unlikely to succeed on the merits of their claim”, since the information the agencies are sharing isn’t covered by the IRS privacy statute.

Cuban authorities have accused 10 men on a speedboat sailing from the United States of attempting to carry out a campaign of violence to destabilise the island’s government.

Four of the 10 men on the boat were killed in a shootout with Cuban border agents this week.

On Thursday, Cuban authorities confirmed that the six remaining crew members were receiving medical treatment for their injuries. At least one Cuban officer was also hurt in the gunfire.

CBS News also reported that at least one US citizen was among the dead, citing White House officials.

Still, Cuban officials defended their government’s response and alleged the speedboat passengers shot first at border agents.

“Cuba will defend itself with determination and firmness against any terrorist and mercenary aggression that seeks to affect its sovereignty and national stability,” Cuban President Manuel Diaz-Canel said in a social media post.

The incident comes during a period of heightened tensions between Cuba and the US, which has made repeated threats against the island’s communist government.

The administration of President Donald Trump has also ratcheted up measures meant to worsen economic conditions there, including by imposing a fuel blockade on Cuba in late January.

Only one of the four men killed has been identified by the Cuban government so far: Michel Ortega Casanova.

One of Casanova’s associates told the news service AFP that he sought to overthrow the government in Havana.

“His goal was to go and fight against a criminal and murderous narco-tyrannical [government], to see if that would spark the people to rise up,” said Wilfredo Beyra, head of the Cuban Republican Party in Tampa.

Family members of Casanova said that they were not aware of his plans but that he was motivated by the “great suffering” of people under the Cuban government.

“No one knew,” Misrael Ortega Casanova, his brother, said. “My mother is devastated.”

He identified his sibling as part of a group concerned about rights abuses on the island.

“They became so obsessed that they didn’t think about the consequences nor their own lives,” Misrael added.

US officials have said that they will investigate the incident and denied any government involvement. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the US embassy in Havana is seeking more details, including whether US citizens are among those detained.

“We have various different elements of the US government that are trying to identify elements of the story that may not be provided to us now,” he said.

The US has worked with Cuban exiles against the country’s government in the past, including by supporting campaigns of clandestine infiltration, violence and sabotage.

But activist groups in South Florida have also launched their own operations, some of them running small speedboats and planes to ferry out Cuban nationals.

Cuban authorities have used US intervention as a pretext for the country’s steep restrictions on political dissent and a slate of security measures that rights groups say have been wielded against critics.

Cuban authorities identified some of this week’s speedboat passengers as Conrado Galindo Sariol, Jose Manuel Rodriguez Castello and Cristian Ernesto Acosta Guevara. More have yet to be identified.

The Cuban government also stated that some of the passengers were wanted by law enforcement authorities “based on their involvement in the promotion, planning, organisation, financing, support or commission of actions carried out in the national territory or in other countries, in connection with acts of terrorism”.

Members of the Cuban American community, however, have expressed scepticism about the Cuban government’s claims.