• Israeli special forces rescued four hostages from Gaza on June 8.
• Noa Argamani, whose abduction via motorcycle was captured on video, is among the rescued hostages. 
• Argamani's boyfriend is believed to still be in captivity.

Four hostages were rescued from Gaza in an Israeli operation on Saturday morning, according to a joint IDF, ISA, and Israeli police statement.

The operation in Nuseirat rescued Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv.

The four hostages were kidnapped by Hamas from the Re'im 'Nova' music festival on October 7th. They were among 40 people taken hostage from the festival.

Hamas gunmen killed 364 people at the Nova festival.

Noa Argamani's abduction went viral when she was taken hostage via motorbike eight months ago.

Footage of her capture circulated on social media in the days after October 7. In the video, she is seen begging her captors for her life. "Don't kill me!" she says while reaching for her boyfriend, Avinatan Or.

Or is believed to still be in captivity, his mother said in a Ynet interview in April.

Argamani, whose mother is Chinese, turned 26 during her first week in captivity.

Two days ago, an Israeli attack on Gaza's Nuseirat camp, from which the hostages were rescued, killed 40 people, according to Al Jazeera.

IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari called the operation "daring," per The Times of Israel.

The rescuers included the elite Yamam counter-terrorism unit and an officer had been seriously wounded in the operation, said the Israeli news outlet.

Business Insider contacted the IDF for comment.

This is a developing story

• Mark Cuban pays out bonuses to his employees every time he sells a company.
• The billionaire said his payout practice has helped hundreds of people become millionaires.
• Cuban told Business Insider he thinks it's "the right thing to do." 

Billionaire Mark Cuban isn't opposed to sharing the wealth.

In a Tuesday post on X, the investor said he's maintained a business practice throughout his decadeslong career that has helped hundreds of people cross over to millionaire status.

When selling a company, Cuban said he always sets aside some of the profits to pay out his employees.

"In every business I've sold, I've paid out bonuses to every employee that was there more than a year," Cuban wrote.

The approach dates back to 1990 when Cuban sold his first company, MicroSolutions, a software firm that garnered $6 million at the time, he told CNBC Make It.

Cuban said he paid out 20% of that profit to the company's 80 employees, which, if distributed equally, would equal $15,000 per staffer.

In the years that followed, Cuban was an early investor in the streaming platform AudioNet, taking operational control of the service that would eventually become Broadcast.com.

When he ultimately sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5.7 billion in stock in 1999, Cuban said 300 of the company's 330 employees became millionaires thanks to his employee payout practice.

Cuban said he's continued to set aside profits for loyal employees since becoming a billionaire in 1999. The businessman sold his majority stake in HDNet, now AXS TV, in 2019, paying out 20% of what he made to employees, he wrote.

Cuban added that HDNet was the only one of his companies to do layoffs immediately following its sale.

The billionaire, who bought the Dallas Mavericks NBA team in 2000, said he paid out more than $35 million to employees after selling his majority stake in the basketball team last year.

"I just believe it's the right thing to do," Cuban told Business Insider on Friday. "Everyone that contributes should benefit as well."

Cuban is worth an estimated $5.4 billion, according to Forbes.

• France announced this week it would send Ukraine Mirage 2000-5 fighter jets.
• It's the second warplane that NATO has promised Kyiv, after American-made F-16s.
• The Mirage is a good aircraft, but it may not be the one that's best suited for Ukrainian forces.

Ukraine is slated to receive Mirage 2000-5 fighter jets from France in the coming months, adding another aircraft to Kyiv's coming arsenal of Western combat planes.

French President Emmanuel Macron announced Thursday that France will provide Kyiv with the Mirage fighter aircraft after training pilots how to fly the warplanes through a program that will begin this summer. He added that Paris will build a coalition with other countries to supply the jets and that Ukraine could even be flying them by the end of the year.

Macron's announcement comes as Ukraine eagerly awaits the seemingly imminent arrival of American-made F-16s, which will be Kyiv's first Western fighter jet. Four NATO countries promised to send these fighters.

The Mirage 2000-5, like its F-16 counterpart, is a good fourth-generation fighter jet that will bring some additional capabilities to Ukraine's fleet of aging Soviet-era warplanes. But neither aircraft is necessarily the best fit for Kyiv given the current battlefield conditions.

With next-gen systems not even up for discussion, the plane that is most suitable for Ukraine remains Sweden's JAS 39 Gripen. But it is also out of reach, at least for the time being.

Limited air-to-air reach

The Mirage is a multi-role, delta-winged fourth-gen fighter jet manufactured by French company Dassault Aviation. Around 600 of these aircraft have been produced since it was designed in the late 1970s, and they are currently operated by a small number of militaries, including Greece and Taiwan.

Like the F-16, the Mirage 2000s are combat-proven aircraft, having flown sorties in conflicts across the Middle East and in the Balkans.

The 2000-5 variant, which is what France has promised to send Ukraine, first flew in 1990 and, compared to previous versions of the aircraft, features an upgraded radar system. The jet can be equipped with air-to-surface and air-to-air missiles, as well as laser-guided bombs.

Macron told French broadcasters on Thursday that the pilot training will begin this summer and take place in France. The program typically lasts around five to six months, he said, and an undisclosed number of Mirage jets will be transferred to Ukraine following the completion of that training.

Under normal conditions, the French Mirage 2000-5 would be perfectly suitable for a country like Ukraine, but that's just not the situation right now, Justin Bronk, an airpower and technology expert at the UK-based Royal United Services Institute think tank, told Business Insider.

The effectiveness of the Mirage 2000-5 is primarily limited by the MICA beyond-visual-range air-to-air missile, which has a much shorter range than the AIM-120 AMRAAM variants that Kyiv could use with its F-16s, Bronk said.

And the AMRAAM is already an unsatisfactory tool to address Russian air threats near the front lines because Moscow's formidable ground-based surface-to-air missile systems force Ukrainian fighters to fly at relatively low altitudes, putting limitations on the effectiveness of their missiles, Bronk said.

Investing resources to get Ukraine another Western fighter that has an even shorter air-to-air reach won't necessarily improve this dilemma.

The Mirage can carry powerful long-range cruise missiles like the French-made SCALP-EG, but those can also be launched from Ukraine's existing fighter fleet and have already been used to great effect.

Additionally, Bronk said, Ukrainian pilots who are able to be trained quickly on operating and maintaining a system as complex as a fighter jet are also in extremely limited supply. Many of these individuals are already training on the F-16 at sites in Europe and the US.

Doug Birkey, the executive director of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, told BI that the Mirage is an "older capability" on par with what Ukraine is getting out of the F-16. Rather than split the focus between aircraft, creating new supply lines, maintenance processes and diverting resources, some NATO partners have argued it might make more sense to simply stick to the F-16.

Like the F-16, the French fighter jet's effectiveness, he said, will ultimately come down to how it's used and whether Kyiv can strike inside Russian territory. Last month, Macron said Ukraine should be allowed to use Western weapons to do so, a stance more NATO countries are taking.

"It's very difficult to try to win and succeed in the campaign when you're largely stuck to defense," Birkey said.

A fighter designed for the Ukraine war

Air warfare experts like Bronk have argued throughout the conflict in Ukraine that the most suitable Western combat aircraft for Ukrainian forces would be Sweden's JAS 39 Gripen.

Built by Swedish defense and aerospace firm Saab, the Gripen is a 4.5-generation multi-role fighter aircraft that has been in production since the 1980s.

The Swedish fighter jet was designed with the idea of a dispersed fighter force taking on Russia without having the benefits of being in NATO and facing a very dangerous surface-to-air missile threat. Essentially, it was designed for the exact conditions in which Ukraine is fighting.

Sweden's Gripen is considered by experts to be a highly capable, effective, and efficient fighter. It is relatively inexpensive to operate, easy to maintain, and requires less runway space than some other aircraft for taking off and landing.

The jet also features advanced electronic-warfare capabilities that were specifically designed to be able to counter the radars on Russian aircraft and ground-based air-defense systems.

Furthermore, the Gripen can be equipped with various air-to-surface missiles and bombs, as well as longer-range air-to-air missiles. Among the latter is the Meteor air-to-air missile, which, with a range of up to 80 miles, delivers a much longer reach than the French MICA and even some Russian weaponry.

Compared to the F-16 and Mirage, the Gripen is far more flexible in terms of operational requirements — especially when it comes to cost and maintenance — and is more resource-efficient.

The downsides of the Swedish aircraft are that it has yet to see combat and is rather limited in availability, unlike the F-16 and its support systems, which are available across Europe.

Sweden previously explored sending Gripens to Ukraine, but those considerations were recently put on hold to allow Kyiv to focus on the F-16. But France has announced its intention to send the Mirage, seemingly contradicting this rationale.

"Why you would then have another non-F-16 fighter being supplied that is less effective for Ukraine's requirements and less well-suited in every way than the Gripen seems slightly odd," Bronk said.

Ukrainian officials have long pushed for the West to provide fighter aircraft, and regardless of any drawbacks, they have expressed their delight publicly over both the F-16 and Mirage pledges.

"French combat aircraft — brilliant fighter jets that, under the control of Ukrainian pilots, will prove that Europe is stronger," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said during a Friday speech to France's National Assembly, referring to the Mirages.

Until these aircraft arrive, though, Ukraine will have to continue making do with its Soviet-era fleet. For Kyiv, any Western deliveries may prove valuable — regardless of the type of aircraft.

"The best fighter they can get are the ones they can get," Birkey argued. "It still remains that."

France's announcement on its plans to send Mirage fighters comes as Kyiv's partners step up their support for the country in the wake of Russia's new offensive in the northeastern Kharkiv region.

Macron on Thursday also revealed plans to train and equip a brigade of 4,500 Ukrainian soldiers, which will be a significant development and a notable break from some previous training schemes.

"One of the biggest problems that Ukraine is currently facing is a lack of training capacity, particularly the capacity to train at a larger unit level, so battalions and brigades, rather than companies and smaller," Bronk said.

Instead of offering lots of short courses for smaller numbers of troops — a strategy that showed its limitations during Kyiv's failed counteroffensive last summer because it didn't generate officers — the French plan offers a way for Ukrainian troops to train as a unified formation with standardized equipment, Bronk said.

That, he added, "is an incredibly useful and an incredibly well-thought-out way of increasing and stabilizing long-term support. That's really potentially impactful."

• Apple is expected to unveil iOS 18 with new AI features at its WWDC event on Monday.
• The AI features will reportedly require at least an iPhone 15 Pro or the upcoming iPhone 16 lineup.
• Expected features include AI email composition, custom emojis, and a ChatGPT-like chatbot.

It sounds like Apple is betting its long-expected AI features will be enough to convince you to upgrade your iPhone — especially if the AI requires a top-of-the-line device.

Apple is expected to reveal iOS 18 at its annual developers conference, WWDC, on Monday.

The company's new AI software, which Bloomberg reported will be called "Apple Intelligence," will include features that run on-device — meaning they're powered directly by the iPhone's chips rather than relying on cloud servers. Some of the AI services will still rely on cloud-based computing, according to the report, but many will not.

So which iPhone models will make the cut? Not many, apparently.

The new AI features will require at least an iPhone 15 Pro or the upcoming iPhone 16 lineup, Bloomberg reported. The iPhone 16 and public launch of iOS 18 are both expected in the fall. Those with iPads and Macs will also require models with an M1 chip at minimum, according to the report.

Apple will be integrating the AI technology into several apps, including Mail, Voice Memos, and Photos, but users can choose to opt-in, Bloomberg reported.

The features will reportedly be focused on helping with everyday tasks, ranging from summarizing and helping compose emails to AI-suggested custom emojis while texting. Siri will also be getting an AI overhaul to allow users to command more specific tasks within apps, such as asking Siri to delete an email, according to Bloomberg.

Apple also inked a deal with OpenAI to help power some features, including a chatbot similar to ChatGPT, The Information and Bloomberg previously reported.

CEO Tim Cook, who has acknowledged that the smartphone market has been "tough" in the US recently, is likely hoping that the new generative AI offerings spur a big device upgrade cycle.

Apple's WWDC keynote kicks off Monday at 1 p.m. ET. Business Insider will be liveblogging the event.