Updates: Hamas-Israel ceasefire holds

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun said on Friday that ceasefire talks with Israel are primarily aimed at stopping Israeli hostilities on Lebanese territory, after the Israeli prime minister's office said the country seeks economic cooperation with its long-time foe.

Germany's opposition party Die Linke (The Left) has censured Chancellor Friedrich Merz for his upcoming visit to Israel this weekend, Al Jazeera reported.

"Merz’s trip to Israel is a declaration of war on international law. He is meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu even though there is an international arrest warrant against him for alleged war crimes. A meeting with an alleged war criminal is not a normal state visit," said party's co-chair Jan van Aken.

The politician further termed the resumption of arms supply to Israel as a "political scandal" and said that no weapons should be provided to Tel Aviv as long as it does not publicly back a separate Palestinian state.

Israel's defence budget for 2026 has been set at 112 billion shekels ($34.63 billion), the defence minister's office said on Friday, up from 90 billion shekels budgeted in an earlier draft.

Defence Minister Israel Katz and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich agreed on the defence spending framework as the cabinet has begun debating next year's budget, which needs to be approved by March or could lead to new elections.

Ministers began what is usually a marathon session on Thursday ahead of a vote that could come early on Friday. If it passes, it heads to parliament for its initial vote.

NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has said he will review all of outgoing mayor Eric Adams’ last-minute executive orders once he takes office.

Adams has less than 30 days in office as new mayor's term begins on January 1, 2026.

Mamdani noted Adams is free to issue directives in his final days, but they will face scrutiny under the new administration.

Israel killed at least six people, including children and women, in multiple air strikes across the Gaza Strip on Thursday as it continues to violate the ceasefire agreement on a near-daily basis, the Middle East Eye reported, citing an Al Jazeera report. 

In one strike, Israeli military incinerated a father Fathi Abu Hussein and his eight-year-old son Bilal and ten-year-old son Mohammed in their tent after they targeted the Al-Mawasi tent camp in a 'safe' zone as people slept and then struck the vicinity of a nearby hospital a short while later, Al Jazeera reported.

The strikes also wounded 16 others.

A federal judge said she was "struggling" to understand why President Donald Trump's administration is preventing a Tufts University PhD student who had engaged in pro-Palestinian activism from working on campus nearly seven months after the Turkish citizen was released from an immigration detention center.

Chief US District Judge Denise Casper during a hearing in Boston questioned whether US Immigration and Customs Enforcement acted arbitrarily when it terminated Rumeysa Ozturk's status in a key database used to track foreign students after she co-wrote an opinion piece in the Tufts student newspaper criticising her school's response to Israel's war in Gaza.

"What’s the rationale for allowing the agency to have the discretion to terminate the record?” Casper asked.

Ozturk's record in the ICE-maintained Student and Exchange Visitor Information System database was terminated on March 25, the same day that she was arrested by masked, plainclothes agents on a street in the Boston suburb of Somerville, Massachusetts, near her home, after the US Department of State revoked her student visa.

The sole basis authorities provided for revoking her visa was the opinion piece, which criticised Tufts' response to calls by students to divest from companies with ties to Israel and to "acknowledge the Palestinian genocide."

Israeli forces killed Samar al-Shurbasi in Gaza City’s al-Tuffah neighborhood, far from the designated “yellow line,” according to Gaza Civil Defence.

Her body lay inside an ambulance as her toddler, born at the start of the war, stood beside it holding his uncle’s hand, staring at his mother’s face, said Palestinian Civil Defence spokesperson Mahmoud Basal while describing the painful sight.

The spokesperson called the scene one of the most painful he has witnessed, urging the world to confront the deliberate targeting of Gaza’s civilians.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams signed two executive orders restricting pro-BDS policies and tightening protest rules near houses of worship, especially synagogues. 

The move comes weeks before Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani takes office, with Adams framing it as a defense against antisemitism.