Hamas freed six Israelis on Saturday in the last scheduled release of living hostages by the militant group under the current stage of a ceasefire agreement with Israel.
In all, a total of 33 Israelis are being freed during this stage — including eight who are dead. Five Thai hostages have also been freed separately. Sixty-three hostages, including the body of a soldier held since 2014, remain in Gaza.

Israel on Monday denied entry to two European Union lawmakers, accusing one of promoting boycotts of the country.
Lynn Boylan, who chairs the European Parliament EU-Palestine delegation, and Rima Hassan were refused entry at Ben-Gurion airport and ordered to return to Europe.

Just hours after the U.S. Office of Personnel Management had directed agencies that responses to its email were optional, Musk again threatened federal workers in a post on X, his social media platform.
He wrote: “Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”

President Donald Trump said Monday that his tariffs on Canada and Mexico are starting next month, ending a monthlong suspension on the planned import taxes that could potentially hurt economic growth and worsen inflation.
"We're on time with the tariffs, and it seems like that's moving along very rapidly," the U.S. president said at a White House news conference with French President Emmanuel Macron.

In a dramatic shift in transatlantic relations under President Donald Trump, the United States split with its European allies by refusing to blame Russia for its invasion of Ukraine in votes on three U.N. resolutions Monday seeking an end to the three-year war.
The growing divide follows Trump's decision to open direct negotiations with Russia on ending the war, dismaying Ukraine and its European supporters by excluding them from the preliminary talks last week.

When night falls over northern Gaza, much of the cityscape of collapsed buildings and piled wreckage turns pitch black. Living inside the ruins of their home, Rawia Tambora's young sons get afraid of the dark, so she turns on a flashlight and her phone's light to comfort them, for as long as the batteries last.
Displaced for most of the 16-month-long war, Tambora is back in her house. But it is still a frustrating shell of a life, she says: There is no running water, electricity, heat or services, and no tools to clear the rubble around them.

The final results of Iraq's first census in nearly 40 years released Monday show the population has reached 46.1 million.
In 2009, an unofficial count estimated the population at 31.6 million.

Parliament on Tuesday started debating the new government's policy statement, with Prime Minister Nawaf Salam voicing commitment to extending the state's sovereignty across Lebanon, stressing that only the country’s armed forces should defend the nation in case of war.

Order a Coke to wash down some hummus in the Israeli-occupied West Bank these days and chances are the waiter will shake his head disapprovingly — or worse, mutter "shame, shame" in Arabic — before suggesting the popular local alternative: a can of Chat Cola.
Chat Cola — its red tin and sweeping white script bearing remarkable resemblance to the iconic American soft drink's logo — has seen its products explode in popularity across the occupied West Bank in the past year as Palestinian consumers, angry at America's steadfast support for Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza, protest with their pocketbooks.

The late leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah group who was killed in an Israeli airstrike days after he took the post was laid to rest in his southern hometown Monday, a day after his cousin and predecessor was buried in Beirut.
Hashem Safieddine, who was about 60, was killed in early October in a series of Israeli airstrikes in a southern suburb of Beirut at the height of the Israel-Hezbollah war. He was killed days after his cousin and predecessor Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was killed in Israeli airstrikes south of Beirut.
