The leader of Syria’s former rebels who toppled President Bashar Assad last month was named the country’s interim president on Wednesday as ex-insurgents also cancelled the existing constitution, saying a new charter would be drafted soon.

The appointment of Ahmad al-Sharaa, a rebel who was once aligned with al-Qaida, as the country’s president “in the transitional phase” came after a meeting of the insurgents in Damascus, the Syrian capital.

A list of more than 100 Palestinian prisoners that Israel is set to release on Thursday in exchange for three hostages includes Zakaria Zubeidi, a prominent former militant leader and theater director whose dramatic jailbreak in 2021 thrilled Palestinians and stunned the Israeli security establishment.

Zubeidi once led the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade — an armed group affiliated with Fatah, the secular political party that controls the Palestinian Authority — which carried out deadly attacks against Israelis during a Palestinian uprising between 2000 and 2005.

Palestinian health authorities said an Israeli airstrike in the northern West Bank has killed at least 10 people late Wednesday.

The Israeli military said the strike by a warplane targeted a Palestinian militant cell in the area based on intelligence.

President Donald Trump may want lower interest rates, but the Federal Reserve will almost certainly keep its benchmark interest rate unchanged at its two-day policy meeting that ends Wednesday.

It is likely to be a quiet start to an eventful year for the central bank. Trump said last week in Davos, Switzerland that he would bring down energy prices, then "demand" that the Fed lower borrowing costs.

The sounds of spring, with babbling brooks and birdsong, set a serene yet surreal tone Wednesday as Elie Saab unveiled his latest couture collection inside the soaring Palais de Tokyo in Paris. It was punctuated only by whoops and clicking camera shutters as Eva Longoria swept in.

While the setting evoked pastoral bliss, the collection was a study in high-drama couture, as Saab's signature opulence met a new architectural precision.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order aimed at cutting federal support for gender transitions for people under age 19, his latest move to roll back protections for transgender people across the country.

"It is the policy of the United States that it will not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called 'transition' of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit these destructive and life-altering procedures," the order says.

The German government on Wednesday slashed its 2025 growth forecast for the country's economy, Europe's biggest, to just 0.3% after it shrank for two consecutive years.

The new projection is much lower than the government's previous forecast of 1.1% growth, issued in October.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspected a facility that produces nuclear material and called for bolstering the country's nuclear fighting capability, state media reported Wednesday, as the North looks to increase pressure on the United States following the inauguration of President Donald Trump.

Kim's visit suggests a continued emphasis on an expansion of North Korea's nuclear arsenal, though Trump has said he's willing to talk to Kim again to revive diplomacy. Many analysts view North Korean weapons moves as part of a strategy to win sanctions relief and political concessions from the United States.

Western officials have warned Ukraine that an escalating rift between the defense minister and procurement chief may jeopardize trust in the country and urged the government to resolve the situation quickly so as not to disrupt weapons supplies.

The conflict began last week when the Defense Procurement Agency's board unanimously voted to extend director Maryna Bezrukova's contract for another year.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz's main challenger in Germany's upcoming election plans to put proposals for a tougher migration policy to parliament on Wednesday, a maneuver aimed at piling pressure on the governing parties that has brought accusations that he's breaking commitments to shun the far right.

Opposition leader Friedrich Merz put migration in the focus of the campaign following a knife attack a week ago in the Bavarian city of Aschaffenburg by a rejected asylum-seeker, which left a man and a 2-year-old boy dead.