Hamas freed the first two of six Israeli hostages due to be released Saturday even as heightened tension between the adversaries clouded the future of the fragile ceasefire deal.

The two hostages — Tal Shoham, 40, and Avera Mengistu, 39 — were put into Red Cross ambulances after being brought out onto a stage by masked and armed Hamas fighters in front of a crowd in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Soon after, the Israeli military confirmed that the two had been brought into Israel.

The termination letters that ended the careers of thousands of U.S. Forest Service employees mean fewer people and less resources will be available to help prevent and fight wildfires, raising the specter of even more destructive blazes across the American West, fired workers and officials said.

The Forest Service firings — on the heels of deadly blazes that ripped through Los Angeles last month — are part of a wave of federal worker layoffs, as President Donald Trump's cost-cutting measures reverberate nationwide.

Billionaire Elon Musk appeared at a conservative gathering outside Washington waving a chainsaw in the air, showing openness to auditing the Federal Reserve and accusing Democrats of "treason."

Musk, the Tesla CEO who has become perhaps President Donald Trump's most influential adviser, spoke Thursday about his crusade to cut government spending and downsize the federal workforce with the administration's Department of Government Efficiency.

French President Emmanuel Macron said he intends to tell Donald Trump that it's in the joint interest of Americans and Europeans not to "be weak" in the face of Russia's Vladimir Putin amid U.S.-led negotiations to end the almost three-year war in Ukraine.

Macron is to travel to Washington to meet with Trump on Monday, the White House said.

A Madrid derby. A German classic. A rare meeting between Liverpool and Paris Saint-Germain.

The Champions League got more heavyweight clashes when the draw for the round of 16 was made Friday.

Climate change is accelerating the melting of the world's mountain glaciers, according to a massive new study that found them shrinking more than twice as fast as in the early 2000s.

The world's glaciers lost ice at the rate of about 255 billion tons (231 billion metric tons) annual from 2000 to 2011, but that quickened to about 346 billion tons (314 billion metric tons) annually over about the next decade, according to the study in this week's journal Nature.

Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba Group Holding posted its fastest revenue growth in more than a year, beating analyst expectations as it capitalizes on the artificial intelligence boom in China.

Alibaba said Thursday that its revenue for the quarter ended December grew 8% to 280.2 billion yuan ($38.38 billion) compared to the same period last year.

The pope looms so large in everyday Italian life that there are lots of expressions that make light of even a dark event like his death.

"A pope dies, they make another," goes one, suggesting how life goes on.

Ariana Grande, Timothée Chalamet, Selena Gomez, Mikey Madison and other stars of the top Screen Actors Guild Awards film nominees will be among the presenters at Sunday's ceremony.

Organizers announced Thursday presenters will also include "Wicked" co-stars Cynthia Erivo and Bowen Yang. The musical is the leading nominee at the show, which will be streamed live on Netflix.

An official with the committee preparing a national dialogue conference in Syria to help chart the country's future said Friday that it has not been decided whether the conference will take place before or after a new government is formed.

The date of the conference has not been set and the timing "is up for discussion by the citizens," Hassan al-Daghim, spokesperson for the committee, told The Associated Press in an interview in Damascus Friday.