International Glance
Hamas intends to maintain security control in Gaza during an interim period, a senior Hamas official told Reuters, adding he could not commit to the group disarming - positions that reflect the difficulties facing US plans to secure an end to the war.
Hamas politburo member Mohammed Nazzal also said the group was ready for a ceasefire of up to five years to rebuild devastated Gaza, with guarantees for what happens afterwards depending on Palestinians being given "horizons and hope" for statehood.
Speaking to Reuters in an interview from Doha, where Hamas politicians have long resided, Nazzal defended the group's crackdown in Gaza, where it carried out public executions on Monday. There were always "exceptional measures" during war and those executed were criminals guilty of killing, he said.
Pressure To Disarm
While Hamas has broadly expressed these views before, the timing of Nazzal's comments demonstrates the major obstacles obstructing efforts to cement a full end to the war in Gaza, days after the first phase of the ceasefire was agreed.
Hamas Aims To Keep Grip On Gaza Security, Can't Commit To Disarm, Says Senior Official
IDF investigates report of Israeli troops setting Gaza sewage treatment plant ablaze
The Israel Defense Forces are investigating reports Israeli troops who were occupying a key sewage treatment plant in Gaza set it ablaze amid a drawdown of their forces from much of the enclave's territory last week as a part of the first phase of the ceasefire deal.
The Sheikh Aljin sewage treatment plant, located to the southeast of Gaza City, was badly damaged in the reported fire, according to Gaza's Coastal Municipalities Water Utility.
The CMWU told ABC News that an in-person investigation of the site on Tuesday, Oct. 14, confirmed that four of the plant's six biological treatment towers had suffered massive fire damage.
According to the CMWU, the plastic cells and hydraulic systems inside the treatment towers had been destroyed and their concrete walls cracked by the fire.
Photos taken by the CMWU's staff after the fire and provided to ABC News reveal the damage to the plant. The photos show multiple treatment towers with charred walls, their interiors burnt out and strewn with garbage. The treatment towers are scattered with Hebrew-language graffiti, including one reading, "I'll be back soon."
Russians and Ukrainians expect no major breakthrough at planned Trump-Putin summit
People in Russia and Ukraine on Friday hoped for progress but anticipated no major breakthrough on ending their war at an upcoming summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
The two leaders agreed in a phone call Thursday to meet in Budapest, Hungary, in the coming weeks, according to Trump, who was scheduled to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House later Friday.
“When (Trump and Putin) meet, I don’t think anything will be achieved quickly,” 36-year-old Moscow resident Artyom Kondratov told The Associated Press.
At a previous Trump-Putin summit in Alaska in August, Putin didn’t budge from his demands and has raised objections about some key aspects of U.S.-led peace efforts. Three rounds of direct peace talks in Istanbul yielded no major breakthroughs.
Aid group suspends Gaza operations after ceasefire
The controversial US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) has confirmed it suspended operations in Gaza after the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas came into effect on 10 October.
Despite being funded until November, the organisation said its final delivery was on Friday.
The GHF has been heavily criticised after hundreds of Palestinians were killed while collecting food near its distribution sites. Witnesses say most were killed by Israeli forces.
Israel has regularly denied that its troops fired on civilians at or near the sites and the GHF has maintained that aid distribution at its sites has been carried out "without incident".
The group's northernmost aid distribution site, known as SDS4, was shut down because it was no longer in IDF-controlled territory, said a spokesman.
Israel imposes new Gaza aid restrictions, keeps Rafah crossing closed
Israel has imposed new restrictions on aid entering the besieged Gaza Strip and will not open the Rafah crossing as planned, while Israeli forces killed at least nine people in the Palestinian territory as the Israel-Hamas ceasefire came under growing strain.
Israel notified the United Nations on Tuesday that it will only allow 300 aid trucks – half of the number it originally agreed to – daily into the Gaza Strip from Wednesday.
Olga Cherevko, a spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Gaza, confirmed the UN had received the note from the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the arm of the Israeli military that oversees aid flows into Gaza.
The COGAT note said no fuel or gas will be allowed into the war-torn enclave except for specific needs related to humanitarian infrastructure.
Reporting from Gaza City, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud noted that allowing 300 trucks of aid each day was “not nearly enough” for famine-stricken Gaza.
Trump says U.S. struck 5th boat accused of carrying drugs off coast of Venezuela, killing 6
President Trump said Tuesday that the U.S. struck another small boat that he accused of carrying drugs in the waters off the coast of Venezuela.
The president said in a post on Truth Social that six people aboard the vessel were killed in the strike and no U.S. forces were harmed. It's the fifth deadly strike in the Caribbean, where the Trump administration has asserted it is treating alleged drug traffickers as unlawful combatants who must be met with military force. At least 27 people have been killed in the five strikes, according to figures released by the administration.
Frustration with the use of force has been growing on Capitol Hill among members of both major political parties. Some Republicans are seeking more information from the White House on the legal justification and details of the strikes. Democrats contend the strikes violate U.S. and international law.
László Krasznahorkai wins the Nobel prize in literature 2025
The Nobel prize in literature for 2025 has been awarded to the Hungarian author László Krasznahorkai, the Swedish Academy has announced.
The academy cited the 71-year-old’s “compelling and visionary oeuvre that, in the midst of apocalyptic terror, reaffirms the power of art”.
Krasznahorkai is known for his dystopian, melancholic novels, which have won numerous prizes, including the 2019 National Book award for translated literature and the 2015 International Booker prize. Several of his works, including his novels Satantango and The Melancholy of Resistance, have been adapted into feature films.
“I am deeply glad that I have received the Nobel prize – above all because this award proves that literature exists in itself, beyond various non-literary expectations, and that it is still being read,” said Krasznahorkai. “And for those who read it, it offers a certain hope that beauty, nobility, and the sublime still exist for their own sake. It may offer hope even to those in whom life itself only barely flickers.”
The novelist Colm Tóibín described Krasznahorkai as “a unique literary visionary who has opened up a huge amount of rich space in the contemporary novel showing what can be done”.
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