Israel's defense ministry said the military has been instructed to prepare to defend a Druze settlement in the suburbs of Damascus, asserting that the minority it has vowed to protect was "under attack" by Syrian forces.

The statement, citing an order from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz, follows an Israeli warning last weekend that the forces of neighboring Syria's new government and the insurgent group that led last year's ouster of former President Bashar Assad should not enter the area south of Damascus.

Israel stopped the entry of all goods and supplies into the Gaza Strip on Sunday and warned of "additional consequences" if Hamas does not accept a new proposal for an extension of the first phase of a fragile ceasefire.

Hamas accused Israel of trying to derail the truce and said its decision to cut off aid was "cheap extortion, a war crime and a blatant attack on the (ceasefire) agreement." Both sides stopped short of saying the ceasefire had ended.

Thousands of mourners in southern Lebanon attended a funeral for nearly 100 Lebanese killed last year during the war between Israel and Hezbollah.

It was the largest mass burial ceremony in Lebanon since the U.S.-brokered ceasefire three months ago. It followed last week's burial of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's former leader, and his top aide in Beirut attended by tens of thousands.

The Trump administration has approved a major nearly $3 billion arms sale to Israel, bypassing a normal congressional review to provide the country with more of the 2,000-pound bombs that it has used in the war against Hamas in Gaza.

In a series of notifications sent to Congress late Friday, the State Department said it had signed off on the sale of more than 35,500 MK 84 and BLU-117 bombs and 4,000 Predator warheads worth $2.04 billion.

People mourned Friday, in the southern border town of Aitaroun, their loved ones killed in Israeli airstrikes during hostilities that lasted more than a year between Israel and Hezbollah.

The 95 civilians and Hezbollah members had been temporarily buried outside their hometown as the Israeli military remained in an area of dozens of border towns past its withdrawal deadline.

Matt Ries has lived in Florida only three years, but everyone told him last summer was unusually hot. That was followed by three hurricanes in close succession. Then temperatures dropped below freezing for days this winter, and snow blanketed part of the state.

To Ries, 29, an Ohio native now in Tampa, the extreme weather — including the bitter cold — bore all the hallmarks of climate change.

Germany's inflation rate remained stable in February at 2.3 percent, preliminary data showed Friday, leaving the door open for the European Central Bank to ease rates at its meeting next week.

The annual inflation rate in Europe's largest economy was in line with the expectations of analysts surveyed by financial data firm FactSet.

The afternoon session of Formula 1 preseason testing was briefly interrupted Friday when a shuttle bus drove on the track.

In a bizarre scene, a red flag was waved to halt testing as a white bus drove slowly on a runoff area of the track at Bahrain International Circuit.

Israeli police said Friday they arrested eight people for spitting at churches in Jerusalem’s Old City, as religious tensions threatened to flare in the contested capital.

Grainy security video released by the police showed two young Jewish men in a procession, who appeared to be spitting on the ground.

North Korea said Friday it had test-fired strategic cruise missiles to demonstrate its nuclear counter-attack capability, days after it vowed to respond to what it called escalating U.S.-led hostilities since the start of the Trump administration.

The official Korean Central News Agency said leader Kim Jong Un oversaw the missile tests off the country's west coast Wednesday. They were the North's fourth missile launch event this year and the second of President Donald Trump's second term.