U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday that Qatar will be allowed to build an air force facility at Mountain Home Air Base in Idaho that will house F-15 fighter jets and pilots.

The announcement comes soon after President Donald Trump signed an executive order vowing to defend the Gulf Arab state against attacks, following Israeli air strikes targeting Hamas leaders in the Qatari capital Doha.

A United Nations rapporteur on Friday said an Israeli attack on south Lebanon on October 13, 2023, that killed a Reuters journalist and wounded others including two from AFP was a war crime.

Morris Tidball-Binz, U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, told a press conference in Beirut that it was "a premeditated, targeted and double-tapped attack from the Israeli forces, a clear violation, in my opinion, of IHL (international humanitarian law), a war crime."

Syria's foreign minister arrived in Beirut on Friday in what observers say could mark a breakthrough in relations between the two neighbors, which have been tense for decades.

Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani held talks with his Lebanese counterpart Youssef Rajji and and later with President Joseph Aoun. He is also scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Nawaf Salam. It is the first high-profile Syrian visit to Lebanon since insurgent groups overthrew President Bashar Assad's government in early December 2024.

The Nobel Peace Prize was on Friday awarded to Venezuela's opposition leader and democracy activist Maria Corina Machado, forced to live in hiding in what has become a "brutal" state, the Nobel jury said.

Thousands of Gazans began heading north in the territory after the Israeli military announced that a ceasefire had come into effect on Friday, AFP footage showed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said on Friday that the government had "approved the framework" of a hostage release deal with Hamas, as both sides edged closer to ending more than two years of hostilities in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday said Donald Trump should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, hours after the US president announced a ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas.

"Give @realDonaldTrump the Nobel Peace Prize -- he deserves it!" said a post on the official X account of the Office of the Prime Minister of Israel.

An Israeli government spokeswoman on Thursday said high profile Palestinian prisoner Marwan Barghouti would not be exchanged as part of the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal reached by Israel and Hamas.

When asked by a journalist whether Israel had agreed to release Barghouti, government spokeswoman Shosh Bedrosian told a briefing that: "I can tell you at this point in time that he will not be part of this release."

The price of silver reached more than $50 an ounce Thursday for the first time since 1993 in the wake of sister safe-haven gold soaring to record highs.

Ukraine announced on Thursday it was ordering the evacuation of children and their guardians from towns and villages in and around the eastern frontline city of Kramatorsk, citing an uptick in Russian drone attacks.

"Due to the deterioration of the security situation in certain areas of the Kramatorsk city community, the mandatory evacuation of families with children has been announced," the city council announced in a statement on social media.