President Joseph Aoun ruled out Friday normalization between Lebanon and Israel, which still occupies parts of southern Lebanon.

Aoun's statement is the first official reaction to Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar's statement last week in which he expressed his country's interest in normalizing ties with Lebanon and Syria.

The Kremlin on Friday criticized Emmanuel Macron, a day after the French president said plans to send a peacekeeping force to Ukraine were "ready" should Moscow and Kyiv agree to an elusive ceasefire.

"The presence of foreign troops near our borders is unacceptable to us," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, accusing European leaders of a "pattern of militaristic anti-Russian sentiment."

The Israeli military said it targeted Muhammad Jamal Murad, a Hezbollah artillery commander in the coastal sector, in a drone strike on Mansouri in southern Lebanon on Thursday.

The Israeli army accused Murad of being behind past rocket launches towards Israel and of attempting to rebuild Hezbollah's artillery capabilities.

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has told EU ambassadors that the "safety of UNIFIL personnel is essential to Lebanon" after recent attacks on patrols.

In recent weeks, several incidents have seen civilians in Hezbollah strongholds confront UNIFIL patrols. The U.N. force sits on the ceasefire monitoring committee alongside Lebanon, Israel, France and the United States.

Israel is ready to negotiate a lasting deal with Hamas to end the Gaza war when a temporary halt to hostilities begins, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday.

An Israeli man was killed in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, local authorities said, with the military and first responders saying that two attackers were shot dead.

Emergency services said they were called to reports of a person injured in a shooting in the car park of a shopping center in Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem.

The EU on Thursday struck a deal with Israel to increase aid access to Gaza that should see more food trucks entering and the opening of additional crossing points, the bloc's top diplomat said.

"Today, we reached an agreement with Israel to expand humanitarian access to Gaza," EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas wrote on X.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz urged U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday to "stay with us" Europeans in maintaining support for Ukraine, at a Rome conference on rebuilding the war-torn country.

Addressing himself "to Washington DC and to President Donald Trump: stay with us and stay with the Europeans, we are on the same page and we are looking for a stable political order in this world" -- adding in a message to Moscow, that "we will not give up".

The European Parliament on Thursday voted down a no-confidence motion against EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, initiated by the far right over her handling of Covid vaccine contracts.

Von der Leyen comfortably survived the vote by a wide margin, with 360 MEPs rejecting it and 175 backing the move.

The U.S. embassy accused Yemen's Houthi rebels Wednesday of kidnapping crew members from the Eternity C during their deadly attack on the cargo vessel in the Red Sea earlier this week.

"After killing their shipmates, sinking their ship and hampering rescue efforts, the Houthi terrorists have kidnapped many surviving crew members of the Eternity C. We call for their immediate and unconditional safe release," the embassy said in a statement on X.