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.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer wore a broad smile aboard the plane home from Washington. He landed back in Britain on Friday with the satisfaction of a tricky mission not quite accomplished, but off to a flying start.

Starmer's goals for his trip were to persuade President Donald Trump to provide Ukraine with security guarantees in any peace deal and head off duties on British goods while pursuing a rapport with an unpredictable U.S. leader who is the center-left prime minister's opposite in temperament and political outlook.

Shares in Japan and South Korea closed sharply lower on Friday as US President Donald Trump's volley of tariff measures sparked fresh fears about a global trade war.

Japan's Nikkei 225 closed down 2.88 percent at 37,155.50, while in Seoul the Kospi ended 3.39 percent lower at 2,532.78. The Hang Seng in Hong Kong was off 3.47 percent in afternoon trade.

Imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan called on his militant group Thursday to lay down its arms and dissolve as part of a new bid to end a four-decade long conflict with Turkey's government that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

In a message from his prison on an island off Istanbul, Ocalan said that the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, should hold a congress and decide to disband.

Negotiations between Israel and Hamas on the next phase of the Gaza ceasefire began Thursday, Egypt said, averting a collapse ahead of Saturday's expiration of the agreement's first phase.

Officials from Israel, Qatar and the United States started "intensive discussions" on the ceasefire's second phase in Cairo, Egypt's state information service said.

An investigation by the Israeli military has determined that Hamas was able to carry out the deadliest attack in Israeli history on Oct. 7, 2023, because the much more powerful Israeli army misjudged the militant group's intentions and underestimated its capabilities.

The findings, released Thursday, could pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to launch a widely demanded broader inquiry to examine the political decision-making that preceded the attack, which triggered the war in Gaza.

Russian and U.S. diplomats held talks in Istanbul on Thursday to discuss normalizing the operation of their respective embassies after years expelling each others' diplomats.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the talks in Istanbul followed an understanding reached during President Donald Trump's call with Russian President Vladimir Putin and talks between top Russian and U.S. diplomats and other senior officials in Saudi Arabia.