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Germany will suspend arms exports to Israel that could be used in the Gaza Strip, Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced Friday, marking Berlin’s clearest shift yet in response to Israel’s escalating military campaign.

“Under these circumstances, the German government will, until further notice, not approve any exports of military equipment that could be used in the Gaza Strip,” Merz said in a government press release. He added that Israel’s intensified operations in Gaza — approved by its Cabinet overnight—make it “increasingly difficult” to see how stated goals like the release of hostages or the disarmament of Hamas can be achieved.

The move stops short of a full weapons embargo and leaves open the possibility of continued exports for systems unrelated to the Gaza campaign, such as missile defense or naval equipment.

Germany has long emphasized Israel’s right to self-defense and reiterated Friday that “the disarmament of Hamas is essential.”

However, Merz sharply criticized the humanitarian consequences of Israel’s planned offensive, urging the government to allow “full access for aid deliveries, including for U.N. organizations and other non-governmental institutions.”

“The Israeli government carries greater responsibility than ever for the civilian population’s supply,” Merz said.

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The FBI is firing the former acting director who led the bureau at the start of the Trump administration and refused to turn over a list of agents who worked on Jan. 6 cases.

Brian Driscoll, who has returned to a career post at the bureau since departing its top spot, has been asked to leave by Friday, a source familiar confirmed to The Hill.

Driscoll has been viewed as a champion of the bureau’s rank-and-file staff. He declined to turn over a list of the thousands of FBI agents who worked on investigations into those that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. 

The request to do so sparked a lawsuit from FBI staff members who feared the list would be used to target agents and could lead to retribution.

The FBI declined to comment.

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A federal judge in Maryland blocked President Trump’s birthright citizenship restrictions nationwide late Thursday, the fourth such ruling following the Supreme Court’s decision clawing back universal injunctions. 

U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman already signaled she would block the restrictions nationwide, but she did not have jurisdiction at the time because the case rested with an appeals court.

Last week, the appeals court sent the case back to Boardman so she could issue the ruling. 

The new phase of litigation follows the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision along ideological lines curtailing judges’ ability to issue universal injunctions. The high court still left the door open for nationwide blocks when needed to provide plaintiffs “complete relief” or when judges certify a nationwide class action. 

Boardman insisted she was not “resurrecting” a universal injunction and Thursday’s ruling “comports with old and recent Supreme Court precedent.”

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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has gotten an up-close look at a headline-grabbing object known as 3I/ATLAS that has recently wandered into Earth's cosmic neighborhood from far away.

The image, which NASA bills as "the sharpest-ever picture" of an object most astronomers agree is almost definitely a comet, depicts the interstellar visitor that originated from outside our solar system from elsewhere in the Milky Way.

3I/ATLAS first made news in early July when scientists confirmed it as the third-ever observed interstellar interloper in our solar system. The space object further attracted the public's fascination again later in the month when a controversial astrophysicist from Harvard University began claiming it could be an alien spaceship.

What we definitely know about 3I/ATLAS is that it has been drifting through interstellar space for billions of years, gaining speed from the gravitational slingshot effect of passing countless stars and nebulas.

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Athens is upset by the seizure of properties of the Greek Orthodox Church in the West Bank by illegal Israeli settlers, local media reported on Thursday.

According to Kathimerini daily, Greek authorities expressed serious concern over reports of expanded land intrusions by settlers on property belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church in the West Bank, particularly around the historic Monastery of Saint Gerasimos of the Jordan near the city of Jericho.

According to the daily, tension in the Jericho region has risen over the past two years, particularly following October 2023, when Israel began its devastating war on Gaza, with at least five new settler outposts reportedly established in the region, often preceding further land seizures.

It added that a high-level meeting was held in Athens to assess the situation, including the expansion of illegal settlement activity on land under the jurisdiction of the Jerusalem Greek Orthodox Patriarchate.

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Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that Israel intends to take military control of all of Gaza in defiance of warnings that such a move would lead to countless more Palestinian deaths, further mass displacement and endanger Israeli hostages still held in the territory.

Before a security cabinet meeting to discuss Gaza’s future, the Israeli prime minister insisted that Israel does not want to ultimately govern the territory and would hand over that responsibility to friendly Arab nations

Asked in an interview with Fox News if Israel would “take control of all of Gaza”, Netanyahu replied: “We intend to, in order to assure our security, remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free of Gaza.” The security cabinet would need to approve such a decision.

“We don’t want to keep it. We want to have a security perimeter,” Netanyahu said. “We want to hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly without threatening us and giving Gazans a good life.”

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U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday that he would meet with Vladimir Putin even if the Russian leader will not meet with Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in comments that suggested Washington and Moscow could soon hold a summit.

Trump’s comments followed a statement from Putin earlier in the day that he hoped to meet with Trump next week, possibly in the United Arab Emirates. But the White House was still working through the details of any potential meetings, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

When asked by a reporter if Putin would need to meet with Zelenskyy in order to secure a meeting with the U.S., Trump said: “No, he doesn’t. No.”

A White House official told The Associated Press earlier Thursday that a U.S.-Russian summit would not happen if Putin did not agree to meet with Zelenskyy, but the official later said it only made the summit less likely. The official was not authorized to speak publicly and had spoken on condition of anonymity.

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Donald Trump signed an executive action on Thursday forcing colleges and universities to submit data to prove they do not consider race in admissions, as the White House intensifies its scrutiny of higher education institutions that receive federal funding.

The Trump administration is accusing colleges of using personal statements and other proxies in order to consider race, despite a 2023 supreme court ruling reversing affirmative action, as part of its wider attack on diversity-, inclusion- and equality-related initiatives at American institutions.

“Although the Supreme Court of the United States has definitively held that consideration of race in higher education admissions violates students’ civil rights,” the presidential memorandum reads, “the persistent lack of available data – paired with the rampant use of ‘diversity statements’ and other overt and hidden racial proxies – continues to raise concerns about whether race is actually used in practice.”

In the memorandum, Trump directs the education secretary, Linda McMahon, to require that higher education institutions submit “the data necessary to verify that their admissions do not involve unlawful discrimination”. McMahon is to overhaul the US higher education database, expand the scope of required admissions reporting and increase accuracy checks to help provide additional “transparency”.

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