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Displaced repeatedly. Forced to live in tent camps or amid the ruins of their homes. Stricken by hunger and deprived of medical supplies.

Now, 22 months into the war, around 1 million Palestinians are bracing for another catastrophe after the Israeli security cabinet’s decision to take control of Gaza City. Such an offensive would force them toward the south of the territory, and an uncertain future.
An aerial image shows smoke rising above Gaza City during an aid airdrop on Thursday.

“Since this morning, after hearing the news of evacuation of Gaza City, I have been feeling anxious and afraid,” said Umm Ibrahim Banat, a 55-year-old mother originally from northern Gaza, who has already been displaced four times. “Where will we go with the children and the elderly? I swear we are exhausted from displacement, starvation, and being driven from one place to another.”

“Now,” she said, “We are the walking dead.”

After a 10-hour overnight meeting, the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced on Friday that his security cabinet had approved a plan to take over Gaza City, marking another escalation of Israel’s offensive that has killed at least 61,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians.

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The Trump administration is seeking a $1bn settlement from the University of California, Los Angeles, a White House official said on Friday.

The person was not authorized to speak publicly about the request and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The Trump administration has suspended $584m in federal research funding from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy and other agencies, the university’s chancellor, Julio Frenk, said in a message to UCLA staff and students this week.

Last week, the justice department notified the university that an investigation by the department’s civil right division had “concluded that UCLA’s response to the protest encampment on its campus in the spring of 2024 was deliberately indifferent to a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students” in violation of federal anti-discrimination law.

“This disgusting breach of civil rights against students will not stand: DOJ will force UCLA to pay a heavy price for putting Jewish Americans at risk and continue our ongoing investigations into other campuses in the UC system”, the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, said in a statement.

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President Donald Trump has removed former U.S. Rep. Billy Long as IRS commissioner less than two months after his confirmation, a White House official said Friday.

It was not immediately clear why Long was dismissed. His quick exit makes him the shortest-tenured IRS commissioner confirmed by the Senate since the position was created in 1862.

Long said in a social media post that Trump had nominated him for an ambassadorship.

“It is a honor to serve my friend President Trump and I am excited to take on my new role as the ambassador to Iceland. I am thrilled to answer his call to service and deeply committed to advancing his bold agenda. Exciting times ahead!” the former Missouri congressman wrote on X.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will serve as acting IRS commissioner, according to the White House official, who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

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The U.S. Department of Justice has launched a federal grand jury investigation into New York Attorney General Letitia James, according to two sources familiar with the investigation who weren't authorized to speak publicly.

James won a civil fraud case against President Trump and his companies in 2023, resulting in millions of dollars in penalties linked to fraud allegations.

The DOJ is seeking more information from James about the suit, and appears to be operating under a theory that James may have deprived Trump and his adult children of their rights as part of that case, the sources said.

The DOJ declined to comment.

Trump has repeatedly singled out James for public criticism dating back to when she first launched the civil case against him in 2022. He has accused James — a Democrat who is Black — of acting with political motivations against him and referred to her as "racist."

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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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