Hamas intends to maintain security control in Gaza during an interim period, a senior Hamas official told Reuters, adding he could not commit to the group disarming - positions that reflect the difficulties facing US plans to secure an end to the war.
Hamas politburo member Mohammed Nazzal also said the group was ready for a ceasefire of up to five years to rebuild devastated Gaza, with guarantees for what happens afterwards depending on Palestinians being given "horizons and hope" for statehood.
Speaking to Reuters in an interview from Doha, where Hamas politicians have long resided, Nazzal defended the group's crackdown in Gaza, where it carried out public executions on Monday. There were always "exceptional measures" during war and those executed were criminals guilty of killing, he said.
Pressure To Disarm
While Hamas has broadly expressed these views before, the timing of Nazzal's comments demonstrates the major obstacles obstructing efforts to cement a full end to the war in Gaza, days after the first phase of the ceasefire was agreed.
Hamas Aims To Keep Grip On Gaza Security, Can't Commit To Disarm, Says Senior Official
IDF investigates report of Israeli troops setting Gaza sewage treatment plant ablaze
The Israel Defense Forces are investigating reports Israeli troops who were occupying a key sewage treatment plant in Gaza set it ablaze amid a drawdown of their forces from much of the enclave's territory last week as a part of the first phase of the ceasefire deal.
The Sheikh Aljin sewage treatment plant, located to the southeast of Gaza City, was badly damaged in the reported fire, according to Gaza's Coastal Municipalities Water Utility.
The CMWU told ABC News that an in-person investigation of the site on Tuesday, Oct. 14, confirmed that four of the plant's six biological treatment towers had suffered massive fire damage.
According to the CMWU, the plastic cells and hydraulic systems inside the treatment towers had been destroyed and their concrete walls cracked by the fire.
Photos taken by the CMWU's staff after the fire and provided to ABC News reveal the damage to the plant. The photos show multiple treatment towers with charred walls, their interiors burnt out and strewn with garbage. The treatment towers are scattered with Hebrew-language graffiti, including one reading, "I'll be back soon."
Russians and Ukrainians expect no major breakthrough at planned Trump-Putin summit
People in Russia and Ukraine on Friday hoped for progress but anticipated no major breakthrough on ending their war at an upcoming summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
The two leaders agreed in a phone call Thursday to meet in Budapest, Hungary, in the coming weeks, according to Trump, who was scheduled to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House later Friday.
“When (Trump and Putin) meet, I don’t think anything will be achieved quickly,” 36-year-old Moscow resident Artyom Kondratov told The Associated Press.
At a previous Trump-Putin summit in Alaska in August, Putin didn’t budge from his demands and has raised objections about some key aspects of U.S.-led peace efforts. Three rounds of direct peace talks in Istanbul yielded no major breakthroughs.
No Kings organizers project a massive turnout for this weekend's protests
Organizers of the No Kings protests are projecting that millions of Americans will demonstrate against the policies of the Trump administration on Saturday, amid ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests and the deployment of National Guard troops to several Democratic-run cities around the United States.
"The purpose here is to stand in solidarity, to organize, to defend our democracy and protect each other and our communities, and just say enough is enough," said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group that is one of the protest organizers.
"We've been watching the Trump administration's abuses of power, and millions took to the streets in June," she said.
Some Republicans have decried the protests as anti-American. House Speaker Mike Johnson called it a "hate America rally."
This summer, droves of demonstrators protested on the Army's 250th anniversary, which coincided with President Trump's birthday. In celebration of the date, Trump insisted on a massive military parade that critics said was meant to honor Trump as much as the armed service.
Trump administration freezes $11bn for infrastructure in Democratic states
The White House budget director, Russell Vought, said on Friday that the Trump administration will freeze another $11bn worth of infrastructure projects in Democratic states due to the ongoing government shutdown.
Vought said on social media the US army corps of engineers would pause work on “low priority” projects in cities such as New York, San Francisco, Boston and Baltimore. He said the projects could eventually be canceled.
The White House office of management and budget (OMB) said Donald Trump “wants to reorient how the federal government prioritizes Army Corps projects”.
The Trump administration has already frozen at least $28bn meant for transportation and energy projects in Democratic-controlled cities and states, as the president pressures his opponents in Congress to end the shutdown, which began on 1 October.
Trump has also vowed to cut “Democrat agencies” and has sought to eliminate 4,100 federal jobs as he looks to inflict pain on his political opposition.
Breathtaking, unsettling, healing: how US artist Kara Walker transformed a Confederate monument
In 2021, the city of Charlottesville, Virginia, finally removed the Confederate statues that had inspired a series of violent and eventually deadly white supremacist rallies in 2017.
The statue of Robert E Lee, which had been surrounded by white men with torches in a famous far-right propaganda image, was melted down. But the statue of Confederate general Stonewall Jackson, which stood at the heart of a 2017 Ku Klux Klan rally, was given to a California-based arts non-profit, which pledged to use it for “transformation, not further veneration”.
Today, that same Jackson equestrian statue, chopped apart and reconstructed by American artist Kara Walker, is in Los Angeles, the centerpiece of a new art exhibit reckoning with the US’s white supremacist monuments.
Walker is famous for making art that grapples with racist images and archetypes, from her cavorting mock-historical silhouettes of plantation scenes, to the shark-filled fountain she erected in the Tate Modern as a monument to the British slave trade. Her work made her the obvious choice for transforming a prominent Confederate statue weighted with many decades of violent history.
Los Angeles agrees to pay $828m to settle more sexual abuse claims
Six months after approving the largest sexual abuse settlement in US history, officials in Los Angeles announced the county tentatively agreed to pay another huge sum, nearly $1bn, to settle more than 400 additional claims against county employees.
In April, Los Angeles county approved a historic $4bn settlement with about 11,000 claimants and allegations of sexual abuse in LA juvenile facilities that dated back decades. On Friday, the county said it had reached another major settlement for $828m, pending approval by the board of supervisors, the county governing body, and the county claims board.
“Our settlements balance our obligation to compensate victims and treat their experiences with compassion, with the need to put strong protections in place to protect taxpayers from fraud,” Kathryn Barger, the chair of the Los Angeles county board of supervisors, said in a statement.
At least 15 detained after protesters and police clash outside Chicago Ice center
At least 15 people were taken into custody outside the Broadview Ice detention center in the Chicago area after heated confrontations between Illinois state police and protesters on Friday.
Authorities had instructed demonstrators to remain in designated “protest zones”
According to the Chicago Tribune, at about 8am, protesters advanced toward the building. Within minutes, dozens of troopers equipped with helmets and batons moved in to push the crowd back. Officers tackled and dragged several individuals. Much of the clash was captured on video and posted to social media.
At one point, protesters tried to intervene as a fellow demonstrator was detained. Later in the day, groups blew whistles at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents entering and leaving the facility.
Late October hurricane outlook warns of tropical trouble
The 2025 Atlantic hurricane season might have at least one more trick up its sleeve.
A tropical wave in the central Atlantic Ocean shows signs of organizing as it makes its way west toward the Caribbean Sea, forecasters said Oct. 17.
"Interests in the Caribbean from Jamaica to Puerto Rico should monitor this tropical wave in the coming days," said meteorologist Ryan Maue in an Oct. 17 Substack post.
If it becomes a tropical storm, it would be the 13th named storm of the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season. It would likely get the name Melissa.
According to the National Hurricane Center, in a forecast released on the morning of Oct. 17, "A tropical wave located over the central tropical Atlantic more than 1,000 miles east of the Windward Islands continues to produce a large area of showers and thunderstorms. Gradual development of this system is possible over the next several days while it moves generally westward at 15 to 20 mph.
Late October hurricane outlook warns of tropical trouble
A tropical wave in the central Atlantic Ocean shows signs of organizing as it makes its way west toward the Caribbean Sea.
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