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Hamas has accepted a U.S. proposal to begin talks on releasing Israeli hostages, including soldiers and men, 16 days after the first phase of an agreement aimed at ending the Gaza war, a senior Hamas source told Reuters on Saturday.

The militant Islamist group has dropped a demand that Israel first commit to a permanent ceasefire before signing the agreement, and would allow negotiations to achieve that throughout the six-week first phase, the source told Reuters on condition of anonymity because the talks are private.

A Palestinian official close to the internationally mediated peace efforts had said the proposal could lead to a framework agreement if embraced by Israel and would end the nine-month-old war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

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The KP.3 COVID-19 variant is continuing to lead as the dominant variant, the newest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data shows.

For a two-week period starting on June 23 and ending on July 6, the CDC’s Nowcast data tracker showed the projections of the COVID-19 variants. The KP.3 variant accounted for 36.9% of positive infections followed by KP.2 at 24.4%.

"Estimates predict that KP.3 is the dominant SARS-CoV-2 variant making up 31.2 to 43% of viruses nationally. KP.3 is projected to continue increasing as proportions of the variants that cause COVID-19," CDC Spokesperson, Rosa Norman, told USA TODAY in a statement. "KP.3 evolved from JN.1, which was the major viral lineage circulating since December 2023."

The data also shows that the new variant LB.1 has fallen back 3% by accounting for 14.5% of cases but was previously at 17.5% of infections. JN.1, the previous ring leader since 2023, only had 1.0% of positive cases which is a 0.6% decrease from the previous two-week period.

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Ukraine has said its army has retreated from a neighborhood in the outskirts of Chasiv Yar.

It comes as the strategically important town in the eastern Donetsk region has been reduced to rubble under a months-long Russian assault.

Chasiv Yar lies a short distance west Bakhmut, which was captured by Russia last year after a bitter 10-month battle. For months, Russian forces have focused on capturing Chasiv Yar, a town which occupies a strategic, elevated location. Its fall would put nearby cities in jeopardy, compromise critical Ukrainian supply routes and bring Russia closer to its stated aim of seizing the entire Donetsk region.

• An Israeli raid in Jenin has killed seven Palestinians and injured several others as violence escalates in the occupied West Bank.
• Hamas says it rejects plans to deploy any foreign forces in Gaza or undermining independent Palestinian administration of the territory.
• Israeli bombardment continues across Gaza amid repeated displacement of Palestinians.
• Israel’s Mossad spy chief David Barnea has visited Doha as the head of a negotiating delegation after reports of a “breakthrough” following Hamas’s latest response to a ceasefire proposal.
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says gaps remain between the parties, but ceasefire talks are set to resume next week.
• At least 38,011 people have been killed and 87,445 wounded in Israel’s war on Gaza since October 7. The death toll in Israel from the Hamas-led attacks is estimated at 1,139 with dozens of people still held captive in Gaza.

Eruptions at Italy's Mount Etna and the smaller Stromboli volcano spewed hot ash and lava, raising alert levels on the Mediterranean island of Sicily and forcing a temporary shutdown of Catania Airport on Friday.

Beryl has turned its wrath on Mexico and is headed for the Gulf of Mexico, weakened but still dangerous after tearing through a series of Caribbean islands in recent days. The tropical storm is expected to strengthen once again before targeting Texas.

The National Hurricane Center says Beryl made landfall as a Category 2 storm just east of Tulum on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula shortly after 6 a.m. ET on Friday. It weakened throughout the day, and by midafternoon it was downgraded to a tropical storm.

“Continued weakening is expected as Beryl crosses the Yucatan Peninsula today, but re-intensification is expected once the center moves back over the Gulf of Mexico,” the NHC said in its 2 p.m. ET update.

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The jobs figures, released on the first Friday of every month, have been closely watched by Wall Street, which is eager to see interest rates drop, and in Washington, where the strength of hiring has been one of the few bright spots for the Biden administration, which is struggling with poor polling on its economic policies.

Along with inflation figures, which come out later in the month, the Federal Reserve uses jobs figures to determine whether the economy is cooling and ready for interest rates to drop.

Last month, officials at the Fed kept rates at a two-decade high of around 5.3%, where it has been for nearly a year. The Fed has been trying to bring inflation down to 2%. In May, inflation sat at 3.4% – lower than its peak of 9.1% in June 2022, but still higher than the Fed’s target rate.

Three people were killed and at least nine others injured, four critically, when a pickup truck drove into a group celebrating the Fourth of July holiday in New York City, authorities said.

Police have identified 44-year-old Daniel Hyden, of New Jersey, as the driver behind the deadly collision. Hyden was allegedly driving a gray Ford F-150 that came down a street “at a high rate of speed” shortly before 9pm on Thursday. The truck went through an intersection and past a stop sign, drove on to the sidewalk and into Corlears Hook Park on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Jeffrey Maddrey, the New York police department chief, said during a news conference.