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Days after Secretary of State Antony Blinken signaled that there would be no U.S. inquiry into Israel's killing of Turkish American activist Ayşenur Ezgi Eygi in the occupied West Bank last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday called on the Department of Justice to open an investigation of the young campaigner's death.

Sanders noted that both U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, both called for "full accountability" for Eygi's killers.

"Let's be clear: There will be no accountability if the United States defers to the extremist Israeli government to investigate its own actions," he said in a statement.

“There is no other country in the world that has a monthly meeting on the (Security) Council’s agenda going back decades,” the US envoy said, describing the “unfair amount of focus on Israel in the UN” as “problematic”.

Asked about recognising the Palestinian State, Thomas-Greenfield gave an evasive response as she claimed that “a state has certain responsibilities for its people, and I do not believe the Palestinians, as they exist right now, have all of the elements to give it statehood.

She also bluntly responded to a question about the arrest warrant issued for Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, by the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor, Karim Khan, and said: “We have been clear that we have a problem with the Court’s ruling.”

“Well, let me be clear: We will not arrest him,” she stressed.

Speaking during an event at Chatham House in London on Friday, Prince Turki - who led Saudi Arabia’s intelligence for over two decades - called on Washington to deny Israel financial and military support.

“A lot of financial help goes to Israel from the United States,” the 79-year-old, whose father King Faisal ruled the kingdom between 1964 and 1975, told reporters and foreign policy analysts in the British capital.

He stated that “Israeli lobbyists” enjoyed tax-free status in the US because they were considered to be “philanthropic or humanitarian”, rather than as representing the interests of Israel. He urged for such tax exemptions on pro-Israel groups to be withdrawn by the Americans in light of the ongoing conflict.

Israeli occupation forces have conducted a large-scale arrest campaign since Wednesday, with at least 40 Palestinians detained across the occupied West Bank by yesterday morning. Among those arrested were a patient receiving treatment in a hospital and several former prisoners.

The arrests were primarily concentrated in the Hebron and Tubas governorates, with others reported across the majority of the West Bank, according to a joint statement from the Palestinian Prisoners Club and the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs.

Organisations dedicated to prisoners’ rights have been unable to verify the full extent of the arrests due to the ongoing military operations by occupation forces in the Tulkarm and Tubas governorates, including their respective refugee camps.

Since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Flood operation on 7 October 2023, and amid the ongoing genocide and comprehensive aggression against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank, Israeli occupation forces have arrested more than 10,700 Palestinians in the West Bank, including Jerusalem.

When asked to comment on the appointment of Michel Barnier as prime minister and the political and economic challenges facing France, de Villepin concluded the interview by expressing his anger over the French political and media response to Israel's war on Gaza.

When the journalist brought up the conflict and cited the death toll as provided by "Hamas' health ministry", de Villepin quickly interrupted her.

“I hear that all the time... It is not only the Ministry of Health of Hamas that says that there are 40,000 dead; there are probably many more. Let’s not give the impression that this is a truncated figure,” he said. Visibly angered, he continued: “No, it is, unfortunately, an everyday reality. In Gaza, bodies are in pieces; hearts are in pieces; souls are in pieces; heads are in pieces.”

The former centre-right prime minister, who served under Jacques Chirac from 2005 to 2007, went on to describe Gaza as “undoubtedly the greatest historic scandal, which no one talks about in this country anymore”.

“It is silence, a lead weight; the media doesn't discuss it... I have to turn to Google to find news that gives me the number of deaths in Gaza. It is a real scandal in terms of democracy,” he said.

The Biden administration has decided to release $320m in military aid to Egypt - a package previously contingent on improving human rights issues in the country.

Unless Congress steps in, this brings the total amount from Washington to Cairo this year to $1.3bn. Egypt has long been the second-highest recipient of US military aid after Israel.

In a statement, the Middle East Democracy Center, a Washington-based advocacy group, called the decision a “betrayal” by an administration that pledged to make human rights central to the US-Egypt bilateral relationship.

“The illusion that the United States can use its military aid to these regimes as leverage for the dictatorships and the abusive regimes to improve themselves is a joke,” Raed Jarrar, advocacy director with Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn) told MEE. “There is no way for el-Sisi to reform el-Sisi. There is no way for Netanyahu to reform Netanyahu. These things are not going to happen."

A court has found a woman not guilty of a racially aggravated public order offence for holding a placard depicting politicians Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman as “coconuts” during a pro-Palestine march in central London.

Speaking in Westminster Magistrates' Court on Friday, Hussain said the placard was not “meant to be offensive” but an example of political commentary and “satirical". “[Calling the placard] hate-speech is far-fetched in my opinion.”

"The only qualified expert the police could find in 10 months of searching was Professor Kehinde Andrews. And he told them that coconut was not racist. And he additionally told the police to share his advice with the CPS so they could stop wasting everyone's time.

A campaign is under way to drive the UN relief agency for Palestinians, Unrwa, out of existence, its commissioner general has said, days after 18 people were killed when Israeli jets bombed an Unrwa school in Gaza.

Philippe Lazzarini said in an interview that the Israeli government was seeking to close down the agency, having failed to persuade western donors to stop funding it on the grounds of allegations about links between Unrwa staff and Hamas.

“This deliberate attempt to eliminate Unrwa and prevent it from operating would have devastating consequences for the multilateral system, the UN and the cause of a Palestinian transition to self-determination,” Lazzarini said.

He said: “There is a deliberate attempt to eliminate and dismantle the agency and the reason behind that has nothing to do with neutrality issues, but there is a political purpose behind it. Ultimately there is a desire to strip the Palestinians of refugee status and beyond that to undermine the future Palestinian aspiration for self-determination. That is why Unrwa has become such a target.

Dozens of kilograms of cocaine have been found in banana deliveries to four of a French supermarket chain’s stores, with police unsure who the intended recipient was.

Staff at Grand Frais branches in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in eastern France were astonished to find between 40kg (88lb) and 50kg of drugs hidden under pallets of bananas and were anxious to reassure customers that the cocaine had not come into contact with the fruit.

Now detectives are attempting to solve the mystery of how the drugs, believed to have originated in Colombia, came to be in the pallets and – more importantly – for whom they were destined.

China is to raise the retirement age for the first time since 1978, as the world’s second-largest economy faces up to a sharply ageing population that will leave it short of workers.

The country will gradually extend the retirement age for all men from 60 to 63, for women in white-collar jobs from 55 to 58, and for women in blue-collar work from 50 to 55, state-owned news agency Xinhua reported on Friday.

The measures were approved by the standing committee of China’s rubber-stamp parliament on Friday. They will take effect in January and be phased in over 15 years in line with the principle of “small-step adjustments”, Xinhua said.

Harris’ statement gives us a very clear window into just how little she and her boss care about the death of an American citizen at Israel’s hands.

“The killing of Aysenur Eygi is a horrific tragedy that never should have happened…Aysenur was peacefully protesting in the West Bank—standing up against the expansion of settlements—when her young life was senselessly cut short. No one should be killed for participating in a peaceful protest. The shooting that led to her death is unacceptable and raises legitimate questions about the conduct of IDF personnel in the West Bank. Israel must do more to ensure that incidents like this never happen again.”

Harris then stated that she accepted Israel’s version of the incident, saying, “Israel’s preliminary investigation indicated it was the result of a tragic error for which the IDF is responsible. We will continue to press the government of Israel for answers and for continued access to the findings of the investigation so we can have confidence in the results. There must be full accountability.”

Both Biden and Harris affirmed Israel’s absurd story that a trained sniper accidentally fired a shot that ricocheted off a rock and managed to hit Aysenur with a kill shot to the head that ended her life in minutes. It is a cartoonish narrative of a magic bullet that wouldn’t be remotely credible in a movie script.

The U.S. military has announced the sale of billions of dollars of missiles, bombs, and other weapons to Israel in the past year, as the campaign on Gaza grinds on. Now, the Department of Defense is also building aircraft facilities in Israel to accommodate American-made refueling tanker planes, according to newly issued public contracting documents reviewed by The Intercept.

The project includes new construction and upgrades of existing buildings, including one or more hangars, warehouses, and storage facilities, at an Israeli military base in the south of Israel, according to Army Corps of Engineers documents.