A top Hamas official told AFP Saturday that the release of 48 mostly Israeli hostages held by Palestinian militants in Gaza would begin on Monday morning.

Iran on Saturday said it did not have confidence that its arch-nemesis Israel would respect the terms of a Gaza ceasefire that began a day earlier, following two years of war.

“I will not allow the Democrats to hold our Military, and the entire Security of our Nation, HOSTAGE, with their dangerous Government Shutdown,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.

North Korea showed off its “most powerful” intercontinental ballistic missile at a military parade attended by top officials from Russia and China, Pyongyang’s state media reported Saturday.

“The proposed weapons handover is out of the question and not negotiable,” the official said.

Trump has since called Zelensky a “nice guy” and maintained support for Ukraine, which has been fighting a Russian invasion since 2022.

“I felt nothing when I first saw the news,” said Liu Ming, a 48-year-old employee in a software company, outside a large Beijing shopping mall.

“I was to meet President Xi in two weeks, at APEC, in South Korea, but now there seems to be no reason to do so,” he added in the post, which he sent as he headed for a medical check-up at a military hospital near Washington

“The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace,” White House Director of Communications Steven Cheung said on X.

He said that when he began heading home, “the situation was dangerous, with gunfire, so I waited for a while”.

The Israeli military said a ceasefire in Gaza took effect at 0900 GMT on Friday, after Israel and Hamas agreed to a truce and hostage-release deal proposed by US President Donald Trump.

The Nobel Peace Prize was on Friday awarded to Venezuela’s opposition leader and democracy activist Maria Corina Machado, the Norwegian Nobel Committee said.

Burkina Faso, ruled by a junta hostile to the West, has refused to take in people kicked out of the United States, in a snub to one of President Donald Trump’s signature migration policies.

Ukraine said on Friday that Russia had launched a “massive attack” on the capital Kyiv, triggering power cuts as a minister warned that Moscow was also striking hard at the national energy grid.

He said ECOWAS has had to engage additional recruitment firms and is now working to introduce an e-recruitment system to fast-track applications and interviews.