SOUTH AFRICA: The Foreign Ministry ordered Israel’s deputy ambassador to leave the country within 72 hours today, accusing him of undermining relations between the countries with social media posts that insulted President Cyril Ramaphosa and violating diplomatic protocols.

The South African Foreign Ministry said that it was expelling Ariel Seidman, the charge d’affaires at the Israeli embassy, and declared him persona non grata.

Hours later, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said it was expelling a senior South African diplomat, Shaun Edward Byneveldt, in response.

PALESTINE: Israel said today that it will reopen the pedestrian border crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt in both directions over the weekend.

The military said in a statement that starting on Sunday a “limited movement of people only” would be allowed through the Rafah crossing, Gaza’s main gateway to the outside world.

The crossing has been under a near complete closure since Israel seized it in May 2024. It was briefly opened for the evacuation of medical patients during a short-lived ceasefire in early 2025.

SYRIA: The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) announced a new agreement today with the central government intended to stabilise a ceasefire that ended weeks of fighting, and to lay out the steps toward integration between the two sides.

Under the agreement, security forces affiliated with the Syrian Ministry of Interior would go into the cities of al-Hassakeh and Qamishli in the Kurdish heartland, which they had previously been barred from entering, and the process of integrating SDF and government forces would begin.

US: Federal prosecutors can’t seek the death penalty against Luigi Mangione in the killing of United Healthcare chief executive Brian Thompson, a judge ruled today, foiling the Trump administration’s bid to see him executed.

US District Judge Margaret Garnett dismissed a federal murder charge that had enabled prosecutors to seek capital punishment, finding that it was technically flawed.

She wrote that she did so to “foreclose the death penalty as an available punishment to be considered by the jury” as it weighs whether to convict Mangione.