Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko on Friday said the Ukrainian capital was in a "very dramatic situation" as Russia stepped up its deadly barrages, pummeling key infrastructure and sowing traffic chaos.

Israel's elections commission has fined National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir for a video he posted on X in which he threatened to "put to death" a Palestinian prisoner, arguing the footage was electoral propaganda.

A senior UAE official said Friday that the incident aboard a flydubai flight to Israel this week was a "terrorist act", praising the captain who helped stop the plane from crashing after he was attacked by his co-pilot.

When China opened its first overseas air force base this week, a joint facility in isolated Laos, it was sending a signal -- its foreign military foothold is set to grow, analysts said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Friday that Israel would impose a "very heavy price" on any power behind the flydubai incident, without offering evidence that any country was responsible.

"As time passes, the picture is becoming clearer: The attacker underwent Islamist radicalization. He came to crash the plane with all passengers on board," Netanyahu said in a statement.

G7 leaders were holding talks Friday to coordinate action on fuel prices, after the United States upped pressure on Europe to release its strategic reserves, threatening a diesel export ban.

Finland's government on Friday survived a parliamentary vote of confidence called over the government's Middle East policy following a criticized visit to Israel by the defense minister.

Opposition parties have accused the right-wing government of internal policy differences and inconsistency on the Middle East, leading the Social Democratic Party (SDP) to call for a motion of no confidence against the government.

Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said Friday that rebuilding regions destroyed in the latest Israel-Hezbollah war is beyond the state's capacity, calling for funding as he visited the heavily damaged south.

"I am aware of the magnitude of the crisis" including the destruction, displacement and loss of livelihoods, Salam said in Nabatieh, a major southern city hit hard by Israeli airstrikes.

The deputy director-general of the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization has said that she is "deeply concerned" about the impact of the latest Israel-Hezbollah conflict on agriculture in south Lebanon.

The latest war "puts additional pressure on farmers and rural communities that, frankly, were already facing considerable hardships," said the FAO's Beth Bechdol.

The Lebanese Army announced that it has seized nearly 250 kilograms of explosives being transported from neighboring Syria into Lebanon, though it was unable to apprehend the smugglers.

"An army unit seized approximately 245 kg of TNT, four explosive devices, eight detonators and electrical wiring for the detonators," which were being "smuggled from Syrian territory into Lebanese territory," the army said in a statement.