Singing together in harmony, hundreds of religious Jews gather in a Tel Aviv square to listen to the devastated families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza for 13 months.

The paved area, now known as "Hostage Square", welcomes the families of the captives -- most taken from secular kibbutzim -- for emotional gatherings every Saturday evening where they issue a rallying cry for their loved ones' freedom: "A deal now!"

On Tuesdays, religious Jews attend to provide solace to the families.

In the crowded Qalandia refugee camp, UNRWA's training centre is an island of calm where young people from the occupied West Bank master trades, but a recent Israeli ban on all cooperation with the UN agency has left the centre in limbo.

On the spacious campus a stone's throw from the wall separating the West Bank and Israel, plumbers in training assemble pipes, future electricians wire circuits and carpenters hammer together roof frames.

As winter descends on Gaza's tent cities, emergency housing made from mushrooms could keep out the cold -- just one of several sustainable, home-grown innovations put forward by Arab designers at an expo in Dubai.

Lightweight, warm and versatile, mushroom-based structures are an appealing alternative to the flimsy shelters now housing many thousands of Gazans displaced by more than a year of war, according to Dima Al Srouri, a member of the ReRoot initiative.

For more than a year, the United States has steadfastly backed Israel in its Gaza war while quietly counseling restraint. With Donald Trump's return, the nuance will vanish, although his hunger for deal-making makes him less predictable.

Looting of aid reaching Gaza has been made easier by Israel's army targeting the local police which would otherwise be able to prevent it, a group of non-governmental organisations said Friday.

A report by the 29 NGOs, including Save the Children, Oxfam and Care, said that humanitarian aid entering the Palestinian territory had fallen to an all-time low, averaging 37 humanitarian trucks per day in October, and 69 in the first week of November.

This compared with an average of 500 a day before the October 7, 2023, unprecedented attack by Hamas militants on Israel.

A senior adviser to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei met Lebanese officials in Beirut Friday, the third high-profile Iranian solidarity visit since the Israel-Hezbollah war began in September.

Speaking after meeting Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Parliament speaker Nabih Berri -- a Hezbollah ally at the forefront of ceasefire negotiations -- Ali Larijani said he "hopes for a swift solution to the suffering of the Lebanese people".

Suzanne Karkaba and her father Ali were both civil defence rescuers whose job was to save the injured and recover the dead in Lebanon's war.

When an Israeli strike killed him on Thursday and it was his turn to be rescued, there wasn't much left. She had to identify him by his fingers.

Karkaba then rushed back to the bombed civil defence centre to search for her fellow first responders under the rubble.

Former US vice president Al Gore told AFP Friday it was "absurd" for petrostates such as Azerbaijan to host UN climate talks, saying the selection process should be overhauled.

Mukhtar Babayev, a former oil executive who now serves as Azerbaijan's ecology minister, is chairing the COP29 talks in Baku while the country's leader, Ilham Aliyev, caused a stir this week by calling fossil fuels a "gift of the God".

Lebanese officials were reviewing on Friday a US truce proposal in the Israel-Hezbollah war as Hamas said it was ready for a ceasefire on Israel's other front, in Gaza.

Israel has been at war against Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon since late September, after a year of relatively low-level cross border exchanges which Hezbollah said were in support of Hamas fighting Israel in Gaza.

A top government official in Beirut, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said US Ambassador Lisa Johnson discussed with senior Lebanese officials on Thursday a 13-point proposal.

Deaths in the Sudan war are likely to be "substantially underreported", according to a recent report, which gave figures for Khartoum State alone that were greater than one current estimate for the whole country.

The findings came from a report by researchers at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).

They found that in the first 14 months of the conflict, between April 2023 and June 2024, more than 61,000 people died of all causes in Khartoum State -- a 50 percent increase in the pre-war death rate.