1. The head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service met representatives from Qatar, Egypt and the United States in what appears to be the most serious push in weeks to stop the fighting and release the hostages held by Hamas.

2. Yemen’s Houthis said they will expand their attacks on Red Sea shipping after telling shippers and their insurers that they are banning vessels linked to Israel, the US and Britain from the region.

3. Israel’s expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank is inconsistent with international law, the Biden administration said.

4. A spokeswoman for Alexei Navalny, who died suddenly a week ago, said Russian authorities told his mother that she had three hours to decide whether to bury him without a public funeral or to have him interred in the Arctic penal colony where he was jailed. Lyudmila Navalnaya said authorities were trying to threaten her into agreeing to a private burial and that she refused to go along with it.

5. The chipmaker briefly hit $2 trillion in market value on Friday thanks to insatiable demand brought on by the AI boom. That’s double where Nvidia was eight months ago, the fastest rise in market value among US companies.

6. The head of Boeing’s 737 MAX program left the company, making him the first major executive departure since the Jan. 5 mid-air panel blowout on an Alaska Airlines MAX 9. Boeing also created a senior-VP position for quality and safety.

Source: Reuters
=FRESH NEWS