Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip have killed at least 100 people over the past 24 hours, as bombs, missiles and drones fell on homes, businesses, apartment buildings, and tents housing displaced Palestinians. In one of the latest attacks, Israel bombed a crowded restaurant and marketplace in Gaza City, killing at least 32 people and wounding 86 others. Witnesses said the strike littered the ground with body parts and blood. One survivor fled clutching a baby, with another two terrified children in tow.

Reporter: “What happened?”

Palestinian eyewitness: “While we were at the hall of the restaurant, the Israeli army did a strike, and everyone died. The youth died.”

Reporter: “What happened?”

Palestinian eyewitness: “I can’t tell you. Youth at the entrance of the hall, blood was like a lake. Oh my! Pools of blood.”

Among the dead was Palestinian journalist Yahya Subaih, who was killed just hours after celebrating the birth of his daughter. Palestinian officials say he’s the 214th media worker killed in Gaza since October 2023. Another journalist, Nour El-Din Abdo, was killed in a separate Israeli attack.

Israel’s unrelenting violence came as its total blockade of Gaza entered its third month. The World Central Kitchen charity said Wednesday it had halted Gaza relief efforts after running out of supplies. Gaza’s government media office reports more than 3,500 young children face imminent death from starvation, another 70,000 children are being hospitalized for severe malnutrition, and 1.1 million Palestinian children lack the minimum nutritional requirements for survival.

On Wednesday, more than 20 United Nations experts demanded action by states to avert what they called “the annihilation of the Palestinian population.” They write, “Continuing to support Israel materially or politically, especially via arms transfers … risks complicity in genocide and other serious international crimes.”

A new report finds U.K. firms have continued to export military supplies, including munitions, to Israel, despite the government’s suspension of arms export licenses to Israel in September. Meanwhile,

Reuters reports Trump officials and their Israeli counterparts have discussed the possibility of the U.S. leading a temporary postwar administration of Gaza.

In the occupied West Bank, Israel is continuing its illegal forced displacement of Palestinian communities in the Tulkarm and Nur Shams refugee camps. Last week, Israeli officials announced plans to demolish another 100 Palestinian homes. This is Iman Fathi Haikal, a resident of Nur Shams.

Iman Fathi Haikal: “What do they think we are to move us to caravans? This will never happen. Even if they build castles for us, we will not accept. Let them demolish half of the house and give me the other half. I would rather live in a room than in a castle outside the refugee camp. This camp is our life.”

Israeli forces also demolished homes and other structures in Masafer Yatta this week. The Israeli military has forcibly displaced tens of thousands of West Bank Palestinians this year.

Meanwhile, a new documentary by Zeteo has exposed new details about the killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was fatally shot three years ago in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin. For the first time, Zeteo has identified Shireen’s killer to be an Israeli soldier named Captain Alon Scagio. We will have more on this story after headlines.

India and Pakistan are exchanging heavy artillery fire for a second straight day along the Line of Control that divides India- and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. Pakistan’s military says Indian airstrikes and shells have killed 31 people and injured 57 others on its side of the Kashmiri border and in Pakistan’s Punjab province. Among the dead were three people killed when India bombed a mosque in the Kashmiri city of Muzaffarabad. The principal of a nearby school said the attack sparked fear among students.

Saima Masood: “There has been significant damage here, as you can see. The school was also badly hit. The mosque is in a terrible state, and the mosque’s caretaker was martyred. The children are in fear. The school’s condition is such that the ceiling has collapsed, the windows are shattered, and the doors and furniture have all been badly damaged.”

Meanwhile, India says Pakistani artillery fire has killed at least 13 civilians, including five children. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif promised to retaliate against India in a national address Wednesday, saying, “We will avenge the blood of our innocent martyrs.”

In Germany, Friedrich Merz was elected as chancellor Tuesday in a second round of parliamentary voting, just hours after he failed to clinch the ballot in the first round — a first in postwar Germany.

The new government announced Wednesday Germany will start rejecting undocumented migrants at its border, and plans to deploy thousands more police officers to crack down on arrivals. The move undoes a 2015 order by then-Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose leadership was defined in large part by her welcoming of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, many of whom had fled war in Syria.

A federal judge on Wednesday warned a Trump administration plan to send undocumented immigrants to Libya would violate a court order issued in March. Lawyers for immigrants from Laos, Vietnam and the Philippines believe a North Africa-bound deportation flight could take off as early as this week. But Libya’s two rival governments have denied any such agreement with the U.S., calling the potential move a violation of the country’s sovereignty. Libya has a track record of gross human rights violation in its treatment of refugees and immigrants; the U.N. has reported “widespread practices of arbitrary detention, torture, rape and slavery.”

Agents with the Department of Homeland Security swept out across Washington, D.C., on Tuesday and Wednesday, serving restaurant owners with notices demanding I-9 “Employment Eligibility Verification” forms. This follows President Trump’s recent executive order to intensify immigration enforcement in D.C. ICE said it served over 100 local businesses with notices. Among those raided was Chef Geoff’s, a restaurant owned by the husband of CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell, a correspondent for “60 Minutes.” Trump has targeted CBS over what he considers unfavorable coverage.

In North Carolina, a Republican candidate for the state’s Supreme Court has conceded the election, more than six months after he lost to Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs. Jefferson Griffin finally conceded two days after a federal judge ordered the state’s Board of Elections to certify Riggs’s victory, ruling against Griffin’s attempt to disqualify tens of thousands of ballots. North Carolina’s Supreme Court will retain its current 5-2 Republican majority.

A federal judge has struck down Trump’s executive order seeking to bar lawyers from the firm Perkins Coie from accessing government buildings, and threatening to cancel federal contracts of its clients. Judge Beryl Howell found the president’s attack on Perkins Coie over its DEI policies and its work on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign violates First Amendment protections. The Justice Department could still appeal Howell’s ruling.

Staff at the Voice of America network are expressing alarm after presidential adviser Kari Lake announced the beleaguered media outlet will start carrying content provided by the far-right, Trump-allied One America News. OAN has spread conspiracy theories about election fraud in 2020 and COVID, among other things. VOA was forced to stop broadcasting, and over 1,000 staffers are still on forced administrative leave amid pending legal challenges to Trump’s order to dismantle the outlet. VOA reporters involved in the case against the Trump administration responded to the latest news, “Congress mandated VOA to report reliable and authoritative news, not to outsource its journalism to outlets aligned with the president’s agenda.”

Ukraine has accused Russia of violating a unilaterally declared ceasefire, just hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin said his forces would pause attacks for three days. Russian warplanes reportedly fired two guided bombs on Ukraine’s Sumy region. Beside that attack, there were no other reports of Russian incursions. This follows another wave of Ukrainian drone attacks that forced the closure of more than a dozen Russian airports, including four in Moscow, where 29 leaders, including China’s Xi Jinping, are gathering for a World War II Victory Day parade.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had no plans to abide by Russia’s truce, but repeated his offer for a formal 30-day ceasefire. This week, Trump’s envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, said President Putin is unlikely to accept a ceasefire plan unless it requires Ukraine to withdraw from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.

Keith Kellogg: “If you do a ceasefire in place, the ground that you own, the ground that you fought for, that that’s your ground right now. What happens five or 10 years down the line is different. And you don’t have to [inaudible]” —

John Roberts: “So, basically freeze everything in place?”

Keith Kellogg: “Right. And we’ve got that right now, and the Ukrainians are willing to do a freeze in place, what I call a ceasefire in place. And then, for a period of time, they’re willing to set up a demilitarized zone. What they basically said is, ’We’ll back up 15 kilometers, you back up 15 kilometers,’ to the Russians, so you get this 30-kilometer, 18-mile zone that you can actually observe.”

In Tennessee, jurors acquitted three former Memphis police officers of murder in the 2023 killing of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black father who died after the officers brutally beat him during a traffic stop. The lawyers representing Nichols’s family called the verdicts “a devastating miscarriage of justice.” Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith, along with two other officers, are awaiting sentencing on separate federal charges. Those two other officers — Desmond Mills Jr. and Emmitt Martin — are pleading guilty to the state charges and will not stand trial. We’ll have more on this case later in the broadcast.

Here in New York, police arrested at least 79 protesters at Columbia University Wednesday after they occupied the campus’s main library to demand their school divest from Israel. The Columbia Palestine Solidarity Coalition says multiple students were hospitalized by public safety officers. At least one protester was carried away on a stretcher. Columbia’s acting President Claire Shipman said in a statement, “Columbia strongly condemns violence on our campus, antisemitism and all forms of hate and discrimination, some of which we witnessed today.”

The protests came a day after a group of Jewish peace activists from Columbia traveled to Washington, D.C., to lobby members of Congress and to condemn what they call the “weaponization” of accusations of antisemitism to silence critics of Israel’s occupation of Palestine and its assault on Gaza. This is Columbia graduate student Carly Shaffer.

Carly Shaffer: “Columbia University has decided who is Jewish, who is not Jewish, and then, from there, who is worthy of protection, who is not worthy of protection. And while we as Jewish students are fully, you know, transparent and honest as the repression and harm we have faced as Jewish students is not anything near what our Palestinian peers have faced, we are here directly to talk about this issue of weaponizing antisemitism to harm anybody and anyone, because it’s all interconnected. I mean, look at the abduction of Mahmoud Khalil. Look at the abduction of Mohsen, when you’re using antisemitism as a weapon.”

On Wednesday, Jewish students blasted a congressional hearing in which House Republicans continued to conflate anti-Israel and anti-Zionist protests with antisemitism. Jewish Voice for Peace Action called the House session a “kangaroo hearing.”

A federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to transfer abducted Tufts scholar Rümeysa Öztürk from ICE detention in Louisiana to Vermont as a judge continues to consider her release on bail. Öztürk, a Turkish citizen, was arrested for co-writing a student op-ed on Tufts’ response to Gaza solidarity protests.

Students at four California State Universities — Long Beach, San Jose State, Sacramento State and San Francisco State — have launched a joint hunger strike to protest Israel’s starvation campaign against Palestinians in Gaza. The students are demanding “full divestment from companies complicit in genocide,” “an end to CSU ties with Israeli institutions” and “protection of free speech on campus.”

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, students have set up an encampment at Utrecht University to demand the school divest from Israeli institutions. They’ve named their encampment after slain Palestinian journalist Hossam Shabat.

At the Vatican, black smoke rose from a chimney at the Sistine Chapel earlier today as cardinals convened for a second day of secretive conclave deliberations to select the new pope. Tens of thousands of the faithful have been gathering in St. Peter’s Square as they await the sight of white smoke — the signal that a new leader for the Roman Catholic Church has been elected.