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The Israeli military has withdrawn more ground troops from the southern Gaza Strip, leaving just one brigade there six months after the start of its offensive, a spokesperson for the force said on Sunday.

The military has been reducing numbers in Gaza since the start of the year to relieve reservists and under growing pressure from its ally Washington to improve the humanitarian situation. It did not give details on its reasons for withdrawing soldiers or the numbers involved.

Meanwhile, Egypt is preparing to host a new round of talks aimed at reaching a ceasefire and hostage release deal, which both Israel and Hamas said they would attend.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would not bend to international pressure and give in to "extreme demands" by Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls Gaza.

It was unclear whether the withdrawal would delay a long-threatened incursion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, which Netanyahu says is needed to eliminate Hamas.

Palestinian residents of the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, which has come under Israeli bombardment in recent months, said they had seen Israeli forces leaving the centre of the city and retreating to the eastern districts.

Israel's offensive, launched after the shock attack by Hamas on Israel on Oct. 7, has focused in the past months on the south of the Gaza Strip.

More than 250 hostages were seized and some 1,200 people killed during the Oct. 7 attack, according to Israeli tallies. More than 33,100 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive, according to the health ministry in Gaza.

Rafah has become the last refuge for more than a million Palestinians sheltering in the territory near the border with Egypt.

WATCHING IRAN

Six months of combat in Gaza has strained the Israeli military and the country's economy. Many Israeli security experts say they now see a greater threat from Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Israel is also on alert for a possible retaliatory attack from Iran in reaction to the killing of Iranian generals on April 1.

Israel is under increased pressure from the United States, where President Joe Biden has demanded that it improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza and work towards a ceasefire, saying that U.S. support could depend on that.

That was the first time Biden, a staunch supporter of Israel, has sought to leverage U.S. aid as a way to influence Israeli military behaviour. The U.S. is a major supplier of arms to Israel's military.

Biden has also urged the leaders of Egypt and Qatar to pressure Hamas to agree to a ceasefire and hostage deal ahead of a fresh round of talks in Cairo.

Netanyahu, at the start of his weekly cabinet meeting, said any deal must include the release of 133 hostages still being held in Gaza, and that Hamas' "extreme demands" were the obstacle.

"Giving in to Hamas' demands will allow it to repeat the crimes of Oct. 7 again and again, as it has promised to do," he said.

There was no immediate comment from Hamas.

More than 130 hostages are still in captivity in Gaza, and Israel says it will not stop its offensive until they are all returned.

President Vladimir Putin is poised to tighten his grip on power on Sunday in a Russian election that is certain to deliver him a landslide victory, though some opponents staged a symbolic noon protest at polling stations against his rule.

Putin, who rose to power in 1999, is poised to win a new six-year term that, if he completes it, would enable him to overtake Josef Stalin and become Russia's longest-serving leader for more than 200 years.

The election comes just over two years since Putin triggered the deadliest European conflict since World War Two by ordering the invasion of Ukraine. He casts it as a "special military operation".

War has hung over the three day election: Ukraine has repeatedly attacked oil refineries in Russia, shelled Russian regions and sought to pierce Russian borders with proxy forces - a move Putin said would not be left unpunished.

While Putin's re-election is not in doubt given his control over Russia and the absence of any real challengers, the former KGB spy wants to show that he has the overwhelming support of Russians. Voting ends at 1800 GMT on Sunday.

The Kremlin has sought a high turnout, and as polls opened for a third day in western Russia, officials said the turnout in the first two days had already reached 63% nationwide. An exit poll will be published shortly after voting ends at 1800 GMT.

Supporters of Alexei Navalny, who died in an Arctic prison last month, had called on Russians to come out at a "Noon against Putin" protest to show their dissent against a leader they cast as a corrupt autocrat.

"Alexei was fighting for very simple things: for freedom of speech, for fair elections, for democracy and our right to live without corruption and war," Navalny's widow, Yulia, said in a message to a rally in Budapest on March 15.

"Putin is not Russia. Russia is not Putin."

There was no independent tally of how many of Russia's 114 million voters turned out at noon to show opposition to Putin, amid extremely tight security involving tens of thousands of police and security officials.

'NOON AGAINST PUTIN'

Reuters journalists saw a slight increase in the flow of voters, especially younger people, at noon at some polling stations in Moscow and Yekaterinburg, with queues of several hundred people. Some said they were protesting.

Leonid Volkov, an exiled Navalny aide who was attacked with a hammer last week in Vilnius, estimated hundreds of thousands of people had come out to polling stations in Moscow, St Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and other cities.

At polling stations at Russian diplomatic missions from Australia and Japan to Armenia, Kazakhstan and Georgia, hundreds of Russians stood in line at noon.

Over the previous two days, there were scattered incidents of protest as some Russians set fire to voting booths and poured dye into ballot boxes, drawing a rebuke from Russian officials who called them scumbags and traitors. Opponents posted some pictures of ballots spoiled with slogans insulting Putin.

But Navalny's death has left the scattered opposition deprived of its most formidable leader.

The West casts Putin as an autocrat and a killer. U.S. President Joe Biden last month dubbed him a "crazy SOB". The International Criminal Court in the Hague has indicted him for the alleged war crime of abducting Ukrainian children, which the Kremlin denies.

WAR

Russia's election comes at what Western spy chiefs say is a crossroads for the Ukraine war and the wider West.

Support for Ukraine is tangled in U.S. domestic politics ahead of the November presidential election contest between Biden and predecessor Donald Trump, whose Republican party in Congress has blocked military aid for Kyiv.

The Biden administration fears Putin could grab a bigger slice of Ukraine unless Kyiv gets more support soon. U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns has said that could embolden Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Putin casts the war as part of a centuries-old battle with a declining and decadent West that he says humiliated Russia after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 by encroaching on Russia's sphere of influence.

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have been killed or seriously injured, though neither side gives proper casualty figures. Swathes of Ukraine have been devastated.

Angela Stent, senior non-resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the election outcome was not in question but that there were serious reasons to take note of the event.

"The Russian presidential election matters to the United States and its allies for two reasons: what happens during the voting period and what follows after it is over," Stent, told the Russia Matters project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center.

Voting is also taking place in Crimea, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, and what Moscow calls its "new territories", four other regions it partly controls and has claimed Russia since 2022. Kyiv regards the election taking place in parts of its territory controlled by Russia as illegal and void.

Heads of the Group of Seven major democracies on Saturday pledged to stand by war-weary Ukraine, and Western leaders traveled to Kyiv to show solidarity on the second anniversary of Russia's invasion, with no end in the sight to the fighting.

After initial successes in pushing back the Russian army, Ukraine has suffered recent setbacks on eastern battlefields, with its generals complaining of growing shortages of both arms and soldiers.

The G7 leaders on Saturday held a video conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on the anniversary of Russia's "special military operation," which ranks as the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War Two.

"As Ukraine enters the third year of this relentless war, its government and its people can count on the G7’s support for as long as it takes," the G7 leaders said in a statement.

The officials, who have been critical sources of military and financial aid to Kyiv, also vowed to continue targeting Russia's sources of revenue with sanctions.

Zelenskiy stressed the need to protect Ukrainian skies and strengthen its army. "We are counting on you," he said on the call, according to remarks published on his website.

Looking to dispel concerns the West is losing interest in the conflict, Italy's Giorgia Meloni and Canada's Justin Trudeau came to Kyiv early on Saturday with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo.

"The message I want to send today to ... all the Ukrainian people is that they are not alone," Meloni said as she signed a 10-year defence pact with Zelenskiy.

Trudeau signed a similar accord and pledged some $2.25 billion in financial and military support this year.

"We will stand with Ukraine with whatever it takes, for as long as it takes," Trudeau said.

Ordinary Ukrainians held services to commemorate the anniversary, laying flowers to honour their many dead, amid fears the war will last years longer as Russian President Vladimir Putin shows no sign of relenting.

"I'm a realist and understand that most likely the war will drag on for the next three or four years. I hope society will mobilise, I hope we'll be able to somehow defeat Russia," said Denys Symonovskiy, a Kyiv resident.

Outside Kyiv, the war continued unabated.

Russian drones attacked the port of Odesa for a second night running, hitting a residential building and killing one person, the regional governor said. In Dnipro, a Russian drone hit an apartment building and a rescue operation uncovered two dead.

Meanwhile, a source in Kyiv said Ukrainian drones caused a blaze at a Russian steel plant, which a Russian official identified as one in Lipetsk, some 400 km (250 miles) from Ukraine, that is responsible for about 18% of Russian output.

HOLDING THE FRONT LINE

The Canadian and Italian security deals mirror similar pacts signed recently with France and Germany.

However, $61 billion in aid promised by U.S. President Joe Biden is being blocked by Republicans in Congress, casting a long shadow over Kyiv's hopes of pushing back the much larger, better supplied Russian military.

In the G7 video call, Biden discussed Washington's continued support for Ukraine and steps the group can take to continue holding Russia accountable, a White House official said.

Seeking to maintain Western focus on Ukraine, Zelenskiy has warned Putin may not stop at Ukraine's borders if he emerges victorious. Putin dismisses such claims and casts the war as a wider struggle with the United States, which he says aims to dismantle Russia.

Anniversary events were held across Ukraine including in the western city of Lviv, hundreds of kilometres from the fighting. Grieving women cried as a priest led a prayer in a cemetery festooned with blue and yellow Ukrainian flags, each marking the death of a soldier.

"The boys are holding the front line. We can only imagine what effort and price is paid for every peaceful day we have. I want to believe it is not all in vain. We have funerals every day," Evhenia Demchuk, a widow and mother of two, told Reuters.

The initial shock of the invasion faded into familiarity then fatigue as the world watched initial Russian gains and a stunning Ukrainian counteroffensive in late 2022 slow into grinding trench warfare.

Russia, with a much bigger population to replenish the army's ranks and a larger military budget, might favour a drawn-out war, although its costs have been huge as it seeks to navigate sanctions and a growing reliance on China.

UKRAINE'S POSITION GROWS PRECARIOUS

Ukraine's position is more precarious. Villages, towns and cities have been razed, troops are exhausted and Russian missiles and drone strikes rain down almost daily.

Russia this month registered its biggest victory in nine months, capturing the eastern town of Avdiivka and ending months of deadly urban combat.

A recent World Bank study said rebuilding Ukraine's economy could cost nearly $500 billion. Two million housing units have been damaged or destroyed, and nearly 6 million people remain abroad after fleeing the invasion.

In addition to seeking money and weaponry, Zelenskiy is promoting legislation allowing Ukraine to mobilise up to half a million more troops - a target some economists say could paralyse the economy.

Russia's finances have so far proved resilient to unprecedented sanctions. While natural gas exports have slumped, oil sales have held up, thanks largely to Indian and Chinese buying, and the economy has been boosted by massive defence spending.

Russia has also ruthlessly punished dissent over the war. On Feb. 16, Putin's most formidable domestic opponent, Alexei Navalny, died suddenly of unexplained causes in an Arctic penal colony where he was serving terms totalling more than 30 years.

Vladimir Putin praised Joe Biden as a more reliable alternative for Russia than Donald Trump, making his first public comments on the American presidential election.

“He’s a more experienced person, he’s predictable, he’s an old-style politician,” the Russian president said of Biden in a state television interview when asked which of the two leading candidates would be better for Russia, according to video released by the Kremlin.

His intervention highlighting Biden’s political longevity and traditionalist approach amounted to doubtful praise for a US president battling perceptions at home that he’s too old to seek a second term. After Biden denounced Trump on Tuesday for “shameful” threats to allow Russia to invade some NATO allies, it also undercut claims that the incumbent is the only one tough enough to stand up to Putin.

In the interview, the Kremlin leader dismissed a question about 81-year-old Biden’s mental acuity by praising his sharpness at their last summit in Geneva nearly three years ago. “Even then, there was talk he wasn’t competent, but I didn’t see anything like that,” said Putin, 71. “Yes, he looked at his notes, but I also looked at mine. It was nothing.”

Read more: Putin Seeks Revenge on a World Order He Once Wanted to Join

Even as he praised Biden, Putin also had approving words for Trump about his position on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which Moscow views as a threat.

“There is probably some logic from his point of view,” he said of the Republican frontrunner’s comments that he wouldn’t want the US to defend NATO allies against a Russian attack if they weren’t meeting pledges on defense spending.

“Trump’s always been called a non-systemic politician,” Putin added. “He has his own view of how the US should develop relations with its allies and there have been sparks in the past, as well.”

At a rally in South Carolina on Wednesday evening, Trump said Putin, by praising Biden, “has just given me a great compliment. That’s a good thing.”

Eight years ago, Putin publicly praised then-candidate Trump amid accusations that the Kremlin sought to interfere in the 2016 election in his favor. Those allegations cast a shadow over the 2017-2021 Trump presidency.

Kremlin officials say privately they’re not sure Russia would benefit if Trump returned to the White House in November’s election, as his first term was marked by unpredictability and produced no breakthrough in relations with the US. After meetings with Trump, one Kremlin insider said Russia just didn’t understand him.

Read more: Trump Eyes NATO Makeover, Hurried Peace in Ukraine If Elected

Still, Putin denounced the Biden administration’s approach to Russia as “harmful and mistaken.” The Kremlin leader regularly criticizes the US for its support of Ukraine’s campaign to repel Moscow’s invasion, among other issues.

While Trump has repeatedly spoken in glowing terms about the Russian leader, Biden this week accused the former president of kowtowing to Putin.

Those comments came after Trump last weekend claimed he’d told the president of one NATO member country that he’d let Russia do “whatever the hell they want” if the nation didn’t hit the bloc’s defense-spending targets.

Putin didn’t waver over his decision to start the war in Ukraine. “We can only regret that we didn’t act earlier,” he said.

He reiterated that the US and its allies should concede they’ve failed to defeat Russia. “If they see they aren’t getting their result, then they need to make changes,” he said. “But that’s a question for the art of politics, which is the art of compromise.”

Putin also expressed disappointment with last week’s two-hour interview with Tucker Carlson, a conservative commentator and Trump supporter. While he was “grateful” that western leaders could hear him speak at length since “we’re unable to conduct direct dialogue” now, Putin said he’d expected “tough questions” from Carlson that didn’t come.

“I was not just prepared for this, I wanted it, because it would give me the opportunity to respond with equally sharp answers,” Putin said of his first western interview since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. “He gave me no cause for doing what I was prepared to do. That is why, to tell the truth, I did not fully enjoy that interview.”

The Dow closed at record highs Thursday for the second-straight day as the post-Fed rally continued to push stocks higher even as some express concern that the recent run higher has been too much, too fast.

By 16:00 ET (21:00 GMT), the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 158 points, or 0.4%, to close at a record of 37,248.35. The S&P 500 index rose 0.4%, higher and the NASDAQ Composite climbed 0.2%.
Post-Fed rally continues despite run into overbought territory

The rally in the three key indexes including the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq breached technically "overbought" levels, or a level above 70 on the relative strength index, or RSI, a technical tool that indicates whether a security is overbought or oversold.

The earlier intraday surge in stocks came a day after the Federal Reserve forecast three rate hikes for next, with Fed chairman Jerome Powell announcing that it discussion of when to cut rates was now on the table.

Technicals aside, the rally has also cast a light on whether valuations have run up too far, too fast.

"It seems like stocks are just a little bit overheated at this point in time," Brian Mulberry at Zacks Investment Management said in an interview with Investing.com's Yasin Ebrahim.

"Next year, we are expecting earnings on the S&P 500 to grow to $240 a share, but we're already enjoying the valuation of that earnings growth today," Mulberry added. "It's hard to say even if we get the 10% earnings growth that we're expecting from the S&P 500, that we're going to have a valuation 10% higher from where we are now ... that doesn't make sense at this point in time."
Jobless claims come in light, but retail sales spring upside surprise

Initial jobless claims dropped 19,000 to a seasonally adjusted 202,000 for the week ended Dec. 9, but while that was short of economists estimates, some continue to see a material weakening ahead.

Small businesses, in particular, are facing pressure from higher interest that have hiked up monthly business, Jefferies said.

"The increase to-date has likely been a force behind the overall slowdown in hiring. It has not translated to layoffs yet, but it will eventually," it added.

Still, the consumer continued to show strength, with U.S. retail sales unexpectedly rising 0.3% on the month in November as the holiday shopping season got off to a brisk start.
Adobe stutters on earnings stage as guidance fails to impress; Apple notches fresh closing high

Adobe Systems (NASDAQ:ADBE) stock fell 7% after the computer software company issued conservative guidance for 2024’s earnings and revenue.

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) closed at a fresh record high, but it wasn't all smooth sailing as the iPhone maker retreated from its all time intraday high of $199.62 amid profit taking on big tech, with Alphabet Inc Class A (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) ending the day in the red.

Semiconductor stocks jumped to an all-time high, powered by a rise Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) to fresh 52-week highs after the chipmaker unveiled new AI chips to take the fight to leaders NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (NASDAQ:AMD).
Moderna , Rivian in rally mode

Moderna (NASDAQ:MRNA) stock rose over 9% after an experimental messenger RNA cancer vaccine it co-developed with Merck received positive experimental results.

Rivian Automotive Inc (NASDAQ:RIVN) jumped more than 13% after the electric vehicle maker clinched a deal to supply AT&T with commercial van and R1 vehicles as part of pilot program.
Occidental Petroleum gets boost from Buffett to lead energy stocks higher

Occidental Petroleum (NYSE:OXY) jumped nearly 3% underpinning the broader energy sector after Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRKa) acquired nearly 10.5 million shares of the oil giant for about $588.7 million.

As well as a boost from Occidental Petroleum, a jump in oil prices also supported the broader energy sector as growing hopes of sanguine U.S. economy backdrop amid expectations for an accommodative Fed next year.

Russia's most powerful mercenary Yevgeny Prigozhin was on board a plane which crashed on Wednesday evening north of Moscow with no survivors, the Russian authorities said, two months to the day after he led an abortive mutiny against the army top brass.

There was no official comment from the Kremlin or the Defence Ministry on the fate of Prigozhin, head of the Wagner mercenary group and a self-declared enemy of the army's leadership over what he argued was its incompetent prosecution of Russia's war in Ukraine.

A Telegram channel linked to Wagner, Grey Zone, pronounced him dead, however, and hailed him as a hero and a patriot who it said had died at the hands of unidentified people it called "traitors to Russia."

Amid fevered speculation and an absence of verifiable facts, some of his supporters pointed the finger of blame at the Russian state, others at Ukraine which was due to mark its Independence Day on Thursday.

Others who have opposed President Vladimir Putin or his interests have also died under unclear circumstances or come close to death, including outspoken political leaders and journalists.

A building housing Wagner's offices in St Petersburg lit up its windows after dark in such a way as to display a giant cross in a mark of respect and mourning. Flowers were left and candles lit near the offices early on Thursday.

Prigozhin's death would leave the Wagner Group, which incurred Putin's wrath in June by staging an abortive armed mutiny against the army's top brass, leaderless and raise questions about its future operations in Africa and elsewhere.

Whoever or whatever was behind the crash, his death would also rid Putin of someone who had mounted the most serious challenge to the Russian leader's authority since he came to power in 1999.

The Brazilian Embraer Legacy 600 model of executive jet that crashed has only recorded one accident in over 20 years of service, according to website International Aviation HQ, and it was not due to mechanical failure.

A 2008 Brazilian air force report blamed two U.S. pilots, traffic controllers and faulty communications for the mid-air collision, while a lawyer for the pilots said individual air traffic controllers and flaws in Brazil's air traffic control system caused the accident.

Embraer said it has complied with international sanctions imposed on Russia and had not provided maintenance for the aircraft since 2019.

The plane showed no sign of a problem until a precipitous drop in its final 30 seconds, according to flight-tracking data.

WAGNER CO-FOUNDER ALSO ON PLANE

Rosaviatsia, Russia's aviation agency, published the names of all 10 people on board the downed plane, including Prigozhin and that of Dmitry Utkin, his right-hand man who helped found the mercenary group and bore the call sign "Wagner".

Russian investigators said they had opened a criminal investigation. Some unnamed sources told Russian media they believed the plane had been shot down by one or more surface-to-air missiles. Reuters could not confirm that.

The aircraft, which had been travelling from Moscow to St. Petersburg, crashed near the village of Kuzhenkino in the Tver Region, Russia's emergency situations ministry said.

Abbas Gallyamov, a former Putin speech writer turned critic whom the Russian authorities have branded a "foreign agent", suggested the Russian leader, who is expected to run for another term in office next year, was behind the crash and had strengthened his authority in the process.

"The establishment is now convinced that it will not be possible to oppose Putin," Gallyamov wrote on Telegram. "Putin is strong enough and capable of revenge."

Bill Browder, a businessman with years of experience in Russia and another Kremlin critic, agreed.

"Putin never forgives and never forgets. He looked like a humiliated weakling with Prigozhin running around without a care in the world (after the mutiny). This will cement his authority," Browder wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

On a visit to California, U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters he did not know what had happened.

"But I’m not surprised," Biden said. "There is not much that happens in Russia that Putin is not behind."

SECOND PLANE LINKED TO PRIGOZHIN

Flightradar24 online tracker showed that the Embraer plane (registration number RA-02795) carrying Prigozhin had dropped off the radar at 6:11 p.m. (1511 GMT). An unverified video clip posted to social media showed a plane resembling a private jet falling out of the sky.

Another unverified clip showed the burning wreckage of the plane on the ground. At least one body was visible. Rescuers had recovered seven bodies from the scene, TASS reported.

Soon after the plane crashed, a second private jet linked to Prigozhin which also appeared to be heading to St. Petersburg, Prigozhin's home base, turned back to Moscow, flight tracking data showed, and later landed.

Prigozhin, 62, spearheaded the mutiny against Russia's top army brass on June 23-24 which Putin said could have tipped Russia into civil war. Wagner fighters shot down Russian attack helicopters during the revolt, killing an unconfirmed number of pilots, infuriating the military.

He has also spent months criticising Russia's war in Ukraine, something Moscow calls a "special military operation", and had tried to topple Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the General Staff.

Many Russians had wondered how he was able to get away with such brazen criticism without consequence.

The mutiny was ended by an apparent Kremlin deal which saw Prigozhin agree to relocate to neighbouring Belarus. But in practice he had appeared to move freely inside Russia after the agreement which had reportedly guaranteed his personal safety.

Prigozhin posted a video address on Monday which he suggested was made in Africa. He turned up at a Russia-Africa summit in St Petersburg in July.

Unconfirmed Russian media reports said that Prigozhin and his associates had attended a meeting on Wednesday with officials from the Russian Defence Ministry. Reuters could not confirm that.