Thousands of people began the long walk from the south to the north of the Gaza Strip on Friday after the cease-fire took effect at noon.
“The crowds are unbelievable,” said Shamekh al-Dibs, who had fled south with his family last month. “People are so happy, even if what they’re going back to is destruction.”
Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s Mideast envoy, said the U.S. military had verified that Israeli troops had withdrawn to an agreed-upon line inside Gaza. The Israeli government said in a resolution that the troops would move by early Saturday, beginning the 72-hour window for Hamas to return all remaining hostages, including the bodies of those who have died.
The resolution also said Israel had authorized the release of 250 Palestinian prisoners and 1,722 Gazans detained during the war who were not involved in the attacks of Oct. 7. Hamas said the list of prisoners issued by Israel was not yet agreed on.
The deal was based on a proposal presented by Trump last week, and a spokesman for Israel’s Parliament said Trump was expected to visit the chamber in Jerusalem on Monday. The deal also calls for the influx of humanitarian aid, which international groups are preparing.
Background: Today’s edition of The Daily podcast explained how Trump got to a truce.
The White House cut more jobs
Russell Vought, the White House budget director, said on social media that “RIFs have begun.” That’s short for reduction in force, bureacratese for layoffs.
Vought did not say how many federal employees, or at which agencies, would be cut. But a White House official described the forthcoming downsizing as substantial. Trump has threatened to seize on the government shutdown to eliminate what he has described as “Democrat” agencies.
More administration news:
Senior E.P.A. officials directed agency scientists to assess whether traces of abortion pills could be detected in wastewater.
Stocks fell after Trump threatened more tariffs on Chinese imports over its curbs on rare earth exports.
The administration moved to cancel a solar project that would power nearly two million homes.
A Venezuelan protest leader won the Nobel Peace Prize
The Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado, who built a powerful social movement challenging the country’s authoritarian president, has been living in hiding since last year. Today, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Machado united the country’s fractious opposition against President Nicolás Maduro before last year’s election. The candidate she backed lost what was widely regarded as a rigged contest, and a crackdown by Maduro left dozens dead.
Her movement has been effectively criminalized, and today, rumors spread that informers were monitoring reactions to the award. Venezuelans looked for private ways to celebrate their country’s first-ever Nobel Prize.
Machado has supported the Trump administration’s military actions off Venezuela and its approach to Maduro. But Trump has sought the peace prize for himself, and the White House was unhappy with the choice: “The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace,” its communications director posted on social media.
Related: Hoping to end their country’s clash with the U.S., Venezuelan officials offered the Trump administration a dominant stake in the country’s oil and gold wealth.
M.I.T. rejected Trump’s higher-education ‘compact’
The Trump administration sent a proposal called the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” to nine universities. It would trade support for the administration’s agenda — capping international student enrollment, adhering to definitions of gender — in exchange for favorable treatment.
Today, M.I.T. became the first to reject the agreement. “Fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone,” Sally Kornbluth, the school’s president, wrote in a letter.
More top news
Protests: The Trump administration wants to present Portland, Ore., as a “hellscape.” Right-wing influencers are eager to help.
Economy: The bankruptcy of a midsize auto parts maker could cause billions in losses and raise alarms on Wall Street about the loosely regulated world of private credit.
Tennessee: 19 people are missing after an explosion at an ammunition plant 60 miles from Nashville.
Peru: President Dina Boluarte was impeached amid outrage over rampant crime and accusations of bribery.
China: Beijing is building one of the world’s biggest solar farms on the world’s highest plateau — 162 square miles of panels at nearly 10,000 feet.
Science: For the first time, researchers recorded evidence of a bat catching and eating a bird in midair. The bat kept chewing, while flying, for 23 minutes.
Sports: Bill Belichick promised to run the University of North Carolina’s football program like an N.F.L. team. Insiders say his approach has backfired.
TIME TO UNWIND
The legend lives on from Lightfoot on down
New England has “Moby-Dick.” The Mississippi has Mark Twain. The Great Lakes have Gordon Lightfoot’s folk-rock shanty “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
On Nov. 10, 1975, the Fitzgerald, one of the biggest and most modern freighters on the lakes, sank in a sudden storm. No one survived, but it inspired Lightfoot’s surprise hit, bumper stickers, beer labels and LEGO kits — a touchstone of regional identity and tourism.
The 50th anniversary of the wreck will be commemorated in multiple locations next month. A Times reporter and photographer spent a week in its wake, on a freighter that survived the storm.
The ’cue capital
A recent barbecue revival has been led by larger-than-life Texas and Carolina pitmasters serving Instagram-friendly brisket and whole hog. But the most influential American barbecue city might be the one that gave us thick, ketchup-based supermarket sauces: Kansas City, Mo.
“Barbecue slathered in sauce doesn’t fit the Texas ‘craft barbecue’ aesthetic, which has been dominant for years,” one expert told our reporter. But there’s more to the Kansas City style than the sauce, and its newest restaurants are omnivorous — like KC Turkey Leggman, which made The Times’s 2025 best restaurants list.
You try: Here are recipes for a classic Kansas City-style sauce and Thai-inspired sweet chili baby back ribs.
Dinner table topics
Artistic intelligence: Lu Yang uses A.I. to imagine the Buddhist experience of life, death and religious enlightenment as a video game.
On the catwalk: Smutty style, tradwives and fashion that erased the women beneath were themes of this season’s fashion shows.
Mystery tablet: A New Orleans couple found a stone in their yard that reads, in Latin: “To the spirits of the dead for Sextus Congenius Verus.” It was a 2,000-year-old grave marker.
Pick-me-up: If an energy drink drank an energy drink, you’d get a Celsius.
WHAT TO DO TONIGHT
Cook: These smoky bean and sweet potato burritos get their heat from chipotles.
Watch: Rose Byrne is magnificent as an overwhelmed mother in “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.”
Move: $650,000 will get you these charming homes in the English countryside.
Remove: Here’s the right way to take off your makeup.
Hang out: You probably know socializing is linked to longevity. So what do you do if you’re an introvert?
Haunt: Most Halloween decorations are junk. You’ll want to use these year after year.
Test yourself: Try this week’s news quiz.
Play: Today’s Spelling Bee, Wordle and Mini Crossword. For more, find all our games here.
ONE LAST THING
Art + math
Bridges, an international conference celebrating synergies between math and art, drew more than 400 attendees this year — and 184 exhibits, some from artists who like math, some from mathematicians who like art.
Jill Borcherds, a retired math teacher, sewed a flexagon, which reveals its various faces when its folds are opened and closed. “So often,” she said, “I have witnessed the sense of wonder appearing when the third face of a hexaflexagon appears.”
Have a multifaceted evening.
Thanks for reading. — Whet
Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at evening@nytimes.com. And follow The New York Times on Instagram, Threads, Facebook and TikTok at @nytimes.