Ceasefire underneath risk after Hamas accused of violation | Invesloan.com

Good morning and welcome back to the final edition of FirstFT Americas this week: Here’s what we’re covering today: 

• Hamas accused of ceasefire violation

• Japanese court Tesla over Nissan

• Trump’s first month in office in charts

• And the FT’s annual bonus survey

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Hamas would “pay the full price” for returning the body of an unidentified woman and not that of the mother of two young boys in yesterday’s hostage swap, threatening the fragile ceasefire agreement.

Hamas was supposed to have handed over the remains of four Israeli hostages yesterday, including two young boys, in a grim exchange that initially signalled progress for the shaky ceasefire agreement.

But early this morning, the military said that while it had confirmed the body of peace activist Oded Lifschitz and the remains of two brothers — Kfir and Ariel Bibas — the last body was not that of the boys’ mother Shiri Bibas.

In a video statement published this morning Netanyahu said Israel would “act with determination to bring Shiri home” and said Hamas would pay “for this cruel and evil violation of the agreement.”

Hamas said that the body of Shiri Bibas was mixed with other human remains from the rubble after an Israeli air strike hit the place she was held in. It released the names of the six hostages it intends to release tomorrow.

The events threaten to derail the fragile ceasefire agreement reached with the backing of the US last month.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has invited the leaders of Egypt and Jordan to Riyadh today for talks to discuss Donald Trump’s peace plan for the Gaza strip which involve resettling Gaza’s 2mn Palestinian population and redeveloping the enclave as a resort. He has called on Jordan and Egypt to take the resettled Palestinians. Here are more details.

And here’s what else we’re keeping tabs on today and over the weekend:

• Markets: European share prices rose today, following peers in Asia, which hit a three-month high on AI optimism. Today’s moves come as European stocks outpaced the US in the month since Donald Trump’s inauguration.

• Economic data: S&P Global releases flash Purchasing Managers’ Index data for the US manufacturing and services sector, while Mexico’s national statistics agency releases final fourth-quarter GDP data.

• Fed speak: The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and the Federal Reserve vice-chair Philip Jefferson speak at a conference in San Francisco. Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem is also due to appear at a public event.

• German election: Europe’s largest democracy goes to the polls on Sunday. Berlin bureau chief Anne-Sylvaine Chassany visited the centre-left SPD stronghold of Ruhr and found voters shifting to the far-right AfD.  

How well did you keep up with the news this week? Take our quiz.

Five more top stories

1. A high-level Japanese group that includes former prime minister Yoshihide Suga has drawn up plans for Elon Musk’s Tesla to invest in the struggling carmaker Nissan, following the collapse of its merger talks with rival Honda. The group is hopeful Tesla will become a strategic investor since they believe the world’s largest pure electric-vehicle maker is keen to acquire Nissan’s plants in the US. Read the exclusive story.

2. Australia has warned commercial airlines that Chinese warships are conducting “live-fire” military exercises off the country’s east coast, prompting them to reroute flights. Qantas and Air New Zealand confirmed they had adjusted some flights to avoid the area which was in international waters. Read more on the manoeuvres far from Chinese territory.

3. Meta’s oversight board has clashed internally over Mark Zuckerberg’s “free speech” overhaul of content moderation, as it rushes to find ways to hold the social media giant to account over the changes. The independent body tasked with ruling on sensitive moderation issues was not consulted on Zuckerberg’s U-turn, according to people familiar with the matter. Read the full report.

4. The US is opposed to calling Russia the aggressor in a G7 statement intended to mark the third anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to western officials. The Trump administration doubled down on its criticism of Zelenskyy yesterday, with national security adviser Mike Waltz accusing Kyiv of hurling “unacceptable” insults at the US president, and also demanding that Ukraine agree to a minerals deal.

5. Citigroup is scaling back its policies around diversity, the latest US company to retreat from targets to promote a more inclusive workforce. Trump’s return to the White House has intensified a backlash to diversity, equity and inclusion targets, leading companies to abandon goals they had put in place only a few years ago. 

• Opinion: As US companies dial back DEI efforts, the University of Chicago’s Raghuram Rajan asks: was social responsibility always just performative political theatre?

Today’s Big Read

Eric Adams, mayor of New York City, was once a rising star in the Democratic Party but his reputation is now in tatters, as critics accuse him of entering a Faustian pact with Donald Trump’s administration to crackdown on immigration in exchange for federal corruption charges against him being dropped. The clamour for him to step down is growing.

We’re also reading . . . 

Chart of the day

The first 30 days of Donald Trump’s second round in the White House have been a whirlwind of executive orders, lawsuits and controversy. Here’s a look at the numbers behind the president’s first month in office.

Take a break from the news . . . 

Our annual survey of FT readers shows bonus payouts are on the rise. Of the more than 1,000 readers who answered the questionnaire over half said they anticipated a bigger or substantially bigger payout than last year but there was uncertainty about the next 12 months.