Ukraine and Russia agreed to a 1,000-for-1,000 prisoner swap — the war’s largest — during their first direct peace talks in three years, in Istanbul. Kyiv is now pushing for a Zelensky-Putin summit and a clear ceasefire plan.
The FA Cup was not Manchester City’s top priority this season, but now that they are in a third straight final, the club will go all out to win the trophy at Wembley, manager Pep Guardiola said.
City have had a “horrific season” in the words of striker Erling Haaland, with Guardiola’s side falling by the wayside in the Premier League title race while they were also eliminated in the Champions League knockout phase playoffs.
City are fourth in the Premier League and yet to secure Champions League qualification for next season – winning the FA Cup when they face Crystal Palace on Saturday may not be enough to salvage their campaign.
“That is the problem, right? The FA Cup now is not the first choice. Of course, we want it. Once we are here, of course, we want the trophy. It is massively important,” Guardiola told reporters on Friday.
“It was a disappointment last season [losing in the final to Manchester United]. But I’m pretty sure we’ll perform well, and we are going to compete against them.
“It’s the final of the FA Cup, it’s an honour and a privilege. Third time in a row being there, and we have to perform well. We travel to London to win the title.”
Guardiola also praised Oliver Glasner’s Palace, who knocked out fellow Premier League sides Fulham and Aston Villa to reach the final.
Palace, who are 12th in the league table, are seeking their first major trophy, having fallen in the final in 1990 and 2016, losing to Manchester United on both occasions.
“It is a fantastic team. They have had a really good second part of the season. They have had more than a year with Oliver working with the same players,” Guardiola said.
“They are a threat because they have quality. [Striker Jean-Philippe] Mateta is strong and the quality in [Eberechi] Eze is obvious and, of course, the pace from [fellow forward Ismaila] Sarr … [Adam] Wharton is a really good holding midfielder.
“They are well structured defensively and their set-pieces are one of the best in the Premier League.”
The quiet confidence seeping out of Crystal Palace’s training ground before the final against Manchester City was summed up by manager Oliver Glasner on Friday.
“We’re focused on what we want to do at Wembley. We analysed Man City, but 90 percent, we were talking about us,” Glasner, who will become the first Austrian to lead a team in an FA Cup final, told reporters.
“This is what we can influence. We can influence our performance. We can influence what we want to do in and out of possession. And the focus was on our game. We have a lot of confidence and looking forward to the final.”
Palace may be 12th in the Premier League, but have matched their record points tally with two games still to play.
In the FA Cup, they have clicked impressively, winning 3-0 at Fulham in the quarterfinals and then beating Villa by the same margin at Wembley in the semis.
Now, they have one last obstacle to get over and claim the south London club’s first major trophy in its 120-year history.
Palace drew 2-2 with City at Selhurst Park in the league and led 2-0 in the return fixture, only to lose 5-2. They also lost 4-2 last April, a couple of months after Glasner took charge.
Scoring goals against Pep Guardiola’s team has not been a problem, but Glasner knows they will need to adjust defensively to give themselves the best possible chance at Wembley.
“In every single game [against City] we scored two goals, but we just had one draw, because we conceded four, two and five, so we have to make a few adjustments in our defending,” he said. “Because when you concede five, it’s tough to win, but when you score two, you should be able to win.
“So, we have confidence that we will create our chances, we will create our situations to score goals, but we have to do better in defence, and I don’t mean the back three or the back five. So as a team, maybe we have to adjust a few things, and this is what we want to do tomorrow.”
Palace fans, hoping it will be third time lucky in Cup finals after defeats in 1990 and 2016, produced a wall of sound and colour in the semifinal against Villa and are bound to give their side passionate support again on Saturday.
Goalkeeper Dean Henderson was one of several Palace players to donate to a fundraising campaign for a giant “tifo” against Villa, and another 45,000 pounds has been raised for one to be unfurled before Saturday’s Wembley showdown.
The World Bank says it will restart operations in Syria following a 14-year pause after the country cleared more than $15m of debt with financial backing from Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
The United States-based institution announced on Friday that Syria no longer has outstanding obligations to the International Development Association (IDA), its fund dedicated to low-income countries.
Earlier this week, Saudi Arabia and Qatar paid off Syria’s outstanding debts of approximately $15.5m, paving the way for renewed engagement with international financial bodies.
“We are pleased that the clearance of Syria’s arrears will allow the World Bank Group to reengage with the country and address the development needs of the Syrian people,” the bank said. “After years of conflict, Syria is on a path to recovery and development.”
The bank is now preparing its first project in Syria, which will focus on improving electricity access — a key pillar for revitalising essential services like healthcare, education, and water supply.
Officials said it marks the beginning of expanded support aimed at stabilising Syria and boosting long-term growth.
The bank’s announcement coincides with a dramatic shift in US policy towards Damascus.
US President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that Washington would begin lifting sanctions imposed on Syria, including measures under the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act.
On Wednesday, Trump met Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa on the sidelines of the GCC summit in Riyadh, marking a historic breakthrough in relations between the countries and the first such meeting between the two nations’ leaders in 25 years.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that waivers would be issued, easing restrictions on entities previously penalised for dealings with the now former administration of Bashar al-Assad, which was toppled in December.
“Lifting sanctions on Syria represents a fundamental turning point,” Ibrahim Nafi Qushji, an economist and banking expert, told Al Jazeera. “The Syrian economy will transition from interacting with developing economies to integrating with more developed ones, potentially significantly reshaping trade and investment relations.”
The moves represent a significant moment in Syria’s reintegration into the global financial system after 13 years of civil war and isolation.
In April, a rare meeting was held in Washington involving officials from Syria, the IMF, the World Bank, and Saudi Arabia. A joint statement issued afterwards acknowledged the dire state of Syria’s economy and promised coordinated efforts to support its recovery.
The International Monetary Fund has since named its first mission chief to Syria in more than a decade. Ron van Rooden, previously involved with IMF operations in Ukraine, will lead the Fund’s renewed engagement.
Martin Muehleisen, a former IMF strategy chief, noted the urgency of providing technical assistance to rebuild Syria’s financial institutions. “Those efforts could be funded by donors and grants in-kind,” he told the news agency Reuters, adding that some support could begin within months.
Al-Assad was toppled after a lightning offensive by opposition fighters led by the Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham armed group last December.
Syria’s new government has sought to rebuild the country’s diplomatic ties, including with international financial institutions. It also counts on wealthy Gulf Arab states to play a pivotal role in financing the reconstruction of Syria’s war-ravaged infrastructure and reviving its economy.
United States House Republicans’ “big, beautiful bill”, a wide-ranging tax and spending legislation, is at a crucial moment.
The nearly 400-page legislation proposes sweeping changes which include extending the 2017 tax cuts, slashing taxes for businesses and individuals, and enacting deep cuts to social programmes like Medicaid and SNAP.
While Republicans tout the bill as a boon for economic growth and middle-class relief, nonpartisan analysts warn it could add trillions to the national debt and strip millions of Americans of medical and food assistance.
The bill will be voted on by the House Budget Committee today and, if passed, will be voted on the floor next week.
The most substantive part of the bill is an extension of the 2017 tax cuts. The tax bill would add at least an additional $2.5 trillion to the national deficit over the next 10 years and decrease federal tax revenue by roughly $4 trillion by 2034.
Passing the legislation will also raise the debt ceiling, which sets the amount of money the government can borrow to pay for existing expenditures, by $4 trillion, a sticking point for hardline Republicans who want deeper cuts.
Here are some of the key measures in the proposed bill in its current form.
The bill increases standard deductions for all Americans. Individual deductions will increase by $1,000, $1,500 for heads of households, and $2,000 for married couples.
The bill extends the child tax credit of $2,000, which would otherwise have ended with the expiration of the 2017 tax cuts at year’s end.
It bumps up the child tax credit by $500 per child for this tax year and runs through the end of 2028. It also includes a $1,000 savings account for children born between December 31, 2024 and January 1, 2029. The legislation would also allow families to annually contribute $5,000 tax-free.
There is a new tax deduction for Americans 65 and older. The new bill would give a $4,000 annual deduction starting this year for people making a gross income of $75,000 for a single person and $150,000 for a married couple. If passed, the rule would take effect for the current tax year and run until the end of 2028.
“It will just make tax paying more complicated and more uncertain when a lot of these things ultimately expire,” Adam Michel, director of tax policy studies at the right-leaning Cato Institute, told Al Jazeera.
Another provision in the bill modifies state and local tax (SALT) deductions. It allows filers to be able to write off some of what they paid in local and state taxes from their federal filings.
Under the 2017 tax act, that was capped at $10,000, but the new legislation would raise that to $30,000. Some Republicans, particularly those in states with higher taxes like New York and California, have been pushing to raise the cap or abolish it altogether. However, they have faced fiscal hawks and those who see the increases as relief for those already wealthy.
The bill includes an increased benefit for small businesses that allows them to deduct 23 percent of their qualified business income from their taxes, up from the current 20 percent.
There is also a call for no taxes on overtime pay for select individuals. It would not apply to people who are non-citizens, those who are considered “highly compensated employees,” and those who earn a tipped wage.
The bill, however, also eliminates taxes on tips, a critical campaign promise by both Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Kamala Harris. The bill would allow people who work in sectors like food service, as well as hair care, nail care, aesthetics, and body and spa treatments, to specifically deduct the amount of tipped income they receive.
At the federal level, employers will still not be required to pay tipped workers more than the subminimum wage of $2.13 hourly. The intention is that workers will be able to make up the difference in tipping the receipt from customers.
The legislation calls to make $880bn in cuts to key government programmes with a focus mostly on Medicaid and food stamps.
The CBO found that more than 10 million people could lose Medicaid access and 7.6 million could lose access to health insurance completely by 2034 under the current plan.
Even far-right Republicans have called out the Medicaid cuts. In an op-ed in The New York Times this week, Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri said the cuts are “morally wrong and politically suicidal”.
According to a new report from One Fair Wage shared with Al Jazeera, tipped workers could be hit especially hard, as 1.2 million restaurant and tipped workers could lose access to Medicaid.
“A no tax on tips proposal, which is like a minuscule percentage of their income and doesn’t affect two-thirds of tips workers because they don’t earn enough to pay federal income tax, is just nowhere near enough to compensate for the fact that we’re going to have millions of these workers lose the ability to take care of themselves, in some cases go into medical debt, in many cases just not take care of themselves,” Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage, an advocacy group for restaurant workers, told Al Jazeera.
The bill also introduces work requirements to receive benefits, saying that recipients must prove they work, volunteer or are enrolled in school for at least 80 hours each month.
At the same time, the bill also shortens the open enrolment period by a month for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise known as Obamacare. This means people who have employer-funded healthcare and lose their job might lose eligibility to buy a private plan on the healthcare exchange.
“It’s taking folks like 11 to 12 weeks to find a new job. The worse the labour market gets, that number will tick up. If you’re unemployed for three months, you get kicked off Medicaid,” Liz Pancotti, managing director of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collective, told Al Jazeera.
“Then, if you try to go buy a plan on the ACA marketplace, you are no longer eligible for subsidies … which I think is really cruel.”
Other major proposed cuts will hit programmes like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme or SNAP, which helps 42 million low-income individuals afford groceries and comes at a time when food costs are still 2 percent higher than a year ago. The CBO found that 3 million people could lose SNAP access under the new plan.
The bill would also force states to take up more responsibility in funding the programmes. States would be required to cover 75 percent of the administrative costs, and all states would have to pay at least 5 percent of the benefits — 28 states would need to pay 25 percent.
“States are now going to be on the hook for billions of dollars in funding for these two vital programmes. They have a tough choice. One is, do they cut funding from others like K-12 education, roads, veteran services, etc, to cover this gap, or do they raise taxes so that they can raise more revenue to cover this gap,” Pancotti added.
Under the current law, the federal government is solely responsible for shouldering the cost of benefits. The proposed cuts would save $300bn for the federal government but hit state budgets hard.
The bill would also cut the $7,500 tax credit for new electric vehicle purchases and $4,000 for a used EV, a move which could hurt several major US automakers that are already reeling from the administration’s tariffs on automobiles.
General Motors pumped billions into domestic EV production in the last year, which has included a $900m investment to retrofit an existing plant to build electric vehicles in Michigan and alongside Samsung, the carmaker invested $3.5bn in EV battery manufacturing in the US.
In February, Ford CEO Jim Farley said that revoking the EV tax credit could put factory jobs on the chopping block. The carmaker invested in three EV battery plants in Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee. The federal government under the administration of former President Joe Biden paid out more than $2bn in EV tax credits in 2024.
The proposed legislation would also give the Trump administration authority to revoke the tax exempt status of nonprofit organisations that it deems as a “terrorist supporting organisation”. It would give the secretary of the treasury the ability to accuse any nonprofit of supporting “terrorism”, revoke their tax exempt status without allowing them due process to prove otherwise, which has raised serious concerns amongst critics.
“This measure’s real intent lurks behind its hyperbolic and unsubstantiated anti-terrorist rhetoric: It would allow the Treasury Department to explicitly target, harass and investigate thousands of U.S. organizations that make up civil society, including nonprofit newsrooms,” Jenna Ruddock, advocacy director of Free Press Action, said in a statement.
“The bill’s language lacks any meaningful safeguards against abuse. Instead it puts the burden of proof on organizations rather than on the government. It’s not hard to imagine how the Trump administration would use it to exact revenge on groups that have raised questions about or simply angered the president and other officials in his orbit.”
The bill would introduce new taxes on colleges, including a varying tax rate based on the size of a university’s endowment per student with the highest at 14 percent for universities with a per student endowment of more than $1.25m but less than $2m and 21 percent for those of $2m or more.
This comes amid the Trump administration’s increased tensions with higher education. In the last week, the Trump administration pulled $450m in grants to Harvard on top of the $2.2bn it pulled in April — a move which will hinder research into cancer and heart disease, among other areas. Harvard has an endowment of $53.2bn, making it one of the richest schools in the country.
The legislation would also increase funding for a border wall between the US and Mexico, which the administration has argued will help curb undocumented immigration. However, there is no evidence that such a wall has deterred border crossings.
Washington, DC – Three days, three countries, hundreds of billions of dollars in investments and a geopolitical shift in the United States’s approach to the region: Donald Trump’s trip to the Middle East has been eventful.
This week, the United States president visited Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates in the first planned trip of his second presidency, after attending Pope Francis’s funeral last month.
Trump was visibly gleeful throughout the trip as he secured investments, criticised domestic political rivals and heaped praise on Gulf leaders. The word “historic” was used more than a few times by US officials to describe the visits.
With Trump returning to the White House, here are five key takeaways from his trip:
Addressing an investment summit in Riyadh, Trump promoted a realist approach to the Middle East — one in which the US does not intervene in the affairs of other countries.
He took a swipe at neoconservatives who oversaw the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as he lauded Gulf leaders for developing the region.
“This great transformation has not come from Western intervention or flying people in beautiful planes, giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs,” he said.
“The gleaming marbles of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called nation-builders, neo-cons or liberal nonprofits like those who spent trillions and trillions of dollars failing to develop Kabul, Baghdad, so many other cities.”
Trump built his political brand with his “America First” slogan, calling for the US to focus on its own issues instead of helping — or bombing — foreign countries.
But his words at the investment summit marked a stern rebuke of the neo-cons who dominated Trump’s Republican Party a decade ago.
“In the end, the so-called nation-builders wrecked far more nations than they built, and the interventionists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves,” Trump said.
It is rare for US presidents to travel to the Middle East and not visit Israel, but Trump omitted the US ally from his itinerary as he toured the region.
Skipping Israel was seen as a reflection of the deteriorating ties between the US administration and the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
This week’s trip also came in the context of several moves perceived as evidence of the US marginalising Israel. The US has continued to hold talks with Israel’s rival Iran, announced a ceasefire with the Houthis in Yemen, and conducted unilateral negotiations to release Israeli soldier Edan Alexander, a US citizen, from Hamas captivity.
Moreover, while touring the Gulf, Trump did not use his remarks to prioritise the establishment of formal diplomatic ties between Saudi Arabia and Israel, which had been a top goal during his first term.
It remains unclear how Trump’s decisions will affect the “special relationship” between the two allies, but experts say it is becoming increasingly apparent that the US no longer views the Middle East solely through the lens of Israel.
“Is it a tactical problem for Netanyahu and the entire pro-Israel lobby? I think it is,” Khaled Elgindy, a visiting scholar at Georgetown University, said of Trump’s shift.
“It does throw a wrench in the machinery because it is a president who is showing openly daylight with Israeli decision-making, and not just in rhetoric, but acting on it — leaving Israel out of the process.”
With that chasm emerging, some Palestinian rights advocates had hoped that the US president’s trip to the region would see Washington pursue a deal to end Israel’s war on Gaza.
But as Trump marvelled at the luxurious buildings in the Gulf, Israel intensified its bombardment to destroy what’s left of the Palestinian territory.
No ceasefire was announced, despite reports of continuing talks in Doha. And Israel appears to be pushing forward with its plan to expand its assault on Gaza as it continues to block aid for the nearly two million people in the enclave, leading to fears of famine.
United Nations experts and rights groups have described the situation as a genocide.
But despite preaching “peace and prosperity” for both Israelis and Palestinians, Trump made no strong push to end the war during this week’s trip.
On Thursday, Trump suggested that he has not given up on the idea of depopulating Gaza and turning it over to the US — a proposal that legal experts say amounts to ethnic cleansing.
“I have concepts for Gaza that I think are very good. Make it a freedom zone,” he said. “Let the United States get involved, and make it just a freedom zone.”
In a move that surprised many observers, Trump announced from Riyadh that he will offer sanction relief to Syria, as the country emerges from a decade-plus civil war.
Trump also met with interim Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa and described him as a “young, attractive guy”.
A wholesale lifting of sanctions was not expected, in part because of Israel’s hostility to the new authorities in Syria. Israeli officials often describe al-Sharaa, who led al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria before severing ties with the group, as a “terrorist”.
But Trump said he made the decision to lift the economic penalties against Syria at the request of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at greatness,” the US president said.
The White House said on Wednesday that Trump had a list of requests for al-Sharaa, including establishing diplomatic relations with Israel and deporting “Palestinian terrorists”.
Removing US sanctions, which had been imposed on the government of former President Bashar al-Assad, is likely to be a boost for the new Syrian authorities, who are grappling with an ailing economy after years of conflict.
“Lifting sanctions on Syria represents a fundamental turning point,” Ibrahim Nafi Qushji, an economist, told Al Jazeera.
“The Syrian economy will transition from interacting with developing economies to integrating with more developed ones, potentially significantly reshaping trade and investment relations.”
In Saudi Arabia, Trump declared that he wants a deal with Iran — and he wants it done quickly.
“We really want them to be a successful country,” the US president said of Iran.
“We want them to be a wonderful, safe, great country, but they cannot have a nuclear weapon. This is an offer that will not last forever. The time is right now for them to choose.”
Trump warned Iran that, if it rejects his “olive branch”, he would impose a “massive maximum pressure” against Tehran and choke off its oil exports.
Notably, Trump did not threaten explicit military action against Iran, a departure from his previous rhetoric. In late March, for instance, he told NBC News, “If they don’t make a deal, there will be bombing.”
Iran says it is not seeking nuclear weapons and would welcome a stringent monitoring programme of its nuclear facilities.
But Israel and some hawks want the Iranian nuclear programme completely dismantled, not just scaled back.
US and Iranian officials have held multiple rounds of talks this year, but Tehran says it has not received an official offer from Washington. And Trump officials have not explicitly indicated what the endgame of the talks is.
US envoy Steve Witkoff said last month that Iran “must stop and eliminate” uranium enrichment, but days earlier, he had suggested that enrichment should be brought down to civilian energy levels.
Several Gulf countries, including the three that Trump visited this week, have welcomed the nuclear negotiations, as relations between Iran and its Arab neighbours have grown more stable in recent years.
Before entering politics, Trump was a real estate mogul who played up his celebrity persona as a mega-rich dealmaker. He appears to have brought that business mindset to the White House.
While in the wealthy Gulf region, Trump was in his element. He announced deals that would see Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE buy US arms and invest in American firms. According to the White House, Trump secured a total of $2 trillion in investments from the Middle East during the trip.
And his administration is framing the deals as a major political and economic victory for Trump.
“While it took President Biden nearly four years to secure $1 trillion in investments, President Trump achieved this in his first month, with additional investment commitments continuing to roll in,” the White House said.
“President Trump is accelerating investment in America and securing fair trade deals around the world, paving the way for a new Golden Age of lasting prosperity for generations to come.”
Gaining citizenship by simply being born in a country is not the global norm, but it has been a long-standing practice in the United States. President Donald Trump, however, wants to change that. Al Jazeera’s Joseph Stepansky explains how the Supreme Court could be the deciding factor.