Europe

Major power outage hits the prominent film festival on its closing day and impacts 160,000 homes in the area.

French police were investigating a possible arson attack as being the main cause for a power outage which hit the Alpes-Maritimes region in southern France, including Cannes which is hosting its world-famous annual film festival.

“We are looking into the likelihood of a fire being started deliberately,” a spokesperson for the French national gendarmerie said on Saturday, adding that no arrests had been made at this stage.

The local authority for the Alpes-Maritimes region had said earlier on Saturday that the western part of the area, which includes Cannes, was suffering from a major electricity outage and that grid operator RTE France was working on restoring power.

The outage, which affected 160,000 homes, according to RTE and regional officials, started shortly after 10am local time (08:00 GMT) on Saturday.

Police sources said the outage was caused by an overnight fire, probably an arson attack, at a high-voltage substation in the village of Tanneron.

Traffic lights were knocked out and businesses closed on the main shopping street of the Alpes-Maritimes holiday destination.

Separate power outages swept across the Iberian Peninsula and parts of southern France on Monday, disrupting critical infrastructure and airport operations. Officials denied foul play.

While Spain and Portugal suffered blackouts last month, the French Basque Country saw brief power outages with interruptions lasting only a few minutes, according to the French electricity transmission network.

The latest outage came just hours before the 78th Cannes Film Festival is due to close on Saturday evening with an award ceremony at the Palais des Festivals.

Despite the power cut, festival organisers said switching to an alternative electricity power supply enabled them to “maintain the events and screenings planned for today in normal conditions, including the closing ceremony”.

After a politically charged two weeks, a jury led by French actor Juliette Binoche is expected to announce the winners among 22 films competing for the Palme d’Or for best film.

This year, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the genocide in Gaza and United States President Donald Trump were the biggest talking points at the festival. More than 900 actors and filmmakers signed an open letter denouncing the genocide in Gaza, according to the organisers.

Cristiano Ronaldo is in discussions to play at FIFA’s Club World Cup where Lionel Messi currently headlines the event.

Cristiano Ronaldo is in “discussions” to play at FIFA’s inaugural Club World Cup this summer, according to the president of the sport’s global governing body.

Gianni Infantino says the former Manchester United and Real Madrid forward might play in the tournament, which is being staged in the United States in June, because of a unique transfer window.

Ronaldo’s Saudi Arabian club Al Nassr did not qualify for the tournament, but Infantino suggested that the Portugal star could switch to one of the 32 teams participating in the tournament.

“Cristiano Ronaldo might play in the Club World Cup,” Infantino told online streamer IShowSpeed, whose YouTube channel has more than 39 million subscribers. “There are discussions with some clubs, so if any club is watching and is interested in hiring Ronaldo for the Club World Cup, who knows? Still a few weeks’ time, will be fun.”

FIFA confirmed on Wednesday that last-minute transfer signings are open to all teams going to the tournament, which fuelled more speculation that one of them will try to sign the 40-year-old Ronaldo on a short-term deal, potentially a loan.

Such a move would be unprecedented in modern football, though it could appeal to FIFA by boosting the profile and ticket sales of an inaugural tournament being played in 11 US cities.

A transfer for Ronaldo would also reunite him and Lionel Messi in the same competition for the first time since the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

Last October, FIFA invited Messi’s Inter Miami to enter the tournament in the slot that was expected to be reserved for the host nation’s champions. Inter Miami were eliminated in the MLS Cup playoffs.

Speculative reports have linked Ronaldo to the one Saudi club that qualified, Al Hilal, the Brazilian club Palmeiras and Wydad of Morocco, even though that club is currently banned by FIFA from registering new signings.

Transfers can be made from June 1-10 and again from June 27 to July 3, according to exceptional rules FIFA approved in October.

“The objective is to encourage clubs and players whose contracts are expiring to find an appropriate solution to facilitate the players’ participation,” FIFA said in Wednesday’s statement.

The two countries swap hundreds of soldiers and civilians as Russia launches more drone attacks on Ukraine.

Russia and Ukraine have exchanged more prisoners of war as Ukrainian officials renew their calls for more sanctions in response to dozens of attack drones and ballistic missiles launched by Moscow’s forces at Kyiv overnight.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence said on Saturday it released 307 Ukrainian prisoners of war in exchange for as many Russian servicemen, who are being cared for in Belarus before their return to Russia.

Ukraine confirmed the exchange, saying among those returned were army soldiers, agents of the State Border Guard Service, and members of the National Guard of Ukraine.

The two sides each released 270 servicemen and 120 civilians on the Ukrainian border with Belarus on Friday, as part of the biggest prisoner exchange since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Both sides have agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners, but the aerial attacks and ground fighting have not stopped.

Ukraine’s military on Saturday said overnight attacks launched from multiple Russian regions used 250 drones and 14 ballistic missiles to hit Kyiv and other areas, damaging several apartment buildings and a shopping mall, and injuring at least 15 people in the capital.

Sites in the Ukrainian regions of Dnipropetrovsk, Odesa and Zaporizhia were also hit, with Ukrainian forces saying six of the ballistic missiles were shot down by its air defences, along with 245 drones, many of which were said to be Iranian-designed.

Oleh Syniehubov, head of Kharkiv’s regional state administration, said on Saturday morning that four Ukrainians were killed and several others injured over the past 24 hours in the region as a result of multiple Russian attacks.

Meanwhile, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said at least 100 Ukrainian drones attempted to strike Russian targets overnight. It said 64 unmanned aerial vehicles were downed overnight in the skies of the Belgorod region, along with 10 additional drones launched on Saturday morning.

Dozens more projectiles were downed over Kursk, Lipetsk and Voronezh and another five were shot down over Tver northwest of Moscow, it said.

‘Difficult night’

In a social media post, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the country had another “difficult night” that he believes should convince the world that “the reason for the war being dragged out is in Moscow”.

“It is obvious that we need to put much more pressure on Russia to get results and start real diplomacy. We are waiting for sanctions from the US, Europe and all our partners. Only additional sanctions against key sectors of the Russian economy will force Moscow to agree to a ceasefire.”

The Group of Seven (G7) nations threatened on Friday to impose further sanctions on Russia if it fails to agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said a week after talks in Turkiye’s capital Istanbul led only to an agreement on the exchange of prisoners of war, that Moscow has yet to send any “peace memorandum”.

“Instead, Russia sends deadly drones and missiles at civilians,” he wrote in a post on X, adding that “increased sanctions pressure on Moscow is necessary to accelerate the peace process.”

Reporting from Kyiv, Al Jazeera’s John Hendren said the Istanbul meeting was disappointing for Zelenskyy because he wanted a face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Instead, it was a much lower-level meeting. But they did manage to get this prisoner swap,” he said, adding that the exchanges could be over by Sunday but the details were not clear.

“Zelenskyy has been disappointed by the lack of additional US sanctions against Russia. Europe has agreed to new sanctions, but it’s not clear that they will really have the desired effect to bring Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table.”

These are the key events on day 1,185 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Saturday, May 24:

Fighting

• At least 14 people were injured in one of the biggest combined drone and ballistic missile attacks to date on Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, according to city officials, and witnesses reported a series of explosions and waves of Russian drones flying over the city.
• Ukraine’s air force said that Moscow launched 250 long-range drones and 14 ballistic missiles overnight. It said it down 245 of the Shahed-type drones and six of the Iskander ballistic missiles. It was unclear if the remaining drones and missiles hit its targets.
• Anti-aircraft units were activated across the Ukrainian capital following the attack at dawn. Timur Tkachenko, head of the capital’s military administration, said two fires had broken out in the city’s Sviatoshynskyi district. Drone fragments also hit the ground in four districts.
• At least two people were killed in Ukraine’s southern city of Odesa after Russia struck port infrastructure with missiles, according to authorities.
• Three people were killed in shelling incidents in different parts of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, the focal point of the war’s front line, authorities said.

• Russia has accused Ukraine of launching a massive wave of drone attacks, numbering up to 800, against non-military targets in Moscow and other regions in the last three days and said it would respond, but said it was still committed to holding peace talks with Kyiv.

• Ukraine’s military said that it had hit a battery-manufacturing facility in Russia’s Lipetsk region, which it said supplied Russian missile and bomb manufacturers. It added that the batteries were used in aerial bombs, cruise missiles and the Iskander-M ballistic missile.

• A Russian military helicopter has crashed near the village of Naryshkino in Russia’s Oryol region, killing the crew, the state news agency TASS reported, citing the Moscow military district headquarters. The preliminary cause of the crash was a technical malfunction.

Politics and diplomacy

• Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has announced that Moscow will be ready to hand Ukraine a draft document outlining conditions for a long-term peace accord once a prisoner exchange, now under way, is completed.

• Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha told reporters that Kyiv was waiting for Russia’s proposals on the form of talks, a ceasefire and a meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

• Sybiha, quoted by Ukrainian media, said Kyiv would be in favour of expanding such a meeting to include United States President Donald Trump.

• Lavrov has cast doubt on the Vatican as a potential place for peace talks with Ukraine. Italy had said Pope Leo XIV was ready to host the peace talks after Trump suggested the Vatican as a location. Italy, the pope and the US had voiced hope the city-state could host the talks.
• Russia and Ukraine have each released 390 prisoners of war and said they would free more in the coming days, an initiative agreed in talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials in Turkiye last week.
• Putin has declared in televised remarks that Russia needs to strengthen its position in the global arms market by increasing exports of weapons.
• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz urged Chinese President Xi Jinping to back Western efforts towards a Ukraine truce in his first phone call with China’s leader since Merz took office this month.

Economy

• US credit rating agency Fitch has affirmed Ukraine’s long-term foreign currency sovereign credit rating at “Restricted Default”, as the war-torn nation continues to navigate diplomatic tensions and a significant erosion of its finances amid its grinding war with Russia.

• The International Monetary Fund has started a new review of its $15.5bn programme to Ukraine this week, even as the country failed to reach a deal with GDP-linked debt holders last month.

EU official says a trade deal ‘must be guided by mutual respect, not threats’ after the US president says talks with the bloc are ‘going nowhere’.

The European Union has said it will defend its interests after United States President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 50-percent tariff on all goods from the 27-member bloc.

The EU’s top trade official, Maros Sefcovic, said in a post on X that he spoke on Friday with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on the issue.

“The EU is fully engaged, committed to securing a deal that works for both,” he said, adding that the EU Commission remains ready to work in good faith towards an agreement.

“EU-US trade is unmatched and must be guided by mutual respect, not threats. We stand ready to defend our interests.”

Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that he is “recommending” a huge 50 percent duty on the EU starting on June 1 since talks with them “are going nowhere”.

Speaking later in the Oval Office, the Republican president emphasised that he was not seeking a deal with the EU but might delay the tariffs if more European companies made major investments in the US.

“I’m not looking for a deal,” Trump told the reporters. “We’ve set the deal. It’s at 50 percent.”

European leaders warned the tariffs will hurt both sides.

German economy minister Katherina Reiche said everything must be done “to ensure that the European Commission reaches a negotiated solution with the United States” while French foreign minister Laurent Saint-Martin said the bloc prefers de-escalation but is “ready to respond”.

If implemented, the tariffs would mean that the EU will have higher import taxes on its hundreds of billions worth of exported goods compared with China, which had its tariffs cut earlier this month to allow more negotiations between Washington, DC, and Beijing.

In early April, Trump announced a 20 percent tariff on most EU goods but brought it down to 10 percent until July 8 to allow time for more negotiations.

Trump has complained that existing frameworks are “unfair” to US companies as the European bloc sells more goods to its ally than it buys from it.

Trump on Friday also warned that the US tech giant Apple could also be hit with a 25 percent import tax on all iPhones not manufactured but sold in the US.

His announcements online dealt another blow to stock markets both in the US and in the EU, with the S&P 500 down about 0.8 percent and the pan-European STOXX 600 index falling about 1.2 percent.

EVEN though humans have never set foot on Mars, we’ve still got plenty of photos of the red planet.

And if you went by those pics alone, you’d think the Martian surface was littered with mysterious faces, swarms of monstrous spiders, and even alien beings.

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Of course, Mars is just a barren wasteland – only occupied by camera-toting rovers shipped there from Earth.

So why do we see all of these strange faces and figures on Mars?

Well it’s a phenomenon known as pareidolia, which is a human tendency to see patterns when there isn’t one – and it’s often to blame for those bizarre sightings on the red planet.

Here are some of the creepiest “sightings” from our space neighbour, Mars.

CYDONIA ‘FACE ON MARS’

One of the most iconic Martian faces is from the Cydonia region.

The feature was first captured in 1976, revealing a strikingly humanlike formation on the Martian surface.

Early images of the region were snapped by Viking 1 and Viking 2, a pair of Nasa orbiters tasked with imaging Mars.

It’s since been captured in several later photographs, clearly exposing it as an optical illusion.

Sadly it’s not a giant alien face at all – but a massive 1.2-mile-long Cydonian mesa.

The region is known for its flat-topped mesas.

BEAR WE GO

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Forget Stonehenge – what about a giant bear circle?

That’s what was seemingly snapped by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on December 12, 2022.

It looks like the face of an enormous grizzly, but it’s actually just a weird hill, as Nasa explains: “A V-shaped collapse structure makes the nose, two craters form the eyes, and a circular fracture pattern shapes the head.

“The circular fracture pattern might be due to the settling of a deposit over a buried impact crater.”

LEG IT!

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Several images of what look like terrifyingly large spiders have been captured on Mars.

The first was caught by the European Space Agency‘s (ESA) ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter in October 2020, and the second was picked up by Nasa’s MRO in May 2018.

Thankfully they’re not spiders at all – but a strange phenomenon called “araneiform terrain”.

“This is an active seasonal process not seen on Earth,” Nasa explained.

“Like dry ice on Earth, the carbon dioxide ice on Mars sublimates as it warms (changes from solid to gas) and the gas becomes trapped below the surface.

“Over time the trapped carbon dioxide gas builds in pressure and is eventually strong enough to break through the ice as a jet that erupts dust.

“The gas is released into the atmosphere and darker dust may be deposited around the vent or transported by winds to produce streaks.

“The loss of the sublimated carbon dioxide leaves behind these spider-like features etched into the surface.”

LIVING ON A PRAYER

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In 2007, Nasa’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit captured what appeared to be a person kneeling in prayer.

It made headlines around the world when the image was released in early 2008.

The eerie scene was part of a vast panorama of Martian hills taken during the closing months of Spirit’s mission.

Of course, all we’re actually seeing is an interesting rock, and a trick of the light.

GHANDI’S MARTIAN TWIN

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Pictures from Europe‘s Mars Express probe appear to have captured a Ghandi lookalike on Mars.

The Mars Orbiter has been used to pack out the Google Mars project with satellite-style snaps of the red planet.

And in 2011, Italian space fan Matteo Lanneo thought he spotted Ghandi’s likeness on the surface.

Of course, it’s just another classic example of pareidolia, where we’re simply seeing things that aren’t really there.

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MARTIAN DOORWAY

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In mid-2022, Nasa captured what appeared to be a “doorway” into a mound of rock nicknamed ‘East Cliffs’.

The picture of the mound on Mount Sharp was snapped by Nasa’s Curiosity Rover.

Sadly it’s not really a doorway, as Nasa explains: “The mound, on Mount Sharp, has a number of naturally occurring open fractures – including one roughly 12 inches (30 centimeters) tall and 16 inches (40 centimeters) wide, similar in size to a dog door.

“These kinds of open fractures are common in bedrock, both on Earth and on Mars.”

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Who: Barcelona vs Arsenal
What: UEFA Women’s Champions League final
When: Saturday, May 24 (18:00 kickoff, 16:00 GMT)
Where: Estadio Jose Alvalade in Lisbon, Portugal

Follow Al Jazeera Sport‘s live text and photo commentary stream.

Barcelona are aiming to complete a three-peat of Women’s Champions League titles and win its fourth European crown in five years when it faces Arsenal in Lisbon on Saturday.

Al Jazeera Sport looks at a final that pits two of the biggest names in women’s football for the game’s biggest club prize.

What is the secret to Barcelona’s success?

Barcelona are out to reaffirm their status as the dominant force in European women’s football after they finally beat Lyon and successfully defended their title in last year’s final.

Their possession-hungry and high-scoring attack is led from the midfield by Ballon d’Or winners Aitana Bonmati and Alexia Putellas and several other members of Spain’s World Cup-winning team that beat England in the 2023 final.

What is Barcelona’s Champions League record?

Barcelona will be playing in its sixth Champions League final in seven seasons and a record-equalling fifth in a row at Lisbon’s 50,000-capacity Estadio Jose Alvalade.

The Catalan club has the chance to become the only team other than Lyon to lift the European Cup in three consecutive years.

Bonmati, the Ballon d’Or winner in 2023 and 2024, said the experience gained from previous finals is invaluable.

“I’ve learned a lot of things. It is the path that has fallen to us. The first final in Budapest was an inexperienced team that was going to see what happened. Now, we are the team to beat,” she said.

“Knowing how to be, knowing how to suffer, is very important. And never giving up. We have had finals where we have come back. We have had games of all colours.”

What is Arsenal’s take on facing Barcelona?

Standing in Barcelona’s way is an Arsenal team that has excelled as a spoiler this campaign and hopes it can pull off another upset and win its second European title.

“They’re a fantastic team and they’ve obviously got the recent history to prove it,” Arsenal defender Leah Williamson said about Barcelona in the build-up to the final.

“We respect them a lot, but it’s a final, so everybody turns up and everybody gives their best.”

How do Barcelona and Arsenal match up?

First-year Barcelona coach Pere Romeu has a side that can hit from all angles with multiple scoring options.

They lead all the major team statistics in attack: most goals scored with 44, to Arsenal’s 25, the highest possession, best pass accuracy and most shot attempts.

Barcelona forward Claudia Pina leads the competition in scoring with 10 goals, ahead of Arsenal pair Mariona Caldentey, who joined from the Spanish club last year, and Alessia Russo with seven each. Bonmati and teammate Patri Guijarro lead the competition with five assists each.

Have Barcelona improved on last season?

Barcelona added to its winning squad in the offseason by signing Poland striker Ewa Pajor, who went on to lead the Spanish league with 23 goals.

Pajor, 28, is seeking her first European title after losing four finals with former club Wolfsburg, including the 2023 final to Barcelona after leading 2-0.

“The final is played in the details, and we can prepare the details before the game,” Pajor said. “What I have also learned, because I’ve played in four finals, you have to be there in the first minute until the end.”

How has Barcelona’s season progressed?

Barcelona has rolled to a sixth consecutive Liga F title and has reached another Copa de la Reina final, but at the same time, it has proven beatable.

Barcelona’s home unbeaten run in Liga F came to an end after a record 64 games this season, and it lost to Real Madrid for the first time in 19 Clasicos since its top rival founded a women’s team.

They also started the Champions League with a rare group stage loss to Manchester City.

“We lost a couple more games than we are used to, and we lost some games that hurt more than others,” Barcelona forward Caroline Graham said, adding about the City defeat: “A lot of people thought that our run to be good in the Champions League was a bit over. That was a motivation to show that we still are good and that we can still compete against the best.”

How do Arsenal shape up?

Arsenal remain the only English team to win the biggest title in women’s club football after it won UEFA’s Women’s Cup in 2007 when it beat Umea, two years before the tournament was reformatted and renamed the Women’s Champions League.

Arsenal may be the underdog, but it is likely comfortable with that role given its recent run of comebacks.

Renee Slegers’s side rallied against Madrid in the quarterfinals, and then shocked eight-time winner Lyon in the semifinals when they rebounded from a 2-1 loss in London by winning 4-1 in France.

This is the English club’s only chance to win some silverware this campaign after finishing second to Chelsea in England’s Women’s Super League and failing to reach the finals of the FA Cup or League Cup.

“We’ve had to come back from a lot of difficult situations, from setbacks, but the persistence of the team and the [fact that we] keep on believing, that’s been key for us,” Slegers said. “We’ve done some magical things.”

Do Arsenal and Barcelona have history?

Arsenal were Barcelona’s first opponents in Europe’s top club competition in the 2012-13 season, when the English side crushed the Catalans 7-0 over two legs.

Barcelona were nowhere near as good as they are now, however. They overwhelmed Chelsea, who went unbeaten across the 22-game Women’s Super League season en route to winning the title, 8-2 on aggregate in the Champions League semifinals.

“Everything leads you to be what you are now,” Putellas said. “In that first match of this competition, it was unthinkable what would come next. It’s thanks to work. I feel privileged to have been able to live this whole journey.”

Police say four victims face life-threatening injuries, suggest suspect may have have suffered a ‘psychological emergency’.

Authorities in Germany have arrested a woman after at least 17 people were injured in a knife attack at the main train station in the northern city of Hamburg.

At least four of the victims sustained life-threatening injuries in Friday evening’s mass stabbing incident, which took place in the middle of the city’s evening rush hour, emergency services said.

The suspect, a 39-year-old German woman, was arrested at the scene by law enforcement, a Hamburg police spokesperson said.

Officers “approached her, and the woman allowed herself to be arrested without resistance”, spokesman Florian Abbenseth told journalists in comments carried by public broadcaster ARD.

“We have no evidence so far that the woman may have had a political motive,” Abbenseth said.

“Rather, we have information, based on which we now want to investigate, whether she may have been experiencing a psychological emergency.”

The suspect was thought to have “acted alone”, Hamburg police said in a post on X.

Four of the victims have suffered life-threatening injuries, Hamburg’s fire department spokesman said, revising down an earlier figure.

The suspect was thought to have turned “against passengers” at the station, a spokeswoman for the Hanover federal police directorate, which also covers Hamburg, told the AFP news agency.

Images of the scene showed access to the platforms at one end of the station blocked off by police and people being loaded into waiting ambulances.

Four platforms at the station were closed while investigations were ongoing, and railway operator Deutsche Bahn said it was “deeply shocked” by the attack. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz also expressed his shock in a call with the mayor of Hamburg following the attack.

Germany has been rocked in recent months by a series of violent attacks that have put security at the top of the agenda.

The most recent, on Sunday, saw four people injured in a stabbing at a bar in the city of Bielefeld. The investigation into that attack had been handed over to federal prosecutors following the arrest of the suspect, who is from Syria.

Bangkok, Thailand – Over several years in the mid-1960s, the crumbling ruins of an ancient temple in northeast Thailand were picked clean by local looters.

Possibly hundreds of centuries-old statues that were long buried beneath the soft, verdant grounds around the temple were stolen.

To this day, all the known artefacts from the pillaging spree, collectively known as the Prakhon Chai hoard, sit scattered thousands of miles away in museums and collections across the United States, Europe and Australia.

In a matter of weeks, though, the first of those statues will begin their journey home to Thailand.

The acquisitions committee of San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum recommended the release last year of four bronze statues from the hoard, which had been held in its collection since the late 1960s.

San Francisco city’s Asian Art Commission, which manages the museum, then approved the proposal on April 22, officially setting the pieces free.

Some six decades after the late British antiquities dealer Douglas Latchford is suspected of spiriting the statues out of the country, they are expected to arrive back in Thailand within a month or two.

“We are the righteous owners,” Disapong Netlomwong, senior curator for the Office of National Museums at Thailand’s Fine Arts Department, told Al Jazeera.

“It is something that our ancestors … have made, and it should be exhibited here to show the civilisation and the belief of the people,” said Disapong, who also serves on Thailand’s Committee for the Repatriation of Stolen Artefacts.

The imminent return of the statues is the latest victory in Thailand’s quest to reclaim its pilfered heritage.

Their homecoming also exemplifies the efforts of countries across the world to retrieve pieces of their own stolen history that still sit in display cases and in the vaults of some of the West’s top museums.

From Thai temples to the Acropolis in Athens

Latchford, a high-profile Asian art dealer who came to settle in Bangkok and lived there until his death in 2020 at 88 years of age, is believed to have earned a fortune from auction houses, private collectors and museums around the world who acquired his smuggled ancient artefacts from Thailand and neighbouring Cambodia.

In 2021, Latchford’s daughter, Nawapan Kriangsak, agreed to return her late father’s private collection of more than 100 artefacts, valued at more than $50m, to Cambodia.

Though never convicted during his lifetime, Latchford was charged with falsifying shipping records, wire fraud and a host of other crimes related to antiquities smuggling by a US federal grand jury in 2019.

He died the following year, before the case against him could go to trial.

In 2023 the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York agreed to return 16 pieces tied to Latchford’s smuggling network to Cambodia and Thailand.

San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum has also previously returned pieces to Thailand – two intricately carved stone lintels taken from a pair of temples dating back to the 10th and 11th centuries, in 2021.

While Thailand and Cambodia have recently fared relatively well in efforts to reclaim their looted heritage from US museum collections, Greece has not had such luck with the British Museum in London.

Perhaps no case of looted antiquities has grabbed more news headlines than that of the so-called “Elgin Marbles”.

The 2,500-year-old friezes, known also as the Parthenon Marbles, were hacked off the iconic Acropolis in Athens in the early 1800s by agents of Lord Elgin, Britain’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, which controlled Greece at that time.

Elgin claimed he took the marbles with the permission of the Ottomans and then sold them in 1816 to the British Museum in London, where they remain.

Greece has been demanding the return of the artefacts since the country’s declaration of independence in 1832 and sent an official request to the museum in 1983, according to the nongovernmental Hellenic Institute of Cultural Diplomacy.

“Despite all these efforts, the British government has not deviated from its positions over the years, legally considering the Parthenon marbles to belong to Britain. They have even passed laws to prevent the return of cultural artefacts,” the institute said.

‘Colonialism is still alive and well’

Tess Davis, executive director of the Antiquities Coalition, a Washington-based nonprofit campaigning against the illicit trade of ancient art and artefacts, said that “colonialism is still alive and well in parts of the art world”.

“There is a mistaken assumption by some institutions that they are better carers, owners, custodians of these cultural objects,” Davis told Al Jazeera.

But Davis, who has worked on Cambodia’s repatriation claims with US museums, says the “custodians” defence has long been debunked.

“These antiquities were cared for by [their] communities for centuries, in some cases for millennia, before there was … a market demand for them, leading to their looting and trafficking, but we still do see resistance,” she said.

Brad Gordon, a lawyer representing the Cambodian government in its ongoing repatriation of stolen artefacts, has heard museums make all sorts of claims to defend retaining pieces that should be returned to their rightful homelands.

Excuses from museums include claiming that they are not sure where pieces originated from; that contested items were acquired before laws banned their smuggling; that domestic laws block their repatriation, or that the ancient pieces deserve a more global audience than they would receive in their home country.

Still, none of those arguments should keep a stolen piece from coming home, Gordon said.

“If we believe the object is stolen and the country of origin wishes for it to come home, then the artefact should be returned,” he said.

Old attitudes have started breaking down though, and more looted artefacts are starting to find their way back to their origins.

“There’s definitely a growing trend toward doing the right thing in this area, and … I hope that more museums follow the Asian Art Museum’s example. We’ve come a long way, but there’s still a long way to go,” Davis said.

Much of the progress, Davis believes, is down to growing media coverage of stolen antiquities and public awareness of the problem in the West, which has placed mounting pressure on museums to do the right thing.

In 2022, the popular US comedy show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver dedicated a whole episode to the topic. As Oliver said, if you go to Greece and visit the Acropolis you might notice “some odd details”, such as sections missing from sculptures – which are now in Britain.

“Honestly, if you are ever looking for a missing artefact, nine times out of 10 it’s in the British Museum,” Oliver quips.

Gordon also believes a generational shift in thinking is at play among those who once trafficked in the cultural heritage of other countries.

“For example, the children of many collectors, once they are aware of the facts of how the artefacts were removed from the country of origin, want their parents to return them,” he said.

Proof of the past

The four bronze statues the San Francisco museum will soon be returning to Thailand date back to the 7th and 9th centuries.

Thai archaeologist Tanongsak Hanwong said that period places them squarely in the Dvaravati civilisation, which dominated northeast Thailand, before the height of the Khmer empire that would build the towering spires of Angkor Wat in present-day Cambodia and come to conquer much of the surrounding region centuries later.

Three of the slender, mottled figures, one nearly a metre tall (3.2 feet), depict Bodhisattva – Buddhist adherents on the path to nirvana – and the other the Buddha himself in a wide, flowing robe.

Tanongsak, who brought the four pieces in the San Francisco collection to the attention of Thailand’s stolen artefacts repatriation committee in 2017, said they and the rest of the Prakhon Chai hoard are priceless proof of Thailand’s Buddhist roots at a time when much of the region was still Hindu.

“The fact that we do not have any Prakhon Chai bronzes on display anywhere [in Thailand], in the national museum or local museums whatsoever, it means we do not have any evidence of the Buddhist history of that period at all, and that’s strange,” he said.

The Fine Arts Department first wrote to San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum about the statues’ illicit provenance in 2019, but started to make progress on having them returned only when the US Department of Homeland Security got involved on Thailand’s behalf.

Robert Mintz, the museum’s chief curator, said staff could find no evidence that the statues had been trafficked in their own records.

But they were convinced they had been looted and smuggled out of Thailand – and of Latchford’s involvement – once Homeland Security provided proof, with the help of Thai researchers.

“Once that evidence was presented and they heard it, their feeling was the appropriate place for these would be back in Thailand,” Mintz said of the museum’s staff and acquisition committee.

‘Pull back the curtain’

The San Francisco Asian Art Museum went a step further when it finally resolved to return the four statues to Thailand.

It also staged a special exhibit around the pieces to highlight the very questions the experience had raised regarding the theft of antiquities.

The exhibition – Moving Objects: Learning from Local and Global Communities – ran in San Francisco from November to March.

“One of our goals was to try to indicate to the visiting public to the museum how important it is to look historically at where works of art have come from,” Mintz said.

“To pull back the curtain a bit, to say, these things do exist within American collections and now is the time to address challenges that emerge from past collecting practice,” he said.

Mintz says Homeland Security has asked the Asian Art Museum to look into the provenance of at least another 10 pieces in its collection that likely came from Thailand.

Tess Davis, of the Antiquities Coalition campaign group, said the exhibition was a very unusual, and welcome, move for a museum in the process of giving up looted artefacts.

In Thailand, Disapong and Tanongsak say the Asian Art Museum’s decision to recognise Thailand’s rightful claim to the statues could also help them start bringing the rest of the Prakhon Chai hoard home, including 14 more known pieces in other museums around the US, and at least a half-dozen scattered across Europe and Australia.

“It is indeed a good example, because once we can show the world that the Prakhon Chai bronzes were all exported from Thailand illegally, then probably, hopefully some other museums will see that all the Prakhon Chai bronzes they have must be returned to Thailand as well,” Tanongsak said.

There are several other artefacts besides the Prakhon Chai hoard that Thailand is also looking to repatriate from collections around the world, he said.

Davis said the repatriation of stolen antiquities is still being treated by too many with collections as an obstacle when it should be seen, as the Asian Art Museum has, as an opportunity.

“It’s an opportunity to educate the public,” Davis said.

“It’s an opportunity to build bridges with Southeast Asia,” she added, “and I hope other institutions follow suit.”

Trial featured emotional testimony from Kardashian, who said the robbery was traumatising but forgave ringleader.

A Paris court has found eight men guilty of involvement in a 2016 armed robbery of the US celebrity Kim Kardashian, who described the incident as “the most terrifying experience of my life”.

Seven of the convicted received prison sentences of between three and eight years, some of which were suspended, and another received a fine.

The court did not order any additional time behind bars for the accused, with Chief Judge David De Pas saying that the defendants’ ages – six are in their 60s and 70s – and their health issues weighed on the court’s decision to impose sentences that he said “aren’t very severe”.

“The crime was the most terrifying experience of my life, leaving a lasting impact on me and my family,” Kardashian, who was not present for the verdict, said in a statement on Friday.

“While I’ll never forget what happened, I believe in the power of growth and accountability and pray for healing for all. I remain committed to advocating for justice and promoting a fair legal system.”

De Pas told the convicted men that they had “caused fear” during the October 2, 2016, robbery of millions of dollars worth of jewels from the Kardashians in their hotel room during the Paris Fashion Week. During the theft, Kardashian was tied up and said she feared for her life.

Aomar Ait Khedache, the 69-year-old ringleader of the gang dubbed by the French press as the “grandpa robbers”, used a cane to walk into the courthouse.

Khedache was given a sentence of eight years in prison, five of which were suspended. Three others were given seven years with five suspended. Three more received prison sentences ranging from three to five years, mostly or completely suspended, and an eighth person was found guilty on a weapons charge and fined. Due to time served in jail, none of the accused will return to detention.

Two of the 10 defendants were acquitted.

The trial was heard by a three-judge panel and six jurors, before whom Kardashian testified last week.

During an emotional testimony, Kardashian recounted the harrowing experience of the robbery and the fear she felt being at the mercy of a group of armed men. During the theft, she was thrown onto a bed, tied up and had a gun pressed to her.

“I absolutely did think I was going to die,” she said. “I have babies. I have to make it home. They can take everything. I just have to make it home.”

Kardashian is known for her interest in law and obtained her law degree in the United States earlier this week. She has also been an outspoken advocate for criminal justice reform.

Earlier in the trial, a letter written by Khedache expressing remorse for his actions was read to Kardashian, who said that she appreciated the letter and forgave him, even if nothing could change the “trauma and the fact that my life was forever changed”.

Kedache again asked for “a thousand pardons” via a written note on Friday, with the other defendants also using their final remarks before the court to say that they were sorry for their actions.

Napoli beat Cagliari 2-0 to seal the Serie A title as Champions League hopefuls Inter’s victory at Como is in vain.

Napoli secured the Serie A title in style with a 2-0 home win over Cagliari thanks to goals from Scott McTominay and Romelu Lukaku.

The title race had come down to the wire on Friday, with Napoli holding a one-point advantage over Inter Milan going into the final round of games.

McTominay opened the scoring three minutes before the break with a stunning bicycle kick from Matteo Politano’s cross, sending the home crowd into a frenzy.

Lukaku doubled the lead six minutes after the restart by latching on to a long ball, shrugging off a defender and calmly finishing past Cagliari keeper Alen Sherri.

The rest of the match turned into a celebration at the Diego Armando Maradona Stadium as flares and smoke filled the pitch before the final whistle blew and fireworks lit up the Naples sky.

McTominay and Lukaku were the two players Napoli coach Antonio Conte wanted more than any others to help the Naples club reclaim the title they lost to Inter last season.

The former Italian international has now become the first coach to win the Italian championship with three teams, following his victories with Juventus and Inter Milan.

“It happened again, and it’s something wonderful. When we got to the stadium, it was honestly difficult to get in, as I don’t know how many people were there. I had a slight thought, if we let these people down, it’d be something we carried with us for a long time,” he told reporters.

Conte was absent from the touchline for the final match due to suspension, but Napoli completed their task.

“All the credit goes to the boys. Winning in Naples is difficult, these boys are doing it for the second time in two years,” he said. “They are serious boys, you don’t leave in a team that always plays to win.”

Napoli needed only to do the same or better than defending champions Inter in the final round of matches, so Inter’s 2-0 win at 10-man Como was not enough for the Nerazzurri.

Stefan de Vrij and Joaquin Correa netted the goals for Simone Inzaghi’s Inter, who are now left to focus on their Champions League final with Paris Saint-Germain next Saturday.

The results meant Napoli finished Serie A one point ahead of Inter. Had the teams finished level on points, then a playoff would have been required to decide the title.

Abu Dhabi’s IMI will take a minority stake in the company of no more than 15 percent.

A consortium led by US investment firm RedBird Capital Partners has agreed to buy the publisher of the United Kingdom’s 170-year-old Daily Telegraph newspaper for about $674m (500 million pounds).

Redbird said it has reached an agreement in principle to become controlling owner of the Telegraph Media Group, ending a lengthy takeover saga for the conservative-leaning newspaper on Friday.

Gerry Cardinale, founder and managing partner of RedBird, said the sale “marks the start of a new era for The Telegraph as we look to grow the brand in the UK and internationally, invest in its technology and expand its subscriber base”.

The Telegraph group, previously owned by the UK’s Barclay family, was put up for sale two years ago to help pay off the family’s debts. It publishes the Daily and Sunday Telegraph newspapers and weekly newsmagazine The Spectator, which all are closely allied to the UK’s Conservative Party.

In 2023, there was an offer to buy the publications from RedBird IMI, a consortium backed by RedBird Capital Partners and Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of Abu Dhabi’s royal family and the vice president of the United Arab Emirates.

But the consortium pulled out last year following strong opposition from the UK government, which launched legislation to block foreign state ownership of the British press.

Under the deal, Abu Dhabi’s IMI will take a minority stake of not more than 15 percent in the Telegraph as a member of the consortium. The sale must be approved by British regulators.

RedBird has investments in football team AC Milan, the parent company of Liverpool football club and film production company Skydance.

Telegraph Media Group chief executive Anna Jones said that “RedBird Capital Partners have exciting growth plans that build on our success — and will unlock our full potential across the breadth of our business.”

The Spectator was sold in September to British hedge fund investor Paul Marshall.

US President Donald Trump has threatened a 50-percent tariff on all imports from the European Union and 25-percent on Apple products unless iPhones are made in the United States.

The president announced his intentions over social media on Friday.

“Our discussions with them are going nowhere!” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Therefore, I am recommending a straight 50% Tariff on the European Union, starting on June 1, 2025. There is no Tariff if the product is built or manufactured in the United States.”

The Republican president’s proposal would see higher import taxes on goods from the EU, a longstanding US ally, than from China, a geopolitical rival that had its tariffs cut to 30 percent this month so Washington and Beijing could hold negotiations.

Trump has been upset by the lack of progress in trade talks with the EU, which has proposed mutually cutting tariffs to zero even as the president has publicly insisted on preserving a baseline 10-percent tax on most imports.

Trump aides have said the goal of his tariffs was to isolate China and strike new agreements with allies, but the president’s tariff threats undermine the logic of those claims. Not only could the EU face higher tariffs than China, but the bloc of member states might have been better off by establishing a broad front with China and other countries against Trump’s trade policy, said German economist Marcel Fratscher.

“The strategy of the EU Commission and Germany in the trade conflict with Trump is a total failure,” Fratscher, the head of the German Institute for Economic Research, said on X. “This was a failure you could see coming — Trump sees Europe’s wavering, hesitation and concessions as the weaknesses that they are.”

Apple’s ultimatum

Trump’s post had been preceded by a threat of import taxes against Apple for its plans to continue making its iPhone in Asia. Apple now joins Amazon, Walmart and other major US  companies in the White House’s crosshairs as they try to respond to the uncertainty and inflationary pressures unleashed by his tariffs.

“I have long ago informed Tim Cook of Apple that I expect their iPhone’s that will be sold in the United States of America will be manufactured and built in the United States, not India, or anyplace else,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “If that is not the case, a Tariff of at least 25% must be paid by Apple to the US.”

The statement by Trump is critical in that he suggests the company itself would bear the price of tariffs, contradicting his earlier claims as he rolled out a series of aggressive tariffs over the past several months that foreign countries would shoulder the cost of the import taxes. In general, importers pay the tariffs and the costs are often passed along to consumers in the form of higher prices.

In response to Trump’s tariffs on China, Apple CEO Tim Cook said earlier this month that most iPhones sold in the US during the current fiscal quarter would come from India, with iPads and other devices being imported from Vietnam. After Trump rolled out tariffs in April, analysts estimated that the cost for a $1,200 iPhone, if made in America, could jump anywhere from $1,500 to $3,500.

“The pressure from Trump administration on Apple to build iPhone production in the US … would result in an iPhone price point that is a non-starter for Cupertino and translate into iPhone prices of ~$3,500 which is not realistic as this would take 5-10 years to shift production to the US. We believe the concept of Apple producing iPhones in the US is a fairy tale that is not feasible,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said in a note.

Trump had previously created an exemption on electronics imported from China to help companies such as Apple, something he could now remove. He also threatened separate 25-percent import taxes on computer chips and could have the tariffs schedule rewritten in ways that could expose Apple products to the taxes.

Until recently, the US president repeatedly bragged about the $500bn that Apple in February pledged to invest domestically as part of its development of artificial intelligence technologies. But he publicly turned against the company last week while speaking in Qatar.

“I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday,” Trump told the audience. “I said to him, ‘My friend, I treated you very good. You’re coming here with $500bn, but now I hear you’re building all over India. I don’t want you building in India.’”

A global response

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said the EU’s executive commission has his country’s full support in working to “preserve our access to the American market”.

“I think such tariffs help no one, but would just lead to economic development in both markets suffering,” Wadephul said in Berlin. “So we are still counting on negotiations, and support the European Commission in defending Europe and the European market while at the same time working on persuasion in America.”

Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof said he expected a calm and robust response from the EU to the announcement of possible new US trade tariffs.

In response to the news, Volvo Cars CEO Hakan Samuelsson said the tariffs would result in higher prices for consumers. In an interview with the Reuters news agency, he said the tariff would limit the ability of Volvo Cars to sell its Belgium-made EX30 electric vehicle in the US.

Investors are shaken on the move. As of 10:30am in New York (14:30 GMT), the Dow was down 0.6 percent, the tech-heavy Nasdaq was down 1 percent and the S&P 500 was down 0.8 percent. Apple is down 2.3 percent from the market close yesterday.

SAP, Europe’s most valuable company’s stock, is down 1.8 percent from yesterday’s close. Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical giant and the maker of the blockbuster drug Ozempic, which is Europe’s second-highest valued company, has seen its stock down 1 percent on the news.

Shares in LVMH and Hermes, France’s largest listed companies by market capitalisation, fell by about 3 and 4 percent, respectively.

Finance officials from the Group of Seven (G7) nations have threatened they could impose further sanctions on Russia should it fail to agree a ceasefire in its war on Ukraine.

Ending their G7 meeting in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, where foreign ministers were also convening this week, the finance chiefs said on Thursday night that if efforts to end Russia’s “continued brutal war” in Ukraine failed, the group would look at how it could push Moscow to step back.

“If such a ceasefire is not agreed, we will continue to explore all possible options, including options to maximise pressure such as further ramping up sanctions,” a final communique following three days of meetings read.

The G7, comprised of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, also pledged to work together to ensure that no countries that financed the war would be eligible to benefit from Kyiv’s reconstruction.

Canadian Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said that point was a “very big statement”, calling it a key pillar.

However, the group shied away from naming countries, including China, which the West has previously accused of supplying weapons to Russia.

The communique added that Russia’s sovereign assets in G7 jurisdictions would continue to be blocked until Moscow ended the war and paid reparations to Ukraine for the damage it caused to the country.

‘Clear signal?’

“I think it sends a very clear signal to the world … that the G7 is united in purpose and in action,” Champagne told the closing news conference.

However, the statement omitted mention of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs that are disrupting global trade and supply chains and swelling economic uncertainty.

Differences were also apparent in the approach to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Trump has unnerved US allies by sidelining them to launch bilateral ceasefire talks with Moscow, in which US officials have adopted many of the Kremlin’s narratives regarding the conflict.

In the statement, the description of the war was watered down from October’s G7 statement, issued before Trump’s re-election, that called it an “illegal, unjustifiable, and unprovoked war of aggression against Ukraine”.

Tariffs

According to European Commission executive vice president, Valdis Dombrovskis, the ministers discussed a proposal to lower the $60-a-barrel price cap to $50 on Russian oil exports since Russian crude was selling below that level.

However, the official G7 communique did not present the plan as the US was “not convinced” about lowering the price cap, an unnamed European official told the Reuters news agency.

Hours before the G7 meeting, the European Parliament also greenlit tariffs on Russian fertiliser imports.

According to the European Union bill, duties will be enforced from July 1 and gradually increase over three years, from 6.5 percent to about 100 percent, halting trade.

‘Yet to be agreed’

As international entities continue to place sanctions on Russia for invading Ukraine, diplomatic efforts to end the war have increased after the two sides held their first face-to-face meeting last week.

However, Moscow appears set to continue to stall, as it has been doing since the US launched its push to broker a truce.

The Kremlin said on Thursday that new talks were “yet to be agreed” after reports that the Vatican was ready to host a future meeting to discuss a ceasefire.

Still, Russia and Ukraine are trading attacks.

On Friday morning, Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its air defence systems had downed 112 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 24 over the Moscow region.

A day earlier,  Russia said it had fired an Iskander-M missile at part of the city of Pokrov in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region.

Ceasefire negotiations between Russia and Ukraine may soon be under way, but Ukraine’s economic recovery will be hobbled unless the European Union fast-tracks the war-torn country’s membership and provides hundreds of billions of euros’ worth of insurance and investment, experts tell Al Jazeera.

“I think what Ukraine needs is some kind of future where it will have a stable and defendable border, and that will only come, I would think, with EU membership,” historian Phillips O’Brien told Al Jazeera.

The US administration of President Donald Trump last month handed Ukraine and Russia a ceasefire proposal that excluded future NATO membership of Ukraine, satisfying a key Kremlin demand and leaving Ukraine without the security guarantees it seeks.

“What business is actually going to take the risk of getting involved there economically?” asked O’Brien. “With NATO off the table, I think if Ukraine is going to have a chance of rebuilding and being integrated into Europe, it will have to be through a fast-tracked EU membership.”

That membership is by no means assured, although the European Commission started negotiations in record time last June, and Ukraine has the support of EU heavyweights like France and Germany.

If Ukraine becomes an EU member, it would still face a devastated economy requiring vast investment.

The Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) estimated that between Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 and November last year, Moscow’s onslaught had destroyed $170bn of infrastructure, with the housing, transport and energy sectors most affected.

That figure did not include the damage incurred in almost a decade of war in the eastern regions of Luhansk and Donetsk since 2014 or the loss of 29 percent of Ukraine’s gross domestic product (GDP) from the invasion in 2022. The estimate also did not put a value on the loss of almost a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, which Russia now occupies.

That territory contains almost half of Ukraine’s unexploited mineral wealth, worth an estimated $12.4 trillion, according to SecDev, a Canadian geopolitical risk firm.

It also does not include some types of reconstruction costs, such as chemical decontamination and mine-clearing.

The World Bank put the cost of infrastructure damages slightly higher this year, at $176bn, and predicts the cost of reconstruction and recovery at about $525bn over 10 years.

‘The Kremlin has certainly looted occupied territory’

Economic war has been part of Russia’s strategy since the invasion of Donetsk and Luhansk in 2014, argued Maximilian Hess, a risk analyst and Eurasia expert at the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

“The Kremlin has certainly looted occupied territory, including for coking coal, agricultural products, and iron,” Hess told Al Jazeera.

The KSE has estimated Russia stole half a million tonnes of grain, included in the $1.9bn damages bill to the agricultural sector.

Using long-range rocketry, Russia also targeted industrial hubs not under its control.

Ukraine inherited a series of factories from the Soviet Union, including the Kharkiv Tractor Plant, the Zaporizhia Automobile Plant, the Pivdenmash rocket manufacturer in Dnipro and massive steel plants.

“All were targeted by Russian forces,” wrote Hess in his recent book, Economic War. “Russia’s attacks were, of course, primarily aimed at devastating the Ukrainian economy and weakening its ability and will to fight, but they also raised the cost to the West of supporting Ukraine in the conflict, something the Kremlin hoped would lead to reduced support for Kyiv.”

Through occupation and targeting, Russia managed to deprive Ukraine of a flourishing metallurgy sector.

According to the United States Geological Survey, metallurgical production decreased by 66.5 percent as a result of the war.

That is a vast loss, considering that Ukraine once produced almost a third of the iron ore in Europe, Russia and Central Eurasia, half of the region’s manganese ore and a third of its titanium. It remains the only producer of uranium in Europe, an important resource in the continent’s quest for greater energy autonomy.

Ukraine’s claims to have built a $20bn defence industrial base with allied help, a rare wartime economic success story.

That can make up for the losses in metallurgy, Hess said, “but only in part and in different regions of the country from which those mining and metallurgical ones were concentrated. Boosting [metallurgical activities] in places like Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, and ideally territory ultimately freed from Russian occupation, will be necessary to win the peace.”

Trump’s minerals deal, and other instruments

Weeks ago, Ukraine and the US signed a memorandum of intent to jointly exploit Ukraine’s mineral wealth.

Ukraine committed to putting half the proceeds from its metallurgical activities into a Reconstruction Fund, but experts doubted the notion that mineral wealth can rebuild Ukraine.

“Projects have a long launch period … from five to 10 years,” Maxim Fedoseienko, head of strategic projects at the KSE Institute, told Al Jazeera. “You need to make documentation, environmental impacts assessment, and after that, you can also need three years to build this mine.”

The US and EU might invest in such mines, Fedoseienko said, because “we have more than 24 kinds of materials from the EU list of critical [raw] materials,” but they would only contribute to the Ukrainian economy if investments were equitable.

Trump presented the minerals deal as payback for billions in military aid.

“There’s nothing remotely fair about it. The aid was not given to be paid back,” said O’Brien.

As Fedoseienko put it, “It is not fair if everyone will say, ‘OK, we will help you in a time of war, so you are owned [by] us.’”

In addition to fairness, Ukraine needs money. Some of that needs to come in the form of insurance.

A state-backed war-risk insurance formula Kyiv reached with the United Kingdom in 2023, for example, brought bulk carriers back to Ukraine’s ports and defeated Russian efforts to blockade Ukrainian grain exports.

As a result, Ukraine exported 57.5 million tonnes of agricultural goods in 2023-2024, and was on track to export 77 million tonnes in the 2024-2025 marketing year, which ends in June, its agriculture ministry said.

“There needs to be a substantial expansion of public insurance products in particular, as well as a move to seize frozen Russian assets,” said Hess.

Seizing some $300bn in Russian central bank money held in the EU was deemed controversial, but the measure is now receiving support.

“The Russian state has committed these war crimes, has broken international law, has done this damage to Ukraine –  that actually becomes a just way of helping Ukraine rebuild,” said O’Brien. “[Europeans] have a very strong case for this, but they, right now, lack the political will to do it.”

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has already repeatedly asked Europe to use the money for Ukraine’s defence and reconstruction.

What Europeans have done in the meantime is going some way towards rebuilding Ukraine.

Some $300m in interest payments proceeding from Russian assets are diverted to reconstruction each year.

A European Commission programme provides 9.3 billion euros ($10.5bn) of financial support designed to leverage investment from the private sector.

Financial institutions such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Investment Bank are providing loan guarantees to Ukrainian banks, which gives them liquidity.

“So Ukrainian banks can provide loans to Ukrainian companies to invest and operate in Ukraine. This is a big ecosystem to finance investment and operational needs to the Ukrainian economy,” said Fedoseienko.

Together with the finance ministry, the KSE operates an online portal providing information about the various instruments available, which has already helped bring 165 investments to fruition worth $27bn.

“Is it enough to recover the Ukrainian economy?” Fedoseienko asked. “No, but this is a significant programme to support Ukraine now.”

These are the key events on day 1,184 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Friday, May 23:

Fighting

• Ukrainian drones disrupted air traffic around Moscow, grounding planes at several major airports on Thursday, as 35 drones targeting the city were downed, according to Russia’s Ministry of Defence.
• According to the ministry and Moscow mayor’s office, a total of 46 Ukrainian drones targeted Russia’s capital, while an additional 70 drones were launched against other targets across the country.
• Russia launched 128 drones at Ukraine overnight, according to Ukraine’s air force, with 112 of those drones either shot down, jammed or were lost en route to their targets.

• Russia said that 12 civilians were injured in a “massive” Ukrainian strike on the town of Lgov in Russia’s Kursk region.
• Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the former top commander of Ukraine’s military who was known for clashing with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said it was unlikely Ukraine would be able to return to the borders with Russia it held from 1991 until the Russian invasion of 2014. Even keeping Ukraine’s borders up until Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 may also not be possible, he said.
• “I hope that there are not people in this room who still hope for some kind of miracle or lucky sign that will bring peace to Ukraine, the borders of 1991 or 2022 and that there will be great happiness afterward,” Zaluzhnyi told a forum in Kyiv.
• Russia said it has received a list of names from Ukraine for a prisoner of war swap. A swap of 1,000 prisoners from each side was agreed to during a meeting last week between Russian and Ukrainian officials in Istanbul aimed at ending the war.

Regional security

• Finland said it is closely monitoring a Russian military build-up along its 1,340km (832-mile) joint border with Russia. Finland closed the border with its neighbour in December 2023 when 1,000 migrants crossed its frontier without visas.

Economy

• Following a meeting in Canada this week, the G7’s finance ministers said they would explore further sanctions on Russia if it fails to reach a ceasefire with Ukraine. They also said they will work to ensure “no countries or entities” that fuelled “Russia’s war machine” will be able to benefit from Ukraine’s reconstruction.
• Moscow is moving to block foreign companies returning to Russia from accessing “buyback” options for assets left there when they pulled out following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The bill before Russia’s legislature allows “Russian citizens and companies to refuse to return assets to foreign investors, subject to a number of conditions”.

United States debt has long been considered the safest of all safe havens.
But, Washington has just lost its pristine reputation as a borrower.
Moody’s has downgraded the nation from its top-notch AAA rating, becoming the last of the big three agencies to do so.
The ratings agency has cited the United States’s growing debt – now at $36 trillion, almost 120 percent of gross domestic product – and rising debt service costs.
Against this backdrop, President Donald Trump is pushing what he calls the “one big, beautiful bill”.
Critics warn his tax cut package could add trillions more to the already ballooning deficit.

Syrians are hoping sanctions relief will help boost investment, reconstruction after more than a decade of civil war.

Business owners in Syria have welcomed the European Union’s decision this week to lift sanctions on the country, in what observers say is the most significant easing of Western pressure on Damascus in more than a decade.

The EU’s move, which followed a similar announcement by the United States in mid-May, was praised by Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani as one that would bolster Syria’s security and stability.

For many Syrian entrepreneurs, it also brings the hope of rebuilding their livelihoods after years of economic isolation.

“Companies that were ousted from Syria and stopped dealing with us because of the sanctions are now in contact with us,” Hassan Bandakji, a local business owner, told Al Jazeera.

“Many companies and producers are telling us they are coming back and that they want to reserve a spot in our market.”

The EU and US sanctions had levied wide-ranging sanctions against the government of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who was removed from power in a rebel offensive in December of last year.

The economic curbs had severely limited trade, investment, and financial transactions in Syria, cutting businesses off from supplies and international banking.

“The main obstacle we faced was getting raw materials and automated lines,” said Ali Sheikh Kweider, who manages a factory in the countryside of the Syrian capital, Damascus.

“As for bank accounts, we weren’t able to send or receive any transactions,” Kweider told Al Jazeera.

Syria’s new government, led by ex-rebel leader and interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, had called for the sanctions to be lifted as it seeks to rebuild the country.

US President Donald Trump said after a meeting with al-Sharaa in Saudi Arabia last week that he planned to order the lifting of American sanctions on Syria.

Reporting from Damascus, Al Jazeera’s Mahmoud Abdelwahed said the government is hoping the sanctions relief will help Syria reintegrate into the international community.

It also views the EU’s announcement as additional “recognition of the new political leadership” in the country, Abdelwahed added.

Russia and Ukraine are expected to each swap 1,000 prisoners of war as part of deal reached at recent talks in Istanbul.

Russia has received a list of names of prisoners of war (POWs) that Ukraine wants freed as part of an expected exchange between the two countries, a Kremlin spokesperson told the Russian news agency Interfax.

Dmitry Peskov told Interfax on Thursday that the list had been received after Moscow gave Kyiv its own list of prisoners it wants released.

The exchange – which will see each side free 1,000 POWs in what would be the largest swap of the war – was agreed to during talks last week in the Turkish capital, Istanbul.

Those discussions marked the first direct peace negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian delegations since 2022, the year the war began.

In advance of the meeting, Ukraine had called for a 30-day ceasefire, but Moscow rejected the proposal, agreeing only to the prisoner swap.

Ukrainian officials have since accused Russia of deliberately delaying peace talks while consolidating territorial gains on the battlefield.

The major prisoner swap is a “quite laborious process” that “requires some time”, said Peskov, adding that “the work is continuing at a quick pace.”

“Everybody is interested in doing it quickly,” the Kremlin spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Thursday that the deal “to release 1,000 of our people from Russian captivity was perhaps the only tangible result of the meeting in Turkiye”.

“We are working to ensure that this result is achieved,” he said in a post on X.

Zelenskyy added that Defence Minister Rustem Umerov is overseeing the exchange process, supported by several Ukrainian government ministries, intelligence agencies and the president’s own office.

“The return of all our people from Russian captivity is one of Ukraine’s key priorities,” Zelenskyy said. “I am grateful to everyone who is contributing to this effort.”

As Ukraine, the European Union, and the United States press Moscow to return to negotiations, Peskov dismissed reports about future peace talks taking place at the Vatican, saying, “There is no concrete agreement about the next meetings.”

US President Donald Trump spoke with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on Monday and urged an end to the “bloodbath”.

Putin thanked Trump for supporting the resumption of direct talks between Russia and Ukraine, and said his government “will propose and is ready to work with the Ukrainian side on a memorandum on a possible future peace accord”.

Meanwhile, Russia’s defence ministry said on Thursday that its air defences shot down 105 Ukrainian drones overnight, including 35 over the Moscow region.

The ministry said it downed 485 Ukrainian drones over several regions and the Black Sea between late Tuesday and early Thursday.

In southern Ukraine, Kherson Governor Oleksandr Prokudin also said on Thursday that one person was killed in a Russian artillery attack on the region.

He said 35 areas in the Kherson region, including the city of Kherson, came under artillery shelling and air attacks over the past day, wounding 11 people.

Zelenskyy said the “most intense situation” remains in the Donetsk region, however, while Ukrainian forces continue “active operations in the Kursk and Belgorod regions” inside Russia.

Al Jazeera takes a look at financially-troubled Manchester United’s expensive Europa League final defeat by Spurs.

Manchester United’s decline on and off the field has been laid bare for a number of years but was placed in even sharper focus with their defeat by Tottenham in the Europa League final.

It was a zero-sum game on Wednesday: Winner goes into the Champions League – plus the UEFA Super Cup game in August – and loser is out of Europe next season and gets nothing.

Tottenham won a painfully drab match 1-0.

As football finance expert Kieran Maguire noted on Thursday, the defeat came despite United having higher revenue than Tottenham and spending 64% more on wages for a more expensively acquired squad of players. Tottenham also beat United twice in the Premier League this season, and in the domestic League Cup.

“If I was teaching this at management school (I) would conclude that there is something seriously wrong with the culture of the organisation… which is set by senior management,” Maguire wrote on X.

What are the financial costs to Man Utd?

Beyond the loss of sporting opportunities and reputational prestige, the club owned by the Glazer family from the United States and British billionaire industrialist Jim Ratcliffe has short-term and long-term financial hits ahead.

No Champions League play next season is an instant loss of at least 80 million euros ($90m), and approaching 150 million euros ($169m) for a run deep into the knockout stage.

United also misses out on the 4 million euros ($4.5m) Tottenham will get from UEFA for playing the Super Cup against the Champions League titleholder – either Inter Milan or Paris Saint-Germain – on August 13 at Udinese’s stadium in Italy. The winner gets a bonus of 1 million euros ($1.1m).

Can Man Utd recoup its losses in the FIFA Club World Cup?

After failing to qualify for the 2025 Club World Cup – which has a $1bn prize fund from FIFA and should pay more than $100m to a successful European team – United is now far behind in qualifying for the 2029 edition.

European teams qualify for the FIFA event only by being in the Champions League, either winning the title or building consistent results over four seasons.

United already will miss the entire first half of the 2024-28 qualifying period, and it is hard to project the team that last won the Premier League 12 years ago both qualifying for and then winning a Champions League title within three years.

What financial options do Man Utd have?

One clear solution to growing financial issues and the ability to comply with Premier League rules is selling the club’s best players, like captain Bruno Fernandes and out-of-favour forward Marcus Rashford, or its homegrown prospects. Some already earn high wages that are problematic for potential buyers.

A talent drain risks speeding a spiral of decline on and off the field if coach Ruben Amorim is left trying to rebuild with a weaker pool of players.

How do Man Utd match up to other clubs?

While United is still one of Europe’s highest-earning clubs, UEFA’s annual research shows its advantage is in decline, even though revenue was a club record 661.8 million pounds ($887m) last year.

A UEFA chart showed that over five years from 2019-24 – pre-COVID-19 through to the post-pandemic recovery in the football industry – United’s revenue grew at a slower rate than all of its biggest English rivals except Chelsea.

Will Man Utd’s revenue be affected?

Revenue now risks dropping, and another income cut is coming from falling to 16th in the Premier League standings with one round left on Sunday.

Premier League prize money based on final position in the standings means dropping from eighth a year ago to 16th is a difference of 22 million pounds ($29.5m) less.

It all adds up to another loss-making season after a 113.2 million pounds ($152m) deficit last season. The three previous years totaled losses of 236 million pounds ($316m).

Will Man Utd’s losses cost them further?

The Premier League’s profit and sustainability rules (PSR) allow clubs to lose 105 million pounds ($140.7m) over a three-year period or face sanctions, though United can cite some exemptions.

Ratcliffe, who has operational control despite being a minority shareholder, is already the public face of unpopular cuts to jobs and staff benefits, and rising ticket prices for fans.

“This is not sustainable,” the club told fans in January, “and if we do not act now we are in danger of failing to comply with PSR/FFP (financial fair play) requirements in future years and significantly impacting our ability to compete on the pitch.”