Europe

Estonia redirects maritime traffic to prevent future incidents after Russia’s detention of the Green Admire oil tanker.

Russia has detained a Greek oil tanker sailing under the Liberian flag as it left the Estonian port of Sillamae on a previously agreed route through Russian waters, the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs says.

In a statement published on Sunday, the ministry added that the vessel, the Green Admire, was undertaking a navigational route established in a deal between Russia, Estonia and Finland.

The Baltic nation will redirect traffic to and from Sillamea exclusively through Estonian waters to prevent similar incidents in the future, it added.

“Today’s incident shows that Russia continues to behave unpredictably,” Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna said. “I have also informed our allies of the event,” he said, referring to other NATO members.

Estonian Public Broadcasting (EPB), citing the Transport Administration, reported that the Greek tanker was carrying a cargo of shale oil destined for Rotterdam in the Netherlands. It added that such incidents had never occurred before.

Vessels leaving Sillamae usually move through Russian waters to avoid Estonia’s shallows, which can be dangerous for larger tankers, the EPB said.

The incident took place after the Estonian navy on Thursday tried to stop an unflagged tanker that was said to be part of a Russian “shadow fleet” of vessels sailing through Estonian waters. Russia responded by sending a fighter jet to escort the tanker, violating Estonia’s airspace.

The “shadow fleet” is meant to help Moscow maintain its crude oil exports to avoid Western sanctions imposed after its invasion of Ukraine.

Pontiff calls for peace and unity at the service, which attracts dignitaries from around the world.

Pope Leo XIV has met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after his inaugural Mass in the Vatican, where he delivered a message of love and unity to a crowd of 200,000 pilgrims.

“We thank the Vatican for its willingness to serve as a platform for direct negotiations between Ukraine and Russia. We are ready for dialogue in any format for the sake of tangible results. We appreciate the support for Ukraine and the clear voice in defense of a just and lasting peace,” Zelenskyy posted on X.

No statement has been issued by the Vatican yet regarding Sunday’s meeting.

Leo, formerly Cardinal Robert Prevost, was officially installed as the head of the Catholic Church at an outdoor Mass in St Peter’s Square with world leaders and European royalty in attendance.

In his sermon, Leo, the first American pope, called for unity within the church, saying he wanted it to act as a force for peace in the world.

“I would like that our first great desire be for a united church, a sign of unity and communion, which becomes a leaven for a reconciled world,” he said.

“In this our time, we still see too much discord, too many wounds caused by hatred, violence, prejudice, the fear of difference and an economic paradigm that exploits the Earth’s resources and marginalises the poorest.”

Leo said he was assuming the role as leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Roman Catholics “with fear and trembling” and insisted he would not lead like “an autocrat”.

“It is never a question of capturing others by force, by religious propaganda or by means of power. Instead, it is always and only a question of loving, as Jesus did,” he said, in an apparent nod to the split between conservative and liberal factions within the church.

‘The rich heritage of the Christian faith’

The 69-year-old pope, who was born in Chicago and spent years as a missionary in Peru, succeeds the late Pope Francis, whose 12-year tenure was marked by tensions with traditionalists within the church. In an apparent nod to conservatives, Leo said he was committed to protecting “the rich heritage of the Christian faith” and repeatedly used the words “unity” and “harmony”.

Before the ceremony, Leo took his first popemobile ride through St Peter’s Square, waving to crowds cheering, “Viva il Papa.”

Dignitaries in attendance included the presidents of Israel, Peru and Nigeria; the prime ministers of Italy, Canada and Australia; German Chancellor Friedrich Merz; and Spain’s King Felipe and Queen Letizia.

The United States delegation was led by Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic who had clashed with Francis over the White House’s approach to immigration. Vance shook hands with Zelenskyy at the start of the ceremony, in contrast to the previous meeting between the two men and President Donald Trump in a fiery encounter in front of the world’s media at the White House in February.

Leo prayed for the victims of the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza in his sermon, saying Ukraine was being “martyred” and lamenting that Palestinians were being “reduced to starvation”.

Reigning world champion Max Verstappen wins for the fourth straight time at Imola, defeating McLaren’s Lando Norris and F1 drivers’ standings leader Oscar Piastri.

Max Verstappen has given his Formula 1 title defence a big boost with victory at the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix after a daring overtake on standings leader Oscar Piastri at the start.

The Dutch driver built a commanding lead on Sunday that was wiped out when the safety car bundled the field back up. He still held on to win ahead of Lando Norris, who overtook his McLaren teammate Piastri for second with five laps remaining.

Verstappen took his second win of the season and first since last month’s Japanese Grand Prix and denied Piastri – who finished third – what would have been his fourth victory in a row.

Verstappen praised his Red Bull team’s “fantastic execution all round” as the team marked its 400th F1 race with a win.

“The start itself wasn’t particularly great, but I was still on the outside line, or basically the normal [racing] line, and I was like, ‘Well, I’m just going to try and send it round the outside,’ and it worked really well,” Verstappen said of his crucial overtake. “That, of course, unleashed our pace because once we were in the lead, the car was good.”

Norris’s late-race move on Piastri was almost a copy of Verstappen’s although Norris had the advantage of being on fresher tyres than his teammate.

“We had a good little battle at the end between Oscar and myself, which is always tense but always good fun,” Norris said, admitting that Verstappen and Red Bull were “too good for us today”.

Piastri’s lead over Norris in the standings was cut to 13 points. Verstappen rounds out the top three at nine points behind Norris.

Hamilton bounces back

Lewis Hamilton recovered from 12th on the grid to finish fourth in his first race for Ferrari in Italy.

Hamilton profited from a late-race fight between his teammate Charles Leclerc and Alex Albon of Williams.

Albon complained Leclerc had pushed him off the track as they battled for fourth, and Hamilton passed both drivers before Ferrari eventually asked Leclerc to yield fifth to Albon.

George Russell was seventh for Mercedes, ahead of Carlos Sainz Jr in the second Williams.

Isack Hadjar was ninth for Racing Bulls, and Verstappen’s Red Bull teammate Yuki Tsunoda was 10th after starting last following a crash in qualifying.

An action-packed ‘farewell’ to Imola

Overtaking was expected to be rare in what could be F1’s last race for the foreseeable future at Imola. Instead, the Italian fans were treated to Verstappen’s spectacular move at the start and plenty of other overtakes.

The narrow, bumpy Imola track has been a favourite among drivers, who have relished its old-school challenge since it returned to the F1 schedule during the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, its status as Italy’s second race – only the United States also hosts more than one – makes its position vulnerable.

“If we don’t come back here, it is going to be a shame,” Piastri said on Saturday.

Sunday’s race was the last under Imola’s current contract, and while it isn’t officially goodbye yet, there has been no word about next year.

Protesters were assaulted and dragged away for shouting ‘Free Palestine’ and raising the Palestinian flag during Israel’s performance at the Eurovision final. Outside, police attacked demonstrators who said Israel’s violation of international law in Gaza should have ruled them out.

Pope Leo XIV condemned hatred, prejudice and exploitation of the earth and poor, during his inauguration mass at the Vatican. World leaders were among the hundreds of thousands who attended, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy who was seen shaking hands with US Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The first US pontiff arrived at St Peters Square riding his popemobile for the first time.

In 2015, at the height of the refugee crisis in Europe, as a record 1.3 million people, mostly Syrians fleeing civil war, sought asylum, Pau Aleikum Garcia was in Athens, helping those arriving in the Greek capital after a perilous sea journey.

The then 25-year-old Spanish volunteer arranged housing for refugees in abandoned facilities like schools and libraries, and set up community kitchens, language classes and art activities.

“It was kind of a massive cascade of people,” Garcia recalls.

“My own memory of that time is oddly patchy,” he admits. Though there was one encounter that stood out.

In one of those schools in Athens’ Exarcheia neighbourhood, where refugees painted the external wall to illustrate their memories of their journeys, Garcia met a Syrian woman in her late 70s.

“I’m not afraid of being a refugee. I have lived all my life. I’m happy with what I have lived,” he recalls her telling him. “I’m afraid that my grandkids will be refugees for all their life.”

When he tried to reassure her that they would find a place to start anew, she protested: “No, no, I’m worried, because when my grandkids grow [up] and they ask themselves, ‘Where do I come from?’ they won’t be able to answer that question.”

The woman told him how, during the family’s journey to Greece, all but one of their photo albums were lost.

Now, she said, all the memories of their lives in Syria existed only in her and her husband’s minds, unrecorded and unrecoverable for the next generation.

Connecting generations

The woman’s story stayed with Garcia after he returned to Barcelona and his work as cofounder of the design studio, Domestic Data Streamers (DDS).

Over the years, the studio has grown into a 30-person team of experts in varied disciplines such as psychology, architecture, cognitive science, journalism and design. The studio has collaborated with diverse institutions such as museums, prisons and churches, as well as the likes of the United Nations, and uses technology to bring “emotions and humanity” to data visualisation.

Then, in around 2019, with the rise of generative artificial intelligence – a model of machine learning that uses algorithms to create new content from data scraped from the internet – the team began to explore image-generating technology, following the release of ChatGPT.

As they did, Garcia thought of the grandmother from Syria and how this technology might help someone like her by constructing images based on memories.

He believes that memories – captured through records like photographs – play an integral role in connecting generations.

“Memories are the architects of who we are. … It’s a big part of how social identities are built,” he says.

He also likes to cite Montserrat Roig, a Catalan author, who wrote that the biggest act of love is to remember something.

But in the past, people had fewer opportunities to document their lives than their mobile phone-wielding contemporaries, he says. Many experiences have been omitted or erased from collective memory due to lack of access, persecution, censorship or marginalisation.

So with this in mind, in 2022, Garcia and his team launched the Synthetic Memories project to use AI to generate photographic representations of memories that were lost, due to missing photos, for instance, or never recorded in the first place.

“I don’t think there was an eureka moment,” Garcia says of the evolution of the idea. “I’ve always been intrigued by how documentaries reconstruct the past … our goal and approach were more focused on the subjective and personal side, trying to capture the emotional layers of memory.”

For Garcia, the chance to recover such memories is an important act in reclaiming one’s past. “The fact that you have an image that tells this happened to me, this is my memory, and this is shown and other people can see it, is also a way to say to you, ‘Yes, this happened’. It’s a way of saying, of having more dignity about the part of your history that has not been depicted.”

Building memories

To create a synthetic memory, DDS uses open-source image-generating AI systems such as DALL-E 2 and Flux, while the team is developing its own tool.

The process starts with an interviewer asking a subject to recall their earliest memory. They explore various narratives as people recount their life stories before picking the one they think can be best encapsulated in an image.

The interviewer works with a prompter – someone trained in the syntax that the AI uses to create visuals – who inputs specific words to build the image from the details described by the interviewee.

Nearly everything, such as hairstyles, clothing, and furniture, is recreated as accurately as possible. However, figures themselves are usually depicted from behind or, if faces are shown, with a degree of blurriness.

This is intentional. “We want to be very clear that this is a synthetic memory and this is not real photography,” says Garcia. This is partly because they want to ensure their generated images don’t add to the proliferation of fake photos on the internet.

The resulting images – usually two or three from each session, which can last up to an hour – can appear dreamlike and undefined.

“As we know, memory is very, very, very fragile and full of imperfections,” Garcia explains. “That was the other reason why we wanted a model that could be full of imperfections and also a bit fragile, so it’s a good demonstration of how our memory works.”

Garcia’s team found that people who took part in the project said they felt a stronger connection to less detailed images, their suggestive nature allowing for their imagination to fill in the blanks. The higher the resolution, the more someone focuses on the details, losing that emotional connection to the image, Airi Dordas, the project’s lead, explains.

The team first trialled this technology with their grandparents. The experience was moving, Garcia says, and one that grew into medical trials to determine whether synthetic memories can be used as an augmentation tool in reminiscence therapy for dementia sufferers.

From there, the team went on to work with Bolivian and Korean communities in Brazil to tell their stories of migration, before partnering with Barcelona’s city council to document local memories. The sessions were open to the public and held last summer at the Design Museum in Barcelona, generating more than 300 memories.

Some wanted to work through traumatic experiences, like one woman who was abused by a relative who avoided jail and wanted to recreate a memory of him in court to share with her family. Others recalled moments from their childhood, like 105-year-old Pepita, who recreated the day she saw a train for the first time. Couples came to relive shared experiences.

There was always a moment, Ainoa Pubill Unzeta, who carried out interviews in Barcelona, says, “when people actually saw a picture that they would relate to, you could feel it … you can see it”. For some, it was just a smile; others cried. For her, this was confirmation that the image was done well.

One of the first memories Garcia recorded during their pilot sessions was that of Carmen, now in her 90s. She remembers going up to a stranger’s balcony as a child, her mother having paid the owners to let them in, because it looked into the courtyard of the jail where her father, a doctor for the Republican front during the Spanish Civil War, was being held. This was the only way the family could see him from his cell window.

By incredible coincidence, Carmen’s son was employed in the same prison as a social worker decades later, but neither son nor mother knew that. When the whole family came to see an installation at the Public Office of Synthetic Memories last year, her son recognised the prison immediately from his mother’s reconstruction. “It was a kind of closing the loop … it was beautiful,” Garcia says.

Clandestine assemblies

The team was particularly interested in telling stories of civic activists who have played a key role in different social movements in the city over the last 50 years, including those concerning LGBTQ and workers’ rights. While initially the focus was not on the dictatorship era, it “naturally brought us to engage with people who, by the historical circumstances, were activists against the regime,” Dordas explains.

One of them was 74-year-old Jose Carles Vallejo Calderon.

Born in Barcelona in 1950 to Republican parents who faced oppression under General Francisco Franco, Vallejo came of age during one of Europe’s longest dictatorships, which lasted from 1939 to 1975. During the civil war of 1936-39, and following the defeat of the Republican forces by Franco’s Nationalists, enforced disappearances, forced labour, torture and extrajudicial killings claimed the lives of more than 100,000 people.

Vallejo became involved in opposition to the fascist regime first at university, where he attempted to organise a democratic student union, and then as a young worker at Barcelona’s SEAT automobile factory.

He recalls an atmosphere of fear, with most people terrified of speaking out against the authoritarian government. “That fear sprang from the terrible defeat in the Spanish Civil War and from the many deaths that occurred during the war, but also from the harsh repression from the post-war period up to the end of the dictatorship,” he explains.

Informants were everywhere, and the circle of trusted individuals was small. “As you can imagine, this is no way to live – this was living in darkness, silence, fear, and repression,” Vallejo says.

“There were few of us – very few – who dared to move from silence to activism, which involved many risks.”

Vallejo was imprisoned in 1970 for attempting to set up a labour union among SEAT employees, spending half a year in jail, including 20 days being tortured by Barcelona’s secret police. After another arrest in late 1971 and the prosecution demanding 20 years for what were then considered crimes of association, organisation and propaganda, Vallejo crossed the border with France in January 1972. He ultimately gained political asylum in Italy, where he lived in exile before returning to Spain following the first limited amnesty of 1976, which granted pardons to political prisoners after Franco’s death in 1975.

Today, Vallejo dedicates his time to human rights activism. He presides over the Catalan Association of Former Political Prisoners of Francoism, created in the final years of the dictatorship.

He learned about synthetic memories through Iridia, a human rights organisation that collaborated with DDS to help visualise memories of police abuse victims during the regime in a central Barcelona police station.

Vallejo was drawn to the project, curious about how the technology might be applied to capturing resistance activities too dangerous to record during Franco’s rule.

In 1970, SEAT workers organised clandestine breakfasts in the woods of Vallvidrera. On Sunday mornings, disguised as hikers, they would make their way through the dense forests surrounding the Catalan capital to discuss the struggle against the dictatorship.

“I think I must have been to more than 10 or 15 of these forest gatherings,” Vallejo recalls. Other times, they met in churches. No records of these exist.

Vallejo’s synthetic memory of these meetings is in black and white. The image is vague, almost like someone has taken an eraser to it to blur the details. But it is still possible to make out the scene: a crowd of people gathered in a forest. Some sit, others stand beneath a canopy of trees.

Looking at the image, Vallejo says he felt transported to the clandestine assemblies in the Barcelona woods, where as many as 50 or 60 people would gather in a tense atmosphere.

“I found myself truly immersed in the image,” he says.

“It was like entering a kind of time tunnel,” he adds.

Vallejo suffered memory loss around the ordeal of his arrests, imprisonment and torture.

The process of creating the image provided “a feeling – not exactly of relief – but rather of reconciling memory with the past and perhaps also of filling that void created by selective amnesia, which results from complicated, traumatic, and above all, distant experiences”. He found the reconstruction a “valuable experience” that helped him process some of these events.

‘We are not reconstructing the past’

Emphasising that memory is subjective, Garcia says, “One of the things that we are kind of drawing a very big red line about is historical reconstruction.”

This is partly due to the drawbacks of AI, which reinforces cultural and other biases in the data it draws from.

David Leslie, director of ethics and responsible innovation research at the Alan Turing Institute, the United Kingdom centre for data science and AI, cautions that using data that was initially biased against marginalised groups could create revisionist histories or false memories for those communities. Nor can “simply generating something from AI” help to remedy or reclaim historical narratives, he insists.

For DDS, “It is never about the bigger story. We are not reconstructing the past,” Garcia explains.

“When we talk about history, we talk about one truth that somehow we are committed to,” he elaborates. But while synthetic memories can depict a part of the human experience that history books cannot, these memories come from the individual, not necessarily what transpired, he underlines.

The team believes synthetic memories could not only help communities whose memories are at risk but also create dialogue between cultures and generations.

They plan to set up “emergency” memory clinics in places where cultural heritage is in danger of being eroded by natural disasters, such as in southern Brazil, which was last year hit by floods. There are also hopes to make their finished tool freely available to nursing homes.

But Garcia wonders what place the project could have in a future where there is an “over-registration” of everything that happens. “I have 10 images of my father when he was a kid,” he says. “I have over 200 when I was a kid. But my friend, of her daughter, [has] 25,000, and she’s five years old!”

“I think the problem of memory image will be another one, which will be that we are … [overwhelmed] and we cannot find the right image to tell us the story,” he muses.

Yet in the present moment, Vallejo believes the project has a role to play in helping younger generations understand past injustices. Forgetting serves no purpose for activists like himself, he believes, while memory is like “a weapon for the future”.

Instead of trying to numb the past, “I think it is more therapeutic – both collectively and individually – to remember rather than to forget.”

Foreign policy under Prime Minister Donald Tusk, LGBTQ rights and abortion have been major issues on the campaign trail.

Voters in Poland are casting their ballots to elect the next president in what is expected to be a close contest between the liberal mayor of Warsaw and a conservative historian.

Polls opened at 7am (05:00 GMT) in Sunday’s election, and the results of exit polls are expected to be released after the polls close at 9pm (19:00 GMT). The final official results of the contest, in which 13 candidates are running, are expected on Monday.

The frontrunners are Rafal Trzaskowski, the pro-European mayor of the Polish capital, and Karol Nawrocki, a historian backed by the nationalist Law and Justice party, which lost power 18 months ago.

Neither is expected to reach the required 50 percent threshold for victory, making a run-off on June 1 likely.

The election is being closely watched for whether voters endorse the pro-European path set by Prime Minister Donald Tusk or favour a return to the nationalist vision of Law and Justice, which ran the country from 2015 to 2023.

Tusk was elected prime minister in December 2023 after defeating Law and Justice, which had engaged in repeated disputes with the European Union.

The Polish president has limited executive powers but is commander-in-chief of the armed forces, steers foreign policy and can veto legislation.

Security fears loom large

The campaign has largely revolved around foreign policy at a time of heightened security concerns in Poland, a key NATO and EU member bordering war-torn Ukraine, and fears that the United States’s commitment to European security could be wavering in the President Donald Trump era.

Trzaskowski, deputy leader of Tusk’s centre-right Civic Platform, has pledged to cement Poland’s role as a major player at the heart of Europe in contrast with Law and Justice, which was frequently at odds with Brussels over rule-of-law concerns.

“I would definitely strengthen relations with our partners … within NATO and the EU,” Trzaskowski told state broadcaster TVP Info on Friday.

Social issues have also been a major theme on the campaign trail with Nawrocki framing himself as a guardian of conservative values and Trzaskowski drawing support from liberal voters for his pledges to back abortion and LGBTQ rights.

Malgorzata Mikoszewska, a 41-year-old tourism agency employee, told the AFP news agency that she was a fan of Trzaskowski’s liberal stance on social issues.

“Above all, I hope for the liberalisation of the law on abortion and sexual minorities,” she said.

Apartment scandal

Nawrocki’s campaign received a boost when he met with Trump in the Oval Office of the White House this month.

But it then took a hit over allegations that he bought an apartment in Gdansk from an elderly man in return for a promise to provide lifelong care for the man, which was not delivered. Nawrocki denied the allegations.

Polish authorities have reported attempts at foreign interference during the campaign, including denial-of-service attacks targeting the websites of parties in Tusk’s ruling coalition and allegations by a state research institute that political advertisements on Facebook were funded from overseas.

“With Nawrocki as president, the government would be paralysed, and that could eventually lead to the fall of the ruling coalition,” political scientist Anna Materska-Sosnowska told AFP.

His victory could see “the return of the populists with renewed force” at the next general election, she said.

The new president will replace Andrzej Duda, who has served two terms and is ineligible to stand again.

The election result could reshape the direction of the pro-EU and NATO member nation bordering war-torn Ukraine.

Romanians have begun casting ballots in a tense presidential election run-off that pits a pro-Trump nationalist who opposes military aid to Ukraine against a pro-European Union centrist.

Polls opened on Sunday at 7am local time (04:00 GMT) and will close at 9pm (18:00 GMT) in the high-stakes second round of the elections that will impact Romania’s geopolitical direction.

Hard-right nationalist George Simion, 38, who opposes military aid to neighbouring Ukraine and is critical of EU leadership, decisively swept the first round of the presidential election, triggering the collapse of a pro-Western coalition government. That led to significant capital outflows.

Romania’s top court annulled the first round results in December over accusations of Russian interference. The court also disqualified leading nationalist candidate Calin Georgescu, making way for Simion, who is a self-proclaimed fan of United States President Donald Trump.

Centrist Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan, 55, who has pledged to clamp down on corruption and is staunchly pro-EU and NATO, is competing against Simion. He has said Romania’s support for Ukraine is vital for its own security against a growing Russian threat.

An opinion poll on Friday suggested Dan is slightly ahead of Simion for the first time since the first round in a tight race that will depend on turnout and the sizeable Romanian diaspora.

‘Battle between nationalist populism and a centralist’

Reporting from the capital, Bucharest, Al Jazeera’s Sonia Gallego said this election is being pitched as a battle between nationalist populism and a centralist.

“The reality is that Romania, an EU and NATO member, shares a border with war-torn Ukraine, the longest among EU members. And that also makes it one of the most vulnerable within the bloc,” she said.

Some analysts have also warned that online disinformation has been rife again ahead of Sunday’s vote.

Elena Calistru, a political analyst, told Al Jazeera: “We have to look at what is happening online. And there we have seen a lot of misinformation.”

“We have seen a lot of … coordinated inauthentic behaviour. We have seen a lot of foreign interference in our elections,” she said.

‘Pro-European president’?

The president of the country has considerable powers, not least being in charge of the defence council that decides on military aid. He will also have oversight of foreign policy, with the power to veto EU votes that require unanimity.

Daniela Plesa, 62, a public employee, told the AFP news agency in Bucharest on Friday she wanted a president “to promote the interests of the country”, complaining that “the European Union demands and demands”.

Andreea Nicolescu, 30, working in advertising, said she wished for “things to calm down a bit” and “a pro-European president”.

Rallies of tens of thousands ahead of the elections have demanded that the country maintain its pro-EU stance.

Other protests, also drawing tens of thousands, have condemned the decision to annul last year’s vote and the subsequent barring of far-right candidate Georgescu.

The cancellation was criticised by the Trump administration, and Simion has said his prime minister pick would be Georgescu, who favours nationalisation and an openness towards Russia.

The vote in Romania comes on a day when Poland also votes in the first round of the presidential election, expected to be led by pro-EU Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski and conservative historian Karol Nawrocki.

Victory for Simion and/or Trzaskowski would expand a cohort of eurosceptic leaders that already includes prime ministers in Hungary and Slovakia amid a political shift in Central Europe that could widen rifts in the EU.

It took three years to get officials from Ukraine and Russia in the same room.

But President Vladimir Putin, who proposed the meeting, did not go to Istanbul and the talks ended in less than 90 minutes.

The result: an agreement for a large-scale prisoner exchange, talks about their presidents meeting, and both sides pushing their vision of a future ceasefire.

Yet, diplomacy is not narrowing the great gap between Russia and Ukraine.

So, is President Putin agreeing to further talks to avoid more sanctions?

And with Russia steadily advancing on the battlefield, can President Zelenskyy afford to push for peace without further compromise?

Presenter: Dareen Abughaida

Guests:

Peter Zalmayev – Executive director at Eurasia Democracy Initiative

Pavel Felgenhauer – Independent defence and Russian foreign policy analyst

Anatol Lieven – Director of the Eurasia Program at Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft

Actory calls on filmmakers to ‘keep telling the stories, keep expressing yourself and keep fighting to be who you are’.

Chilean-American actor Pedro Pascal has called on members of the film industry to “fight back” and keep expressing themselves amid what he appeared to describe as a political climate of fear in the United States.

“F*** the people that try to make you scared. And fight back. This is the perfect way to do so in telling stories. Don’t let them win,” said 50-year-old Pascal, who was at the Cannes film festival for the premiere of “Eddington”.

“Fear is the way that they win, for one. And so keep telling the stories and keep expressing yourself and keep fighting to be who you are,” he said.

“Eddington” stars Pascal as a small-town mayor campaigning against a down-on-his-luck sheriff played by Joaquin Phoenix in a New Mexico town where tensions are simmering over COVID-19 mask policies and the Black Lives Matter protests.

Pascal, known for his role in dystopian video-game adaptation “The Last of Us”, added that it was “far too intimidating” for him to address a question about US President Donald Trump’s immigration policy.

“It’s very scary for an actor participating in a movie to sort of speak to issues like this,” he said.

“I’m an immigrant. My parents are refugees from Chile. We fled a dictatorship, and I was privileged enough to grow up in the US after asylum in Denmark … I stand by those protections,” the 50-year-old told a news conference in Cannes.

Trump has launched a crackdown on irregular immigration and has also detained and moved to deport a number of legal permanent US residents, his policies triggering a rash of lawsuits and protests.

Trump has made himself one of the main talking points in Cannes this week after announcing on May 5 that he wanted 100 percent tariffs on movies “produced in foreign lands“.

Acting legend Robert de Niro, who accepted a Cannes lifetime achievement award on Tuesday, also urged an audience of A-list directors and actors to resist “America’s philistine president”.

Crystal Palace win their first major trophy by beating Manchester City 1-0 in the FA Cup final at Wembley stadium.

Crystal Palace’s Eberechi Eze sparked a massive south London party by scoring the only goal to win the FA Cup 1-0 against Manchester City and claim the club’s first major trophy in their history.

Local man Eze volleyed in after 16 minutes, former Manchester United goalkeeper Dean Henderson performed heroics in the Palace goal, and City contrived to waste a sack-load of chances, including a penalty, in an enthralling final on Saturday.

After England forward Eze, whose goals in the last eight and semis fired his team into the final for the third time, scored completely against the run of play, Palace had to survive a City siege to spark wild celebrations.

Omar Marmoush had a first-half penalty saved by Henderson as City lost in the Cup final for a second successive season, summing up a harrowing campaign in which they have been dethroned as the powerhouse of English football and will go without a domestic trophy for the first time since 2016-17.

For Palace’s massed ranks decked in purple and blue, it was a day of unbridled joy as Oliver Glasner’s team rode their luck to make it third time lucky after suffering defeats in their previous two FA Cup final appearances in 1990 and 2016.

Glasner, who took charge of the club 15 months ago, becomes the first Austrian coach to win the FA Cup.

City have been a pale imitation of the side that has dominated the English game for most of the past decade.

But the way they began at Wembley suggested that Pep Guardiola’s side were determined to prove that talk of their demise had been greatly exaggerated.

Having picked an ultra-attacking lineup shorn of defensive midfielders, City hemmed Palace deep inside their own half for the opening 15 minutes with Kevin De Bruyne pulling the strings on what was his last Wembley appearance in City’s colours.

His lofted ball picked out Erling Haaland, whose stretching effort at the far post was brilliantly saved by Henderson, who also shortly afterwards beat out Josko Gvardiol’s header.

Palace finally broke the siege, and in their first foray beyond the centre circle, they ripped through City’s lines.

Jean-Philippe Mateta played in Daniel Munoz, and his cross was met by Eze, who flashed a first-time volley past Stefan Ortega to provoke an eruption of noise from the Palace fans.

Ismaila Sarr nearly made it 2-0, but Ortega saved, and Palace’s hearts were in their mouths when Henderson appeared to have handled the ball outside his area under pressure from Haaland, but a subsequent VAR check spared him a possible red card.

There was no escape for Palace defender Tyrick Mitchell when he tripped Bernardo Silva, and referee Stuart Attwell pointed to the spot. Surprisingly, Haaland did not take it and instead Omar Marmoush stepped forward for his first penalty since joining City in January, but his effort lacked conviction and Henderson dived to his right to save.

Henderson made a flying save to keep out Jeremy Doku’s curling effort as Palace reached half-time ahead despite having only 19 percent of possession.

Munoz thought he had made it 2-0 just past the hour mark, but a lengthy VAR check ruled his effort out for offside.

Seven-time winners City went close numerous times after the break, with Henderson and his defenders performing heroics to preserve Palace’s lead.

A huge groan went up from the Palace fans as 10 minutes of stoppage time, but after more close shaves and nail-biting, the final whistle sounded and the club’s anthem Glad All Over bellowed around the stadium.

The drone strike in the Sumy region amounts to ‘a cynical war crime’, Ukraine’s National Police say.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called for tougher sanctions on Moscow after a Russian drone killed nine bus passengers, just hours after the two countries held their first direct peace talks in years.

Seven others were injured in the attack in Bilopillia in Ukraine’s northeastern region of Sumy, Zelenskyy said in a post on X on Saturday.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence said it had targeted Ukrainian military equipment, the TASS news agency reported. Russia denies targeting civilians since launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, although thousands have been killed.

“All the deceased were civilians,” Zelenskyy said, adding that preliminary reports indicated a father, mother and daughter had been killed. “And the Russians could not have failed to understand what kind of vehicle they were targeting. This was a deliberate killing of civilians.”

He said the wounded had suffered burns, fractures, and blast injuries, and were receiving treatment in hospital.

The Ukrainian leader said he expected tougher sanctions from Ukraine’s partners to pressure Moscow “to stop the killings”, which came shortly after Russian and Ukrainian officials met in Istanbul on Friday to to attempt to broker a temporary ceasefire.

“Without tougher sanctions, without stronger pressure, Russia will not seek real diplomacy,” he said. “This must change.”

He said Russia had sent “a weak and unprepared” delegation to Istanbul without a meaningful mandate, and real steps were needed to end the war.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha denounced the attack as an “deliberate and barbaric war crime”, accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of continuing “to wage a war against civilians” and calling for additional pressure on Russia.

“There should be no illusions. Pressure on Moscow must be increased to put an end to Russian terror,” Sybiha wrote.

No breakthrough

The 90-minute talks in Istanbul on Friday failed to reach a breakthrough, but ended with both sides agreeing to swap 1,000 prisoners in what would be the largest such exchange since the start of the war in 2022.

Vladimir Medinsky, the lead Russian negotiator, expressed satisfaction with the talks and said Moscow was ready for further negotiations, including on a ceasefire. “We have agreed that all sides will present their views on a possible ceasefire and set them out in detail,” he said after the meeting.

But a source in the Ukrainian delegation told Reuters news agency that Russia’s demands were “detached from reality and go far beyond anything that was previously discussed”.

The source told the agency Russia had issued ultimatums for Ukraine to withdraw from all parts of its own territory claimed by Moscow before they would agree to a ceasefire, “and other non-starters”.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Saturday said Putin could meet with Zelenskyy – the first time such a meeting would have taken place since December 2019 – but only if certain agreements were reached. He did not elaborate on what would be required.

Speaking to Reuters on Saturday, British foreign minister David Lammy accused Moscow of obfuscating in its approach to the peace talks.

“Yet again we are seeing obfuscation on the Russian side and unwillingness to get serious about the enduring peace that is now required in Ukraine,” said Lammy. “Once again Russia is not serious.”

Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi, reporting from Kyiv, said Medinsky, Russia’s lead negotiator, had sent a clear message during the negotiations that Moscow was ready to continue the war for years – and had no problem in continuing to conduct the war at the same time as it held talks.

“And that is exactly what they have done,” said Basravi, adding that the destroyed vehicle in Bilopillia had been evacuating residents from a conflict zone, according to Ukraine.

The men were charged with engaging in conduct likely to assist a foreign intelligence service, police said.

British police say they have charged three Iranians with suspected espionage for Iran’s intelligence services from August 2024 to February 2025.

The police said in a statement on Saturday that the three men were charged with offences under the National Security Act following a major counterterrorism investigation.

Mostafa Sepahvand, 39, Farhad Javadi Manesh, 44, and Shapoor Qalehali Khani Noori, 55, were accused of conduct likely to assist a foreign intelligence service between August 14, 2024, and February 16, 2025, the police said, adding that the foreign state to which the charges relate is Iran.

The three men are due to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court later on Saturday.

Commander Dominic Murphy, from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command, said the men were arrested two weeks ago. “These are extremely serious charges under the National Security Act, which have come about following what has been a very complex and fast-moving investigation,” he said.

Sepahvand was also charged with carrying out surveillance, reconnaissance and open-source research, intending to commit serious violence against someone in the United Kingdom, police and prosecutors said, while Manesh and Noori were also charged with engaging in surveillance and reconnaissance, with the intention that serious violence against someone in the UK would be carried out by others.

A fourth Iranian national, 31, who was also arrested and detained as part of the investigation, was released with no further action on Thursday.

The arrests took place on the same day that five other Iranians were detained by police as part of a separate counterterrorism probe, in what the UK’s Home Secretary Yvette Cooper called some of the biggest investigations of their kind in recent years.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi had previously said he was “disturbed” to learn that Iranian citizens had been arrested by the British authorities.

The UK has placed Iran on the highest tier of its Foreign Influence Registration Scheme (FIRS), which aims to boost the UK’s national security against covert foreign influences.

The measures, due to come into place later this year, will mean that all people working inside the UK for Iran, its intelligence services or the Revolutionary Guard would have to register or face jail.

Poland will hold the first round of voting in its presidential election on Sunday.

This is a hotly contested race between two main candidates – one from Civic Platform, the lead party in the ruling Civic Coalition, and the other an independent backed by the main opposition party, Law and Justice (PiS).

While much of the power rests with the prime minister and parliament in Poland, the president is able to veto legislation and has influence over military and foreign policy decisions. The current president, Andrzej Duda, who is from PiS, has used his veto to block reforms to the justice system that the government has been trying to enact for some time.

Furthermore, reports of foreign election interference have recently spooked voters who are primarily concerned with issues such as the Russia-Ukraine war, immigration, abortion rights and the economy.

Here is all we know about the upcoming vote:

How does voting work?

Polish citizens aged 18 or older can vote. There are about 29 million eligible voters. On Sunday, they will select a single candidate from a list of registered presidential candidates. If a candidate wins at least 50 percent of the vote, they win the election. If all candidates fall short of the 50 percent threshold, the country will vote in a second round for the two top contenders from the first round on June 1. The winner of that contest will become president. The election is expected to go to a second round.

Presidents may serve a maximum of two five-year terms in Poland. The current president reaches the end of his second term on August 6.

What time do polls open and close in Poland?

On May 18, polls will open at 7am (05:00 GMT) and close at 9pm (19:00 GMT).

What’s at stake?

In 2023, current Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s Civic Coalition ascended to power, ending eight years of rule by the PiS party’s government.

While Tusk promised to reverse unpopular judicial reforms enacted by PiS, President Andrzej Duda, a former nationalist ally of the party, has hampered Tusk’s efforts by using his presidential power to veto legislation.

What are the key issues?

Key issues dominating this election include the Russia-Ukraine war.

When the war first broke out in February 2022, Poland threw its full support behind Ukraine, welcoming more than one million Ukrainian refugees who crossed the border without documents.

On May 10, Tusk, alongside other European leaders, visited Kyiv and gave Russian President Vladimir Putin an ultimatum to enact an unconditional 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine.

However, relations between Poland and Ukraine have grown tense. Earlier this year, Polish farmers led protests, arguing the market had been flooded with cheap agricultural products from Ukraine.

There are also emerging reports of Ukrainian refugees facing discrimination in Poland, as well as resentment about welfare provided to them.

There have been growing fears of a spillover of Russian aggression to Poland due to its proximity to Ukraine. On May 12, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Warsaw said an investigation had revealed that Moscow’s intelligence agencies had orchestrated a massive fire at a shopping centre in Warsaw in May 2024.

Several candidates for the presidential election have proposed raising the defence budget to 5 percent of GDP.

Poles also have economic concerns about taxes, housing costs and the state of public transport.

Abortion is a key issue in Poland. Poland has some of the strictest abortion laws in Europe. Women are only allowed to have abortions in cases of rape or incest or if their life or health are at risk.

In August 2024, Tusk acknowledged that he did not have enough backing from parliament to deliver on one of his key campaign promises and change the abortion law.

Opinion is also split on whether LGBTQ rights should be restricted or expanded in the country.

The country is also divided over how involved it should be with the European Union (EU), with the PiS taking the stance that the country would be better off forming an alliance with the United States than the EU.

Who is running?

A total of 13 candidates are vying for the presidency. The top four candidates are:

Rafal Trzaskowski

Trzaskowski, 53, has been the liberal mayor of Warsaw since 2018 and is an ally of Tusk, affiliated with the PM’s political alliance, Civic Coalition. He is also a senior member of the Civic Platform party (PO), which heads the Civic Coalition. Trzaskowski was narrowly defeated by Duda in the 2020 presidential election.

During his time as mayor, he was lauded for investing in Warsaw’s infrastructure and culture. He proposes to increase defence spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and to develop Poland’s arms and technology industry.

Trzaskowski has liberal views. He is pro-Europe and one of his campaign promises includes strengthening Poland’s position in the EU. Another one of his pledges is to relax abortion laws, however, he has been quiet on this issue during the run-up to the presidential election. He has also been supportive of the LGBTQ community and has attended pride parades. This could alienate some more conservative voters who live outside urban centres.

For this reason, right-wing voters may vote against him in the second round of voting. Trzaskowski could also lose support from centrist and progressive voters, who are frustrated by Tusk’s inability to bring reform to abortion laws.

Karol Nawrocki

Nawrocki, 42, is a conservative historian standing as an independent candidate backed by the PiS party.

His academic work has been centred around anti-communist resistance. He currently administers the Institute of National Remembrance, where his removal of Soviet memorials has angered Russia. He administered the Museum of the Second World War in northern Poland from 2017 to 2021.

His campaign promises include lowering taxes and pulling Poland out of the EU’s Migration Pact and Green Deal. He also wishes to allocate 5 percent of GDP to defence. Nawrocki is critical of giving more rights to LGBTQ couples.

Nawrocki has had a fair share of controversies in the past. In 2018, he published a book about a notorious gangster under the pseudonym “Tadeusz Batyr”. In public comments, Nawrocki and Batyr praised each other, without revealing they were the same person.

Slawomir Mentzen

Mentzen, 38, is a far-right entrepreneur who leads the New Hope party, a member of the Confederation coalition. He has degrees in economics and physics; owns a brewery in Torun; runs a tax advisory firm; and is critical of government regulation, wishing for significant tax cuts.

Mentzen has used social media platforms to connect with younger voters.

He believes that Poland should not take sides in the Russia-Ukraine war. He wants to ensure the Polish constitution overrides EU laws and wishes to withdraw from the EU Green Deal. He opposes LGBTQ rights and opposes abortion, even in cases of rape.

Ahead of the 2019 election for the European Parliament, he said: “We don’t want Jews, homosexuals, abortion, taxes or the European Union.” Since then, he has tried to distance himself from this statement.

While Poland offers free higher education, Mentzen dropped in opinion polls after he advocated for tuition fees in state schools in late March.

Szymon Holownia

Holownia, 48, is a former journalist and television personality-turned-politician. He is the speaker, or marshal, of the lower house of parliament, the Sejm.

In 2020, he founded a centrist movement called Polska 2050, which burgeoned into a party and ended up joining Tusk’s coalition.

Holownia wishes to promote regional development alongside better access to affordable housing and improving the public transport system. He says he wants to reduce bureaucracy, support Polish businesses and develop Poland’s domestic arms production capabilities.

Other candidates

Three leftist candidates are also running the election including Deputy Senate Speaker Magdalena Biejat, 43, an advocate for women’s rights, minority rights, affordable housing and abortion access; Adrian Zandberg, 45, who has made similar promises to Biejat; and academic and lawmaker Joanna Senyszyn, a former member of the Polish United Workers’ Party.

Other candidates include far-right Grzegorz Braun, who was pilloried globally for using a fire extinguisher to put out Hanukkah candles in parliament in 2023, and journalist and YouTuber Krzysztof Stanowski, 42, who does not have a political programme and wants to show Poles behind the scenes of the campaign while raising money for charity.

What do the opinion polls say?

As of May 12, Trzaskowski was in the lead with the support of 31 percent of voters, according to Politico’s polling aggregate. Nawrocki was in second place with 25 percent, while Mentzen had 13 percent and Holownia had 7 percent.

When will we know the results?

As soon as polls close, Ipsos will release an exit poll based on surveys undertaken at 500 randomly selected polling stations. While this is not the official result, it is expected to be highly indicative of which way the vote is going. Partial results may start to emerge on Sunday night or Monday.

In Poland, voting always takes place on a Sunday. In 2020, the official results for the first round of voting were confirmed on Tuesday morning.

What is the election interference controversy about?

On Wednesday, Poland said it had uncovered a possible election interference attempt via advertisements on Facebook.

“The NASK Disinformation Analysis Center has identified political ads on the Facebook platform that may be financed from abroad. The materials were displayed in Poland,” according to a statement by NASK, which is Poland’s national research institute dealing with cybersecurity. “The advertising accounts involved in the campaign spent more on political materials in the last seven days than any election committee.”

The NASK statement did not specify which countries’ financial backers of the campaign were believed to be based in. Fears of Russian election interference are high in Europe after Romania declared a do-over of its November presidential election after reports emerged of alleged Russian election interference. The first round of the repeat election took place on May 4, with the second round due to happen on May 18. This was after far-right politician Calin Georgescu, who was polling in single digits during the campaign, surprisingly emerged victorious.

Liverpool, England – “I love it when it gets like this,” exclaimed the man beside me as he rubbed his hands with glee.

It was the Halloween of 2009 and in the gloom of an early winter’s afternoon, Goodison Park was at its best.

Everton were playing Aston Villa in a league match, which was becoming increasingly bad-tempered. Two late red cards, an appalling referee and the floodlights taking full effect. It was the perfect recipe for a big bowl of Goodison fury.

The game finished as an unmemorable 1-1 draw, but the sheer delight of the man in the neighbouring seat long stayed with me. His excitement was a reminder to relish those rare occasions when the entire audience at this glorious theatre of football are united in emotion.

And nowhere does emotion quite like Goodison Park.

Fury, relief, joy and despair – and that’s just a two-nil defeat to Norwich in the League Cup fourth round.

Fans sitting in this footballing relic have felt it all throughout the stadium’s long and illustrious history. If they gave out Ballon d’Ors for booing, Everton would need a separate stadium just to house the trophy cabinet.

But on Sunday, there will be new emotions to add to the list – because everything is about to change.

A 133-year chapter in the story of Everton is about to end, as Goodison Park hosts the men’s team for the final time.

“Goodison has just always been there, there’s not an Evertonian alive that has watched Everton anywhere else,” said Matt Jones, host of the Blue Room podcast.

Like thousands of fellow fans, he will spend the weekend grappling with various emotions.

“I feel a bit like a dad watching his daughter get married at a wedding and everything’s starting to make him cry. As you get closer and closer to the day, you get more and more emotional,” Jones told Al Jazeera Sport.

At its most basic level, Sunday’s fixture against Southampton is game number 2,791 for the Everton men’s senior team at Goodison. But for Evertonians, it represents so much more. A small part of our identity is about to be lost.

I’ve grown from a boy to a man in various seats in every stand of that grand old stadium, learning every swear word there is to know along the way.

The highs and lows of the last 30 years have been intertwined with trips there, with the ground somehow able to block out everyday life for 90 precious minutes. Much like the inability to get a phone signal inside, you leave your troubles at the turnstile.

I’ve taken various partners to Goodison (one said that she had “never seen rage quite like it”), with most of those relationships ending in the same sort of heartbreak as an Everton cup run.

But I’ve always felt privileged to sit inside a real-life museum of football. Surrounded by history, tradition and furious middle-aged men abusing anything that moves.

The next page of the Everton story will see the men’s team relocate to a 53,000-capacity stadium at Bramley Moore Dock. The impressive structure sits on the banks of the river Mersey and, for the sake of sponsorship, will be called the Hill Dickinson Stadium.

Life in such a shiny, modern arena will be a huge adjustment for one of the oldest teams in English football.

“It’s that feeling of leaving your family home. It’s the only way I can describe it,” said Merseyside-based sports reporter Giulia Bould.

“You know you’re going to a house with a load of mod cons and you know your life’s going to be so much easier in this new house, but you’ve got to leave your family home. It’s weird,” she added.

This season has been filled with finals for Everton, although sadly not the ones that are played at Wembley with a trophy on the line.

Instead, each fixture at Goodison has ticked another final occasion off the list. From the final cup game to the final night match, even the final Saturday 3pm kickoff has had a shoutout.

But on Sunday, it really will be the finale – although only for the men’s team.

Just days before what was due to be the final ever Goodison game, Everton announced that the old stadium would be granted a stay of execution. The bulldozers won’t move in – instead the women’s team will.

“I think it’s perfect,” said Bould as she reflects on the decision from Everton’s American owners to pass Goodison over to the women’s team.

“Under the previous owner, the women’s side has long been ignored and run into the ground really, it’s been pretty much treated as second rate. But now it has been put on a level where it should be, setting the precedent for everyone else,” Bould told Al Jazeera Sport.

Goodison Park is no stranger to setting a precedent. It was the first purpose-built football stadium in England and the first to install dugouts and undersoil heating.

The Toffees’ long run without relegation means it’s hosted more English top-flight football games than anywhere else.

Goodison was also the venue for an FA Cup Final and a World Cup semifinal, with Pele and Eusebio both also scoring there during the 1966 tournament. Even North Korea has graced the Goodison turf.

The storied history of Everton’s home has caught the imagination of some of the greats of the modern game.

Jose Mourinho called the place “the history of English football”, while Arsene Wenger described it as “one of the noisiest” stadium’s he’s managed in.

Sir Alex Ferguson once spared former Evertonian Wayne Rooney from an afternoon at Goodison with Manchester United, purely because of the abuse he would receive.

Visiting Goodison Park today feels vastly removed from the riches of modern English football. To put it bluntly, the stadium is no longer fit for purpose. But that is what makes it magical.

“It is the closest you can get to travelling through time to watch football,” said photographer and Evertonian Gary Lambert. That time travel begins before you even set foot in the stadium.

“Physically, Goodison is an imposing place. It appears out of nowhere between the rows of terraced houses,” said Lambert.

Once inside, the stadium’s history unravels through the various sights and sounds. Obstructed views are common, with posts and pillars causing many a strained neck.

And the unique Archibald Leitch criss-cross design runs down the middle of the ancient Bullens Road stand.

“Goodison Park is the bluest place on earth. The brickwork on three-quarters of the ground is painted a vivid shade of royal blue.

“It doesn’t matter what tweaked blue hue the latest kit manufacturer might tone the latest home shirt, it’s that blue outside which is Everton’s blue,” Lambert told Al Jazeera Sport.

But there is one particular quirk that stands out above them all and it happens whenever Everton go on the attack.

“There are still so many old-fashioned wooden seats, so the seats bang and click as everyone moves to stand up,” said Bould.

The chorus of wooden clangs is something she will miss when Everton move away from their historical home.

“That clicking noise, you don’t hear that anywhere. That, for me, is Goodison.”

Like all Everton fans, I’ll miss the matchday routines around Goodison. Parking near the snooker hall, a pre-match pint in Crofts Social Club, the endless queues for the loo. I might even miss the lack of legroom.

It’s troubling to comprehend life after Goodison for Everton’s men. The two are so connected and so well-suited. Everton is Goodison and Goodison is Everton. A divorce after 133 years was always going to hurt.

But change is needed for a club still clinging to former glories. Everton’s new ground could be the chance for a new start. The Hill Dickinson Stadium doesn’t suit us, but it represents the new world of football, where money is power.

In many ways, Sunday’s fixture will be a changing of the guard as the grand old team are hurtled into the modern age.

“We’re at the end of such a long journey now at Goodison. And at just the very start and the very first step of a new one.

“And maybe we’re quite privileged to be at this crossover point and experience both of them,” said Jones.

These are the key events on day 1,178 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is where things stand on Saturday, May 17:

Fighting

• Russia is preparing for a new military offensive in Ukraine, the Ukrainian government and Western military analysts said, as Russia’s Defence Minister Andrei Belousov was in Minsk on Friday to discuss joint military drills in September and deliveries of new weapons to Belarus.
• A drone attack on the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kupiansk killed a 55-year-old woman and wounded four men, said Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv Regional Military Administration.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said that its forces seized six settlements in eastern Ukraine over the past week. According to a ministry statement, Russian troops advanced in the Donetsk region and took control of Torske, Kotlyarivka, Myrolyubivka, Mykhailivka​​​​​​, Novooleksandrivka, and Vilne Pole settlements, Tukiye’s Anadolu news agency reports.

• The Russian Defence Ministry released a video showing Russian forces raising the Russian flag in the settlement of Mykhailivka.
• A court in Ukraine’s Russian-occupied Luhansk region sentenced Australian national Oscar Charles Augustus Jenkins to 13 years in jail at a high-security penal colony for fighting on behalf of Ukraine, Anadolu reports.

Ceasefire

• The first direct Russia-Ukraine dialogue in three years on Friday produced good results, Kirill Dmitriev, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s investment envoy, said late on Friday. “1. Largest POW exchange 2. Ceasefire options that may work 3. Understanding of positions and continued dialogue,” Dmitriev said on the social media platform X.
• Ukrainian Defence Minister Rustem Umerov said following the talks that some 1,000 prisoners from each side will be swapped “in the near future”, in the largest exchange since the start of the war in 2022.
• Umerov led the Ukrainian delegation, which ended after 90 minutes in Istanbul, while Putin’s adviser, Vladimir Medinsky, negotiated on behalf of Russia. The United States delegation was led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
• Medinsky, who was the lead Russian negotiator, expressed satisfaction with the talks and said Moscow was ready for further negotiations, including on a ceasefire. “We have agreed that all sides will present their views on a possible ceasefire and set them out in detail,” Medinsky said after the meeting.

• A source in the Ukrainian delegation told the Reuters news agency that Russia’s demands were “detached from reality and go far beyond anything that was previously discussed”. The source said Moscow had issued ultimatums for Ukraine to withdraw from parts of its own territory in order to obtain a ceasefire “and other non-starters and non-constructive conditions”.
• Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who opened the talks by welcoming both delegations and calling for a swift ceasefire, served as a buffer between the negotiating tables in Istanbul’s Dolmabahce Palace.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed regret after the talks at what he called a missed opportunity for peace. “This week, we had a real chance to move towards ending the war – if only Putin hadn’t been afraid to come to Turkiye,” Zelenskyy posted on X from the sidelines of a European Political Community (EPC) summit in Albania.
• Zelenskyy, who did not attend the talks, said he had been “ready for a direct meeting with him [Putin] to resolve all key issues”, but “he didn’t agree to anything”.
• US President Donald Trump, who has pressed for an end to the conflict, said he would meet with Putin “as soon as we can set it up” in a bid to make progress in the peace talks. “I think it’s time for us to just do it,” Trump told reporters in Abu Dhabi as he wrapped up a trip to the Middle East.

• Zelenskyy was in Tirana, Albania, on Friday with European leaders to discuss security, defence and democratic standards against the backdrop of the war. He held a phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
• European leaders also agreed to press ahead with joint action against Russia over the failure in Turkiye to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine, Prime Minister Starmer said after consultations with President Trump.
• Starmer said after the talks that the Russian position was “clearly unacceptable” and that European leaders, Ukraine and the US were “closely aligning” their responses.
• European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced new plans for additional sanctions on Moscow after Putin failed to travel to Turkiye to negotiate with Ukraine.
• US senators renewed calls on Friday for Congress to pass sanctions on Russia after Russia-Ukraine ceasefire talks showed little progress, but no votes were scheduled on bills introduced six weeks ago aimed at pressuring Moscow to negotiate seriously.

Regional security

• Russia and Belarus are preparing a new, large military manoeuvre together, the Belarusian state agency BelTA reports. “We plan to jointly develop measures to counter aggression against the Union State,” Defence Minister Belousov said during a meeting with his Belarusian counterpart, Viktor Khrenin, in Minsk, according to BelTA. The Union State combines Russia and Belarus.
• The exercise, dubbed Zapad-2025, or West-2025 in English, will be the main event of the combat training of the regional troop formations, he said. The manoeuvre is planned for mid-September, according to the agency.

Economy and trade

• Russia’s economic growth slowed to 1.4 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2025, the lowest quarterly figure in two years, data from the official state statistics agency showed on Friday.
• Economists have warned for months of a slowdown in the Russian economy, with falling oil prices, high interest rates and a downturn in manufacturing all contributing to headwinds. Moscow reported strong economic growth in 2023 and 2024, largely due to massive state defence spending on the Ukraine conflict.
• The Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS), which represents the democratic countries bordering the Baltic Sea, called for new shipping rules to allow for stronger joint action against Russia’s so-called shadow fleet.

European leaders speak to US president after Russia-Ukraine talks fail to achieve major breakthrough.

European leaders have agreed to step up joint action against Russia over its failure to agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine at a meeting on Friday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said, following talks with United States President Donald Trump.

As the Russia-Ukraine talks concluded in Istanbul on Friday, Starmer and fellow leaders from France, Germany and Poland – together with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – called the US president from a summit in Albania to discuss “developments” in the negotiations, Starmer said.

The talks in Istanbul were the first direct talks between officials from the rwo sides for more than three years. They lasted less than two hours, and the sides agreed to the biggest prisoner exchange since the start of the war in 2022, but failed to make a major breakthrough on a ceasefire.

“We just had a meeting with President Zelenskyy and then a phone call with President Trump to discuss the developments in the negotiations today,” Starmer said from Albania’s capital, Tirana, where leaders of dozens of European countries were gathered for the European Political Community summit.

“And the Russian position is clearly unacceptable, and not for the first time.

“So as a result of that meeting with President Zelenskyy and that call with President Trump, we are now closely aligning our responses and will continue to do so.”

French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters that if Putin continued to reject a ceasefire, “we will need to have a response and therefore escalate sanctions”, which, he said, were being “reworked” by European nations and the US.

EU eyes Russia’s shadow fleet

Macron said it was too early to provide details on the “reworked” sanctions, but European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has pledged to “increase the pressure”.

She said on Friday that the measures would target the shadow fleet of ageing cargo vessels that Russia is using to bypass international sanctions and the Nord Stream pipeline consortium. Russia’s financial sector would also be targeted.

Earlier, Zelenskyy had said that Ukraine was committed to ending the war, but urged the European leaders to ramp up sanctions “against Russia’s energy sector and banks” if Putin continued to drag his feet in talks.

“I think Putin made a mistake by sending a low-level delegation,” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said as he arrived at the Tirana summit. “The ball is clearly in his part of the field now, in his court. He has to play ball. He has to be serious about wanting peace.”

A recent United States ambassador to Ukraine has published an opinion column explaining her decision to resign her post, and criticising President Donald Trump for siding with Russia over Ukraine.

On Friday, former diplomat Bridget Brink published an article in the Detroit Free Press, a newspaper in her home state of Michigan, expressing concern about current US foreign policy.

The US has long been an ally of Ukraine, and since 2014, it has provided the war-torn country with military assistance, as it fends off Russia’s attempts at invasion and annexation.

But Brink wrote that there has been a shift since President Trump returned to office for a second term in January.

“I respect the president’s right and responsibility to determine U.S. foreign policy,” she wrote.

“Unfortunately, the policy since the beginning of the Trump administration has been to put pressure on the victim, Ukraine, rather than on the aggressor, Russia.”

Brink pointed out that her time at the US Department of State included roles under five presidents, both Democrat and Republican. But she said the shift under the Trump administration forced her to abandon her ambassadorship to Ukraine, a position she held from 2022 until last month.

“I cannot stand by while a country is invaded, a democracy bombarded, and children killed with impunity,” she said of the situation in Ukraine.

“I believe that the only way to secure U.S. interests is to stand up for democracies and to stand against autocrats. Peace at any price is not peace at all ― it is appeasement.”

Brink’s position as ambassador has spanned much of the current conflict in Ukraine. After annexing Crimea and occupying other Ukrainian territories starting in 2014, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022. Brink assumed her post that May.

But the slow-grinding war in Ukraine has cost thousands of lives and displaced many more. While campaigning for re-election in 2024, Trump blamed the war’s eruption on the “weak” foreign policy of his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden.

He also pledged to end the war on his first day back in office, if re-elected. “I’ll have that done in 24 hours. I’ll have it done,” Trump told one CNN town hall in 2023.

Since taking office, however, Trump has walked back those comments, calling them an “exaggeration” in an interview with Time Magazine.

Still, his administration has pushed Ukraine and Russia to engage in peace talks, as part of an effort to end the war. How those negotiations have unfolded under Trump, however, has been the source of scrutiny and debate.

Ukraine and its European allies have accused Trump of sidelining their interests in favour of his one-on-one negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. They also have criticised Trump and his officials for seeming to offer Russia concessions even before the negotiations officially began.

On February 12, for instance, his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told an international defence group in Brussels that Ukraine may never regain some of its occupied territory.

“We must start by recognising that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective,” he said, adding that membership in the NATO military alliance was also unlikely. “Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering.”

Trump has gone so far as to blame Ukraine’s NATO ambitions as the cause of the war, something critics blast as a Kremlin talking point.

Amid the negotiations, the relationship between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has grown increasingly testy. Already, during his first term, Trump faced impeachment proceedings over an alleged attempt to pressure Zelenskyy by withholding military aid.

During his second term, though, Trump upped the ante, calling the Ukrainian president a “dictator” for not holding elections, something prohibited under Ukraine’s wartime laws.

One public display of frustration came in the White House on February 28, when Trump shouted at Zelenskyy, calling him “disrespectful” during a gathering with journalists.

The US president also used the appearance to defend his warm relationship with Russia’s president. “ Putin went through a hell of a lot with me,” Trump told Zelenskyy.

The shouting match led to a brief suspension of US aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine.

In the months since, their two countries have agreed to a deal that would establish a joint investment fund that would allow Washington access to Ukraine’s mineral resources — a long-desired Trump goal.

The US president has voiced concern about the amount of money invested in Ukraine’s security, with Congress appropriating more than $174bn since the war began in 2022. He has also argued that a US mining presence would help deter foreign attacks in Ukraine.

But peace between Russia and Ukraine has remained elusive. Talks between the two warring parties on Friday ended after less than two hours, though they did agree to an exchange of 1,000 prisoners each.

In her op-ed column, Brink was clear that she held Russia responsible for the ongoing aggression.

“Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, it has done what can only be described as pure evil: killed thousands of civilians, including 700 children, with missiles and drones that hit their homes and apartments in the dead of night,” she wrote.

She added that Europe has not experienced “violence so systematic, so widespread and so horrifying in Europe since World War II”.

Brink warned that, if the US did not stand up to Russia, a domino effect could occur, paving the way for military assaults on other countries.

“If we allow Putin to redraw borders by force, he won’t stop with Ukraine,” she wrote. “Taken at his word, Putin’s ambition is to resurrect an imperial past ― and he can’t do that without threatening the security of our NATO allies.”

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.”

It’s 90 percent about us, says Palace manager

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 one against Villa was top class,” said Henderson. “I don’t know what they are going to do with 40-odd grand – but I’m excited to see it.”