Author: Daily Sabah With Reuters

The European Union hopes to avert a damaging trade war with the U.S. over impending metals tariffs by prioritising negotiations rather than retaliatory countermeasures, comments from officials signaled on Wednesday. Ministers responsible for trade from the bloc’s 27 members were due to meet for a video conference on Wednesday to discuss the EU response to U.S. President Donald Trump imposing 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminium imports from March 12. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has called those tariffs unjustified and said they would “trigger firm and proportionate countermeasures”. One EU diplomat said it was time to…

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said he hoped to reach a deal on critical minerals with the United States at the Munich Security Conference later this week after a top U.S. official presented him with a first draft agreement in Kyiv on Wednesday. Zelenskiy told a joint news conference that he had a productive and constructive discussion with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. He said they did not discuss natural resources in Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia.

Three detainees have been released from detention in Belarus, including one American, U.S. Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs Adam Boehler told CNN in an interview on Wednesday. “We’ve gotten three detainees out in Belarus,” Boehler said. He did not name the U.S. citizen.

The United States will release Russian Alexander Vinnik, a suspected cybercrime kingpin, as part of an exchange with Russia that freed Marc Fogel, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. Vinnik operated BTC-e, once one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. He was arrested in 2017 and detained at Washington’s request on suspicion of laundering $4 billion through the exchange. In May, he pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering and faced 20 years in prison.

With his Gaza home destroyed in Israel’s military offensive, Shaban Shaqaleh was intending to take his family on a break to Egypt once the Hamas-Israel ceasefire is firmly in place. He changed his mind after Donald Trump announced plans to resettle Gaza’s Palestinian residents and redevelop the enclave – plans which the U.S. president said on Monday would not give them the right to return. The Tel Al-Hawa neighbourhood in Gaza City, where dozens of newly built multi-storey buildings once stood, is now largely deserted. There is no running water or electricity and, like most buildings there, Shaqaleh’s home is…

U.N. humanitarian officials said on Tuesday aid flows into Gaza had increased significantly since a ceasefire deal took effect on January 19, including for items such as tents that had previously faced Israeli restrictions. Hamas announced on Monday it would stop releasing Israeli hostages until further notice over what the Palestinian group called Israeli violations of the truce accord, raising the risk of reigniting the 15-month conflict. It said that such alleged violations included stopping humanitarian aid from entering Gaza as stipulated in the deal, such as 60,000 mobile houses and 200,000 tents as well as heavy machinery to remove…

Pope Francis sharply criticized U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in an unusual open letter sent to America’s Catholic bishops on Tuesday. The pope, who earlier called Trump’s plan to millions of migrants a “disgrace”, said it was wrong to assume that all undocumented immigrants were criminals. “I exhort all the faithful of the Catholic Church … not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters,” said the pontiff.

Türkiye has lifted restrictions on Syrian imports, Syria’s state news agency SANA quoted Director of Relations at the Syrian General Authority for Land and Sea Ports Mazen Alloush as saying on Tuesday, after discussions with Türkiye’s Ministry of Trade. Türkiye and Syria, under the new Syrian administration, have agreed to re-evaluate customs tariffs for certain products and to start negotiations to re-enact a free trade agreement suspended in 2011, when war began in Syria. Bashar Al-Assad was ousted as Syrian president in December.

Russia on Monday said that Chinese President Xi Jinping has accepted the invitation to attend commemorations of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. “Chinese President Xi Jinping has accepted an invitation to take part in the celebrations on May 9 in Moscow on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War,” Igor Morgulov, Russia’s ambassador to China, told state TV channel Rossiya-24. Nazi Germany’s surrender during what Russians call the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45 is marked as “Victory Day” in Russia. Morgulov said that Xi also invited Russian President Vladimir…

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who oversees U.S. relations and arms control, said on Monday that all of President Vladimir Putin’s conditions for ending the conflict in Ukraine must be met before any settlement is possible. On June 14, Putin set out his terms for an immediate end to the war: Ukraine must drop its NATO ambitions and withdraw its troops from the entirety of the territory of four Ukrainian regions claimed and mostly controlled by Russia. Ryabkov said that the sooner the United States and the West understood that all of Putin’s conditions needed to be met, the…