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"An eye for an eye, a tariff for a tariff, same exact amount." That is how Donald Trump billed reciprocal tariffs on other countries during the United States presidential election campaign. Soon after taking charge, he moved to implement them, potentially in April. The measures come on top of tariffs announced for China, Canada and Mexico as well as on metal imports. Trump says duties will collect a lot of money to reduce debt. But, he has acknowledged that prices would rise temporarily. That could turn into a headache for him after inflation rose unexpectedly last month and for the Federal Reserve as it navigates the path forward for interest rates.

Odesa, Ukraine, Michael Bociurkiw, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, said that Zelenskyy may have made a strategic mistake in directly responding to Trump’s criticisms. Still, he added, the US-Ukraine rift is only peripheral to the shuttle diplomacy occurring between the US and Russia. “Here in Ukraine, it does look more and more that Ukraine will have to give up territory. How much? I’m not quite sure, but we can safely assume that Crimea is gone, as well as Luhansk and Donetsk, which the Russians mostly occupy,” he said, referring to the territories seized by Russia in 2014. Last week, US Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said Ukraine must accept it will not regain those annexed territories, marking a major shift in Washington’s stance. “My concern right now is, with no solid red lines being enforced by the Americans, the Russians will do as they’ve been doing in the past two nights, pounding Ukrainian cities and trying to get more territory to kind of exploit this void,” Bociurkiw added.

On March 4, Arab leaders will meet in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, to discuss developments in Gaza. Jawad Anani, Jordan’s former foreign minister, told Al Jazeera that “it’s not going to be easy” for the heads of state to address Gaza’s governance challenges. “Judging from their current behaviour, Hamas wants to show that it still exists and that it has the power to threaten others. However, the best course of action remains dialogue and political thinking.” “So long as Israel makes it a point that Hamas should be depoliticised, the question becomes ‘Are we dealing with the spoilers of peace?’ If that is the case, we have to expect Israel to change its leadership,” he said, referring to Netanyahu’s coalition government. Anani stressed: “There’s no way in heck that Arab leaders can’t come up with a way to convince the Israeli government to find a solution to the conflict because, ultimately, a political solution that accommodates Palestinians will also guarantee Israeli security as well.”

With Syria's new government cracking down on Captagon, where will production shift in the drug trade's supply chain? Under Bashar al-Assad’s rule, Syria became a hub of Captagon production. With demand continuing, where will the drug market turn to next?

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have released the bodies of four Israeli captives, to the Red Cross. Among them are Shiri Bibas and her two children, who were nine months old and four years old, when they were taken during the October 7th attack in 2023 and Oded Lifshitz. The bodies will now be taken to a forensic institute for identification. Uri Dromi, founding director-general of the Jerusalem Press Club and a retired colonel in the Israeli Air Force, says after Hamas handed over the bodies of four Israeli captives in Gaza’s Khan Younis that “this is a very sad moment, not only for Israelis but for everyone who believes in reconciliation between Israeli’s and Palestinians”.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad are handing over the bodies of four Israeli captives held in Gaza, as the ceasefire with Israel holds. These are live pictures from Khan Younis in the south. Among them will be Shiri Bibas and her two children, who were nine months old, and four years old when they were taken during the October 7th attack in 2023. Their father Yarden Bibas was released on February 1.

Trump has recited a list of federal expenses he feels are wasteful or fraudulent, without providing evidence of any wrongdoing. At his speech in Miami, he paused on an expense made under the US Agency for International Development (USAID), for promoting democracy abroad. “What do we need to spend $21 million for voter turnout in India? Wow, 21 million. I guess they were trying to get somebody else elected,” Trump said, implying malfeasance. Trump conflated that sum with accusations that Russia interfered with the US election in 2016, to help get him elected.

Robert Hamilton, the head of research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia Program, said Trump’s attacks on Zelenskyy is “a very bad sign for Ukraine, for Europe, and I would argue, for American security, as well”.

High-level US and Russian delegates have met in Saudi Arabia's capital to discuss the war in Ukraine the first meeting of its kind in three years. But Ukrainian and European Union leaders weren't invited. President Vladimir Putin seems to have already divided the US and EU - creating the worst fracture in the trans-Atlantic relationship since World War Two. So is it time for European allies to create new economic and military strategies? And what does this all mean for Ukraine?

United States President Donald Trump’s plan to cut a Ukraine deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, along with his administration’s shifting approach to transatlantic ties, has left European leaders uneasy. What does this mean for Russia, Ukraine, and the future of the war?