OMAN: Negotiations between Iran and the US over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear programme will return tomorrow to the secluded sultanate, where experts on both sides will start hammering out the technical details of a possible deal.

The talks seek to limit Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of some of the crushing economic sanctions the US has imposed on the Islamic Republic.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to unleash air strikes targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities if a deal isn’t reached. 

BRAZIL: Former far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is in a stable condition, his doctors said today, following reports of a decline in his health on Thursday. He continues to recover in intensive care after undergoing bowel surgery nearly two weeks ago.

The medical team at a hospital in Brasilia said today that Mr Bolsonaro showed no complications, excluding the need of new surgery.

He underwent a 12-hour surgery on April 13, his sixth procedure after he was stabbed in the abdomen during a campaign rally in September 2018.

UKRAINE: US President Donald Trump said in an interview published today that “Crimea will stay with Russia.”

“Zelensky understands that,” Mr Trump said, referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, “and everybody understands that it’s been with them for a long time.”

Russia seized the peninsula in 2014, years before its full-scale invasion of its neighbour in 2022.

Mr Trump made the comments in a Time magazine interview conducted on Tuesday.

“I just want to do it as fast as possible,” he said. Negotiators are “pretty close” to a deal, he claimed.

NIGERIA: Armed men killed at least 20 people and injured dozens in a mining village in northwestern Zamfara state, Amnesty International said on Thursday.

Gunmen arrived by motorcycles in the village of Gobirawa Chali at midday on Thursday and went on a "house-to-house killing spree,” Amnesty said.

The gunmen’s first target was a gold-mining site, where they initially killed 14 people.

The possible motive for the attack is unclear, but bandit groups have been known for mass killings and kidnappings for ransom in the conflict-battered northern region.