US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said he would remove all sanctions against Syria, saying they had served an important function, but it was now time for Syria to move forward.
"I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at greatness," Trump told an investment forum in Riyadh.
"It's their time to shine. We're taking them all off," Trump said, "Good luck Syria, show us something very special," he added.
The United States imposed tough sanctions on Syria during the rule of Bashar al-Assad, and had kept them in place since he was toppled from power in December after more than 13 years of war.
Saudi Arabia has been a leading voice calling for the sanctions to be lifted.
Trump's latest announcement is a huge boost for interim Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa as he seeks to stabilise a country shattered by war.
Two sources from the Syrian presidency said Sharaa would travel to Riyadh to meet Trump.
A Russian bomb attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk killed at least 33 people, authorities said on Thursday, describing it as a targeted strike on civilians in the key stronghold sought by Moscow.
Canadian poet and writer Anne Carson won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature "for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature," the award-giving body said on Thursday.
A 15-year-old former student killed one person and injured two others at a Polish primary school on Thursday, police said, just a day after a 19-year-old wounded 10 people, including himself, in an attack at another school.
French teenagers blockaded some high schools and prepared to rally again on Thursday after the government promised to address their grievances about teacher shortages and dilapidated school buildings but gave no specific details.
Three people were killed and several others injured in separate attacks targeting Abha International Airport and King Khalid International Airport in Saudi Arabia on October 6 and 7, according to the General Authority of Civil Aviation (GACA).