Donald Trump has said the US is ready to “take a pass” on brokering a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine unless a settlement is reached “very shortly”, as Kyiv announced it has signed a memorandum with the US over a controversial minerals deal.

“Now if for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say: ‘You’re foolish. You’re fools. You’re horrible people’ – and we’re going to just take a pass,” Trump told reporters in Washington. “But hopefully we won’t have to do that.”

Trump declined to give a “specific number of days” for when the US would stop trying to negotiate a truce. “But quickly. We want to get it done.”

Asked whether he was being “played” by Putin, Trump said: “Nobody’s playing me, I’m trying to help.”

Trump’s comments came after the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio said the US was ready to abandon its efforts “within days.

Speaking in Paris on Friday after meeting European and Ukrainian leaders, Rubio said Trump was still interested in a deal. But he added that the US president had many other priorities around the world and was willing to “move on” unless there were signs of progress.

“It is not our war. We didn’t start it,” Rubio said, adding that if a deal were not possible – with both sides still far apart – the US president was “probably at a point where he’s going to say, well, we’re done”. Trump felt “very strongly” about this, he said.

Rubio’s comments were the clearest signal yet that the White House is ready to walk away from its diplomatic attempts to negotiate an end to the war. It was unclear if this would also mean an end to US military assistance to Kyiv. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said this week that deliveries had already “practically stopped”.

Last month Zelenskyy agreed to a US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire. The Kremlin, however, has rejected the plan. Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said on Friday that ending the war was “not a simple topic”. Moscow was seeking a settlement that “ensured its own interests”, he added.

In recent weeks Russia has launched a fresh military push across the 600-mile (1,000km) frontline and stepped up its air attacks on Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure. On Sunday it bombed the city of Sumy, killing 35 people and injuring 117.

Since Trump returned to the White House in January he has piled pressure on Ukraine, stopping most US military assistance and temporarily cutting off intelligence sharing. This week he falsely blamed Zelenskyy and Joe Biden for “starting” the war.

In contrast, Trump has refused to criticise the Russian president or to impose sanctions on or punish Moscow. Senior US officials – including the special envoy Steve Witkoff, who held talks last week with Putin in St Petersburg – have instead parroted Kremlin talking points.

According to Bloomberg, the latest US peace plan presented on Thursday to European leaders would in effect freeze the war along the existing frontline. Russia would keep the territory it occupies, while Kyiv would not be allowed to join Nato.

Talks are due to continue in London next week. US officials conceded that the proposal would be irrelevant if the Kremlin did not agree to stop the fighting, and said security guarantees were essential for Ukraine if the deal were to work, Bloomberg reported.

The US vice-president, JD Vance, speaking in Rome after a meeting with the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said he was optimistic “the very brutal war” could be stopped. “Even in the past 24 hours, we think we have some interesting things to report on,” he said.

Meanwhile, significant details of the minerals deal remain unclear, including whether Kyiv has agreed to a White House demand that it “pays back” the cost of earlier military assistance.

Zelenskyy was poised in February to sign a framework agreement over a wide-ranging economic partnership. It was derailed after his disastrous encounter with Trump and Vance in the Oval Office.

Since then negotiations have continued. Overnight, Ukraine’s first deputy prime minister, Yuliia Svyrydenko, said a memorandum had been finalised. It paved the way for the setting up of an investment fund for the reconstruction of Ukraine, she indicated.

“We are happy to announce the signing with our American partners,” she said. Speaking to reporters in the White House, Trump said a deal could be signed next Thursday.

The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, added: “We’re still working on the details.” He said the latest version ran to 80 pages and was “substantially what we’d agree on previously”. “That’s what we will be signing,” he said.

According to the latest draft, seen by the Guardian, Ukraine acknowledges the “significant material and financial support” Kyiv has received from the US since Russia’s 2022 invasion and the desire from both countries for a “lasting peace”.

It says Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, will visit Washington next week to hold final “technical talks” with Bessent. They are expected to complete discussions on a “reconstruction investment fund”, the memo adds.

The deal would need to be ratified by Ukraine’s parliament, Ukraine’s deputy minister of economy said on Friday.

Zelenskyy is keen to improve relations with the Trump administration. At the same time, he has so far rejected the White House’s demand that revenue from the new joint fund is used to cover the cost of weapons deliveries provided by the Biden administration.

Trump has previously said Ukraine “owes” the US $300bn (£226bn). Zelenskyy has pointed out this assistance was given as a grant, not as a loan, with Republicans and Democrats approving it in Congress. Any future partnership has to be based on “parity”, and should benefit both countries, he says.

The deal may help US weapons manufacturers, who are facing a critical shortfall of key rare-earth minerals imported from China. Beijing has restricted its export in response to Trump’s escalating trade war.

Volodymyr Landa, a senior economist with the Centre for Economic Strategy thinktank in Kyiv, said the deal had gone through “multiple iterations”. He added: “It’s hard to say what’s inside.”

Landa said he did not expect Kyiv to accept that previous “non-refundable military aid” was now “debt”. “That’s not only unfair and unrealistic, but may also negatively affect the full global financial system,” he said.

He continued: “If it suddenly turns out that countries and organisations can demand payments for aid given unconditionally in previous years, it will make recipients more cautious, and could reopen difficult issues from previous decades around the world.”

The latest negotiations came as Russia killed one person and injured about 70 in a ballistic missile strike on a residential area of the city of Kharkiv, in the north-east of Ukraine. Five of the injured were children. There were also strikes on Dnipro, Kyiv and Mykolaiv, as well as the Donetsk region.

“This is how Russia began this Good Friday – with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, Shaheds – maiming our people and cities,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media.

Kharkiv’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov, said the Russians used ballistic missiles equipped with cluster munitions. “That is why the affected areas are so extensive,” he said. At least 20 blocks of flats, 30 houses and an educational institution were damaged.

On Palm Sunday Russia dropped two Iskander missiles in the city centre of Sumy. One of them hit a congress centre. The other exploded between two university buildings and next to a crowded bus and cars.

One key to a successful negotiation is always being willing to walk away from the table. But it isn’t clear whether the Trump administration has threatened to give up on a Russia-Ukraine peace deal as a negotiating tactic or simply because it lacks the concentration for a complicated negotiation – a shortcoming that has dogged the administration’s foreign policy through its first three months in office.

Standing on a tarmac in Paris, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, issued a threat that the US could simply “move on” from mediating the biggest military conflict in Europe since the second world war. That would be the latest about-face for an administration that has already taken a back seat on negotiating a peace in Gaza and retreated on implementing worldwide tariffs that shook financial markets around the globe earlier this month.

Diplomacy, it turns out, is hard. The 24 hours that Donald Trump promised he would need to halt the fighting in Ukraine have long since passed. And the administration has done little of the hard diplomatic work that was required to secure landmark deals like the Dayton agreement or the Camp David accords in the past.

There have been plenty of meetings: Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff has spoken three times with Vladimir Putin, during which he has listened to the Kremlin leader’s thoughts on Ukraine for hours, and Rubio was on the phone with Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, and met with Ukrainian officials and European leaders in Paris on Thursday.

But there are few indications that new ground has been struck, that the US has exerted any pressure on the Kremlin or that the negotiations have identified what kinds of security guarantees would exist to ensure that Russia wouldn’t simply continue the war when it sees fit. One element of a “Trump deal” appears to be this: that it doesn’t take very long or involve very much effort to achieve.

“We’re not going to continue to fly all over the world and do meeting after meeting after meeting if no progress is being made,” Rubio said, noting that the US wanted to stop “thousands” of people from dying in the next year. “So if they’re serious about peace – either side, or both – we want to help. If it’s not going to happen, then we’re just going to move on. We’re going to move on to other topics that are equally if not more important in some ways to the United States.”

Rubio clearly wished to vent frustration on Friday, a day after Trump had said in the White House that he was waiting for Russia’s response to the proposed framework for a peace deal and expected to have it this week. The White House appears to be increasingly frustrated with Moscow, something that both European and Ukrainian officials had hoped would take place.

But if Trump walks away from a deal and the war altogether, the decision will still play into Putin’s hands – relieving Ukraine of a key ally and financial backer in its fight against Russia. Moscow appears to see the situation as a win-win: either taking a favourable deal with the White House or waiting for Trump to lose patience. Which he is now threatening to do.

There are more hopeful voices in the administration. JD Vance, the Ukraine-sceptic vice-president, told Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, on Friday that he felt “optimistic that we can hopefully bring this war, this very brutal war, to a close”. There had been “some things … even in the past 24 hours” that he said could indicate a chance to secure a ceasefire.

But to listen to Rubio or Witkoff, the various sides have barely moved from their opening positions. On Friday, Bloomberg reported that the United States had offered Russia some sanctions relief in exchange for a deal – something that Rubio had offered as far back as his confirmation hearings in January. And Witkoff appeared surprised on Fox News that Russia wanted “so much more” than just a ceasefire. “I mean, it’s just a lot of detail attached to it,” he said. “It’s a complicated situation from, you know – rooted in some real problematic things happening between the two countries.”

There was always an expertise gap in the difficult negotiations over a ceasefire to the Russian war in Ukraine. Now the administration appears to have a patience gap and has signaled it is ready to walk away. Ukraine does not have that option.

One key to a successful negotiation is always being willing to walk away from the table. But it isn’t clear whether the Trump administration has threatened to give up on a Russia-Ukraine peace deal as a negotiating tactic or simply because it lacks the concentration for a complicated negotiation – a shortcoming that has dogged the administration’s foreign policy through its first three months in office.

Standing on a tarmac in Paris, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, issued a threat that the US could simply “move on” from mediating the biggest military conflict in Europe since the second world war. That would be the latest about-face for an administration that has already taken a back seat on negotiating a peace in Gaza and retreated on implementing worldwide tariffs that shook financial markets around the globe earlier this month.

Diplomacy, it turns out, is hard. The 24 hours that Donald Trump promised he would need to halt the fighting in Ukraine have long since passed. And the administration has done little of the hard diplomatic work that was required to secure landmark deals like the Dayton agreement or the Camp David accords in the past.

There have been plenty of meetings: Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff has spoken three times with Vladimir Putin, during which he has listened to the Kremlin leader’s thoughts on Ukraine for hours, and Rubio was on the phone with Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, and met with Ukrainian officials and European leaders in Paris on Thursday.

But there are few indications that new ground has been struck, that the US has exerted any pressure on the Kremlin or that the negotiations have identified what kinds of security guarantees would exist to ensure that Russia wouldn’t simply continue the war when it sees fit. One element of a “Trump deal” appears to be this: that it doesn’t take very long or involve very much effort to achieve.

“We’re not going to continue to fly all over the world and do meeting after meeting after meeting if no progress is being made,” Rubio said, noting that the US wanted to stop “thousands” of people from dying in the next year. “So if they’re serious about peace – either side, or both – we want to help. If it’s not going to happen, then we’re just going to move on. We’re going to move on to other topics that are equally if not more important in some ways to the United States.”

Rubio clearly wished to vent frustration on Friday, a day after Trump had said in the White House that he was waiting for Russia’s response to the proposed framework for a peace deal and expected to have it this week. The White House appears to be increasingly frustrated with Moscow, something that both European and Ukrainian officials had hoped would take place.

But if Trump walks away from a deal and the war altogether, the decision will still play into Putin’s hands – relieving Ukraine of a key ally and financial backer in its fight against Russia. Moscow appears to see the situation as a win-win: either taking a favourable deal with the White House or waiting for Trump to lose patience. Which he is now threatening to do.

There are more hopeful voices in the administration. JD Vance, the Ukraine-sceptic vice-president, told Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, on Friday that he felt “optimistic that we can hopefully bring this war, this very brutal war, to a close”. There had been “some things … even in the past 24 hours” that he said could indicate a chance to secure a ceasefire.

But to listen to Rubio or Witkoff, the various sides have barely moved from their opening positions. On Friday, Bloomberg reported that the United States had offered Russia some sanctions relief in exchange for a deal – something that Rubio had offered as far back as his confirmation hearings in January. And Witkoff appeared surprised on Fox News that Russia wanted “so much more” than just a ceasefire. “I mean, it’s just a lot of detail attached to it,” he said. “It’s a complicated situation from, you know – rooted in some real problematic things happening between the two countries.”

There was always an expertise gap in the difficult negotiations over a ceasefire to the Russian war in Ukraine. Now the administration appears to have a patience gap and has signaled it is ready to walk away. Ukraine does not have that option.

As a young photojournalist living in Gaza, Fatima Hassouna knew that death was always at her doorstep. As she spent the past 18 months of war documenting airstrikes, the demolition of her home, the endless displacement and the killing of 11 family members, all she demanded was that she not be allowed to go quietly.

“If I die, I want a loud death,” Hassouna wrote on social media. “I don’t want to be just breaking news, or a number in a group, I want a death that the world will hear, an impact that will remain through time, and a timeless image that cannot be buried by time or place.”

On Wednesday, just days before her wedding, 25-year-old Hassouna was killed in an Israeli airstrike that hit her home in northern Gaza. Ten members of her family, including her pregnant sister, were also killed.

The Israeli military said it had been a targeted strike on a Hamas member involved in attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians.

Twenty-four hours before she was killed, it was announced that a documentary focusing on Hassouna’s life in Gaza since the Israeli offensive began would be debuted at a French independent film festival that runs parallel to Cannes.

Made by the Iranian director Sepideh Farsi, the film, Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, tells the story of Gaza’s ordeal and the daily life of Palestinians through filmed video conversations between Hassouna and Farsi. As Farsi described it, Hassouna became “my eyes in Gaza … fiery and full of life. I filmed her laughs, her tears, her hopes and her depression”.

“She was such a light, so talented. When you see the film you’ll understand,” Farsi told Deadline. “I had talked to her a few hours before to tell her that the film was in Cannes and to invite her.”

She said she had lived in fear for Hassouna’s life but added: “I told myself I had no right to fear for her, if she herself was not afraid. I clung to her strength, to her unwavering faith.”

Farsi, who lives in exile in France, said she feared that Hassouna had been targeted for her much-followed work as a photojournalist and recently publicised participation in the documentary. Gaza has been the deadliest conflict for journalists in recent history, with more than 170 killed since 2023, though some estimates put it as high as 206.

Since Israel began its bombardment of Gaza, after the attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, more than 51,000 people have been killed, more than half of them women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry. Since the ceasefire with Hamas collapsed in March, Israel has resumed its deadly airstrikes with vigour, and at least 30 people were killed in strikes on Friday.

Fellow journalists in Gaza reacted with grief and anger at the news that an Israeli airstrike had taken Hassouna from them, just as she had feared it would. “She documented massacres through her lens, amid bombardment and gunfire, capturing the people’s pain and screams in her photographs,” said Anas al-Shareef, an Al Jazeera reporter based in Gaza.

Miqdad Jameel, another Gaza-based journalist, called on people to “see her photos, read her words – witness Gaza’s life, the struggle of its children in war, through her images and her lens”.

Her death prompted a statement from the Cannes Acid film festival, where Farsi’s documentary will be screened in May. “We had watched and programmed a film in which this young woman’s life force seemed like a miracle,” they said. “Her smile was as magical as her tenacity. Bearing witness, photographing Gaza, distributing food despite the bombs, mourning and hunger. We heard her story, rejoiced at each of her appearances to see her alive, we feared for her.”

Haidar al-Ghazali, a Palestinian poet in Gaza, said in a post on Instagram that before she was killed, Hassouna had asked him to write a poem for her when she died.

Speaking of her arrival into a kinder afterlife, it read: “Today’s sun won’t bring harm. The plants in the pots will arrange themselves for a gentle visitor. It will be bright enough to help mothers to dry their laundry quickly, and cool enough for the children to play all day. Today’s sun will not be harsh on anyone.”

Hamas has formally rejected Israel’s latest ceasefire proposal, saying it will not accept a “partial” deal that does not guarantee an end to the war or a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.

Hamas’s chief negotiator, Khalil al-Hayya, accused Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of putting forward an offer that “set impossible conditions for a deal that does not lead to the end of the war or full withdrawal”.

There are 58 hostages held in Gaza who were captured by Hamas after the 7 October attack on southern Israel in 2023, with 24 still believed to be alive.

In Israel’s most recent offer to Hamas, they had proposed the initial release of 10 hostages in return for a 45-day ceasefire and the release of Palestinian prisoners, with the promise of further discussion of ending the war and restoring aid to Gaza.

For the first time, Israel had demanded the complete disarmament of Hamas as part of the deal – which the militant group has said is a red line. Hayya said it was their “natural right” to possess weapons.

In a video statement, Hayya said that Hamas was no longer willing to accept “partial agreements as a cover for their political agenda, which is based on continuing the war of extermination and starvation”.

He said that Hamas was ready to agree to a “comprehensive package” that ensured the release of all the hostages, in return for an agreed number of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. A key condition, he added, was that Israel “must completely end the war against our people and fully withdraw from the Gaza Strip”.

This week, Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, had made it clear that Israeli troops intended to remain in “security buffer zones” it had established in Gaza since the ceasefire with Hamas collapsed in March.

In recent weeks, Israeli troops have taken control of about 30% of Gaza, including parts of Rafah. More than 1,600 people in Gaza have been killed since the ceasefire collapsed, with 15 people, including 10 people from the same family, killed in airstrikes overnight.

After Hamas’s rejection of the deal, Netanyahu’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said it was time to “open the gates of hell” on Gaza. Earlier this week, Katz had pledged to escalate the conflict with “tremendous force” if Hamas did not return the hostages.

Attempts by mediators from Egypt, Qatar and the US to restore the ceasefire and bring home the hostages have hit major stumbling blocks, and no progress was made in the latest round of talks in Cairo this week, according to officials.

Aid supplies including food, water and fuel have been blocked from entering Gaza since 2 March. Hamas has accused Israel of using mass starvation as a weapon, which they say is a war crime.

There are also fears for the lives of the remaining living hostages as Israel continues its airstrikes on Gaza. This week, a spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing said it had lost contact with the group holding the Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander after a “direct strike” on his location.

The White House criticised Hamas for its rejection of the deal offered by Israel.

“Hamas’s comments demonstrate they are not interested in peace but perpetual violence,” said the US national security council spokesperson James Hewitt. “The terms made by the Trump administration have not changed: release the hostages or face hell.”

The death toll from a boat fire and capsizing in the Democratic Republic of Congo earlier this week has risen to 148 with more than 100 people still missing, officials said on Friday.

About 500 passengers were on board the wooden boat when it capsized on Tuesday after catching fire on the Congo River in the country’s north-west.

The catastrophe began when a fire started while a person was cooking on board the vessel, said Compétent Loyoko, the river commissioner. Several passengers, including women and children, died after jumping into the water without being able to swim.

Dozens were saved but many of the survivors were left badly burnt. The search for the missing included rescue teams supported by the Red Cross and provincial authorities.

The motorised wooden boat caught fire near the town of Mbandaka, Loyoko said. The boat, HB Kongolo, had left the port of Matankumu for the Bolomba territory.

“The death toll among the 500 passengers on board was extremely high,” said senator Jean-Paul Boketsu Bofili on Friday. “As we speak, more than 150 survivors suffering from third-degree burns are without humanitarian assistance.”

Deadly boat accidents are common in the central African country, where late-night travels and overcrowded vessels are often blamed. Authorities have struggled to enforce maritime regulations.

Congo’s rivers are a main means of transport for its more than 100 million people, especially in remote areas with little infrastructure. Hundreds have been killed in boat accidents in recent years as more people abandon the few available roads for wooden vessels packed with passengers and their goods.

“Our magnificent Congo River and the lakes our country abounds in have become huge cemeteries for the Congolese people. This is unacceptable,” said Bofili.

After walking the Earth for a few hundred thousand years, humans might think they have seen it all. But not according to a team of scientists who claim to have experienced a colour no one has seen before.

The bold – and contested – assertion follows an experiment in which researchers in the US had laser pulses fired into their eyes. By stimulating individual cells in the retina, the laser pushed their perception beyond its natural limits, they say.

Their description of the colour is not too arresting – the five people who have seen it call it blue-green – but that, they say, does not fully capture the richness of the experience.

“We predicted from the beginning that it would look like an unprecedented colour signal but we didn’t know what the brain would do with it,” said Ren Ng, an electrical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley. “It was jaw-dropping. It’s incredibly saturated.”

The researchers shared an image of a turquoise square to give a sense of the colour, which they named olo, but stressed that the hue could only be experienced through laser manipulation of the retina.

“There is no way to convey that colour in an article or on a monitor,” said Austin Roorda, a vision scientist on the team. “The whole point is that this is not the colour we see, it’s just not. The colour we see is a version of it, but it absolutely pales by comparison with the experience of olo.”

Humans perceive the colours of the world when light falls on colour-sensitive cells called cones in the retina. There are three types of cones that are sensitive to long (L), medium (M) and short (S) wavelengths of light.

Natural light is a blend of multiple wavelengths that stimulate L, M and S cones to different extents. The variations are perceived as different colours. Red light primarily stimulates L cones, while blue light chiefly activates S cones. But M cones sit in the middle and there is no natural light that excites these alone.

The Berkeley team set out to overcome the limitation. They began by mapping a small part of a person’s retina to pinpoint the positions of their M cones. A laser is then used to scan the retina. When it comes to an M cone, after adjusting for movement of the eye, it fires a tiny pulse of light to stimulate the cell, before moving on to the next cone.

The result, published in Science Advances, is a patch of colour in the field of vision about twice the size of a full moon. The colour is beyond the natural range of the naked eye because the M cones are stimulated almost exclusively, a state natural light cannot achieve. The name olo comes from the binary 010, indicating that of the L, M and S cones, only the M cones are switched on.

The claim left one expert bemused. “It is not a new colour,” said John Barbur, a vision scientist at City St George’s, University of London. “It’s a more saturated green that can only be produced in a subject with normal red-green chromatic mechanism when the only input comes from M cones.” The work, he said, had “limited value”.

The researchers believe the tool, named Oz vision after the Emerald City in the L Frank Baum books, will help them probe basic science questions about how the brain creates visual perceptions of the world. But it may have other applications. Through bespoke stimulation of cells in the retina, researchers might learn more about colour blindness or diseases that affect vision such as retinitis pigmentosa.

Will the rest of the world get the chance to experience olo for themselves? “This is basic science,” said Ng. “We’re not going to see olo on any smartphone displays or any TVs any time soon. And this is very, very far beyond VR headset technology.”

Virginia’s state flag and seal, depicting the Roman goddess Virtus standing over a slain tyrant, her drooping toga exposing her left breast, has been banned from younger students in a Texas school district.

The district, Lamar consolidated independent school district, near Houston, took action against the image late last year when it removed a section about Virginia from its online learning platform used by third through fifth graders, typically encompassing ages eight to 11, sparking a row, Axios reported on Thursday.

The Texas Freedom to Read Project, a group that opposes censorship and book bans in the state, said it had “unlocked a new level of dystopian, book-banning, and censorship hell in Texas” when it discovered that students in Lamar can no longer learn about the state of Virginia on their online research database, PebbleGo Next.

The group said that after it filed a public records request, the school district acknowledged that “Virginia” had been removed from the website due to the lesson violating the school board’s local library policy banning any “visual depictions or illustrations of frontal nudity” in elementary school library material.

The commonwealth of Virginia’s flag is periodically thrust into the national spotlight, and in 2010 was part a debate about what constitutes sexually explicit material in the state’s school libraries.

Then state attorney general Ken Cuccinelli created special lapel pins that edited the seal to cover the breast.

Battles over Virginia’s seal and flag date back to 1776 when the commonwealth wanted to appear strong during the war of independence over British rule and hit on the image of Virtus, wielding a sword and spear, and the inscription “Sic Semper Tyrannis” or “Thus always to tyrants”, next to a body and fallen crown.

At that time, the tyrant was taken as a symbol of England’s King George III, and Virtus more like a warrior in the Ottoman empire than a Roman deity. Over the years, the image was adapted in various ways.

In 1901, Virginia officials ordered that the depiction of the bared breast be included to show clearly that the figure of Virtus was female.

In the 2010 row, there were debates over Virtus’s nipple and the University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato mocked conservatives over censorship efforts, saying: “When you ask to be ridiculed, it usually happens. And it will happen here, nationally. This is classical art, for goodness’s sake.”

Virginia’s state flag and seal, depicting the Roman goddess Virtus standing over a slain tyrant, her drooping toga exposing her left breast, has been banned from younger students in a Texas school district.

The district, Lamar consolidated independent school district, near Houston, took action against the image late last year when it removed a section about Virginia from its online learning platform used by third through fifth graders, typically encompassing ages eight to 11, sparking a row, Axios reported on Thursday.

The Texas Freedom to Read Project, a group that opposes censorship and book bans in the state, said it had “unlocked a new level of dystopian, book-banning, and censorship hell in Texas” when it discovered that students in Lamar can no longer learn about the state of Virginia on their online research database, PebbleGo Next.

The group said that after it filed a public records request, the school district acknowledged that “Virginia” had been removed from the website due to the lesson violating the school board’s local library policy banning any “visual depictions or illustrations of frontal nudity” in elementary school library material.

The commonwealth of Virginia’s flag is periodically thrust into the national spotlight, and in 2010 was part a debate about what constitutes sexually explicit material in the state’s school libraries.

Then state attorney general Ken Cuccinelli created special lapel pins that edited the seal to cover the breast.

Battles over Virginia’s seal and flag date back to 1776 when the commonwealth wanted to appear strong during the war of independence over British rule and hit on the image of Virtus, wielding a sword and spear, and the inscription “Sic Semper Tyrannis” or “Thus always to tyrants”, next to a body and fallen crown.

At that time, the tyrant was taken as a symbol of England’s King George III, and Virtus more like a warrior in the Ottoman empire than a Roman deity. Over the years, the image was adapted in various ways.

In 1901, Virginia officials ordered that the depiction of the bared breast be included to show clearly that the figure of Virtus was female.

In the 2010 row, there were debates over Virtus’s nipple and the University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato mocked conservatives over censorship efforts, saying: “When you ask to be ridiculed, it usually happens. And it will happen here, nationally. This is classical art, for goodness’s sake.”

US military strikes on Yemen’s Ras Isa fuel port have killed at least 80 people including civilians and rescue workers, according to the Houthi-run health ministry, in the deadliest attack since Washington launched its campaign against the Iran-backed militants.

The rebels’ Al-Masirah TV, citing local officials, said the toll from the strike had “risen to 80 dead and 150 wounded”.

Some analysts see the scale of the attack and the nature of the target – a major economic site in the country – as aimed at sending a message to Tehran amid mounting pressure on Iran from the Trump administration over its nuclear programme.

While Donald Trump has threatened to “annihilate” Yemen’s Houthis, the group remains intact despite the ongoing US air campaign, amid deep scepticism from experts over whether Trump’s military policy is achievable.

In the immediate aftermath of the US strikes, a Houthi official vowed to hit back, announcing that the group had targeted two US aircraft carriers and a military site near Israel’s main airport.

“The American military buildup and continued aggression against our country will only lead to more counterattack and attack operations, clashes and confrontations,” the Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree told a rebel-organised protest in the capital, Sana’a.

The US strikes hit several areas but were mostly concentrated around the port facility, where the dead included truck drivers and emergency responders.

Video footage from the port, posted by the Houthi-affiliated al-Masirah TV on social media in the early hours of Friday, showed massive explosions and bodies strewn across the site.

The TV station later screened interviews with survivors lying on stretchers, including one man with burns on his arms. “We ran away. The strikes came one after the other, then everything was on fire,” a man who said he worked at the port told al-Masirah.

Ras Isa terminal has a storage capacity of 3m barrels and was the first port built for oil exports from Yemen, about 40 years ago.

A Nasa satellite system that monitors fires picked up an intense blaze early on Friday morning at the site just off Kamaran Island.

In a statement posted on social media, US Central Command said: “US forces took action to eliminate this source of fuel for the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists and deprive them of illegal revenue that has funded Houthi efforts to terrorise the entire region for over 10 years.

“This strike was not intended to harm the people of Yemen, who rightly want to throw off the yoke of Houthi subjugation and live peacefully.”

The US has vowed to keep attacking Yemen’s Houthis, in its biggest military operation in the Middle East since Trump took office in January, unless the Houthis cease attacks on Red Sea shipping.

Asked for comment on the Houthis’ casualty figure and its own estimate, US Central Command said it had none beyond the initial announcement of the attacks.

Iran called the US strikes “barbaric”, while the Palestinian militants Hamas denounced them as “blatant aggression”.

The latest US campaign was triggered by Houthi threats to resume attacks on international shipping in protest at Israel’s blocking of aid to the Gaza Strip.

The Houthis have launched dozens of drone and missile attacks on vessels in the Red Sea since November 2023, saying they were targeting ships linked to Israel in protest over the war in Gaza.

Early on Friday, hours after the US attack, Israel’s military said it had intercepted a missile launched from Yemen.

Recent expert analysis for the Atlantic Council was dubious about the practicality of US war aims in Yemen. “The United States’ ability to track [Abdel Malik al-Houthi, the Houthis’ leader] is likely hindered by limited intelligence on the ground in Yemen. This reality was echoed early last year when the US had difficulty assessing the success of its operations and the group’s full arsenal due to a lack of intelligence,” it said.

“Without a reliable presence or informant network, targeting such a well-hidden leader will prove challenging.”

The Trump administration’s clumsy handling of the enlarged US campaign against the Houthis was already mired in controversy before Friday’s large death toll, after details of the initial attack plan were discussed by senior Trump officials on an unsecured chat service to which a journalist had been invited to join.

The Trump administration has replaced Covid.gov – a website that once provided Americans with access to information about free tests, vaccines, treatment and secondary conditions such as long Covid – with a treatise on the “lab leak” theory.

The site includes intense criticism of Dr Anthony Fauci, who helmed national Covid policies under Donald Trump and Joe Biden, the World Health Organization (WHO) and state leadership in New York.

“This administration prioritizes transparency over all else,” according to a senior administration quoted in Fox News, in spite of evidence to the contrary. “The American people deserve to know the truth about the Covid pandemic and we will always find ways to reach communities with that message.”

The origin of the SARS-CoV2 virus has been hotly debated since the pandemic emerged from Wuhan, China, and swept the world in early 2020. At the heart of the debate is whether a lab that studied coronaviruses in Wuhan leaked the virus unintentionally, or if it was part of a natural “spillover” event that took place at a nearby market that sold produce, fish, meat and live exotic animals.

The Wuhan Institute of Virology was funded in part by the US government through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a fact that has added to controversy. Joe Biden pardoned Fauci for fear he would be attacked during the incoming Trump administration.

Although definitive answers about the virus’s beginnings are elusive and may never be known, scientists have argued as recently as August 2024 in the Journal of Virology that, while they remain open-minded, the weight of evidence favors a spillover event.

Spillover events are thought to have started at least two other pandemics in recent human history, including the Sars-CoV-1 outbreak in China in 2003 and the 1918 influenza pandemic, which is believed to have started in the American midwest by human-pig contact. Notably, many scientists are concerned about H5N1 transmission among birds and dairy cows in the US because of its potential to infect humans.

Meanwhile, the “lab leak” theory has received high-profile support from pundits and in the media, particularly in right-leaning circles. It has become the subject of Republican-led hearings, rationale for punishing leaders such as Fauci and defunding scientific institutions such as the NIH.

“NIH’s procedures for funding and overseeing potentially dangerous research are deficient, unreliable, and pose a serious threat to both public health and national security,” the Trump administration’s new website argues.

“Further, NIH fostered an environment that promoted evading federal record keeping laws,” the website argues.

Messenger RNA technology, which powered Covid-19 vaccines and led to their swift development under the first Trump administration, has also come under attack. Many leading critics of the government’s initial approach to Covid-19 now have leadership roles in the new Trump administration – including the health secretary and longtime vaccine skeptic, Robert F Kennedy Jr, and Dr Jay Bhattacharya, who now leads the NIH.

Donald Trump’s second visit to the UK later this year will be disrupted by “even bigger” protests than those that coincided with his state visit in his first term, campaigners have vowed.

On Thursday Trump let slip that he expects to visit the UK in September, after Keir Starmer handed him a personal invitation from King Charles III during his visit to the White House in February.

The Stop Trump coalition has predicted its protests will surpass demonstrations that coincided with Trump’s state visit in 2019 when up to 250,000 took part in a “carnival of resistance”.

Zoe Gardner, a spokesperson for the coalition, said: “This time it will be even bigger, uniting campaigners across a huge range of issues. We are confident that the disgust at Donald Trump is just as strong across the country.”

Protesters plan to dust off a blimp of Trump dressed in a nappy that was the focal point of previous anti-Trump protests, but also replace it with a larger version.

Gardner said: “The blimp will be there or something even bigger and better. The blimp itself still exists, but we are thinking we want to take the next step and do something even more exciting.”

The coalition is hoping the London mayor will again grant permission for anti-Trump blimps to fly over the capital.

Gardner said: “Last time Sadiq Khan gave us permission to fly it. He will probably do so again, but we will have to get various permission from the GLA and the police. It might be different from last time but we are confident that a lot of people will want to come out on to the streets and show their disgust.”

The demonstrations will be a test for the police even with tougher laws available to crack down on protests and activism.

Gardner said: “We want it to be a defiant but joyful celebration of all the things that Trump hates, such as the rights of LGBTQ people, the rights of women, the rights of migrants and refugees, union power and workers’ rights. It will celebrate every marginalised group in society.”

The demonstrators will also target the tech and business leaders that have backed Trump. Gardner said: “If we had one strapline it would be ‘Stop Trump and fight the oligarchy’. We are against empowering the super-rich, including treating Gaza like real estate and chumming up to Putin and the tech billionaires who are looking to the UK for tax breaks.”

Giant papier-mache models of the tech leaders that appeared at Trump’s inauguration including Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk will make an appearance at the protests, Gardner said. As will a dancing troupe of chlorinated chickens to mock the UK’s planned trade deal with the US.

The coalition has the support of a number of campaigns including Global Justice Now and the US leftist group the Indivisibles Movement, as well as a groups backing Palestine and Ukraine.

Starmer offered the UK visit as part of a charm offensive towards Trump aimed at trying to secure a favourable trade deal with the US. Gardner predicted that the protesters will vent their anger at Starmer as well as Trump.

Gardner said: “Starmer should be shamed by these demonstrations. The whole country has been embarrassed by his display of rolling over like a pathetic poodle to whatever Trump does. Starmer’s approach of sucking up is not getting us anywhere.”

She added: “We are looking for anyone who has a fun idea to come forward, because we really want to show Trump what we think of him.”

The largest ever study investigating medical cannabis as a treatment for cancer, published this week in Frontiers in Oncology, found overwhelming scientific support for cannabis’s potential to treat cancer symptoms and potentially fight the course of the disease itself.

The intention of the analysis was to solidify agreement on cannabis’s potential as a cancer treatment, said Ryan Castle, research director at the Whole Health Oncology Institute and lead author of the study. Castle noted that it has been historically difficult to do so because marijuana is still federally considered an illegal Schedule I narcotic.

“Our goal was to determine the scientific consensus on the topic of medical cannabis, a field that has long been dominated by a war between cherrypicked studies,” Castle said.

The study was funded by Cancer Playbook, which works with the Whole House Oncology Institute to collect, analyze and share data on patient-reported outcomes.

While research restrictions on Schedule I substances severely hamper clinical research on cannabis in humans, there is a large body of observational studies on medical cannabis and cancer – as well as lab research – that looks at cannabis’s effect on tumors in test tubes and in animals. The analysis included as many of those studies as possible.

“In order to move beyond bias – conscious or not – it was essential to use a large-scale, radically inclusive methodology based on mathematical reasoning,” Castle said, adding: “We wanted to analyze not just a handful, but nearly every major medical cannabis study to find the actual points of scientific agreement.”

Castle’s study looked at more than 10,000 studies on cannabis and cancer, which he said is “10 times the sample size of the next largest study, which we believe helps make it a more conclusive review of the scientific consensus”.

To analyze the massive quantity of studies, Castle and his team used AI – specifically, the natural language processing technique known as “sentiment analysis”. This technique allowed the researchers to see how many studies had positive, neutral or negative views on cannabis’s ability to treat cancer and its symptoms by, for example, increasing appetite, decreasing inflammation or accelerating “apoptosis”, or the death of cancer cells.

Castle says his team hoped to find “a moderate consensus” about cannabis’s potential as a cancer treatment, and expected the “best case scenario” to be something like 55% of studies showing that medical cannabis improved cancer outcomes.

“It wasn’t 55-45, it was 75-25,” he said.

The study overwhelmingly supported cannabis as a treatment for cancer-related inflammation, appetite loss and nausea. Perhaps more surprisingly, it also showed that cannabis has the potential to fight cancer cells themselves, by killing them and stopping their spread.

“That’s a shocking degree of consensus in public health research, and certainly more than we were anticipating for a topic as controversial as medical cannabis,” Castle said.

Medical cannabis is controversial when it comes to cancer. A 2024 meta-analysis published last year in Jama found that adults with cannabis-use disorder – defined by criteria including an inability to stop or cut down – were 3.5-5 times more likely to develop head and neck cancer. Donald Abrams, an oncologist and professor emeritus of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, says that study was “flawed” in his opinion, “as those patients are so often using tobacco and alcohol, known risk factors for those cancers”.

For his part, Abrams has found cannabis to be useful for cancer patients managing symptoms like appetite loss, nausea, pain and anxiety. But he is skeptical of claims that cannabis can actually fight cancer.

“I have been an oncologist in San Francisco for 42 years now where many if not most of my patients have had access to cannabis. If cannabis cures cancer, I have not been able to appreciate that,” he said.

Still, Abrams admits that “there is elegant pre-clinical evidence from test tubes and animal models that cannabis can affect cancer cells or transplanted tumors” but “as yet those findings have not translated into clinical benefit in people”.

Castle, however, believes that the combination of pre-clinical evidence and patient reported outcomes show that cannabis does have cancer-fighting potential.

A small pilot trial in which 21 patients received either a placebo or a cannabis-based medication in addition to traditional chemotherapy found that those who received the cannabis-based medication survived for longer. Another study of 119 cancer patients found that synthetic CBD helped reduce tumor size and tumor cell circulation.

But to truly prove the efficacy of cannabis and find the best treatment formulation, there would need to be much larger clinical trials in humans.

Castle hopes that his meta-analysis will encourage the US Drug Enforcement Administration to complete the long-stalled process of reclassifying cannabis so it is no longer federally illegal, which could help remove restrictions on clinical research.

“We are not arguing that the standards for adopting new cancer treatments should be lower. We are arguing that medical cannabis meets or exceeds those standards,” he said, “often to a greater extent than current pharmaceutical treatments.”

A no-fly zone order has been put in place over the Sandringham estate after drones were spotted flying in the area last month while Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the royal residence.

Security services requested the restrictions, which were put in place to protect “members of the royal family and other dignitaries”, days after King Charles hosted the Ukrainian president on 2 March at the Norfolk estate. They came into force just over a week later on 10 March.

The move reportedly came after drones flying over the estate sparked a security scare on the weekend of Zelenskyy’s arrival. The Sun reported that one drone was traced to a man sitting in a car nearby and another to a photographer. Other drones reportedly remain unaccounted for.

The transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, signed off on the order that restricts aircraft from flying below 2,000ft (600 metres) at Sandringham “for reasons of public safety” and to ensure the security of “royal family and other dignitaries staying at or visiting Sandringham House”.

The order states: “These regulations impose restrictions on flying in the vicinity of Sandringham House, Norfolk.

“In view of the need for security for members of the royal family and other dignitaries staying at or visiting Sandringham House and at the request of the security services, it has been agreed by the Civil Aviation Authority and the Department for Transport that flying should be restricted in the vicinity of that location for reasons of public safety and security.”

Royal flights, visitors’ aircraft and police and emergency services are exempted from the order.

Zelenskyy arrived at Sandringham House by helicopter from London last month, shortly after he attended Keir Starmer’s summit for European leaders.

His meeting with the king, which began at about 5.30pm, lasted just under an hour. Sources indicated the president was warmly received. There were reports that the UK government agreed to the meeting after a request from the Ukrainian president.

The two heads of state had first met in 2023 at Buckingham Palace. Last year, on the second anniversary of Russia’s full invasion, the king issued a strongly worded message of support for Ukraine, speaking of the “indescribable aggression” faced by Ukrainians and hailing the “determination and strength of the Ukrainian people”.