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.

Australia will use “whatever avenues” it can to help Melbourne man Oscar Jenkins, who faces a 15-year jail term in Russia for fighting with Ukrainian troops.

The prime minister said on Saturday that the government would “continue to make representations to the reprehensible regime of Vladimir Putin” to release Jenkins, 33, a former teacher who fought with Ukraine’s armed forces against Russia’s invasion.

After initial reports in January that Jenkins had died in captivity, Russia then confirmed he was alive and in custody. In February video of him appeared on YouTube in which he appeared weak and said he thought he had a broken arm.

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According to several news reports on Saturday, the Russian prosecutor’s office in Luhansk – eastern Ukrainian territory currently occupied by Russia – has approved a criminal indictment against Jenkins. The Guardian has confirmed that a charge was laid.

Russia has indicted other foreign prisoners of war.

“We continue to hold serious concerns for Mr Jenkins and are working with Ukraine and other partners to advocate for his welfare and release.” a spokesperson for Australia’s department of foreign affairs and trade said.

The ABC reported that the indictment claimed “a citizen of Australia, on his own initiative, in order to receive material remuneration, arrived on the territory of Ukraine to participate as a mercenary in an armed conflict with the Russian Federation on the side of enemy troops”.

The ABC also cited local media claiming he was paid up to $15,000 a month to fight on Ukraine’s side against Russia.

The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has said Jenkins was being held as a prisoner of war, which would mean he should be afforded the protection of international humanitarian law. But Moscow referred to him as a mercenary, which would mean he is not covered by the conventions.

Anthony Albanese said on Saturday the Australian government would “stand up and use whatever avenues we have at our disposal to continue to make those representations [on behalf of Jenkins] … both to Russia, but also, of course, through our friends in Ukraine, who have also made representations as well”.

“The Russian war against the people of Ukraine is a war against international law. It’s against national sovereignty.

“The people of Ukraine are fighting for a democratic nation, for their own sovereignty, but they’re also fighting for the international rule of law, which is why we do want to see peace, but we do want to see it on the terms that are acceptable to Ukraine.”

The government is considering sending a peacekeeping force to Ukraine, a plan opposed by the Coalition.

• Ukraine imposed sanctions on three Chinese companies on Friday, claiming they were involved in the production of advanced Iskander missiles. The sanctions list, which also includes Russian companies, names Beijing Aviation & Aerospace Xianghui Technology, Rui Jin Machinery and Zhongfu Shenying Carbon Fiber Xining, all registered in China.

• Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said on X: “Today, we have expanded our Ukrainian sanctions against nearly a hundred more entities – natural and legal persons – most of whom are involved in the production of such missiles – Iskanders – like those that struck our Kharkiv. Many of these entities are Russian, but unfortunately, some are also from China.” On Thursday, Zelenskyy accused China of supplying Russia with artillery and gunpowder, which Beijing has denied.

• The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said the Trump administration was ready to abandon its efforts to broker a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia “within days”. “We’re not going to continue with this endeavour for weeks and months on end. So we need to determine very quickly now, and I’m talking about a matter of days, whether or not this is doable in the next few weeks,” Rubio said in Paris after meeting European and Ukrainian leaders on Friday.

• Following Rubio’s comments, Donald Trump said the US is ready to “pass” on brokering a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine unless a settlement is reached “very shortly”. The US president 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 if the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, was stalling, Trump replied: “I hope not.”

• The Guardian has obtained the memorandum of intent signed by Ukraine and the US over a minerals deal. It envisages setting up a joint investment fund between the two countries and lays out a deadline of 26 April to finalise negotiations. The document recognises the “significant financial and material support” Washington has given Kyiv since Russia’s full-scale 2022 invasion.

• The US is prepared to recognise Russian control of the Ukrainian region of Crimea as part of a broader peace agreement between Moscow and Kyiv, Bloomberg News has reported, citing people familiar with the matter. According to Bloomberg, the people said a final decision on the matter hadn’t yet been taken, and the White House and state department did not respond to a request for comment.

• A Russian missile attack on the north-eastern city of Kharkiv killed one man inside his home and wounded at least 112 others, including nine children, on Friday. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said Russia launched four missiles at Kharkiv, three of them ballistic and carrying cluster warheads. Zelenskyy added later that the Iskander missiles had been used in the attack. “This is how Russia began this Good Friday – with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, Shaheds,” he said on X.

• A Russian drone strike early on Friday hit a bakery in northern Ukraine where traditional Easter cakes were being prepared, killing one man, Ukrainian officials said. Images shared by Ukrainian emergency services – which said they were filmed at the scene of the strike in the city of Sumy – showed trays of Easter cakes covered in grey dust, and a smashed window nearby. The person killed was a local businessman who was at the bakery to collect his order when the drone struck at 5am, according to Sybiha.

• Russia and Ukraine will conduct a new prisoner swap on Saturday mediated by the United Arab Emirates, a source close to the negotiations told Reuters. Nearly 500 Russian and Ukrainian prisoners and 46 injured soldiers will be exchanged in the latest swap to be mediated by Abu Dhabi. The exchange will involve 246 prisoners from each side, the source said.

• Kyiv said on Friday it had received the bodies of hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers killed during battles with Russia, the second such repatriation in the space of three weeks. “As a result of repatriation activities, the bodies of 909 fallen Ukrainian defenders were returned to Ukraine,” the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, a government agency, said in a statement on social media.

• A 19-year-old Russian activist has been sentenced to two years and eight months in prison after using 19th-century poetry and graffiti to protest against the conflict in Ukraine, according to a Reuters witness in the St Petersburg court on Friday. Darya Kozyreva was found guilty of repeatedly “discrediting” the Russian army after she put up a poster with lines of Ukrainian verse on a public square and gave an interview to Sever.Realii, a Russian-language service of Radio Free Europe.

The US supreme court has ordered the Trump administration to temporarily halt the deportation of Venezuelan men in immigration custody, after their lawyers said they were at imminent risk of removal without the judicial review previously mandated by the justices.

“The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court,” the justices said early on Saturday.

Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas publicly dissented.

The order is the latest example of how the country’s courts are challenging the Trump administration’s overhaul of the immigration system, which has been characterised by a number of deportations that have either been wrongful or carried out without due process.

In an emergency Friday court filing, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said dozens of Venezuelan men held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Bluebonnet detention center in Texas were given notices indicating they were classified as members of the Tren de Aragua gang. They said the men would be deported under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), and were told “that the removals are imminent and will happen tonight or tomorrow”.

The ACLU warned immigration authorities were accusing other Venezuelan men held there of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang that would make them subject to deportation.

The ACLU said a number of the men in Texas had already been loaded on a bus and urged the court to rule before they could be deported.

The ACLU has already sued to block deportations under the Alien Enemies Act of two Venezuelans held in the Texas detention center and is asking a judge to issue an order barring removals of any immigrants in the region under the law.

The supreme court has allowed some deportations under the AEA, but has previously ruled they could proceed only if those about to be removed had a chance to argue their case in court and were given “a reasonable time” to contest their pending removals.

Federal judges in Colorado, New York and southern Texas have also issued orders barring the removal of detainees under the AEA until the administration provides a process for them to make claims in court. But there’s been no such order issued in the area of Texas that covers Bluebonnet, which is located 24 miles north of the city of Abilene in the far northern end of the state.

District judge James Wesley Hendrix this week declined to bar the administration from removing the two men identified in the ACLU lawsuit because immigration officials filed sworn declarations that they would not be immediately deported.

But the ACLU’s Friday filing includes sworn declarations from three separate immigration lawyers who said their clients in Bluebonnet were given paperwork indicating they were members of Tren de Aragua and could be deported by Saturday. In one case, immigration lawyer Karene Brown said her client, identified by initials and who only spoke Spanish, was told to sign papers in English.

“Ice informed FGM that these papers were coming from the president, and that he will be deported even if he did not sign it,” Brown wrote.

The ACLU asked Hendrix to issue a temporary order halting any such deportations. Later on Friday, with no response from Hendrix, the ACLU asked district judge James Boasberg in Washington to issue a similar emergency order, saying they had information that detainees were being loaded on buses.

In their court filing, lawyers say clients received a document Friday from immigration officials, titled “Notice and Warrant of Apprehension and Removal under the Alien Enemies Act”.

It reads: “You have been determined to be … a member of Tren de Aragua.”

“You have been determined to be an alien enemy subject to apprehension, restraint and removal from the United States … This is not a removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act,” the notice reads.

Before the supreme court decision, Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat, denounced the reported plan. “We cannot stand by,” Jayapal wrote on social media, as the Trump administration “continues to disappear people”.

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.”

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.”

Iran’s top negotiator believes reaching an agreement on its nuclear programme with the US is possible as long as Washington is realistic, as the two sides prepare to resume talks in Rome on Saturday.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, and the US Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, will begin indirect negotiations through mediators from Oman, after their first round in Muscat, which both sides described as constructive.

“If they demonstrate seriousness of intent and do not make unrealistic demands, reaching agreements is possible,” Araqchi told a news conference in Moscow on Friday after talks with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.

Tehran has, however, sought to tamp down expectations of a quick deal. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said this week he was “neither overly optimistic nor pessimistic”.

The talks take place under the shadow of Donald Trump’s threat to attack Iran if it does not reach a deal with the US over its nuclear programme.

The US president told reporters on Friday: “I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”

Trump, who ditched a 2015 nuclear pact between Iran and six powers during his first term in 2018 and reimposed crippling sanctions on Tehran, has revived his “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran since returning to the White House in January.

Washington wants Iran to halt production of highly enriched uranium, which it believes is aimed at building an atomic bomb.

Tehran, which has always said its nuclear programme is peaceful, says it is willing to negotiate some curbs in return for the lifting of sanctions, but wants watertight guarantees that Washington will not renege again as Trump did in 2018.

Araghchi said Iran’s right to enrich uranium was “non-negotiable”, after Witkoff called for its complete halt.

Since 2019, Iran has breached and far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on its uranium enrichment, producing stocks far above what the west says is necessary for a civilian energy programme.

In an interview published on Wednesday by French newspaper Le Monde, the UN nuclear watchdog chief, Rafael Grossi, said Iran was “not far” from possessing a nuclear bomb.

Grossi, who held talks with Iranian officials during a visit to Tehran this week, said the US and Iran were “at a very crucial stage” in the talks and “don’t have much time” to secure a deal.

Iran’s top negotiator believes reaching an agreement on its nuclear programme with the US is possible as long as Washington is realistic, as the two sides prepare to resume talks in Rome on Saturday.

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, and the US Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, will begin indirect negotiations through mediators from Oman, after their first round in Muscat, which both sides described as constructive.

“If they demonstrate seriousness of intent and do not make unrealistic demands, reaching agreements is possible,” Araqchi told a news conference in Moscow on Friday after talks with Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.

Tehran has, however, sought to tamp down expectations of a quick deal. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said this week he was “neither overly optimistic nor pessimistic”.

The talks take place under the shadow of Donald Trump’s threat to attack Iran if it does not reach a deal with the US over its nuclear programme.

The US president told reporters on Friday: “I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”

Trump, who ditched a 2015 nuclear pact between Iran and six powers during his first term in 2018 and reimposed crippling sanctions on Tehran, has revived his “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran since returning to the White House in January.

Washington wants Iran to halt production of highly enriched uranium, which it believes is aimed at building an atomic bomb.

Tehran, which has always said its nuclear programme is peaceful, says it is willing to negotiate some curbs in return for the lifting of sanctions, but wants watertight guarantees that Washington will not renege again as Trump did in 2018.

Araghchi said Iran’s right to enrich uranium was “non-negotiable”, after Witkoff called for its complete halt.

Since 2019, Iran has breached and far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on its uranium enrichment, producing stocks far above what the west says is necessary for a civilian energy programme.

In an interview published on Wednesday by French newspaper Le Monde, the UN nuclear watchdog chief, Rafael Grossi, said Iran was “not far” from possessing a nuclear bomb.

Grossi, who held talks with Iranian officials during a visit to Tehran this week, said the US and Iran were “at a very crucial stage” in the talks and “don’t have much time” to secure a deal.

About 10,000 pages of records related to the 1968 assassination of Robert F Kennedy, including handwritten notes by the assassin, who said the US senator and Democratic presidential candidate “must be disposed of” and acknowledged an obsession with killing him.

The release continued the disclosure of national secrets ordered by Donald Trump after he began his second presidency in January. It comes a month after unredacted files related to the 1963 assassination of president John F Kennedy were disclosed. The earlier documents gave curious readers more details about cold- war era covert US operations in other nations but did not initially lend credence to long-circulating conspiracy theories about who killed JFK, RFK’s brother.

Robert Kennedy was fatally shot on 5 June 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, moments after giving a speech celebrating his victory in California’s presidential primary. His assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving life in prison.

The files included pictures of handwritten notes by Sirhan.

“RFK must be disposed of like his brother was,” read the writing on the outside of an empty envelope with the return address from the district director of the Internal Revenue Service in Los Angeles.

Sirhan also filled a page of a Pasadena City College notebook with variations of “RFK must die” and “RFK must be killed.” In a note dated 18 May 1968, he wrote: “My determination to eliminate RFK is becoming more of an unshakable obsession.”

In another of the newly released documents, the assassin said he advocated for “the overthrow of the current president”. The Democrat Lyndon Johnson was in the White House at the time of RFK’s death.

“I have no absolute plans yet, but soon will compose them,” wrote Sirhan, who pledged support for communist Russia and China.

The newly released files also included notes from interviews with people who knew Sirhan from a wide variety of contexts, such as classmates, neighbors and coworkers. While some described him as “a friendly, kind and generous person”, others depicted a brooding and “impressionable” young man who felt strongly about his political convictions and briefly believed in mysticism.

According to the files, Sirhan told his garbage collector that he planned to kill Kennedy shortly after Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated on 4 April 1968. The co-worker, a Black man, said he planned to vote for Kennedy because he would help Black people.

“Well, I don’t agree,” Sirhan replied, the man told investigators. “I am planning on shooting the son of a bitch”.

FBI documents describe interviews with a group of tourists who had heard rumors about Kennedy being shot weeks before his death. Several people who visited Israel in May 1968 said a tour guide told them Kennedy had been shot. One person said he heard that an attempt on Kennedy’s life had been made in Milwaukee. Another heard that he was shot in Nebraska.

The National Archives and Records Administration posted 229 files containing the pages to its public website. Many files related to the assassination had been previously released – but others had not been digitized and sat for decades in federal government storage facilities.

Trump, a Republican, has championed in the name of transparency the release of documents related to high-profile assassinations and investigations. But he’s also been deeply suspicious for years of the government’s intelligence agencies. His administration’s release of once-hidden files opens the door for additional public scrutiny and questions about the operations and conclusions of institutions such as the CIA and the FBI.

Trump signed an executive order in January calling for the release of government documents related to the assassinations of Robert F Kennedy and King after their killings within two months of each other.

Lawyers for Kennedy’s killer have said for decades that he is unlikely to reoffend or pose a danger to society. And in 2021, a parole board deemed Sirhan suitable for release. But California governor Gavin Newson rejected the decision in 2022, keeping him in state prison. In 2023 , a different panel denied him release, saying he still lacks insight into what caused him to shoot Kennedy.

The late senator’s son Robert F Kennedy Jr, who now serves as Trump’s health and human services secretary, commended the president and his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, for what he called their “courage” and “dogged efforts” to release the files.

“Lifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government,” Kennedy Jr said in a statement.

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.

A rise in misogyny and racism is flooding UK schools as pupils ape the behaviour of figures such as Donald Trump and Andrew Tate after exposure through social media and online gaming, teachers have warned.

A survey by the NASUWT union found most teachers identified social media as “the number one cause” of pupil misbehaviour, with female staff bearing the brunt. Teachers also raised concerns about parents who refuse to accept school rules or take responsibility for their children’s behaviour.

One teacher told the union: “A lot of the students are influenced by Tate and Trump, they spout racist, homophobic, transphobic and sexist comments in every conversation and don’t believe there will be consequences.”

The NASUWT’s general secretary, Patrick Roach, told the union’s annual conference on Friday: “Two in three teachers tell us that social media is now a critical factor contributing to bullying and poor pupil behaviour.

“Pupils who believe it is their inalienable right to access their mobile phones throughout the school day – and use them to interrupt lessons, bully others, act out, or to garner respect from their peers.”

One primary teacher said: “I have had boys refuse to speak to me, and speak to a male teaching assistant instead, because I am a woman and they follow Andrew Tate and think he is amazing with all his cars and women and how women should be treated. These were 10-year-olds.”

Others reported instances of boys “barking at female staff and blocking doorways … as a direct result of Andrew Tate videos”. Another teacher said: “Pupils watch violent and extreme pornographic material. Their attention spans have dropped. They read lots of fake news and sensationalised stories that make them feel empowered and that they know better than the teacher.”

Roach said the union had “positive discussions” with ministers about tackling the problem but warned that restricting access to mobile phones during the school day did not go far enough. “We now need a plan to tackle what has become a national emergency,” he said.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We know the rise of dangerous influencers is having a damaging impact on our children, which is why we are supporting the sector in their crucial role building young people’s resilience to extremism as part of our plan for change.

“That’s why we provide a range of resources to support teachers to navigate these challenging issues, and why our curriculum review will look at the skills children need to thrive in a fast-changing online world.

“This is on top of wider protections being brought in for children with the Online Safety Act, to ensure children have an age-appropriate experience online.”

The Liberal Democrats, however, said the union’s findings showed that more needed to be done. “Toxic algorithms are pushing many children into dark corners of the internet, where sinister attitudes that cause terrible harm in the real world, including in our schools, are free to develop,” the party’s education spokesperson, Munira Wilson, said.

Delegates to the NASUWT conference in Liverpool heard that parents had become increasingly hostile, and even violent, when called in to discuss their child’s behaviour.

Lindsay Hanger, a delegate from Norwich, said unacceptable behaviour was being tolerated in many schools in England because of a need to meet attendance targets “at any cost” and avoid suspensions or exclusions.

“I think the government needs to go further, with a strategy to ensure that all parents of school-aged children are expected to uphold behaviour strategies or risk their child being denied their place in the classroom,” Hanger said.

The conference passed a motion instructing the union to oppose “no exclusion” policies being legitimised across the education sector – a reference to campaigns seeking to end or curtail the use of exclusions.

Roach also told the conference that the union wanted “a real-terms pay award for teachers this autumn that is funded fully”, warning that anything less “will be met with the response from our members it deserves”.

Roach told Schools Week newspaper that the NASUWT would hold a formal strike ballot in England if the government ignored recommendations for above-inflation pay increases by the independent pay review body.

The conference also passed a motion ordering NASUWT leaders to rule out a merger with the National Education Union (NEU) or other unions. Some members are concerned that Matt Wrack, the former leader of the Fire Brigades Union and the leading candidate to replace Roach as general secretary, supports a merger with the more leftwing NEU.

Mars Delight, Cadbury Dream and Rowntree’s Texan are just some of the once beloved chocolate bars that have been discontinued over the years, and now after almost six decades the dark chocolate Toblerone is joining them in the confectionery graveyard.

The triangular-shaped almond-and-honey-laced chocolate bar is a staple of supermarkets and airport duty-free shopping, but will be discontinued in the UK.

A spokesperson for Mondelēz, the company that produces Toblerone, said it made the “difficult decision” to discontinue its 360g dark chocolate bar because of “changing tastes”.

“While we understand that this may be disappointing for some consumers, we continue to invest in Toblerone,” they added. They did not say whether the product would be discontinued outside the UK.

The announcement comes as the UK enters the Easter bank holiday weekend, when chocolate sales usually soar.

By Friday afternoon, the bar was out of stock on the Waitrose website as social media users urged people to stock up.

The bar is believed to be a portmanteau of the surname of the bar’s inventor, Theodor Tobler, and torrone, a toasted-almond nougat confection typical of Christmas traditions in south-western Europe.

This is not the first time it has grabbed the headlines. In 2023 Mondelēz said the image of the Matterhorn mountain peak would be removed from Toblerone packaging after some production was moved outside Switzerland. In 2016 it increased the gaps between the triangular chocolate chunks.

This is by no means the first time that chocolate connoisseurs have seen their favourite bars removed from supermarket shelves.

Last year, Nestlé confirmed that it was “taking away” Breakaway bars from food production lines. The Swiss food firm said it discontinued the bar because of dwindling sales of the one-time lunch-box staple.

Milky Way Crispy Rolls were discontinued in 2022 to the dismay of many but, earlier this year, Mars reintroduced the product and new variations of the chocolate-wafer bar including Bounty and Twix versions.

The end of the dark chocolate Toblerone comes as consumers have found a taste for “Dubai chocolate”, a chocolate bar containing a filling of pistachio cream and toasted knafeh, a traditional Middle Eastern dessert made from shredded filo.

Lindor recently released its own version of the viral treat, priced at £10 a bar. Lidl has also launched a more affordable take on the nutty chocolate at £4.99 each.

Shoppers queued outside Lidl stores around the country to buy one of the supermarket’s bars and they reportedly sold out within hours.

The news also comes amid rising cocoa prices, which reached a record high in December. The price of chocolate rose by 13.6% in the year to March, according to Office for National Statistics figures.

Some consumers have complained about soaring Easter egg prices, with some having risen by as much as 50% compared to last year according to a Which? investigation.

Many products have not only gone up in price, but have also shrunk in size. The Which? investigation found that the price of a white chocolate Twix Easter egg from Tesco had increased from £5 to £6 year-on-year. It also shrank from 316g to 258g. In terms of price per 100g, this constitutes a rise of 47%.

The consumer group also found that a five-pack of mixed 200g Cadbury Creme Eggs bought at Morrisons had increased from £2.62 last year to £4 this year.

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.”