Donald Trump has accused Volodymyr Zelenskyy of jeopardising what he claimed was an imminent peace deal to end the war in Ukraine, as he gave the clearest hint yet that the US would be willing to formally recognise Russia’s seizure of Crimea as part of any agreement.

The US president claimed a deal to end the war – largely negotiated between Washington and Moscow – was close, while the vice-president, JD Vance, said the agreement would include a proposal to freeze the conflict roughly along the current frontlines.

It was unclear how Ukraine and its European allies, who were meeting in London on Wednesday, would respond to a plan largely constructed in their absence. Zelenskyy countered by proposing a simple ceasefire without conditions on both sides, though this did not immediately gain any traction from the US.

But after a day of speculation and partial disclosure of the terms of the peace proposal, Trump attacked his Ukrainian counterpart for complaining that Kyiv was unwilling to cede Crimea to Russia – the most contentious aspect of the tentative agreement that has leaked so far.

The US president wrote on social media that “Crimea was lost years ago” in 2014, when Barack Obama was president, and its control “is not even a point of discussion”, an apparent reference to the fact that Ukraine has been unable to recapture it in the three-year war sparked by Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country in February 2022.

Reports that Washington would be willing to recognise Crimea under Russian control have been circulating for a couple of days. That prompted Zelenskyy to say on Tuesday that “Ukraine will not recognise the occupation of Crimea”, arguing that doing so it would be incompatible with the country’s constitution.

Responding to a report of his comments, Trump wrote on Wednesday that “this statement is very harmful to the Peace Negotiations with Russia” and accused the Ukrainian leader of making “inflammatory statements” that “makes it so difficult to settle this War”.

“Nobody is asking Zelenskyy to recognize Crimea as Russian Territory,” Trump wrote, implying that US was willing to do so, before accusing Ukraine of failing to defend Crimea. “If he wants Crimea, why didn’t they fight for it eleven years ago when it was handed over to Russia without a shot being fired?”

Russia unilaterally annexed Crimea in March 2014 during a political crisis in Ukraine after the ousting of the country’s pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukovych. Gunmen seized the regional parliament and airports, and in a subsequent referendum 97% voted to join Russia. The poll was not recognised as legal by the US, UK or EU.

Matthew Savill, the director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank, said that US recognition of Russia’s control of Crimea would be a “de jure recognition of territory taken by force” and amount to “actively endorsing the Russian position in opposition to the European position and Ukrainian politics”.

A Ukraine peace summit in London was hastily downgraded on Wednesday morning after Washington said the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, would not be travelling the evening before. Hosted by the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, the meeting was said to be taking place at the level of officials instead.

Downing Street said it had consisted of substantive technical meetings on how to stop the fighting, with Washington’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg; Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, and national security advisers from France and Germany among those present.

Vance had earlier called on Ukraine and Russia to accept a US-led peace proposal and threatened that Washington would abandon its effort to end the war – a Trump campaign promise – if it was not accepted.

“We’ve issued a very explicit proposal to both the Russians and the Ukrainians, and it’s time for them to either say yes or for the United States to walk away from this process,” Vance said.

The US proposal would mean “we’re going to freeze the territorial lines at some level close to where they are today”, Vance said, though he added there should be some adjustments. “Now, of course, that means the Ukrainians and the Russians are both going to have to give up some of the territory they currently own.”

A ceasefire on the current frontlines has already been accepted in principle by Ukraine and Zelenskyy called again for an immediate halt to the three-year war. “In Ukraine, we insist on an immediate, full and unconditional ceasefire,” he said, adding that “stopping the killings is the number one task”.

Early on Wednesday, nine people were reportedly killed when a Russian drone hit a bus carrying workers in the Ukrainian city of Marhanets – one of 134 large drones that Ukrainian authorities reported had attacked the country overnight.

Though Ukraine has indicated it is willing to accept de facto Russian occupation of about a fifth of its territory, arguing that it will reunite the country by diplomatic means eventually, it has refused to accept what would be a domestically unpopular partition by accepting Russia’s formal control of Crimea, even if the recognition came from the US.

Other anticipated elements of the deal are that Ukraine would be prevented by a US veto from joining Nato, a point largely accepted by a reluctant Kyiv. Another, that future security guarantees would be provided by a UK and French-led “coalition of the willing” made up of 30 countries, has not been accepted by Russia.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said Russia continued to oppose the presence of European peacekeeping forces, which Ukraine sees as the only viable alternative to Nato membership for ensuring its security.

Peskov said there were “many nuances” surrounding negotiations to end the conflict in Ukraine and that the positions of the various parties involved had yet to be brought closer – suggesting, from a Russian perspective, that the deal was not yet agreed.

Initial reports on Tuesday had suggested Russia was willing to trade territory it does not control in Ukraine – in effect, fresh air – for a US recognition of its seizure of Crimea, in what would be a formal acknowledgment that it is possible to change borders by force, creating an extraordinary post-second world war precedent.

Russia may be banking on the idea that Ukraine is weary after more than three years of war and that its proposal is a reasonable counter to western suggestions, backed by the US, Ukraine and Europe, that there should be an immediate and full ceasefire to allow other wider negotiations to take place.

The contours of the White House’s “final” peace proposal to halt the Russian invasion of Ukraine have come into focus with proposals to freeze the frontlines in exchange for terms that critics have termed a surrender to Russian interests in the the three-year-old conflict.

Three people with knowledge of the talks told the Guardian that Vladimir Putin had signalled a readiness to effectively freeze the frontlines of the conflict in exchange for numerous concessions, including US recognition of Russian control of Crimea and considerable US sanctions relief. The Financial Times first reported Putin’s proposal on Tuesday.

The vice-president, JD Vance, confirmed on Wednesday that the US would seek to “freeze the territorial lines at some level close to where they are today”. Some territory could change hands, he said.

“The current lines, or somewhere close to them, is where you’re ultimately … going to draw the new lines in the conflict,” he said. “Now, of course, that means the Ukrainians and the Russians are both going to have to give up some of the territory they currently own.”

But reports of the US proposal do not include other Kremlin demands, including a limit on the future size of the Ukrainian military or a ban on foreign troops in the country. Russia had listed concerns over Ukraine’s military and foreign backing as among its “root causes” for launching its 2022 full-scale invasion.

A draft version of the White House proposal seen by Axios reported that Russia would receive de jure recognition of Moscow’s control of Crimea, de facto recognition of Russia’s occupation of much of eastern Ukraine, and a promise that Ukraine would not become a member of Nato (although it could join the EU).

Russia could also receive sanctions relief for its energy sector, enabling the Kremlin to increase vital revenue flows that have been impeded since the invasion.

Ukraine, in turn, would receive a “robust security guarantee” from an ad hoc group of European nations, although the draft did not describe how a peacekeeping force would operate or whether the US would take part. Ukraine would also be promised unimpeded passage on the Dnipro River and some territory in the Kharkiv region, along with vaguely defined pledges for future financial support for rebuilding.

Senior Russian officials have said Moscow will not take part in talks that include discussions of a European peacekeeping force in Ukraine. “Russia is still against [the presence of European peacekeepers],” the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on Wednesday. “That would be de facto Nato forces and resources on the territory of Ukraine. It was one of the main reasons for the start of the special military operation.”

The US decision to recognise Crimea would be politically contentious in Ukraine and would mark a turning point in US postwar policy, with the White House effectively endorsing a Russian effort to redraw the borders of Europe by force.

The Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said this week that Ukraine “will not legally recognise the occupation of Crimea … There’s nothing to talk about here. This is against our constitution.”

Donald Trump reacted angrily to Zelenskyy’s remarks on Wednesday, calling them “very harmful to the Peace Negotiations with Russia”.

“Nobody is asking Zelenskyy to recognize Crimea as Russian Territory but, if he wants Crimea, why didn’t they fight for it eleven years ago when it was handed over to Russia without a shot being fired?” he wrote.

“The situation for Ukraine is dire,” he said. Zelenskyy “can have peace or, he can fight for another three years before losing the whole country”.

Moscow also appears to be eyeing the deal favourably. “There is a chance to make a deal,” said one source close to the Kremlin. “But they could also miss that chance.”

A draft of the plan seen by Axios, as well as the Telegraph, said that Ukraine would retain control over the Zaporizhzhia power plant but it would be managed by the US, which would supply electricity to both Ukraine and Russia.

When his jet lands in Moscow, Steve Witkoff – Donald Trump’s envoy and longtime friend – will mark his fourth visit to Russia this year, a pointed gesture that says as much about who he is meeting as who he is not.

The 68-year-old real estate executive, who holds no formal diplomatic credentials, was expected in London on Wednesday for talks with Kyiv and European allies.

But in a dramatic turn of events, Witkoff, along with the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, abruptly cancelled the trip – underscoring growing tensions between Trump’s inner circle and Ukraine and Europe. The two US officials were reportedly furious with Volodymyr Zelenskyy after Ukraine pushed back against a proposal from the Trump administration to recognise Russia’s illegal 2014 annexation of Crimea.

For Moscow, it marked the latest symbolic victory in its efforts to pull the US closer to its side. Trump on Wednesday launched his latest tirade against Zelenskyy, placing sole blame for the lack of progress on the Ukrainian president.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump once again referred to him as “the man with ‘no cards to play’”, and claimed that Ukraine was facing a stark choice. “The situation for Ukraine is dire – He can have Peace or, he can fight for another three years before losing the whole Country.”

From the outset, Vladimir Putin, flanked by trusted aides with decades of diplomatic experience, has worked to present Russia as the reasonable party in negotiations with Trump and keen to engage in talks, while painting Ukraine and its European allies as the ones standing in the way of peace.

That narrative appeared to be gaining traction in Washington until Kyiv pushed back, in effect calling Putin’s bluff by demanding an unconditional ceasefire, which Moscow promptly rejected.

Sensing that Putin was stalling, Trump, who appears desperate to secure a ceasefire within his first 100 days in office – by 30 April – started issuing rare public criticism of Russia.

The Russian leader quickly moved to curry favour with Washington, announcing a surprise Easter ceasefire – an offer the French foreign minister later described as an attempt to keep Trump from growing “impatient and angry”.

On Tuesday, the Financial Times reported that Putin had signalled a willingness to halt the invasion along the frontlines as they are now – in effect freezing the conflict, in what would mark the first tangible concession from his previously maximalist demands.

In exchange, Washington was reportedly prepared to formally recognise Russia’s annexation of Crimea and, implicitly, accept Moscow’s military gains since the full-scale invasion began in 2022.

A source familiar with Moscow’s thinking confirmed to the Guardian that Putin had floated the proposal during recent talks with Witkoff. However, the source also warned that the offer could be a strategic manoeuvre to draw Trump into accepting broader Russian terms.

Hints of what some of those demands could be began to emerge almost immediately. As in previous rounds of negotiations, Moscow appeared to soften its stance only to follow up with a series of fresh caveats.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, reiterated Russia’s opposition to the presence of European peacekeeping forces in Ukraine – a model Kyiv views as its best alternative to Nato membership to protect it from a renewed Russian assault.

Valentina Matviyenko, the speaker of the Russian federation council, the upper house of the Russian parliament, was even more direct: Russia will never take part in negotiations that involve the idea of deploying European forces on Ukrainian territory.

Even among Russia’s elite, it remains unclear whether Putin is intentionally stalling the peace talks or simply trying to squeeze as much as possible from Trump before committing to a course.

Konstantin Remchukov, a well-connected Kremlin-aligned newspaper editor, wrote in a column published on Sunday that Moscow could end the fighting once it had expelled all Ukraine’s forces out of the Russian region of Kursk.

“When they liberate the last half a per cent, then the troops can stop wherever they are when the news reaches them,” Remchukov wrote in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

But in an interview with the Guardian earlier this month, a source with close ties to senior Russian officials said Putin appeared prepared and willing to continue fighting for full control of the four Ukrainian regions he claimed as Russian territory in 2022.

There are also growing questions about how long Putin can sustain his delicate balancing act: keeping Trump engaged without provoking his anger.

JD Vance, the US vice-president, on Wednesday emphasised that the clock was running down. “We’ve issued a very explicit proposal to both the Russians and the Ukrainians, and it’s time for them to either say yes – or for the US to walk away from this process,” he said, becoming the latest official to issue a warning.

Yet the Kremlin seems to be deliberately dragging its feet, with Peskov advising Trump this week against “rushing a resolution to the Ukraine conflict”.

For Alexander Baunov, a political analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, “Putin appears undecided: walk away from Trump, or continue trying to leverage him to serve Russia’s interests?”

However, with Trump unlikely to increase military support for Ukraine under any scenario, Baunov noted that “the prospect of the US pulling out of peace mediation between Russia and Ukraine doesn’t particularly alarm the Kremlin”.

“In that case,” Baunov said, “things would simply continue as they have in recent months, which, by most accounts, has worked to Russia’s advantage.”

For now, Moscow is focused on Witkoff’s next visit and other urgent matters – like picking out the next gift to flatter his boss, after Putin presented him with a kitschy Trump portrait last month.

Stock markets have risen around the world after Donald Trump said his tariffs on China would come down “substantially” and he had “no intention” of firing the chair of the US central bank, Jerome Powell.

Weeks of tough talk on trade from White House officials have rattled investors and Trump now appears to be softening his tone. The president told reporters in Washington on Tuesday he planned to be “very nice” to China in trade talks and that tariffs could drop in both countries if they could reach a deal, adding: “It will come down substantially, but it won’t be zero.”

Overnight in Asia, Japan’s Nikkei rose by nearly 2%, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was up 2.4% and the South Korean Kospi gained 1.6%.

The rally spread to Europe in early trading on Wednesday, with the UK’s FTSE 100 index up 1.6%, while the Italian FTSE MIB rose by 1.1%. Germany’s Dax gained 2.6% and France’s Cac 2.1%.

Meanwhile, US stocks opened on a high Wednesday morning, with the Dow rallying over 800 points, and the Nasdaq Composite up over 3%. The rally stalled in the afternoon but all the major stock markets managed to end the day higher.

On Wednesday, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, also took a softer, optimistic tone on China in remarks delivered at the Institute of International Finance in Washington DC, saying that China “knows it needs to change”.

“If China is serious on less dependence on export-led manufacturing growth and rebalancing toward a domestic economy … let’s rebalance together,” Bessent said. “This is an incredible opportunity.”

Bessent told investors in a private meeting on Tuesday that he expects a “de-escalation” of the trade war between China and the US in the “very near future”.

“‘America First’ does not mean America alone. To the contrary, it is a call for deeper collaboration and mutual respect among trade partners,” Bessent said on Wednesday.

Investor confidence also grew after Trump told reporters he would not fire Powell, the chair of the US Federal Reserve, reversing the previous day’s losses triggered by the president calling the central bank boss a “major loser”.

The president has criticised the Fed chair repeatedly for refusing to cut interest rates and last week hinted that he believed he could dismiss Powell before his term as the head of the central bank comes to an end in May next year.

Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, last week that Powell’s termination “could not come fast enough”, after the Fed chair raised concerns about the impact of trade tariffs on the American economy.

However, the suggestion from the White House that the US central bank will remain independent helped stocks to rise on Wednesday, as well as the prospect of lower tariffs on Chinese imports to the US.

The US dollar, which hit a three-year low on Tuesday before recovering, rose by 0.25% against a basket of major currencies.

Oil prices also rose on Wednesday, with Brent crude rising above $68 (£51) a barrel amid hopes that lower tariffs will be less damaging to the global economy. The rise was also led by new US sanctions targeting Iranian liquefied petroleum gas and the crude oil shipping magnate Seyed Asadoollah Emamjomeh.

Meanwhile, gold, which is traditionally viewed by investors as a safe haven asset during volatile periods, retreated from the new high of $3,500 (£2,620) an ounce it hit on Tuesday, to trade at about $3,307.

India has closed a key land border with Pakistan, cancelled a water-sharing treaty and barred Pakistan’s citizens from entering under a visa exemption scheme after Tuesday’s attack by Islamic militants in Kashmir that killed 26 tourists.

India’s defence minister, Rajnath Singh, said those who carried out and planned the Kashmir region’s worst attack on civilians in years, including those “behind the scenes”, would see a swift response.

Announcing the downgrading of relations with Pakistan, the Indian foreign secretary, Vikram Misri, told a media briefing that cross-border connections to the attack had been “brought out” at a special meeting of the security cabinet, after which it was decided to act.

Misri said India was suspending the Indus water treaty “until Pakistan credibly and irrevocably abjures its support for cross-border terrorism”. Pakistan has denied involvement in the attack and said its prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, would chair a national security committee meeting on Thursday to respond.

Indian security forces fanned out across the Himalayan region of Kashmir on Wednesday as the army and police launched a massive manhunt for the perpetrators of the attack on Tuesday that killed at least 26 tourists, all men.

Amid rapidly rising tensions in the region, which has been riven by militant violence since the start of an anti-Indian insurgency in 1989, survivors said the militants had asked men they had rounded up to recite Islamic verses before executing those who couldn’t.

Asavari Jagdale, from India’s western state of Maharashtra, who lost her father and uncle in the attack, told local media that she and her family hid inside a nearby tent along with other tourists when the shooting started.

When the militants reached their tent, Asavari said, they asked her father, Santosh Jagdale, to come out and recite an Islamic verse. “When he failed to do so, they pumped three bullets into him, one on the head, one behind the ear and another in the back,” she said. “My uncle was next to me. The terrorists fired four to five bullets into him.”

Debasish Bhattacharyya, a Hindu who teaches at Assam University and who grew up in a Muslim neighbourhood in the state, told Reuters he had been spared because he was familiar with Islamic verses.

The militants ordered him and those nearby on to their knees and when the others started chanting the verses, he followed along.

“I knew the words and at that moment it was probably the only way to save our lives. Those who failed were killed,” he said, adding that they fled when the gunmen left, and trekked through a forest for two hours.

A little-known militant group, the Kashmir Resistance, claimed responsibility for the attack. Posting on social media, it expressed discontent that more than 85,000 “outsiders” had been settled in the region, spurring a “demographic change”.

The attack, reportedly involving four gunmen, took place in a meadow in the Pahalgam area of the scenic Himalayan federal territory. The dead were 25 Indians and one Nepalese national. It was the worst attack on civilians in India since the 2008 Mumbai shootings.

The prime minister, Narendra Modi, cut short a two-day visit to Saudi Arabia and returned to Delhi on Wednesday morning. He held a meeting with his national security adviser, the foreign minister and other senior officials at the airport, and a special security cabinet meeting was called for later on Wednesday.

The incident is being viewed as a major escalation in the regional conflict, in which attacks targeting tourists have been rare. The last deadly attack took place in June 2024 when at least nine people were killed and 33 injured after militants caused a bus carrying Hindu pilgrims to plunge into a deep gorge.

The Kashmir Resistance claimed those attacked on Tuesday “were not ordinary tourists; instead, they were linked to and affiliated with Indian security agencies”.

The attack prompted an immediate exodus of tourists from the region, with airlines operating extra flights from Srinagar, the summer capital of the territory. Local television showed tourists carrying their bags to taxis and filing out of a hotel in Srinagar.

“How can we continue our trip in such a situation?” Sameer Bhardwaj, a tourist from Delhi, said to the news agency ANI. “We need to prioritise our safety. We can only travel if our minds are relaxed but everyone is tense here. So we cannot continue to travel.”

Gulzar Ahmad, a taxi driver in Pahalgam, said: “This attack will impact our work but we are more concerned about the loss of lives. No matter what we do in the future, our tourism industry has been stained by this attack. The perpetrators must receive exemplary punishment so that no one dares to commit such an act again.”

The attack occurred during a four-day visit to India by the US vice-president, JD Vance, who called it a “devastating terrorist attack”.

Omar Abdullah, the region’s top elected official, posted on social media: “It’s heartbreaking to see the exodus of our guests from the [Kashmir] valley after yesterday’s tragic terror attack in Pahalgam. But at the same time, we totally understand why people would want to leave.”

There has been an increase in the number of targeted killings of Hindus, including migrant workers from other Indian states, in the disputed Himalayan region since Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party government unilaterally revoked Kashmir’s limited autonomy in 2019 by imposing a communication blockade and jailing activists and political leaders.

It split the state into two federally administered territories – Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh – and allowed local authorities to issue domicile certificates to outsiders, enabling them to apply for jobs and buy land. Since then, civil liberties and media freedom in the region have been severely curtailed.

Pakistan’s foreign office spokesperson, Shafqat Khan, issued a statement saying Pakistan was “concerned about the loss of tourists’ lives in the attack”, and extended condolences to the victims.

Thousands of people queued for hours under the hot spring sun in St Peter’s Square on Wednesday to pay their final respects to Pope Francis, whose simple wooden coffin has been placed on the main altar of the 16th-century basilica, where he will lie in state until Friday evening.

The pope, the head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics, died at his home in Casa Santa Marta on Monday aged 88 after a stroke and subsequent heart failure. He had been recovering from double pneumonia, which had kept him in hospital for five weeks.

In keeping with his requests for simple funeral rites, Francis was dressed in his vestments, holding a rosary, with his open casket lined with red cloth.

Unlike those of most of his predecessors, his coffin, which is being watched over by two Swiss Guards, has not been raised on a platform. That was one of the rituals Francis shunned when he simplified rules for papal funerals last year.

His funeral mass will take place at St Peter’s Square on Saturday morning, an event that will be attended by a host of world leaders and royals, including the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, the US president, Donald Trump, and Prince William. He will then be buried at the Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica in Rome’s Esquilino neighbourhood, breaking with longstanding Vatican tradition.

On Wednesday morning, mourners erupted into a prolonged but sombre applause as Francis’s coffin was carried through the square by pallbearers in a solemn procession involving dozens of cardinals and bishops, and watched over by Swiss Guards.

The bells of the basilica gently tolled as a choir chanted psalms and prayers in Latin, repeating the call to “pray for us”.

“It was the most profound moment,” said Cardinal Thomas Christopher Collins, the former archbishop of Toronto, who was among the procession. “But from the simple prayers to the incense, it was no different to a [funeral] ritual that any baptised person would have.”

As of Wednesday night, a Vatican official said almost 20,000 people, from all parts of the world, had joined the queue, which stretched along the road leading to Vatican City, to pay their respects to Francis, many holding umbrellas to shield themselves from the sun.

Braced for a long wait, Abigail and her family, from California, brought food. “We’re happy to wait as long as it takes,” she said. “It’s a privilege to be here.”

It was only a few days ago that Francis had made his way through St Peter’s Square aboard the popemobile before appearing on the basilica’s central balcony to give a blessing to the crowds gathered for Easter Sunday mass. It was his final public appearance.

Even though people were aware that Francis was seriously ill, some of those waiting in the queue to pay tribute were still struggling to digest the fact of his death.

“It feels strange that he is no longer with us,” said Piotr Grzeszyk, from Poland.

Their shoulders wrapped with the flag of Francis’s native Argentina, Vicky Cabral and her family arrived in Rome from Buenos Aires on Saturday and saw Francis on the balcony the next day.

They had been hoping to get another glimpse of him during the now suspended canonisation of Carlo Acutis, which had been due to take place on 27 April.

“We came to Italy for the Catholic jubilee year and for Carlo Acutis,” said Cabral. “But it now feels like a real blessing to be here for this special moment. Francis was a great pope and I think he should be made a saint too.”

Once through the huge bronze doors and inside the cavernous basilica, pilgrims fell silent as they shuffled slowly towards the altar.

Francesco Catini, who travelled to Rome from Venice, had waited for four hours to see Francis’s body. “It was a beautiful experience,” he said. “To me, Francis was a living example of peace, of love, and especially of humility and solidarity.”

Chiara Frassine, from Brescia in northern Italy, had waited a similar amount of time. “I’m very happy to be here,” she said as she left the basilica. “Pope Francis had a pure soul. He was a humble point of reference for many people, not just Catholics.”

Not everyone waiting to pay their respects was Catholic. Standing at the end of the queue was Gunnar Prieß, from Germany, who arrived in the Italian capital on Wednesday morning.

“I booked a flight only to be here to see this,” he said. “I am not Catholic, but this is so majestic. What we’re seeing here today is the expression of a holy ritual that goes back 2,000 years. There’s an aura in the Vatican and I wanted to experience it.”

As the funeral rituals continue, speculation is rife about who will succeed Francis. Some 103 cardinals met on Wednesday evening and approved nine days of mourning from the date of the funeral, with a conclave – the secret election process to choose a new pope – therefore not expected to begin before 5 May.

There is no clear frontrunner, although Luis Antonio Tagle, a reformer from the Philippines, and Pietro Parolin, from Italy, who were among the procession, are early favourites.

Collins will be involved in the conclave too and, at 78, will be among the 135 cardinals eligible to vote. But he declined to give any hint of who he thought might succeed Francis.

A prominent Colombian politician and former minister has accused the country’s president, Gustavo Petro, of being a drug addict who allegedly went awol during an official visit to France.

In a damning letter to the South American leader, the former foreign minister Álvaro Leyva painted a dire picture of his one-time boss and ally, later publishing the text on his official X account.

When he joined Petro’s cabinet, shortly after his historic 2022 election, Leyva recalled having high hopes for his administration believing Colombia’s first leftwing president could become a “regional leader and global hope”.

However, Leyva said he had subsequently witnessed scenes that had caused him “unease and bewilderment”, citing the president’s supposedly poor punctuality, incoherent statements and the pointless trips he allegedly made.

Most sensationally, the ex-minister claimed he had witnessed unspecified “embarrassing moments” involving Petro such as when – during a 2023 trip to France – Colombia’s president allegedly “disappeared” for two days.

“It was in Paris that I was able to confirm that you had a drug addiction problem … Your recovery, sadly, has not taken place,” wrote Leyva, who was once close to Colombia’s leftist leader despite being of the right and served under him for nearly two years.

Petro, who has denied such claims in the past, hit back at his former ally on social media, although he stopped short of denying the accusation. Writing on X, where he is known for his lengthy and sometimes late-night posts, Petro criticized the press and said he had better things to do than spend time with his foreign minister while visiting the French capital.

“Isn’t Paris full of parks, museums, bookstores, more interesting than the letter’s writer, to spend two days in? Almost everything in Paris is more interesting. Don’t I have daughters and granddaughters in Paris who are far more interesting than the writer?” Petro wrote.

Leyva’s letter sparked a political firestorm in Colombia, with newspapers stamping his claims across their homepages.

Writing in El Tiempo, the journalist Juan Sebastián Lombo Delgado, said that never before in recent Colombian history had a key ex-member of the government publicly questioned “the faculties” of his former boss.

Congresswoman Katherine Miranda told the same newspaper the “grave” accusations would be irrelevant “if we were talking about any old person – but we are talking about the head of state”.

In 2023, after similar allegations from a Colombian journalist, Colombia’s president responded: “The only thing I am addicted to is a morning coffee.”

Earlier this year Petro claimed cocaine – a drug Colombia produces more of than any other country – was “no worse than whiskey” and was only illegal because it was made in Latin America. Cocaine production has soared since he took office nearly three years ago. According to the UN office on drugs and crime there was a 53% potential increase in cocaine production during 2022, with production reaching 2,664 metric tons.

The claims came as Petro again locked horns with Donald Trump, with whom he had a very public falling out earlier this year over deportation flights.

The row between Petro and Trump began at 3.41am local time in Colombia, on 26 January, when the former took to X to condemn the US’s treatment of Colombian migrants and announce he would not allow US planes to land in his country.

Trump responded swiftly and ferociously, threatening visa restrictions and tariffs unless Petro backed down, which he quickly did.

On Tuesday, Petro said he believed the US had now “taken away” his visa and claimed he could no longer travel there. “I’ve already seen Donald Duck numerous times so I’ll go see other things,” he added sarcastically.

A prominent Colombian politician and former minister has accused the country’s president, Gustavo Petro, of being a drug addict who allegedly went awol during an official visit to France.

In a damning letter to the South American leader, the former foreign minister Álvaro Leyva painted a dire picture of his one-time boss and ally, later publishing the text on his official X account.

When he joined Petro’s cabinet, shortly after his historic 2022 election, Leyva recalled having high hopes for his administration believing Colombia’s first leftwing president could become a “regional leader and global hope”.

However, Leyva said he had subsequently witnessed scenes that had caused him “unease and bewilderment”, citing the president’s supposedly poor punctuality, incoherent statements and the pointless trips he allegedly made.

Most sensationally, the ex-minister claimed he had witnessed unspecified “embarrassing moments” involving Petro such as when – during a 2023 trip to France – Colombia’s president allegedly “disappeared” for two days.

“It was in Paris that I was able to confirm that you had a drug addiction problem … Your recovery, sadly, has not taken place,” wrote Leyva, who was once close to Colombia’s leftist leader despite being of the right and served under him for nearly two years.

Petro, who has denied such claims in the past, hit back at his former ally on social media, although he stopped short of denying the accusation. Writing on X, where he is known for his lengthy and sometimes late-night posts, Petro criticized the press and said he had better things to do than spend time with his foreign minister while visiting the French capital.

“Isn’t Paris full of parks, museums, bookstores, more interesting than the letter’s writer, to spend two days in? Almost everything in Paris is more interesting. Don’t I have daughters and granddaughters in Paris who are far more interesting than the writer?” Petro wrote.

Leyva’s letter sparked a political firestorm in Colombia, with newspapers stamping his claims across their homepages.

Writing in El Tiempo, the journalist Juan Sebastián Lombo Delgado, said that never before in recent Colombian history had a key ex-member of the government publicly questioned “the faculties” of his former boss.

Congresswoman Katherine Miranda told the same newspaper the “grave” accusations would be irrelevant “if we were talking about any old person – but we are talking about the head of state”.

In 2023, after similar allegations from a Colombian journalist, Colombia’s president responded: “The only thing I am addicted to is a morning coffee.”

Earlier this year Petro claimed cocaine – a drug Colombia produces more of than any other country – was “no worse than whiskey” and was only illegal because it was made in Latin America. Cocaine production has soared since he took office nearly three years ago. According to the UN office on drugs and crime there was a 53% potential increase in cocaine production during 2022, with production reaching 2,664 metric tons.

The claims came as Petro again locked horns with Donald Trump, with whom he had a very public falling out earlier this year over deportation flights.

The row between Petro and Trump began at 3.41am local time in Colombia, on 26 January, when the former took to X to condemn the US’s treatment of Colombian migrants and announce he would not allow US planes to land in his country.

Trump responded swiftly and ferociously, threatening visa restrictions and tariffs unless Petro backed down, which he quickly did.

On Tuesday, Petro said he believed the US had now “taken away” his visa and claimed he could no longer travel there. “I’ve already seen Donald Duck numerous times so I’ll go see other things,” he added sarcastically.

At least 25 people have been killed in Israeli airstrikes across Gaza, including 11 in the bombing of a school turned shelter, the strip’s civil defence agency said, as Israel’s war against Hamas in the besieged Palestinian territory grinds on despite a new ceasefire proposal from Arab mediators.

Intense Israeli bombings hit several areas of Gaza on Wednesday, killing 11 in a school sheltering displaced people in al-Tuffah, a neighbourhood of Gaza City. The strike ignited a huge fire that claimed most of the casualties, said a civil defence spokesperson, Mahmoud Bassal.

The Qatari network Al Jazeera and Palestinian media broadcast footage of several bodies wrapped in white shrouds at al-Shifa hospital’s morgue, and women weeping over the body of a child.

“We were sleeping and suddenly something exploded, we started looking and found the whole school on fire, the tents here and there were on fire, everything was on fire,” a witness, Umm Mohammed al-Hwaiti, told Reuters.

“People were shouting and men were carrying people, charred [people], charred children, and were walking and saying ‘dear God, dear God, we have no one but you’. What can we say? Dear God, only,” she said.

Unusually, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) did not comment on the school attack. Israeli officials say fighters from Hamas and allied factions hide behind civilian infrastructure, claims that the Palestinian militant group denies.

Israel has renewed its aerial and ground campaign since the collapse of a two-month-old ceasefire and hostage and prisoner release swap in mid-March. Since then, according to the UN, nearly 2,000 people have been killed and another 420,000 forced to leave their homes or shelters as Israel seizes ever-larger swathes of the territory for what it terms security buffer zones.

More than 51,300 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive after the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel in which 1,200 people were killed and another 250 taken captive. Fifty-nine hostages remain in Gaza.

Israel imposed a total blockade on the strip two weeks before it unilaterally restarted the fighting. Food, water, fuel and medicine are now running critically low, leading aid agencies to declare that Gaza’s already devastating humanitarian crisis is worse than ever.

On Wednesday, the foreign ministers of the UK, France and Germany urged Israel to stop blocking aid into Gaza, warning of “an acute risk of starvation, epidemic disease and death”.

“Humanitarian aid must never be used as a political tool and Palestinian territory must not be reduced nor subjected to any demographic change,” the ministers said. The joint statement – unusually strong criticism from some of Israel’s closest allies – came several weeks after similar calls from the UN, EU and Arab states.

Efforts led by Qatari and Egyptian mediators to resume talks aimed at a ceasefire and ending the war have not yet led to a breakthrough. Reports of a new plan emerged on Wednesday that would include a truce of between five and seven years, and the release of the rest of the Israeli hostages seized in October 2023.

A Hamas delegation travelled to the Egyptian capital, Cairo, late on Tuesday to discuss the proposal. Israel has not responded to the invitation to another round of indirect negotiations.

There has been little sign that either side is willing to move closer on fundamental issues such as the disarmament of Hamas or the withdrawal of Israeli troops, although it is believed mediators are under pressure from Washington to show progress before Donald Trump’s visit to the Middle East next month.

The president of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority (PA), Mahmoud Abbas, made a rare intervention in the conflict on Wednesday, calling for Hamas to free the Israeli hostages and saying their captivity provided Israel with “excuses” to attack Gaza.

Basem Naim, a senior Hamas official, called Abbas’s remarks “insulting”. Hamas and Abbas’s secular Fatah party, which dominates the semi-autonomous Palestinian Authority, fought a brief civil war in 2007 that resulted in Hamas seizing control of Gaza.

A 6.2-magnitude earthquake hit below the Sea of Marmara near Istanbul, prompting widespread panic and scores of injuries in the Turkish city, although there were no immediate reports of serious damage.

More than 150 people were hospitalised with injuries sustained while trying to jump from buildings, said the governor’s office in Istanbul, a city that is considered at high risk of a major quake.

The earthquake had a shallow depth of about 6 miles (10km), according to the United States Geological Survey, and its epicentre was about 25 miles (40km) south-west of Istanbul, below the Sea of Marmara.

It was felt in the neighbouring provinces of Tekirdağ, Yalova, Bursa and Balıkesir and in the city of İzmir, about 340 miles (550km) south of Istanbul. The interior minister, Ali Yerlikaya, said the earthquake lasted 13 seconds and was followed by more than 50 aftershocks, the strongest measuring 5.9 magnitude.

The quake happened at 12.49pm on Wednesday, during a public holiday when many children were out of school and celebrating in the streets of Istanbul. Panicked residents rushed from their homes and buildings into the streets. The disaster and emergency management agency urged people to stay away from buildings.

“Due to panic, 151 of our citizens were injured from jumping from heights,” the Istanbul governor’s office said in a statement. “Their treatments are ongoing in hospitals and they are not in life-threatening condition.”

Many residents flocked to parks, schoolyards and other open areas to avoid being near buildings in case of collapse or subsequent earthquakes. Some people pitched tents in parks.

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said at an event marking the National Sovereignty and Children’s Day holiday: “Thank God, there does not seem to be any problems for now. May God protect our country and our people from all kinds of calamities, disasters, accidents and troubles.”

Leyla Ucar, a personal trainer, said she had been exercising with her student on the 20th floor of a building when they felt intense shaking.

“We shook incredibly. It threw us around, we couldn’t understand what was happening, we didn’t think of an earthquake at first because of the shock of the event,” she said. “It was very scary.”

Senol Sari, 51, told Associated Press he had been with his children in the living room of their third-floor apartment when he heard a loud noise and the building started shaking. They fled to a nearby park. “We immediately protected ourselves from the earthquake and waited for it to pass,” Sari said. “Of course, we were scared.”

They later were able to return home calmly, Sari said, but they are worried that a bigger quake will someday strike the city. He said it was “an expected earthquake, our concerns continue”.

Cihan Boztepe, 40, was one of many who fled to the streets with his family in order to avoid a potential collapse. Standing next to his sobbing child, Boztepe said that in 2023 he had been living in Batman province, an area close to the southern part of Turkey, where major quakes struck at the time, and that Wednesday’s tremor felt weaker and that he wasn’t as scared.

“At first we were shaken, then it stopped, then we were shaken again. My children were a little scared but I wasn’t. We quickly gathered our things and went down to a safe place. If it were up to me, we would have already returned home,” he said.

Yerlikaya said authorities had not received reports of collapsed buildings. He told Habertürk television that there had been reports of damage to buildings.

Turkey is crossed by two major faultlines and earthquakes are frequent. A 7.8-magnitude earthquake on 6 February 2023, and a second powerful tremor hours later, destroyed or damaged hundreds of thousands of buildings in 11 southern and south-eastern provinces, leaving more than 53,000 people dead. Another 6,000 people were killed in the northern parts of neighbouring Syria.

The families of prisoners being held by the authoritarian governments of El Salvador and Venezuela have condemned President Nayib Bukele’s offer to swap 252 Venezuelan detainees sent to his jails by the Trump administration for the same number of political prisoners incarcerated by Nicolás Maduro’s regime.

Nelson Suárez, whose brother was among the Venezuelan immigrants sent from the US to a notorious maximum-security jail in El Salvador last month, said he was desperate for the release of his brother, from whom he has heard nothing in five weeks.

But Suárez voiced outrage that his sibling – a 33-year-old musician who uses the stage name SuarezVzla – had become a bargaining chip in a political game. “I feel they are treating my brother like merchandise … like political merchandise,” said Suárez.

Sebastián García Casique, whose 24-year-old brother Francisco was also sent to the prison in El Salvador, also condemned the proposed trade. “Why are you using human beings in a negotiation as if they were toys?” he asked Bukele in a post on Instagram.

Relatives of the estimated 900 political prisoners who are incarcerated in Venezuela also questioned Bukele’s controversial offer, which the rightwing populist made on Sunday on the social network X, where he has more than 7.5 million followers.

In an open letter, the Committee for the Freedom of Political Prisoners in Venezuela said it wanted both political prisoners in Venezuela and innocent immigrants jailed in El Salvador to be freed. But the group said it did not support the “exploitation of the pain of victims for propaganda purposes in an effort to cover up injustices being committed against innocent Venezuelans, either inside or outside of the country”.

The committee opposed those incarcerated being “played with” or “used as a political resource to make invisible the inhumane conditions” in which prisoners were being detained in both countries.

Bukele repeated his offer on Tuesday after Maduro’s administration rejected what it called his “cynical” gambit, with Venezuela’s top prosecutor calling El Salvador’s president a “tyrannical” human trafficker.

Scores of Venezuelan immigrants have been deported to El Salvador since mid-March without due process, with Donald Trump’s officials accusing them of being dangerous terrorists and gang members. However, the administration has produced little evidence for those claims and many of the detainees – who were at least initially held in a maximum-security prison called the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) – appear to have no criminal background. Their relatives insist they are innocent.

“First they were supposedly alleged terrorists – and now they are no longer terrorists, they’re part of a political exchange,” complained Suárez, who believed the Venezuelan migrants were being treated by Bukele “as if they were animals”.

Adelys Ferro, a Florida-based Venezuelan American activist who runs an advocacy group called the Venezuelan-American Caucus, said she also wanted freedom for both Venezuela’s political prisoners and the innocent immigrants being held in El Salvador.

Ferro slammed Bukele’s “painful and disgusting” political stunt. “What he’s trying to do – to negotiate innocent Venezuelans back and forth with the Maduro dictatorship – is despicable,” Ferro said.

“We cannot celebrate two authoritarians negotiating back and forth with Venezuelan lives.”

Norway has launched a new scheme to lure top international researchers amid growing pressure on academic freedom in the US under the Trump administration.

Following in the footsteps of multiple institutions across Europe, the Research Council of Norway on Wednesday launched a 100m kroner (£7.2m) fund to make it easier to recruit researchers from other countries.

The initiative is open to researchers from around the world, but it was expanded and accelerated after the Trump administration announced substantial cuts last month.

Norway’s announcement comes before a visit to the White House by the Norwegian prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, and his finance minister, the former Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg. Subjects on the agenda are expected to include security, defence, Ukraine, tariffs and trade.

The Nordic country’s minister for research and higher education, Sigrun Aasland, said: “It is important for Norway to be proactive in a demanding situation for academic freedom. We can make a difference for outstanding researchers and important knowledge, and we want to do that as quickly as possible.”

Aasland added: “Academic freedom is under pressure in the US, and it is an unpredictable position for many researchers in what has been the world’s leading knowledge nation for many decades.”

The research council said it would put out a call for proposals next month including in the areas of climate, health, energy and artificial intelligence.

The scheme is planned to take place over several years, with 100m kroner set aside for 2026.

Mari Sundli Tveit, the chief executive of the research council, told broadcaster NRK: “This is particularly relevant to the situation in the US. Academic freedom is under pressure and funding is being cut.”

Other countries to take similar action include France, where nearly 300 academics have applied to Aix-Marseille University after it offered to take US-based researchers, and the former French president François Hollande called for the creation of a “scientific refugee” status for compromised academics.

The Belgian university Vrije Universiteit Brussel has also opened up new postdoctoral positions targeted at Americans, and the Netherlands has said it plans to launch a fund to attract researchers there.

Despite their immense size, species of prehistoric giant kangaroos from a site in Queensland were probably homebodies with a surprisingly small range compared to other kangaroos, according to new Australian research.

Protemnodon, which roamed the Australian continent between 5m and 40,000 years ago and is now extinct, was significantly larger than its modern relatives. Some species weighed up to 170kg, making them more than twice as heavy as the largest red kangaroo.

Given their size, researchers expected they might have an expansive territory, said University of Wollongong palaeo-ecologist Chris Laurikainen Gaete, the co-author of the study published in PLOS One.

That’s because in most modern plant-eating mammals, including kangaroos and other macropods, larger body size correlated with geographic range, he said. A small marsupial such as the pademelon, for example, occupies an area smaller than a kilometre squared, whereas the red kangaroo – the largest of all kinds – in outback Australia can hop long distances, sometimes further than 20km.

But analysis of fossil teeth found near Mt Etna, 30km north of Rockhampton in Queensland, revealed something quite different. These protemnodon kept to close quarters, living and dying near the caves where their remains were found.

Co-author Dr Scott Hocknull, a vertebrate palaeontologist and senior curator at the Queensland Museum, said the individuals from Mt Etna seemed to be “real homebodies” that stayed within “a tiny pocket” in and around the limestone caves.

“These gigantic kangaroos were just chilling at home, eating the rainforest leaves, because there were heaps of them around. That also means that the environment was quite stable. It meant that over hundreds of thousands of years, these animals decided that staying put was a good bet.”

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The population at Mt Etna was “probably quite happy” for some time, Hocknull said. The rainforest probably provided a reliable source of food, while the caves offered protection from prehistoric predators, such as marsupial lions.

But their restricted range was a “bad bet” in the end, Hocknull said, because it pre-disposed them to a risk of extinction when a changing climate and increasing aridity disrupted the rainforest environment about 280,000 years ago.

Dr Isaac Kerr, who specialises in kangaroo palaeontology at Flinders University and was not involved with the study, said protemnodon fossils – found mainly in the south and east of the country – indicated there were several species adapted to different environments.

“Probably they were all over the whole continent, including New Guinea,” he said. A site in Tasmania had one of the latest surviving species, dated to 41,000 years ago.

Kerr said these megafauna kangaroos ranged in size but were generally stockier than their modern counterparts, with shorter feet.

Protemnodon probably looked something like a wallaroo, he said, “squat and muscular but still quite large compared to a modern kangaroo”.

Mt Etna is one of Australia’s richest fossil sites, containing evidence of ancient Pleistocene rainforests and records covering periods of past environmental change when rainforests gave way to open, arid environments.

The researchers’ next step was to apply similar techniques to fossils of smaller kangaroos such as tree kangaroos, pademelons and rock wallabies from Mt Etna, which still have living descendants, to understand how they survived the environmental changes while protemnodon died out.

The study compared the unique chemical signatures found in the local geology with those found in the fossilised teeth to establish the range of each animal, Gaete said.

“Strontium is an element that varies in the environment, specifically in underlying bedrocks – so a limestone will have a significantly different strontium signature compared to something like volcanic rock or basalt,” he said. These unique signatures made their way into soil and plants, and were reflected in the fossilised teeth of herbivores that ate those plants.

Laurikainen Gaete said the technique could be used to understand, on a site-by-site basis, why certain species of megafauna disappeared from particular places.

Hocknull said: “It fundamentally shifts how palaeontologists and ecologists look at the fossil record.”