The US and Kyiv have signed an agreement to share profits and royalties from the future sale of Ukrainian minerals and rare earths, sealing a deal that Donald Trump has said will provide an economic incentive for the US to continue to invest in Ukraine’s defense and its reconstruction after he brokers a peace deal with Russia.

The minerals deal, which has been the subject of tense negotiations for months and nearly fell through hours before it was signed, will establish a US-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund that the Trump administration has said will begin to repay an estimated $175bn in aid provided to Ukraine since the beginning of the war.

“This agreement signals clearly to Russia that the Trump administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine over the long term,” said Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, in a statement.

“President Trump envisioned this partnership between the American people and the Ukrainian people to show both sides’ commitment to lasting peace and prosperity in Ukraine. And to be clear, no state or person who financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine.”

Ukraine’s first deputy prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko, confirmed in a social media post that she had signed the agreement on Wednesday. “Together with the United States, we are creating the fund that will attract global investment into our country,” she wrote. The deal still needs to be approved by Ukraine’s parliament.

Ukrainian officials have divulged details of the agreement which they portrayed as equitable and allowing Ukraine to maintain control over its natural resources.

The Ukrainian prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said that the fund would be split 50-50 with between the US and Ukraine and give each side equal voting rights.

Ukraine would retain “full control over its mineral resources, infrastructure and natural resources,” he said, and would relate only to new investments, meaning that the deal would not provide for any debt obligations against Ukraine, a key concern for Kyiv. The deal would ensure revenue by establishing contracts on a “take-or-pay” basis, Shmyhal added.

Shmyhal on Wednesday described the deal as “truly a good, equal and beneficial international agreement on joint investments in the development and recovery of Ukraine”.

Critics of the deal had said the White House is seeking to take advantage of Ukraine by linking future aid to the embattled nation to a giveaway of the revenues from its resources. The final terms were far less onerous for Ukraine than those proposed initially by Bessent in February, which included a clause that the US would control 100% of the revenues from the fund.

On Wednesday Trump said a US presence on the ground would benefit Ukraine. “The American presence will, I think, keep a lot of bad actors out of the country or certainly out of the area where we’re doing the digging,” he said at a cabinet meeting.

Speaking at a town hall with NewsNation after the deal had been signed, Trump said he told Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a recent meeting at the Vatican that signing the deal would be a “very good thing” because “Russia is much bigger and much stronger”.

Asked whether the minerals deal was going to “inhibit” Russian president Vladimir Putin, Trump said “well, it could.”

UK foreign secretary David Lammy welcomed the agreement in a post on X, adding that “the UK’s support for Ukraine remains steadfast”.

It was unclear up until the last moment whether the US and Ukraine would manage to sign the deal, with Washington reportedly pressuring Ukraine to sign additional agreements, including on the structure of the investment fund, or to “go back home”. That followed months of strained negotiations during which the US regularly delivered last-minute ultimatums while cutting off aid and other support for Ukraine in its defence against Russia.

Ukraine’s prime minister earlier had said he expected the country to sign the minerals deal with the US in “the next 24 hours” but reports emerged that Washington was insisting Kyiv sign three deals in total.

The Financial Times said Bessent’s team had told Svyrydenko, who was reportedly en route to Washington DC, to “be ready to sign all agreements, or go back home”.

Bessent later said the US was ready to sign though Ukraine had made some last-minute changes.

Reuters reported that Ukraine believed the two supplementary agreements – reportedly on an investment fund and a technical document – required more work.

The idea behind the deal was originally proposed by Ukraine, looking for ways to offer economic opportunities that might entice Trump to back the country. But Kyiv was blindsided in January when Trump’s team delivered a document that would essentially involve handing over the country’s mineral wealth with little by way of return.

Since then, there have been various attempts to revise and revisit the terms of the deal, as well as a planned signing ceremony that was aborted after a disastrous meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy at the White House in February.

Earlier this month, it was revealed that the Ukrainian justice ministry had hired US law firm Hogan Lovells to advise on the negotiations over the deal, according to filings with the US Foreign Agents Registration Act registry.

In a post on Facebook, Ukraine’s first deputy prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko gave further details of the fund, which she said would “attract global investment”.

She confirmed that Ukraine would retain full ownership of resources “on our territory and in territorial waters belong to Ukraine”. “It is the Ukrainian state that determines where and what to extract,” she said.

There would be no changes to ownership of state-owned companies, she said, “they will continue to belong to Ukraine”. That included companies such as Ukrnafta, Ukraine’s largest oil producer, and nuclear energy producer Energoatom.

Income would come from new licences for critical materials and oil and gas projects, not from projects which had already begun, she said.

Income and contributions to the fund would not be taxed in the US or Ukraine, she said, “to make investments yield the greatest results” and technology transfer and development were a “key” part of the agreement.

Washington would contribute to the fund, she said. “In addition to direct financial contributions, it may also provide new assistance – for example air defense systems for Ukraine,” she said. Washington did not directly address that suggestion.

Ukraine holds some 5% of the world’s mineral resources and rare earths, according to various estimates. But work has not yet started on tapping many of the resources and many sites are in territory now controlled by Russian forces.

Razom for Ukraine, a US nonprofit that provides medical and humanitarian aid to Ukraine and advocates for US assistance, welcomed the deal, and encouraged the Trump administration to increase pressure on Vladimir Putin to end the invasion.

“We encourage the Trump administration to build on the momentum of this economic agreement by forcing Putin to the table through sanctions, seizing Russia’s state assets to aid Ukraine, and giving Ukraine the tools it needs to defend itself,” Mykola Murskyj, director of advocacy for Razom, said in a statement.

There is cautious optimism in Kyiv over the terms of the long-discussed US-Ukraine minerals deal, signed on Wednesday, which appear to be more advantageous for Ukraine than most had expected.

Many details are still to be finalised and will be written into a yet-to-be-signed further technical agreement, suggesting that the long saga over the deal may not be quite over. But Ukrainian analysts have noted that Kyiv has apparently been able to extract some major concessions, despite Donald Trump’s repeated claim that Ukraine “has no cards” to play.

“Ukraine held the line. Despite enormous pressure, every overreaching demand from the other side was dropped. The final deal looks fair,” Tymofiy Mylovanov, president of the Kyiv School of Economics, wrote on X.

Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said on Thursday that his country would retain “full control over its subsoil, infrastructure and natural resources”. Notably absent from the final text was the insistence that Ukraine should repay previous military US assistance via the deal, something Trump has previously repeatedly demanded. Volodymyr Zelenskyy had rejected signing something that would obligate “10 generations” of Ukrainians to repay. Future potential military assistance to Ukraine, however, will count as investments.

The signed agreement also makes it clear that its terms will not jeopardise Ukraine’s potential future integration with the EU, and also does not subject Ukraine to US legal jurisdiction. It does not lock Ukraine in to partnering only with the US on projects in future, and guarantees only access to bidding processes for US companies on fair terms.

“There’s no requirement to sell everything to the US, or to channel all investment through the fund. The obligation is to give the fund fair market access to future projects,” wrote Mylovanov.

The original idea of some kind of “rare earths” deal was thought up by Zelenskyy’s team. It was part of a “victory plan” unveiled before the US election last year, with the specific goal of interesting Trump in an economic partnership, amid fears that a potential Trump administration would not be as amenable to a values-based argument to support Ukraine as the Biden administration had been.

However it seemed that the gambit had backfired when, soon after taking office, Trump dispatched the US Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, to Kyiv with the draft of an agreement that “looked like it had been written on the train”, according to one source. The plan appeared to lock Ukraine into all kinds of obligations, while offering Kyiv nothing in return by way of security guarantees, save the rather thin claim that Washington taking a stake in Ukraine’s economy was itself a kind of security guarantee.

Since then, there have been various attempts to revise and revisit the terms of the deal. In late February, Zelenskyy was meant to sign it during a meeting in Washington, but after the vice-president, JD Vance, goaded him into an argument in front of the cameras in the Oval Office, Ukraine’s president was kicked out of the White House without signing.

Earlier this month, it transpired that the Ukrainian justice ministry had hired the US law firm Hogan Lovells to advise on the deal, according to filings with the US Foreign Agents Registration Act registry.

The deal will need to be ratified by Ukraine’s parliament, while discussions will continue over the “technical agreement” that also needs to be finalised and signed. The overall agreement is unlikely to have a huge impact in terms of contracts signed as long as fighting between Ukraine and Russia continues, but the Zelenskyy team hope that getting it signed will increased goodwill towards Kyiv in the Trump administration. The US president in recent days has continued to paint Zelenskyy as a bigger obstacle to a peace deal than Vladimir Putin – although he has gradually inched towards criticism of the Russian leader.

The first rhetorical noises from Washington on the deal were positive. After signing the agreement, Bessent called it the start of a “historic economic partnership” and claimed it showed that the US remained committed to Ukraine as an ally.

“This agreement signals clearly to Russia that the Trump administration is committed to a peace process centred on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine over the long term,” said Bessent.

Ukrainian and Russian civil society leaders have called for the unconditional release of thousands of Ukrainian civilians being held in Russian captivity, pushing for world leaders to make it a central part of any peace deal.

Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Kyiv-based Centre for Civil Liberties, which won the 2022 Nobel peace prize, said most of the discussion on ending the conflict, led by Donald Trump’s administration, focused solely on territories and potential security guarantees.

“It’s a huge problem that we lose the human dimension in this political process. Only with solving the human dimension can we find a path to sustainable peace,” she said.

On Tuesday, the Guardian and its reporting partners launched the Viktoriia project, an investigation into the death of the Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna in Russian custody, as well as a report on the systemic torture and mistreatment of thousands of civilian detainees seized by Russian occupying forces.

The European Commission on Wednesday condemned the killing, with foreign affairs spokesperson Anitta Hipper saying it showed life under occupation “remains a constant threat to Ukrainians”.

Jan Braathu, the media freedom representative for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, said he was “appalled” by the evidence emerging in Roshchyna’s case. A preliminary autopsy suggests she was tortured before she died, and her brain and other body parts were removed in order to conceal the cause of death.

In a statement, Braathu said her treatment was a breach of international law, including the Geneva conventions and the UN conventions against torture – to which Russia is a signatory. “I condemn these grave abuses by the Russian Federation,” he said.

The Ukrainian parliament’s commissioner for human rights, Dmytro Lubinets, said that as of April 2024 the number of people registered as having disappeared stood at 16,000, but that calculating an exact total was impossible.

Those detained are often socially and politically active people Russia fears may resist occupation, as well as former military personnel or Ukrainian government officials. Some are simply in the wrong place in the wrong time and are pulled into a nightmare of torture and mistreatment.

Prisoners are often held incommunicado, without charge or access to legal support, and are not allowed to send and receive letters. Their fate is one of the lesser-reported aspects of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

The Guardian and its reporting partners, in a collaboration led by the French newsroom Forbidden Stories, have gathered testimonies from former detainees at one of the most notorious holding facilities, Taganrog pre-trial detention facility No 2. They show civilians and prisoners of war are being subjected to severe food rationing, with little or no medical care, and that torture including electric shocks, physical and sexual violence and waterboarding is meted out by Russian guards.

“When you hear about the conditions and the torture, there is a clear understanding that some of these people have no chance to be alive by the time the political process has ended,” said Matviichuk.

Trump met the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on the sidelines of the pope’s funeral in Rome on Saturday, while his envoy, Steve Witkoff, met Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Friday. Trump claimed Russia and Ukraine were “very close to a deal” and has said he wants the two sides to meet soon.

A draft of the supposed US peace plan, published last week by Reuters, covers territory, economic issues and security guarantees, but says nothing about prisoners.

Karyna Malakhova-Diachuk, the co-founder of an organisation that brings together the families of civilian detainees, said she was hoping that the freeing of these prisoners would come before a deal on territories and other elements that the US wants to nail down on the way to a lasting peace.

“First, there should be an agreement to bring all the people home, and only after that they should start other negotiations. Otherwise everything will stay frozen on this issue,” she said.

During the first year of the war, civilians were frequently included in prisoner exchanges between Russia and Ukraine but it is now rare. Malakhova-Diachuk’s organisation comprises relatives of 380 detainees, and she said there had been no releases for more than a year of those linked to the group.

The emotional toll on relatives was hard to express, she said, adding that the horror stories to emerge from Russian prisons made the waiting and uncertainty all the more painful. “You see the PoWs return and they tell these horrific stories of torture and injuries and the things that happen there and there is just nothing you can do.”

A minority have been charged and given long prison terms for “terrorism” and other crimes, which could present further obstacles if Russia claims they are convicted criminals and so cannot be part of a deal.

Mykhailo Podolyak, a Zelenskyy aide, said that civilian detainees, along with prisoners of war and the Ukrainian children forcibly taken to Russia, would be a key part of Ukraine’s demands in any peace deal. He added that even those who had been given prison terms in Russia should be freed as part of a peace deal.

“These courts have no legal weight for us. We don’t consider these people to be convicted of anything. And we will do everything for our citizens to be returned to Ukraine,” he said.

The human dimension has been absent from most of the western countries’ public messaging around the push for a peace deal, with the focus instead on territories and security guarantees.

“We’ve heard nothing at all from Trump. We are knocking on different doors of different governments,” said Oleg Orlov, head of the Russian human rights organisation Memorial, which was also awarded the 2022 Nobel peace prize.

Memorial and the Centre for Civil Liberties are two of about 50 Ukrainian and Russian organisations that have created a campaign called People First, which calls for the freeing of all prisoners of war, civilian detainees and Ukrainian children taken to Russia, at an early stage in the peace process.

While the all-for-all exchange of prisoners of war is a normal part of the end of military hostilities, the mechanism to free civilians is less clear. “Russia should let them go without any conditions, but it will be very hard to achieve this,” said Orlov.

He said one solution could be for Ukraine to free citizens it had arrested on charges of collaboration with Russian occupying forces and offer them passage to Russia. “You can’t swap civilians, but there could be a possibility of a simultaneous freeing of these people with detained Ukrainian civilians,” he said.

Kamala Harris delivered a searing indictment of Donald Trump’s first 100 days in power, warning in her first major address since leaving office that the nation was witnessing a “wholesale abandonment of America’s highest ideals” by its president.

Speaking to an audience of Democrats in San Francisco, the former vice-president struck a defiant posture as she praised the leaders and institutions pushing back against Trump and his aggressive agenda – from the members of Congress acting boldly to the judges “who uphold the rule of law in the face of those who would jail them”, the universities defying the administration’s “unconstitutional demands”, and the everyday Americans rallying to protect social security.

The speech – her most forceful since Trump returned to power – marked a notable reemergence for Harris. The former vice-president, who now lives in Los Angeles and is weighing her next move – a possible run for California governor next year or another bid for the presidency in 2028 – has mostly kept a low profile since leaving office in January following her devastating loss to Trump in November.

In her remarks, she accused Trump of deliberately sowing fear and chaos to consolidate his own executive power, in a “high velocity” start to his presidency that hurled the country toward a constitutional crisis.

“They are counting on the notion that, if they can make some people afraid, it will have a chilling effect on others,” she said. “But what they’ve overlooked is that fear isn’t the only thing that’s contagious. Courage is contagious.”

Urging Americans to keep organizing, running for office and standing up for fundamental rights and values, she declared: “Let’s lock it in.”

Delivering the keynote address at the 20th anniversary gala for Emerge America in at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco was a poignant coda for Harris. Her early success running for San Francisco district attorney in 2003 inspired the group’s founding, and on Wednesday Harris, a Bay Area native and the nation’s first female vice-president, paid tribute to its work recruiting and training Democratic women to run for office.

“We need to get more of the alpha energy back with women,” said attendee Connie Price, referencing a quote from Michigan senator Elissa Slotkin. “We have to get less kumbaya and more solutions oriented and women are plenty capable of that.”

The crowd included Democratic donors, candidates and elected officials, among Eleni Kounalakis, the lieutenant governor of California and former California Congresswoman Katie Porter, both of whom are running for governor.

In her remarks, Harris argued that the chaotic start to Trump’s second term was by design, laid out in the conservative policy blueprint Project 2025.

“Please, let us not be duped into thinking everything is chaos,” she said. “What we are, in fact, witnessing is a vessel being used for the swift implementation of an agenda that has been decades in the making.”

During the campaign, Trump sought to distance himself from the unpopular initiative but his actions as president follow the plan closely – from his chainsaw approach to downsizing the federal government to his war on diversity, equity and inclusion policies and “gender ideology”. Trump’s “reckless” tariffs were “clearly inviting a recession”, Harris said, adding, with a subtle reference to her campaign trail warnings, “as I predicted”.

She did not, however, get more personal, despite plenty of avenues to do so.

On Tuesday, the Trump administration fired Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff and other senior Biden White House officials from the board that oversees the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Earlier this month, the law firm where Emhoff works reached a deal with the White House to avert an executive order targeting its practice. Emhoff, who was in attendance on Wednesday night, was said to have advised against acquiescing to the administration’s demands, and Harris seemed to obliquely address the situation in remarks days later when she said: “We are seeing those that are capitulating to clearly unconstitutional threats”.

But the self-described “joyful warrior” also left room for hope. She commended leaders whose dissent has galvanized the public, including Democratic senators Cory Booker, who delivered a record-breaking 25-hour speech to show resistance to Trump, and Chris Van Hollen, who secured a visit with a man wrongly deported to El Salvador by the administration, as well Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who have been drawing crowds thousands-strong on their cross-country Stop Oligarchy tour.

Yet with the Democrats out of power in Washington, and Trump pressuring the constitutional system of checks and balances with no resistance from Congress, Harris predicted that “things are probably going to get worse before they get better”.

Concluding her speech, she referenced a viral video of elephants at the San Diego Zoo captured during a 5.2-magnitude earthquake that struck California earlier this month. When the ground began to shake, they instinctively formed a protective circle around the most vulnerable in their herd, which Harris saw as a “powerful metaphor” for collective resistance.

“The lesson is don’t, don’t scatter,” she said.

Filtering out of the ballroom at the end of the evening, attendees parsed Harris’ pithy call to action.

“She was on fire,” said attendee John Glass. “I thought it was going to be more of a perfunctory speech, it was anything but that. I wish she sounded like she did tonight on the campaign.”

“It was nice to see her back” said another attendee Jennifer Wise, who was discussing the evening with Carol Horton. Harris’ speech “was a commentary for the moment”, Horton said, adding that she looks forward to a decision from Harris on whether she will join the crowded field of Democrats vying to succeed California’s term-limited governor, Gavin Newsom, or mount another bid for president in 2028.

A successful campaign to lead the country’s largest blue state would give her a prominent platform from which to challenge Trump and attacks on liberal values and ideas. The former state attorney general and US senator from California is expected to decide by the end of summer.

Donald Trump on Wednesday acknowledged that his tariffs could result in fewer and costlier products in the United States, saying American kids might “have two dolls instead of 30 dolls”, but he insisted China will suffer more from his trade war.

The US president has tried to reassure a nervous country that his tariffs will not provoke a recession, after a new government report showed the US economy shrank during the first three months of the year.

Trump was quick to blame his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, for any setbacks while telling his cabinet that his tariffs meant China was “having tremendous difficulty because their factories are not doing business”, adding that the US didn’t really need imports from the world’s dominant manufacturer.

“You know, somebody said, ‘Oh, the shelves are going to be open,’” Trump continued, offering a hypothetical. “Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls. So maybe the two dolls will cost a couple bucks more than they would normally.”

His remarks followed a defensive morning after the commerce department reported the US economy shrank at an annual rate of 0.3% during the first quarter. Behind the decline was a surge in imports as companies tried to front-run the sweeping tariffs on autos, steel, aluminum and almost every country. And even positive signs of increased domestic consumption indicated that purchases might be occurring before the import taxes lead to price increases.

Trump pointed his finger at Biden as the stock market fell Wednesday morning in response to the gross domestic product report.

“This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s,” the Republican president, who took office in January, posted on his social media site. “Tariffs will soon start kicking in, and companies are starting to move into the USA in record numbers. Our Country will boom, but we have to get rid of the Biden ‘Overhang.’ This will take a while, has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS.”

But the GDP report gives Democrats ammunition to claim that Trump’s policies could shove the economy into a recession. Democrats’ statements after the GDP report noted how quickly the economy, which still has a healthy 4.2% unemployment rate, appears to lose momentum within weeks of Trump returning.

“Trump has been in office for only 100 days, and costs, chaos and corruption are already on the rise,” said Jeff Merkley, a Democratic senator from Oregon. “The economy is slowing, prices are going up and middle-class families are feeling the pinch.”

Police in the Japanese city of Osaka have arrested a man on suspicion of attempted murder after he drove his car into seven schoolchildren, local media said.

The children were walking home from school when the suspect appeared to deliberately drive the car at them on a quiet residential street at about 1.30pm local time, according to the public broadcaster NHK.

A seven-year-old girl suffered a broken jaw and the other children – boys and girls aged seven and eight – are reported to have relatively light injuries. All appeared to be conscious as they were taken to hospital.

Police arrested Yuki Yazawa, 28, an unemployed man from Higashimurayama city in Tokyo, at the scene. It is not clear why he was in Osaka.

“I was just sick of everything so I decided to drive my car into the elementary school students to kill them,” Yazawa told police, according to NHK.

Teachers from the primary school are reported to have pulled the suspect out of the car, where he had remained after driving into the children.

A mother in her 20s who had come to pick up her son, and who saw the attack, told NHK: “The car was being driven erratically, and it seems that it continued to move forward even after it had hit the children.

“My son was very shocked and has been crying the whole time. He only just started elementary school last month, and then something like this happened. It’s scary. I saw the man who had been driving the car. He was very quiet and appeared to be in a daze.”

Another witness told NHK that the car reversed back into the children after crashing into them.

An elementary school pupil told another news outlet, MBS News, that the man in the car had been “driving unsteadily”.

“I was walking along the side of the road and the car and suddenly it almost drove into us. The second and third graders in front of me were injured and were bleeding from their heads after being trapped between the car and the wall,” the pupil said.

A white SUV that appeared to be the one used by the suspect was being examined by police.

Wildfires continued to threaten swaths of forest and fields in Israel on Thursday, though firefighters successfully reopened the main road linking the country’s two principal cities.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, declared a national emergency after the fires broke out on Wednesday along the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, prompting police to shut the route and evacuate thousands of people from nearby communities.

Hundreds were forced from their homes about 19 miles (30km) west of Jerusalem, and Israel’s most-watched television network, Channel 12, had to break off from broadcasting via its studio about 10 miles from the city during a news bulletin.

High winds that have fanned the fires led to the cancellation of many events celebrating Israel’s foundation in 1948. A prerecorded rehearsal of a torch-lighting ceremony was screened instead of the planned event.

The Times of Israel newspaper described “a surreal, fraught evening in which Israel is starting to mark its 77th Independence Day while firefighters battle some of the worst wildfires in its history”.

In a speech at one ceremony, Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, said the wildfires were “part of a climate crisis that we must not ignore”.

The anniversary celebrations had already caused controversy after government ministers were heckled at some events for failing to bring back all the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, and on Tuesday rightwing activists attacked a synagogue where a joint Arab-Israeli memorial event was being screened.

Political tensions are high after a turbulent few weeks with waves of protests and a public clash between Netanyahu and the head of the Shin Bet internal security service. Herzog called for an end to “polarisation” in Israel.

Israel’s military said troops were helping in Jerusalem and other central districts. “Overnight dozens of engineering vehicles started operating throughout the country to form lines to prevent the fire from spreading into other trees,” it said in a statement. “The IAF [air force] continues assisting in the effort to extinguish the fires.”

Israel’s firefighting service said 163 ground crews and 12 aircraft were working to contain the flames. Military planes have dropped hundreds of tonnes of retardant in an effort to stop the spread of the blaze.

Magen David Adom, Israel’s medical rescue service, said it treated 23 people on Wednesday, mostly for smoke inhalation and burns. Seventeen firefighters were injured, according to the public broadcaster Kan.

Witnesses described “walls of flame” surging across woodland on the slopes of the foothills west of Jerusalem, though the situation appeared to have improved on Thursday as winds dropped and a light rain fell.

There has been some criticism of the response of emergency services. Speaking from near the city of Modiin as fires burned on a nearby hillside, Yuval Aharoni, 40, said: “It’s just very sad because we knew the weather, we kind of knew that would happen, and still we feel like they weren’t ready enough with the big planes that can drop large amounts of water.”

Late on Wednesday, the foreign ministry said firefighting aircraft were expected to arrive from Croatia, France, Italy, Romania and Spain to join the operation.

The fire and rescue service’s Jerusalem district commander, Shmulik Friedman, described “a very large wildfire, maybe the largest there has ever been in this country” and said the effort to contain the blaze would continue for “a very long time”.

Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far-right national security minister, hinted that the fires may have been deliberately started, though authorities have not presented any evidence to support such claims.

AFP contributed to this report

Next week, 135 cardinals will gather inside the Vatican for the conclave, a secretive meeting to decide who will succeed the late Pope Francis. Around the world, people are speculating: who will the next pontiff be? But in Taiwan, a more common discussion has been: who are we sending to the inauguration?

Former vice-president Chen Chien-jen recently returned from Vatican City, where he represented Taiwan at Francis’s funeral. But the committed Catholic hopes he won’t be asked to repeat the journey to welcome in the successor. Instead, he’s pushing for it to be Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te.

“We prayed for the possibility for Dr Lai to attend the inauguration of the new pope,” he told the Guardian in Taipei.

The reason Lai didn’t attend the funeral hasn’t been confirmed, but there are plenty of educated guesses going around, and they all involve Beijing. The Vatican is one of just 12 governments that recognise Taiwan as a country, and the only one in Europe. Serving presidents attended the funeral of Pope John II and the first mass of Pope Francis. But in the years since, the geopolitics of Taiwan’s place in the world has become more difficult.

China’s ruling Communist Pparty claims Taiwan is a province and has vowed to annex it, militarily if need be. In the meantime it is using its considerable global influence to keep Taiwan’s government – which it labels “separatist” – away from the international stage, and has persuaded many of Taiwan’s allies to cut ties and recognise Beijing instead. Which is exactly what many observers think was going on with the Vatican for the funeral.

After the death of Francis was announced, Taiwan was quick to offer condolences. Its deputy foreign minister, Wu Chih-chung, publicly said it was the island’s “most important aim” to have its president lead the funeral delegation. But just hours later Chen, who had met Francis six times before he died and was a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, was announced as “the best choice under the current circumstances” following discussions with the Vatican.

Speculation swirled that the Vatican had refused Lai’s attendance – or at least requested he not be sent – under pressure from China. Taipei, Beijing and the Vatican would not comment.

Beijing was relatively late in offering condolences, which came via a foreign affairs spokesperson answering a question at a press conference in which he also insisted Taiwan was an “inalienable part” of China. It also didn’t send anyone to the funeral, fueling speculation that it was because the Vatican refused to bar Taiwan’s delegation.

“We knew [the funeral] would be a headache, we knew China would ask that Taiwan’s delegation not be allowed to come, and we knew the Vatican could not say no but also could not refuse Taiwan as a diplomatic partners and because there are Catholics in Taiwan,” said Michel Chambon, a research fellow at the National University of Singapore.

Taiwan’s presence at these sort of events isn’t only about respecting an important moment for a close ally. It’s also a rare opportunity to mix with other world leaders at a time when Taiwan is seeking as much global support as it can to deter China’s aggression.

Chen isn’t sure how many foreign leaders and dignitaries he spoke to at the funeral but it was many. “In the square I had the chance to meet, for example, President Biden of the US and also the special envoys from Japan, Thailand, South Korea, too many to mention. It was a good chance for us to chat with governmental officers of likeminded countries,” he told the Guardian. “With all of our friends we have the same mindset and we all treasure regional stability, security and prosperity,” Chen said. “And we hope we can maintain this Indo-Pacific’s freedom and openness.”

From the Vatican’s side, Taiwan is an important partner of the church, even though it is home to just 0.02% of the world’s Catholics. “It’s a bridging church,” said Chen. Until about a decade ago, after cross-strait tensions made it too risky, Chinese priests and nuns would quietly travel to Taiwan’s seminaries and universities for theological training in their native tongue.

Francis put greater focus on Chinese-speaking Catholics across Asia. His funeral sermon ended with a prayer in Mandarin – the only one in delivered in an Asian language. There are an estimated 12 million Catholics in China and Francis oversaw significant progress in negotiations with Beijing to better protect their religious freedoms, signing agreements on the appointment of bishops.

“We don’t know if the new pope will love China as Francis did,” said Thomas Tu, a Vatican diplomacy expert at Taiwan’s National Chengchi University. “But I think the Vatican wants to keep that legacy.”

Whether that legacy comes at the expense of Taiwan’s diplomatic status is up for debate. Chen understands that it’s complicated: “The Holy See has to get assurances of religious freedom [from Beijing] to protect all the sheep in China, as a big shepherd. It’s a big pressure.”

Chambon said Francis successfully balanced both relationships, strengthening ties with China without diminishing anything with Taiwan. “The Holy See does not want to abandon any group of Catholics in the world, including Taiwan,” he said. “It’s been able to manoeuvre and resist pressure from Beijing to cut official ties.”

Taiwan’s government says it is still making plans about its delegation and has not said whether or not it hopes it is led by Lai. Chambon thinks the Vatican probably hopes Chen returns instead.

He added: “The Vatican doesn’t want to refuse Taiwan completely … I think they would like to see something like the funeral – we want a delegation but we don’t want provocation towards Beijing.”

Additional research by Jason Tzu Kuan Lu

Next week, 135 cardinals will gather inside the Vatican for the conclave, a secretive meeting to decide who will succeed the late Pope Francis. Around the world, people are speculating: who will the next pontiff be? But in Taiwan, a more common discussion has been: who are we sending to the inauguration?

Former vice-president Chen Chien-jen recently returned from Vatican City, where he represented Taiwan at Francis’s funeral. But the committed Catholic hopes he won’t be asked to repeat the journey to welcome in the successor. Instead, he’s pushing for it to be Taiwan’s president, Lai Ching-te.

“We prayed for the possibility for Dr Lai to attend the inauguration of the new pope,” he told the Guardian in Taipei.

The reason Lai didn’t attend the funeral hasn’t been confirmed, but there are plenty of educated guesses going around, and they all involve Beijing. The Vatican is one of just 12 governments that recognise Taiwan as a country, and the only one in Europe. Serving presidents attended the funeral of Pope John II and the first mass of Pope Francis. But in the years since, the geopolitics of Taiwan’s place in the world has become more difficult.

China’s ruling Communist Pparty claims Taiwan is a province and has vowed to annex it, militarily if need be. In the meantime it is using its considerable global influence to keep Taiwan’s government – which it labels “separatist” – away from the international stage, and has persuaded many of Taiwan’s allies to cut ties and recognise Beijing instead. Which is exactly what many observers think was going on with the Vatican for the funeral.

After the death of Francis was announced, Taiwan was quick to offer condolences. Its deputy foreign minister, Wu Chih-chung, publicly said it was the island’s “most important aim” to have its president lead the funeral delegation. But just hours later Chen, who had met Francis six times before he died and was a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, was announced as “the best choice under the current circumstances” following discussions with the Vatican.

Speculation swirled that the Vatican had refused Lai’s attendance – or at least requested he not be sent – under pressure from China. Taipei, Beijing and the Vatican would not comment.

Beijing was relatively late in offering condolences, which came via a foreign affairs spokesperson answering a question at a press conference in which he also insisted Taiwan was an “inalienable part” of China. It also didn’t send anyone to the funeral, fueling speculation that it was because the Vatican refused to bar Taiwan’s delegation.

“We knew [the funeral] would be a headache, we knew China would ask that Taiwan’s delegation not be allowed to come, and we knew the Vatican could not say no but also could not refuse Taiwan as a diplomatic partners and because there are Catholics in Taiwan,” said Michel Chambon, a research fellow at the National University of Singapore.

Taiwan’s presence at these sort of events isn’t only about respecting an important moment for a close ally. It’s also a rare opportunity to mix with other world leaders at a time when Taiwan is seeking as much global support as it can to deter China’s aggression.

Chen isn’t sure how many foreign leaders and dignitaries he spoke to at the funeral but it was many. “In the square I had the chance to meet, for example, President Biden of the US and also the special envoys from Japan, Thailand, South Korea, too many to mention. It was a good chance for us to chat with governmental officers of likeminded countries,” he told the Guardian. “With all of our friends we have the same mindset and we all treasure regional stability, security and prosperity,” Chen said. “And we hope we can maintain this Indo-Pacific’s freedom and openness.”

From the Vatican’s side, Taiwan is an important partner of the church, even though it is home to just 0.02% of the world’s Catholics. “It’s a bridging church,” said Chen. Until about a decade ago, after cross-strait tensions made it too risky, Chinese priests and nuns would quietly travel to Taiwan’s seminaries and universities for theological training in their native tongue.

Francis put greater focus on Chinese-speaking Catholics across Asia. His funeral sermon ended with a prayer in Mandarin – the only one in delivered in an Asian language. There are an estimated 12 million Catholics in China and Francis oversaw significant progress in negotiations with Beijing to better protect their religious freedoms, signing agreements on the appointment of bishops.

“We don’t know if the new pope will love China as Francis did,” said Thomas Tu, a Vatican diplomacy expert at Taiwan’s National Chengchi University. “But I think the Vatican wants to keep that legacy.”

Whether that legacy comes at the expense of Taiwan’s diplomatic status is up for debate. Chen understands that it’s complicated: “The Holy See has to get assurances of religious freedom [from Beijing] to protect all the sheep in China, as a big shepherd. It’s a big pressure.”

Chambon said Francis successfully balanced both relationships, strengthening ties with China without diminishing anything with Taiwan. “The Holy See does not want to abandon any group of Catholics in the world, including Taiwan,” he said. “It’s been able to manoeuvre and resist pressure from Beijing to cut official ties.”

Taiwan’s government says it is still making plans about its delegation and has not said whether or not it hopes it is led by Lai. Chambon thinks the Vatican probably hopes Chen returns instead.

He added: “The Vatican doesn’t want to refuse Taiwan completely … I think they would like to see something like the funeral – we want a delegation but we don’t want provocation towards Beijing.”

Additional research by Jason Tzu Kuan Lu

Banks in the City of London have poured more than $100bn (£75bn) into companies developing “carbon bombs” – huge oil, gas and coal projects that would drive the climate past internationally agreed temperature limits with catastrophic global consequences – according to a study.

Nine London-based banks, including HSBC, NatWest, Barclays and Lloyds are involved in financing companies responsible for at least 117 carbon bomb projects in 28 countries between 2016 – the year after the landmark Paris agreement was signed – and 2023, according to the study.

If the projects go ahead, the study says they will have the potential to produce 420bn tonnes of carbon emissions, equivalent to more than 10 years of current global carbon dioxide emissions.

“Despite the UK’s seemingly ambitious climate plans, it is astonishing how much money has flowed from UK banks to companies worldwide developing the biggest climate-wrecking and damaging projects since 2016,” said Fatima Eisam-Eldeen, a lead analyst at the Leave It in the Ground Initiative, the climate thinktank that produced the study. “Real climate ambition and leadership would mean proper financial regulation not only within the country but also beyond the country’s borders by stopping all financial flows to companies exacerbating the climate crisis we all suffer.”

The report follows a Guardian investigation that revealed how big fossil fuel companies were quietly planning scores of vast projects that threaten to shatter the effort towards the international goal of limiting global heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels.

In that investigation the countries found to have the most carbon bomb plans were the US, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Russia and China, with the UK playing a minor role.

However, the findings, which look at how the companies behind these projects are being financed, reveal the UK is a key financial hub for destructive fossil fuel mega-projects, financing companies that are involved in more than a quarter of the carbon bombs identified across the globe.

Lucie Pinson, the director of the campaign group Reclaim Finance, said UK banks were turning the City of London into “Europe’s stronghold for financing fossil fuel expansion, undermining the role the UK has played in advancing climate finance”.

She added: “As international tensions escalate, these banks must now choose which world they want to help build, Trump’s world of fossil fuels, where the most powerful profit at the expense of millions, including their own fellow citizens, or a world where economic, financial and political leaders roll up their sleeves and drive the ecological transformation of our economies.”

The new study used the list of carbon bomb projects identified in the original 2022 research then worked out which companies were behind them. It then tracked who was financing these companies.

When approached by the Guardian, some banks objected to the study’s methodology, questioning whether it was fair to attribute the entire emissions of a carbon bomb to a bank that had given finance to a company as a whole rather than to the specific project.

But the researchers say that banks usually fund the company rather than specific fossil fuel development, and that this finance is critical in allowing the companies to push ahead with these destructive projects.

The report found HSBC is financially supporting companies involved in the most carbon bomb projects: 104. It calculated that emissions caused by burning the extracted fossil fuel from these projects would add up to 392 gigatons – or 392bn metric tonnes – of carbon dioxide.

Standard Chartered bank came next, supporting companies involved in 75 carbon bombs, then Barclays, financing companies involved in 62 mega-projects. Lloyds backed firms involved in 26 and NatWest financed firms involved in 20.

HSBC, Lloyds and Standard Chartered declined to comment on the report when approached by the Guardian.

A Barclays spokesperson said it could not comment on individual projects but that the bank provided “financing across the energy sector: supporting energy security, working with customers and clients on their low-carbon transition and mobilising sustainable and transition financing with a target of $1tn by 2030. We are taking pragmatic steps to meet our 2030 financed emissions targets, while helping the world meet its energy needs securely and affordably.”

A spokesperson for NatWest said it had lent more than £93bn in climate and sustainable funding and financing since the start of 2021, against a target of £100bn by the end of this year. They added: “Whilst we recognise the importance of the entire energy industry in furthering the goals of decarbonisation and energy security, our lending to oil and gas represents less than 0.7% of our financing activity.”

Robert De Niro has expressed support for his daughter Airyn after she came out as transgender.

In a statement to Deadline, De Niro said: “I loved and supported Aaron as my son, and now I love and support Airyn as my daughter. I don’t know what the big deal is … I love all my children.”

De Niro’s statement follows an interview Airyn gave to online LGBTQ+ magazine Them, in which she described the process of her transition and said: “There’s a difference between being visible and being seen. I’ve been visible. I don’t think I’ve been seen yet.”

Saying “no parent is perfect”, Airyn thanked De Niro and her mother, model Toukie Smith, adding: “I am grateful that both my parents agreed to keep me out of the limelight. They have told me they wanted me to have as much of a normal childhood as possible.”

After Them’s interview was published, Airyn responded on social media, saying: “Thank you to everyone who’s been so sweet and supportive! I’m not used to all these eyes on me.”

Japan’s busiest bullet train line was brought to a halt on Wednesday after a metre-long snake wrapped itself around a power line, shorting the electricity supply and stranding hundreds of passengers.

Shinkansen trains running between Tokyo and Osaka were brought to a standstill by the snake, with news reports showing footage of people inside trains waiting for services to resume. Power did not appear to have been cut inside trains, with lights and air conditioning still functioning, according to passengers.

The outage happened at 5.25pm between Maibara and Gifu-Hashima stations, after the snake appeared to have climbed an electricity pole, meeting its demise as it attempted to slither along the overhead line. Power was not restored until after 7pm.

The Golden Week series of national holidays began on Wednesday, with millions on the move across Japan, returning to home towns and taking family vacations. In addition, the Osaka Expo 2025, which opened mid-April and runs until October, is attracting even more people than usual to the city.

“I use the shinkansen several times a month, but this is the first time I have experienced suspensions due to a power outage,” Satoshi Tagawa, 46, who was returning to Tokyo, told Kyodo News.

The line connects Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka with more than 370 trains daily carrying an average of 430,000 passengers. Reaching speeds of up 285km per hour, it takes less than two and a half hours to Osaka from the Japanese capital.

More than 7 billion passengers have ridden the tokaido shinkansen since it opened as Japan’s first high-speed rail line just before the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. It has an exemplary safety record, with not a single injury or accident recorded, and trains running to within an average of 1.6 minutes of their scheduled times, according to operator Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai).

However, it is not the first time reptiles have delayed shinkansen.

A 40cm snake inside a carriage on a Nagoya to Tokyo service in April last year caused consternation among passengers. Staff were unable to find the creature, and the carriage was replaced, resulting in a 17-minute delay.

In 2009, an electricity outage was also caused by a snake climbing on to power lines, stopping trains between Tokyo and Fukushima.

Scientists studying Arctic plants say the ecosystems that host life in some of the most inhospitable reaches of the planet are changing in unexpected ways in an “early warning sign” for a region upended by climate change.

In four decades, 54 researchers tracked more than 2,000 plant communities across 45 sites from the Canadian high Arctic to Alaska and Scandinavia. They discovered dramatic shifts in temperatures and growing seasons produced no clear winners or losers. Some regions witnessed large increases in shrubs and grasses and declines in flowering plants – which struggle to grow under the shade created by taller plants.

Those findings, published in Nature, fill key knowledge gaps for teams on the frontlines of a changing climate.

“Climate change is so widespread across the whole of the Arctic and we’re seeing this magnitude of warming at four times the rate than the rest of the planet. We expected to see very concrete trends and trajectories. Because in other biomes, we are,” said lead author Mariana García Criado, a postdoctoral researcher in tundra biodiversity at the University of Edinburgh. “But the Arctic is a special and often unexpected place.”

The researchers found greater species richness at lower latitudes and warmer sites, while species and the areas with the greatest growth – and loss – were in areas with the largest temperature increase.

In Canada’s western Arctic, for example, Isla Myers-Smith and her “Team Shrub” group of researchers have documented ecosystems rapidly shifting, where the tundra is “greening” at an incredible rate as shrubs such as willow push north and grow taller.

Shrubs are highly competitive: they grow taller and shade out other plants, extracting more resources in the process. As they take over, they push out the cottongrass, mosses and lichens that take hundreds – sometimes thousands – of years to grow. Higher temperatures and lengthened growing seasons mean this trend is unlikely to abate, and more broadly across the Arctic, the number and diversity of plants will keep growing.

“Often when we think about climate change impacts on the planet we think about biodiversity loss, but in the temperature-limited tundra, climate change is multi-faceted,” she said in a news release.

While an increase in biodiversity might seem like a beneficial shift for the region, experts caution those changes come with a steep cost.

“These ecosystems are so fragile and any changes to the species composition can really have strong effects on everything else. Changes start with plants, and if plants move, everything follows, said García Criado, adding that herds of caribou were among the most likely casualties, as bare spots on the tundra, favoured by the lichen that they like to eat, are overtaken by shrubs.

“This has cascading effects for Arctic animals that depend on these plants, also for food security for all the people that live in the Arctic, for local and Indigenous communities, but also for the more ecosystem function,.”

Greg Henry, a geography professor at the University of British Columbia who helped establish the study’s data collection system, said the research involved thousands of hours of fieldwork in remote locations, with teams “enduring extreme weather, clouds of biting insects and even the occasional polar bear encounter”.

But researchers didn’t have enough data to include mosses and lichens in the study. These cryptogams are critical for ecosystem function, particularly in the Arctic where there is a rich diversity in species.

García Criado said the results underscore the deep uncertainty in understanding the effects climate change has on life – and the way in which the Arctic often serves as a harbinger of changes to come.

“All these changes that we’re observing, they’re not limited to the Arctic. We may see them in the Arctic, but the consequences spread far beyond the confines of the region,” she said. “We want to understand these changes. And then we need to prepare for these changes. Because it’s not a question of if they might happen – it is a question of when.”

Erin Patterson said she spent a “small fortune” on buying eye fillet steak for her “special meal” of beef wellingtons, and was really disappointed that her estranged husband cancelled the night before the lunch, a Victorian court has heard.

Simon Patterson has started his evidence in Patterson’s murder trial in the supreme court, detailing the deterioration in their relationship about the paying of child support.

Patterson, 50, faces three charges of murder and one charge of attempted murder relating to a beef wellington lunch she served at her house in Leongatha in South Gippsland in 2023.

Patterson has pleaded not guilty to murdering or attempting to murder the relatives of her estranged husband.

She is accused of murdering Simon’s parents, Don and Gail Patterson, his aunt Heather Wilkinson, and attempting to murder Ian Wilkinson, Simon’s uncle and Heather’s husband.

Simon started his evidence in Patterson’s case by answering the question: “In what way do you know her?”

“I’m married to her,” he responded.

What followed was an unspooling of the history of their relationship, from meeting while part of an “eclectic” group of friends who worked together at the Monash city council in the early to mid 2000s, to driving across the Nullarbor to Perth as a newly married couple.

Shortly before they married in 2007, Simon said, Erin’s grandmother died, leaving her a share of the estate worth about $2m. This was slowly “dribbled” to her by the estate executors over about eight years until 2015, he said.

The couple had two children born in 2009 and 2014. But there were numerous separations during the course of their relationship, culminating in a final separation in 2015.

Simon said the couple remained amicable, however, until a dispute over child support in late 2022, sparked by his accountant accidentally lodging a tax return that listed him as “separated” from Patterson.

This had the ramification of Patterson having to apply for child support, he said, and him being advised by child support authorities to cease paying for other expenses he had previously contributed to, including school and medical fees.

There was a cooling of their relationship after this, which Simon said became clear when their previously “chatty” text exchanges, including banter and political discussions, became less frequent.

They continued to share responsibility for their children, and seeing each other regularly, including at Korumburra Baptist church, where Ian Wilkinson was the pastor.

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During a service at the church on 16 July 2023, Simon said, Erin invited him to lunch on 29 July 2023. She invited his parents, and the Wilkinsons, during the same service, Simon said.

Simon agreed to go, but the night before the lunch he texted her to cancel.

“Sorry, I feel too uncomfortable about coming to the lunch with you, mum, dad, Heather and Ian tomorrow, but am happy to talk about your health and implications of that at another time if you’d like to discuss on the phone,” he wrote to Erin at 6.54pm, according to a text shown to the court.

“Just let me know.”

Patterson then replied at 6:59pm: “That’s really disappointing. I’ve spent many hours this week preparing lunch or tomorrow which has been exhausting in light of the issues I’m facing and spent a small fortune on beef eye fillet to make beef wellingtons because I wanted it to be a special meal as I may not be able to host a lunch like this again for some time.

“It’s important to me that you’re all there tomorrow and that I have the conversations that I need to have.

“I hope you’ll change your mind. Your parents and Heather and Ian are coming at 12:30. I hope to see you there.”

Simon said he did not respond. He had already told his parents he would not be attending.

Simon became emotional several times during his evidence, including when detailing how unwell Don looked when he visited him in hospital the morning after the lunch.

“Yeah, Dad was substantially worse than Mum, he was really struggling,” he said.

“Lying on his side, hunched quite noticeably. Discoloured face, struggling to … speaking was an effort … and his voice was strained in a way that was, he wasn’t right inside, he was feeling the pain.”

Erin also appeared emotional when Simon detailed the closeness of her relationship with his parents, particularly Don.

“She especially got along well with Dad, they shared a lot of knowledge and learning and interest in the world, and I think she loved his gentle nature,” Simon said.

“Mum and Dad were really active in maintaining a good relationship with Erin [despite the separation], and I think it was mutual.”

Simon also detailed conversations he had with Erin about her also falling ill after the lunch, including when she said multiple times to him that she feared she would “poo her pants” because of diarrhoea she suffered.

He spoke about a conversation the couple had with their children at Monash hospital, where Erin and the children had been taken for treatment after the lunch, when they discussed that Erin conducted a blind taste test with muffins cooked using dehydrated mushroom.

She said it was interesting their youngest child, who did not like mushrooms, preferred a muffin with dried mushroom in it, the court heard.

The prosecution allege Patterson was not unwell because of the lunch. The court was also told on Tuesday that the prosecution would not be suggesting there was not a particular motive for the alleged murders and attempted murder.

Colin Mandy SC, for Patterson, says she accidentally poisoned her lunch guests, and had not meant to harm any of them.

Under cross-examination, Simon said Erin provided loans worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to each of his three siblings and their partners in order for them to purchase houses.

The loans had no repayment schedule, and interest was only indexed to inflation, Simon said.

He also said the couple enjoyed travel together with their children after their 2015 separation, including on trips to South Africa, Botswana, Darwin, Adelaide, New Zealand and South Australia.

After a trip to Africa in 2018, there was another attempt to reconcile, Simon said, but it was unsuccessful.

Nevertheless, he was involved in the design and speaking with a builder about the house Patterson intended to construct in Leongatha, where the lunch was hosted about three years later.

Simon considered that while the design of the house focused on it being ideal for the children to grow up, it also reflected the prospect of him and Patterson having a future together.

He agreed Patterson was a devoted mother, who relied on his extended family, including his siblings and their partners, as a support network.

Simon agreed that Patterson had put on weight during their relationship, but did not think she had said she was embarrassed about that.

“Do you accept she wasn’t happy with the way she looked?” Mandy asked.

“I think Erin is not particularly happy with how she is, including probably most aspects,” Simon replied.

“I don’t think she has high self-esteem.”

Simon confirmed that the child support payment he had to make to Erin was $40 a month, which created some “friction” as it was clear it was not enough.

Simon also spoke about attending Korumburra Baptist church with Patterson during a trip to South Gippsland with friends before the pair were in a relationship.

He said that although he knew Patterson was an atheist she appeared moved by the service.

“She was moved by what was happening during the communion part of the service, not the sermon,” Simon said.

“By a religious or spiritual aspect of what was happening on that date?” Mandy asked him.

“Yes,” Simon responded.

The trial in Morwell continues, with Simon’s evidence expected to conclude on Friday.