Seventy-five years ago this week, more than 135,000 North Korean troops invaded South Korea, starting a war that cost millions of lives and left scars that linger to this day.

Yet, the Korean War has been forever overshadowed by World War II, a much larger conflict that ended less than five years earlier. Even the US Army refers to Korea as “the Forgotten War” – despite more than 36,000 American lives lost.

Sixteen nations, including the United States, sent combat troops in aid of South Korea under the United Nations Command. Chinese troops intervened on the North Korean side.

War broke out on June 25, 1950, when North Korean forces stormed across the 38th parallel dividing North and South Korea. An armistice signed on July 27, 1953, stopped the conflict, but the war never officially ended because there was no peace treaty.

While the twists and turns of today’s US-North Korea relationship have put a spotlight on the Korean War’s legacy, it is still a widely overlooked conflict.

Here are six things you might not know about the Korean War:

The US Army once controlled one of the world’s most secretive cities

It’s almost impossible for Americans to travel to North Korea or its capital city Pyongyang. US passport holders are not allowed to go there without special permission from the US State Department.

But for eight weeks in 1950, Pyongyang was under control of the US Army.

On October 19 of that year, the US Army’s 1st Cavalry Division along with a division of South Korean soldiers captured the North Korean capital, according to US Army histories.

The US forces quickly made themselves at home, according to the histories.

By October 22, the US Eighth Army had set up its advance headquarters in what was the headquarters building for North Korean leader Kim Il Sung.

A picture from the time shows an American intelligence officer sitting at Kim’s desk with a portrait of Soviet Union leader Joseph Stalin hanging on the wall behind him.

But the US military’s occupation of Pyongyang was short-lived. When Chinese troops entered the war in late November 1950, they quickly pushed south and vanquished US forces from Pyongyang by December 5.

The US dropped more bombs on North Korea than on the entire region during WWII

Most images of the Korean War are of ground battles fought in places like the Chosin Reservoir and Incheon. But much of the destruction wreaked on North Korea by the US military was done in a relentless bombing campaign.

During the three years of the Korean War, US aircraft dropped 635,000 tons of bombs – both high explosive and incendiary – on North Korea. That’s more than the 500,000 tons of bombs the US dropped in the Pacific in the entirety of the Second World War, according to figures cited by historian Charles Armstrong in the Asia-Pacific Journal.

Journalists, international observers and American prisoners of war who were in North Korea during the war reported nearly every substantial building had been destroyed. By November 1950, North Korea was advising its citizens to dig holes for housing and shelter.

North Korea didn’t keep official casualty figures from the bombings, but information obtained from Russian archives by the Wilson Center’s Cold War International History Project put the number at more than 280,000.

Gen. Curtis LeMay, the father of US strategic bombing and the architect of fire raids that destroyed swathes of Japanese cities in World War II, said this of the American bombing of North Korea:

“We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, some way or another.”

Armstrong said that bombing of North Korea has effects that linger to this day.

“The DPRK (Democratic Republic of Korea) government never forgot the lesson of North Korea’s vulnerability to American air attack, and for half a century after the Armistice continued to strengthen antiaircraft defenses, build underground installations, and eventually develop nuclear weapons to ensure that North Korea would not find itself in such a position again,” Armstrong wrote.

North Korea convinced the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin to let the war happen

When World War II ended, control of the Korean Peninsula – occupied by defeated Japanese troops – was divided between the Soviet Union in the north and the United States in the south.

Kim Il Sung, the leader of North Korea, wanted to unite the two Koreas under communist rule and sought permission of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to do so by force, according to records from the Wilson Center.

Upon Kim’s first request to invade in March 1949, Stalin was wary and did not want to be pulled into a conflict with the United States, which still had occupation troops in South Korea.

But when those troops were pulled in the summer of 1949, Stalin’s opposition softened, and by April 1950 the Soviet leader was ready to hear Kim out again when the North Korean leader visited Moscow.

Stalin told Kim that the USSR would back the invasion, but only if Kim got communist China to approve too.

Emboldened by communist China’s victory over Nationalist forces in 1949 – in a civil war in which Washington did not intervene – Chinese leader Mao Zedong agreed and offered to be a backup force for North Korean troops in the eventuality the US intervened.

With that, Kim had the green light to invade.

The Korean War saved Taiwan from a potential communist takeover

In 1949, communist China was amassing forces along its coast to invade Taiwan, the island to which Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist forces had fled after losing to Mao and the communists in the Chinese Civil War.

But the outbreak of the Korean War put a big roadblock in the way of communist China’s plans – the US Navy. Fearful of the fighting in Korea spreading across East Asia, President Harry Truman dispatched US warships to the waters between China and Taiwan.

The US State Department tells how close Taiwan, now a self-governed democaracy that Beijing still claims as part of China, came to a potential communist takeover.

“In late 1949 and early 1950, American officials were prepared to let PRC (People’s Republic of China) forces cross the Strait and defeat Chiang, but after the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, the United States sent its Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to prevent the Korean conflict from spreading south,” reads a passage from the department’s Office of the Historian.

“The appearance of the Seventh Fleet angered the Chinese communists, who transferred their troops poised for an invasion of Taiwan to the Korean front,” it reads.

By October 19, 1950, 12 divisions of communist Chinese troops, more than a quarter-million men, were in North Korea, according to a Brookings Institution account.

Those Chinese troops would inflict horrific losses on the US and South Korean troops they faced, eventually driving them out of North Korea completely.

But China also suffered massive losses; more than 180,000 of its troops were killed.

The first jet-vs-jet dogfight

Jet fighters entered military service in World War II with the introduction of the German Messerschmidt 262. But the jet fighters didn’t go head-to-head in a “Top Gun”-style dogfight until the Korean War.

Records seem to agree that first dogfight occurred over Sinuiju in North Korea, near the Yalu River, and its border with China on November 8, 1950. The Americans, flying F-80 Shooting Star jets, were confronted by MiG-15s, Soviet-made jets that were probably being piloted by Soviet pilots from bases in China.

According to a report from the historian of the US Air Force’s 51st Fighter Wing, eight to 12 MiGs came after an American flight of four F-80s that day. In a 60-second encounter with one of those MIGs, Air Force 1st Lt. Russell Brown hit a MiG-15 with fire from his jet’s cannon and saw it explode in flames, becoming the first jet fighter pilot to score a kill in a dogfight, the report says.

But others dispute that account, with a report from the US Naval Institute (USNI) saying that Soviet records show no MiGs were lost that day.

What is certain is that the next day, November 9, 1950, US Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Amen, flying an F9F fighter off the aircraft carrier USS Philippine Sea, shot down a MiG-15 during airstrikes against bridges on the Yalu River.

Soviet records confirm the MiG-15 loss that day, according to the USNI report.

Later in the war, the US introduced the F-86 jet to the Korean conflict. That plane won fame in battles against the MiG-15 in what was know as “MiG Alley,” the area along the Korea-China border, where the Soviet pilots flew out of bases on the Chinese side.

The National Museum of the US Air Force in Ohio explains MiG Alley this way:

“Large formations of MiGs would lie in wait on the Manchurian side of the border. When UN aircraft entered MiG Alley, these MiGs would swoop down from high altitude to attack. If the MiGs ran into trouble, they would try to escape back over the border into communist China. (To prevent a wider war, UN pilots were ordered not to attack targets in Manchuria.) Even with this advantage, communist pilots still could not compete against the better-trained Sabre pilots of the US Air Force, who scored a kill ratio of about 8:1 against the MiGs.”

The United States never declared war

Though millions of lives were lost during the fighting on the Korean Peninsula between 1950 and 1953, they were technically casualties of what was called a “police action.”

Under the US Constitution, only the US Congress can declare war on another nation. But it has not done so since World War II.

When North Korea invaded the South in 1950, US President Harry Truman sent the US military to intervene as part of a combined effort approved by the United Nations Security Council.

“Fifteen other nations also sent troops under the UN command. Truman did not seek a formal declaration of war from Congress; officially, America’s presence in Korea amounted to no more than a ‘police action,’” reads a passage from the US National Archives.

And those police actions have become the norm for US military intervention ever since. The Vietnam War, the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo, all have seen US troops enter combat under congressional authorizations for the use of military force (AUMF), according to the US House of Representatives website.

Though the AUMF had been around since the beginning of the republic, “after World War II … AUMFs became much broader, often granting Presidents sweeping authority to engage America’s military around the world,” the US House website says.

“The war was the first large overseas US conflict without a declaration of war, setting a precedent for the unilateral presidential power exercised today,” Emory University law professor Mary Dudziak wrote in a 2019 opinion column for the Washington Post.

“The Korean War has helped to enable this century’s forever wars,” Dudziak wrote.

Canada believes US President Donald Trump is no longer interested in turning it into the 51st state, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Tuesday.

“He admires Canada,” Carney told Amanpour. “I think it’s fair to say, maybe for a period of time (he) coveted Canada.”

Carney has frequently pronounced the old, close partnership between Canada and the United States as “over.” He began his term by courting European partners in the United Kingdom and France, and even collaborating with Australia on new radar systems for the Canadian Arctic.

Still, Carney credited Trump for pushing Canada toward higher defense spending, especially meeting the defense spending benchmark for NATO members.

“The president is focused on changing a series of bilateral relations,” Carney told Amanpour. “We’re at NATO. He’s been focused on making sure that all members, Canada included … pay their fair share. I think we’re doing that now.”

Trump now has the “potential to be decisive” in the situation in the Middle East, Carney also told Amanpour. While a broader peace in the region is the ultimate goal, he added, the current priority should be getting “the basics”: a ceasefire, a full resumption of humanitarian aid and the release of all hostages held in the strip.

“He’s used his influence and US power in other situations. We’ve just seen it in Iran. It does create possibility of moving forward and there’s a moral imperative to move forward,” Carney added.

The Canadian leader also credited Iran for its “proportionate” response to the US having bombed three nuclear sites: a highly telegraphed strike on a regional US military base, which was largely intercepted.

“The military action was also a diplomatic move by Iran. We never welcome, obviously, hostilities and reactions, but it was proportionate, it was de-escalatory, it appears to have been previewed,” Carney said.

In the past 48 hours, the Middle East has witnessed an unprecedented US airstrike on Iran with its most powerful non-nuclear weapons, an Iranian retaliatory strike on the largest US air base in the region, to an apparent truce that will see Iran and Israel end their hostilities that have set the world on edge.

The region and the wider world watched warily as events unfolded overnight into Tuesday, but with a degree of hope as daylight broke in the region that what US President Donald Trump called the “12 Day War” may be over.

“THE CEASEFIRE IS NOW IN EFFECT. PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social account.

Around the same time, Israeli emergency workers were at the site of what appeared to be Iran’s final attack of the 12-day conflict, a missile strike in Beer Shiva that left at least five people dead and 20 wounded.

It could be the last hostile act of two days of whipsawing developments leading up to Trump’s surprise announcement of a ceasefire.

Here’s the situation Tuesday in the Middle East.

The ceasefire deal

On Monday evening in Washington, the US president announced the ceasefire.

“It has been fully agreed by and between Israel and Iran that there will be a Complete and Total CEASEFIRE,” Trump said in a social media post.

“I would like to congratulate both Countries, Israel and Iran, on having the Stamina, Courage, and Intelligence to end, what should be called, “THE 12 DAY WAR,” Trump said.

Trump said the ceasefire would be phased in, with Iran ending attacks on Israel first, then Israel stopping its attacks on Iran 12 hours later. But the exact timing of those events was unclear.

During the negotiations, Trump communicated directly with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff negotiated the terms, through direct and indirect channels, with the Iranians, the source said.

Trump said in a later social media post that both Israel and Iran came to him to get a ceasefire done.

Iranian state media reported, however, that Trump sought the ceasefire deal “in a begging-like manner” after the attack on the US air base in Qatar.

Whether a ceasefire will hold remains to be seen.

Around the time Iran was supposed to have stopped its attacks under the Trump timeline, its missiles hit Israel, killing at least five civilians, according to Israeli officials.

Iran fires on biggest US base in region

Just hours before Trump’s ceasefire announcement, Iran fired about a dozen short- and medium-range ballistic missiles at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest US military installation in the Middle East.

But Tehran tipped both the US and Qatar that the strike was coming, and air defenses, including Patriot missile batteries, were able to intercept all but one of the incoming Iranian missiles, according to US and Qatari officials. No deaths or injuries were reported in Qatar.

In a social media post, Trump thanked Iran for warning the missile attack was coming.

“Most importantly, they’ve gotten it all out of their ‘system,’ and there will, hopefully, be no further HATE. I want to thank Iran for giving us early notice, which made it possible for no lives to be lost, and nobody to be injured,” Trump said.

“Tehran’s choice to limit its retaliation and deescalate the crisis is rational on their part given overwhelming US strength and Iranian weakness,” said Rosemary Kelanic, director of the Middle East Program at Defense Priorities.

What about Iran’s nuclear program?

Israel’s contention that Iran would soon be able to build a nuclear weapon was the impetus for the conflict, which began with Israel Defense Forces strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and against Iran’s military and nuclear program scientists on the night of June 12-13.

Trump followed on Israel’s airstrikes by ordering an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities, including a fleet of US B-2 bombers to dropping fourteen 30,000-pound Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs on two deeply buried sites in Iran, the first time weapon had been used in combat.

Trump administration officials said Iran’s nuclear weapons program, which they said was just days away from the ability to make a nuclear bomb, was set back years by the US strikes.

Experts were more skeptical, saying Iranian stores of enriched uranium may have escaped destruction in the US strikes and Tehran may be able to make a weapon in just a few months.

What now for Gaza?

The Middle East has been a tinderbox since October 2023, when Hamas militants from Gaza entered Israel in force, killing hundreds and taking dozens more hostage.

Israel responded with an invasion of the Palestinian enclave to root out Hamas from tunnels and other fortifications that has left over 55,000 people dead, much of Gaza in ruins and its population of 2.1 million at risk of famine, according to the World Health Organization.

While the world’s attention has been on Israel’s fighting with Iran, dozens of people have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza as they scramble to get the limited food aid allowed into the territory, including 21 in the past day, Palestinians say.

A group advocating for the return of Israeli hostages held in Gaza has called for the ceasefire between Israel and Iran to be expanded to include the war-torn enclave.

“Those who can achieve a ceasefire with Iran can also end the war in Gaza,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement Tuesday.

The forum said the ceasefire “must expand to include Gaza” and called on the government “to engage in urgent negotiations that will bring home all the hostages and end the war.”

“After 12 days and nights during which the people of Israel could not sleep because of Iran, we can finally go back to not sleeping because of the hostages,” the forum said.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid echoed those sentiments, writing in a post on X: “And now Gaza. This is the moment to close that front as well. To bring the hostages home, to end the war. Israel needs to start rebuilding.”

An empty base as a target, with many hours warning, and a limited number of missiles fired at some of the best air defense systems in the world. Iran’s retaliation for the US’s weekend strikes on three of its nuclear facilities can only have been designed to deescalate.

The US-run Al Udeid airbase in Qatar had been evacuated days earlier, with satellite images showing the departure of planes and personnel widely publicised in the media. It is the most important US military airbase in the region, the home of Central Command. It even launched the drone that killed Iran’s top military personality, General Qasem Soleimani, in 2020, Iranian state media said in the hours after “Operation Glad Tidings of Victory.” The Monday strike against Al-Udeid had close to zero chance of American casualties – and provided the perfect moment of quasi-absurd face-saving for Iran.

The first hint of a possible strike came when the US Embassy in Doha, Qatar, issued an emergency “shelter in place” order for US citizens. As if to remove any doubt, Qatar closed its airspace about an hour prior to the launch of what appears to have been close to a dozen missiles by Iran. Adding to the favourable conditions of the launch for Iran’s dwindling arsenal, Qatar is close enough to permit the use of shorter-range missiles, stocks of which have not been as depleted as the medium-range missiles used to hit Israel over the past week.

To pour water on anything resembling a flame, Iran’s National Security Council said moments after the attack the number of missiles fired had been “as many as the number of bombs used in the attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.” Packaging the barrage as the definition of a proportionate response, the Iranian statement went on to insist the attack posed “no dangerous aspect to our friendly and brotherly country of Qatar and its noble people.”

Tehran’s method of retaliation-without-fangs has been successfully tried and tested. After Soleimani was killed, Iran’s retaliatory missile attack against the US’s Al Asad airbase in Iraq was reportedly telegraphed to Baghdad beforehand, possibly helping reduce the level of US injury suffered to mostly concussions. Iran’s response to Israel’s assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in July 2024 in the heart of Tehran heavily telegraphed in advance.

“We knew they’d retaliate. They had a similar response after Soleimani,” a senior White House official said Monday night.

A playbook appears to be forming. But it is one that compounds Iran’s military weakness each time it is employed. In 2020, the Islamic Republic lost its pre-eminent military personality – an Iranian hardline hero. In 2024, it showed that valuable allies were not safe in central Tehran. This year, the regime has lost control of its own airspace to the point of previously unthinkable strikes on their prized nuclear facilities by both Israel and the US.

This is stark testament to the differing powers on display. Iran has to feign its strength in a managed presentation of restrained and muted anger. The US and Israel get to break taboos daily, shattering Iran’s long-held position as a regional power in under ten days, and perhaps ending its ambitions to be a nuclear power.

There is now only one real red line left for the United States or Israel to cross, and that is to directly target Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. But that may seem ill-advised, given the likelihood this octogenarian theocrat would be replaced by a younger hardliner who is keener to flex Iran’s muscles of deterrence. Better to accept toothless retaliations amid Tehran’s slow decline.

Each expression of Iran’s anger has confirmed its slow erosion of power. An angry fledging nuclear power would have accelerated its race to an atomic bomb. That may still happen. But it looks more likely that Iran is desperately hoping its performative lashing out can sate what remains of its hardliners, decimated by Israeli strikes. It may even hope to shuffle back to diplomacy, with talks to contain a nuclear program and ballistic missile stockpile likely severely depleted to shadows of what they were merely ten days ago.

It’s a Monday night in June and hundreds have braved the haze of Canadian wildfires to gather in a cavernous sports facility in the city of Red Deer, Alberta.

An Alberta team, the Edmonton Oilers, are taking on the Florida Panthers in a National Hockey League finals game tonight. The atmosphere is heavy with anticipation.

But these people aren’t here for hockey. This is a rally for Alberta independence.

It might be hard to believe, given Canadian sports fans’ recent booing of “The Star Spangled Banner,” but not all Canadians took offense to US President Donald Trump’s questioning of their country’s sovereignty.

In oil-rich Alberta, where a movement for independence from Canada appears to be gathering steam, many see in Trump a powerful and important ally whose haranguing of their former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was as welcome as his calls to “drill baby, drill.”

Though some see US statehood as a step too far, many in the Red Deer crowd believe the US president – as a fellow pro-oil conservative – would recognize a breakaway Alberta should a vote on independence go their way.

“Donald Trump is not the savior of the world,” says Albert Talsma, a welding contractor from Bentley. “But right now he’s North America’s best asset.”

With their “Make Alberta Great Again” hats, “Alberta Republic” T-shirts and posters declaring “Albertans for Alberta!” it’s not hard to see parallels to the US president’s MAGA movement and the forces that inspired it.

Separatists here have long argued that Canada’s federal system fails to represent their interests; that the federal government’s efforts to stymie climate change are holding back Alberta’s lucrative oil industry (the largest in Canada); that they pay more than they get back through federal taxation; that their conservative values are drowned out by the more liberal eastern provinces.

“Alberta hasn’t been treated fairly since 1905, when we joined Confederation. They basically used the west as a colony, to take wealth from the west to support the east,” says Kate Graham, a singing grandmother from Calgary.

She opens the rally with a rendition of Janis Joplin’s “Mercedez Benz,” the lyrics modified to promote independence. Like Janis, she sings it a cappella, before spending much of the rest of the event at a booth by the door, selling merch emblazoned with the slogan “I AM ALBERTAN.”

Similar disenchantment is voiced by a steady stream of Albertans, each venting against their mother country on a stage flanked by a large provincial flag strung across a soccer goal.

“They want to stifle our (oil) industry,” says Mitch Sylvestre, a businessman from Bonnyville and one of the rally’s chief organizers, his hoarse voice echoing over the PA system.

“We have cancer. We have a problem,” says Sylvestre. “We have it large.”

Hopes for a vote in ‘one of God’s treasures’

In a strange twist, the push to get Alberta out of Canada has gained momentum just as much of the country has united in patriotism in the face of Trump’s tariffs and threats of annexation.

Soon after Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberals rode a wave of anti-Trump sentiment to win the 2025 federal election in April, the Alberta Legislature passed a law making it easier to organize a referendum on independence.

Under the new law, petitions for a province-wide vote now require just 177,000 signatures – down from 600,000 previously – and those signatures can be gathered over a period of four months rather than three. The province is home to nearly 5 million people, according to Statistics Canada, representing more than a tenth of the population of the entire country.

One of the most vocal advocates for a referendum is Jeffrey Rath, a lawyer and co-founder of the Alberta Prosperity Project (APP), which organized the Red Deer rally.

Rath, well over six feet tall in a cowboy hat and boots, has a ranch just outside of Calgary. He raises race horses there and follows the sport closely, especially the Kentucky Derby – where this year, he notes with a grin, “’Sovereignty’ beat ‘Journalism.’”

“If you wanna know what’s special about Alberta, just look around, right?” Rath says with a sweep of his hand.

The view from the rise above Rath’s horse pasture is superb: quaking aspen, white pine and green rolling hills.

“It’s one of God’s treasures on earth. And the people here are very distinct people that have a very distinct culture and that are interested in maintaining that culture.”

In Rath’s eyes, Trump’s attitude toward Canada is an opportunity. His group is counting on US government support in the event of success at the ballot box.

“Trump’s election has given us a lot of hope,” Rath says. “If anybody is going to have the guts to recognize an independent Alberta, (it) would be the Trump administration.”

Western alienation

Separatism is not new in Canada, but it’s only had real political power in the predominantly Francophone province of Quebec, which has numerous pro-independence parties and voted in two referendums on independence in the past 50 years, rejecting it by a 60/40 margin in 1980 and by around one percentage point in 1995.

In Alberta, enthusiasm for separation has waxed and waned for decades, fueled initially by “Western alienation” – resentment felt in western Canada against a federal system dominated by the more populous eastern provinces. More recently, the movement has attracted Albertans who were angered by federally mandated lockdowns during the Covid pandemic. Among them was Rath, who has in the past faced controversy for suggesting government officials should face murder and negligent homicide charges over what he claims are the ill-effects of the Covid vaccine.

A recent poll by the Angus Reid Institute found about a third of Albertans currently support independence, though that support does not break down equally throughout the population.

Some of the loudest critics of the idea come from Alberta’s indigenous communities, whose treaties with the Canadian crown are older than the province itself. Under pressure from that community, the government added a provision to the referendum bill that guarantees their treaty rights whatever the result.

While Smith’s party proposed the referendum bill, she says she is against separation herself, preferring to “get Alberta to exert its sovereignty within a united Canada.”

“We have had, from time to time, these kinds of initiatives flare up,” says Smith. “And they’re almost always in response to a federal government that’s out of control. But they have all subsided when the federal government got back in its own lane.”

“I think that it’s a notice to Ottawa that they’ve got to take this seriously,” Smith adds. “The question is, what can we do to address it?”

The 51st state?

One of the more explosive questions surrounding secession is whether an independent Alberta might join the United States.

In February, a billboard appeared along the highway between Calgary and Edmonton, with text urging onlookers to tell Premier Smith that Alberta ought to “Join the USA!” superimposed over a picture of her shaking hands with Trump.

“I don’t think Albertans are very keen to trade a bad relationship with Ottawa with a bad relationship with Washington,” Smith says when asked about the possibility.

But others, like construction worker Stephen Large of Czar, Alberta, feel it would be good to have the might of the US on their side – particularly if negotiations fail in the event of a “yes” vote for independence.

“The minute something happens here toward independence, our federal government is going to be furious,” says Large, who wears a red “Make Alberta Great Again” cap.

“They will pull out all the stops, military and police and whatever they can find to lock us down, lock us in.”

Large points to how former Prime Minister Trudeau briefly invoked the Emergencies Act when Canadian truckers blockaded downtown Ottawa to protest cross-border vaccine mandates in 2022.

The statute, which had never been used before, allowed Canadian law enforcement to take extraordinary measures to restore public order – including freezing the bank accounts of certain protesters and banning public assembly in parts of Ottawa. The law also allows the government to deploy troops within Canada to enforce the law, though Trudeau did not invoke that part of the provision in 2022.

“We’re gonna need some support from somewhere, and the only place on Earth that is worthy of their support is the United States military,” Large says.

A woman sitting in front of Large overhears him and turns around, nodding in agreement.

“I’m with him,” she says, introducing herself as Evelyn Ranger of Red Deer. “I’m not sure that Alberta or the western provinces, even together, can make it on their own. So, the States is still the better way to go, because you’ve got the military, you’ve got the trade and everything already set there.”

For his part, Rath refuses to consider whether the federal government might invoke the Emergencies Act or use other measures to put down his movement if it were to unilaterally declare Alberta independent in the event of a “yes” vote.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, but we don’t see that happening,” Rath says.

Asked if he would be up for an interview at that point, he grins.

“Yeah,” Rath replies, before letting out a laugh. “It might be from a jail cell.”

A British-flagged luxury superyacht that sank off Sicily last year, killing UK tech magnate Mike Lynch and six others, completed its final trip to the Sicilian port of Termini Imerese Sunday, a day after recovery crews finalized the complex operation to lift it out of the water.

The white top and blue hull of the 56-meter (184-foot) Bayesian, covered with algae and mud, was kept elevated by the yellow floating crane barge off the port of Porticello, before being transferred to Termini Imerese, where it docked in the early afternoon.

On Monday, the delicate recovery operation will be concluded, as the vessel will be transported to shore and settled in a specially built steel cradle.

Then it will be made available for investigators for further examinations to help determine the cause of the sinking.

The Bayesian sank Aug. 19 off Porticello, near Palermo, during a violent storm as Lynch was treating friends to a cruise to celebrate his acquittal two months earlier in the US on fraud charges. Lynch, his daughter and five others died. Fifteen people survived, including the captain and all crew members except the chef.

Italian authorities are conducting a full criminal investigation.

The vessel was slowly raised from the seabed 50 meters (165 feet) deep over three days to allow the steel lifting straps, slings and harnesses to be secured under the keel.

The Bayesian is missing its 72-meter (236-foot) mast, which was cut off and left on the seabed for future removal. The mast had to be detached to allow the hull to be brought to a nearly upright position that would allow the craft to be raised.

British investigators said in an interim report issued last month that the yacht was knocked over by “extreme wind” and couldn’t recover.

The report said the crew of the Bayesian had chosen the site where it sank as shelter from forecast thunderstorms. Wind speeds exceeded 70 knots (81 mph) at the time of the sinking and “violently” knocked the vessel over to a 90-degree angle in under 15 seconds.

In a warehouse in northeast Nigeria, a nonprofit’s stocks of food to treat malnourished children and pregnant women are running low.

The organization, Action Against Hunger (ACF), is running a project to combat malnutrition that had been relying on funding from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to procure much-needed therapeutic food sachets. But the project was intermittently suspended, leaving ACF unable to procure enough of the nutrient-rich food during the peak season of malnutrition.

It’s one of the many urgent, lifesaving aid projects left in limbo and in need of additional resources following the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID.

But now, a group of former USAID staff has come together to connect big donors with cost-effective projects like this, which desperately need cash to carry out operations already in the pipeline.

The primary goal is “to save as many lives as possible,” said Robert Rosenbaum, a former USAID portfolio manager and one of the people spearheading the initiative, which they are calling Project Resource Optimization (PRO). “At this point, there really are people who are dying as a result of these (budget) decisions and this halting of the work.”

Rosenbaum said that thinking about cuts to American programs tackling things like malnutrition, extreme poverty and disease prevention was keeping him up at night after he lost his job earlier this year.

So, he and other laid-off USAID workers decided to do something. They began vetting projects being carried out by USAID partner organizations, which had abruptly lost their funding earlier this year.

They gradually built a spreadsheet – dubbed the Urgent & Vetted Projects list – and started matchmaking, setting up meetings between the most critical and cost-effective programs and donors who wanted to help, but didn’t know where to start.

The spreadsheet was first inspired by reach-outs from a few small family foundations seeking expert guidance on where to best put their dollars, amid the initial uncertainty surrounding US government aid cuts. But it quickly grew into something bigger.

It became clear to Rosenbaum that there was an opportunity to “expand the overall pool of private philanthropy” and bring in donations from people who might not have considered giving to international aid projects until this year.

“There have been a handful of folks who have come out of the woodwork and literally written us an email that’s like, ‘I set aside $100,000, $200,000, a million dollars… And this is exactly how I want to think about giving… So, help us figure out how to do this,’” he said.

Earlier this week, the PRO team also launched a tool for smaller donors to contribute online, crowdfunding for some of the most critical aid projects.

Now, anyone can give a one-time or monthly contribution to the team’s “Rapid Response Fund” to support vetted projects in Sudan, Haiti, Nigeria and more.

“For most of the humanitarian projects that we’ve talked to… sometime this summer, if the funding doesn’t come through, the lights will go off and it will be very hard to stand back up,” Rosenbaum said.

“Part of what we’re offering for funders is that the fixed cost of standing these projects up has already been taken on by the US government. The staff has already been hired, they’re trained, they’re in place. The commodities, in many cases, have been procured and are sitting in a warehouse,” Rosenbaum said. “There’s all these efficiencies.

“But the flip side is that the cost of shutting them down is extraordinarily high,” he added, noting that typically it takes years for local organizations to build trust with authorities, leaders and communities.

In Mali, an organization called the Alliance for International Medical Action (ALIMA) was at risk of shutting down a project that delivers medical care to children under five, pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers, as well as providing mobile health clinics to internally displaced people.

“We were forced to suspend activities and reduce activities at different points,” said Carlota Ruiz, the organization’s head of grant management, adding that more than half ALIMA’s operating budget in Mali had come from USAID. “One of our main concerns in terms of navigating suspensions or project closures was the risk to our credibility and our relationships with the Ministry of Health and the communities that we work with.”

Weeks ago, the organization was facing the prospect of shutting down vital services, but now a new grant will allow ALIMA to provide 70,000 medical consultations to people in need and treat more than 5,000 children with severe acute malnutrition.

Meanwhile, in Nigeria, ACF says it is close to securing funding to keep one of its malnutrition projects going, after coordinating with the PRO team.

The funding will go towards procuring more ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF). The timing was “extremely critical,” according to an ACF staff member on the ground.

But the funding will only go towards that one project. ACF also supports programs in northern Nigeria that provide food assistance, clean water and sanitation, and support hundreds of health clinics.

“It will be very meaningful, and it will be really very useful to ensure continuity of activity and save the lives of thousands of children,” the ACF worker said of the grant about to be finalized. “But this project cannot address all the other aspects of our work.”

The bodies of an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier and two civilians killed in the Hamas-led October 7 attacks have been recovered from Gaza in a military hostage recovery operation.

In a special operation carried out by the Israel Security Agency (ISA) and the IDF, the bodies of civilians, Ofra Keidar and Yonatan Samerano, and soldier Shay Levinson were recovered from the Gaza Strip on Saturday, the ISA and IDF said in a joint statement Sunday.

Ofra Keidar, from the kibbutz Be’eri community, was killed by Hamas militants on October 7, 2023. The 71-year-old’s body was taken to Gaza, where it had been held since. Keidar was a wife and mother of three. Her husband was also killed in Hamas’ attack.

“On that dark Saturday Ofra went, as usual, for a walk in the fields she loved – and never returned,” her kibbutz said in a statement.

“Ofra was one of the women leading Be’eri to be the flourished kibbutz it has become, and set an example for other women while showing strength and leadership skills. She left three children and seven grandchildren.”

Samerano, 21, from Tel Aviv, was killed by Hamas militants who took his body after fleeing the Nova music festival.

Levinson, a dual German-Israeli national and tank commander, was killed in combat on October 7, the joint ISA-IDF statement said. The 19-year-old’s body was then taken to Gaza.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said: “Alongside the grief and pain, the return of their bodies provides some comfort to the families who have waited in agony, uncertainty, and doubt for 625 days.”

The forum also called for the return of the remaining 50 hostages in Gaza to be a priority as Israel continues its conflict with Iran. “Particularly against the backdrop of current military developments and the significant achievements in Iran, we want to emphasize that bringing back the remaining 50 hostages is the key to achieving complete Israeli victory,” it said.

In a statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered his “heartfelt condolences” to the families of Keidar, Samerano and Levinson and thanked Israeli soldiers for a “successful operation.”

A meticulously planned meal prepared in the home of an alleged killer is at the heart of a triple murder trial that’s nearing its dramatic conclusion in rural Australia.

For eight weeks, audiences have been glued to daily news reports and podcasts on an unusual case that alleges the world’s most toxic mushroom was used to kill.

A jury will soon decide if Erin Patterson, a 50-year-old mother of two, deliberately added death cap, or amanita phalloides, mushrooms to a Beef Wellington lunch she made for her estranged husband’s parents and his aunt and uncle in July 2023.

Three guests died within days of the meal, while a fourth recovered after spending several weeks in an induced coma. Patterson denies three counts of murder and one of attempted murder.

The prosecution and defense agree death cap mushrooms were in the meal.

The question is, how did they get there?

During eight days of testimony at Latrobe Valley Magistrates’ Court, Patterson acknowledged she repeatedly lied to police, dumped a dehydrator used to dry mushrooms, and reset her phone to delete images of mushrooms and the dehydrator from devices seized by investigators.

But she said she did not intend to kill.

Explaining her lies, Patterson told the jury she had a “stupid knee-jerk reaction to just dig deeper and keep lying.”

“I was just scared,” she said.

Defense lawyer Colin Mandy SC said Patterson accidentally added foraged mushrooms to the meal, along with ones she bought from an Asian grocer in Melbourne.

“What happened was a tragedy and a terrible accident,” he said.

In his closing arguments, Mandy said the prosecution’s case was based on “ridiculous” propositions, including that Patterson “would intend to kill these four people, blowing her entire life up in the process without a motive.”

The prosecution doesn’t need to prove a motive. But it does need to convince the 12-member jury beyond reasonable doubt that Patterson intended to kill the two elderly couples – including her children’s grandparents – and that she deliberately picked death cap mushrooms to do it.

A sumptuous lunch of Beef Wellington

On the morning of July 29, 2023, the smell of frying garlic and shallots likely filled Patterson’s kitchen in the small town of Leongatha in rural Victoria.

She was preparing a meal for two older married couples – Don and Gail Patterson and Heather and Ian Wilkinson.

Don and Gail were the parents of Erin’s estranged husband Simon. Heather and Ian were his aunt and uncle. Gail and Heather were sisters, and Ian the pastor of their local church.

The two couples lived close by in Korumburra, a country town home to fewer than 5,000 people in the scenic hills of southern Victoria.

Erin had asked Simon to come to the lunch, too, but he pulled out the night before, writing in a text that he felt “too uncomfortable” to attend.

Their relationship had become increasingly strained over finances and the children’s schooling, and he was living elsewhere, the court heard.

Erin told the jury she was “a bit hurt and a bit stressed” by Simon’s message, but the lunch went ahead the next day as planned. Patterson said she had started feeling left out of family gatherings and wanted to make more of an effort.

She said she chose to cook Beef Wellington because she remembered her mother preparing the meal for special occasions. It was Patterson’s first attempt at the dish, and she wanted to get it right.

To the garlic and shallots, she added store-bought button mushrooms that she had chopped up in a processor, before simmering the mixture on low for 45 minutes, she said.

The paste was used to coat the steaks, which she wrapped in pastry and baked in the oven.

The prosecution alleges she prepared poisoned parcels for her guests and reserved an untainted one for herself. Patterson insists she made just one batch.

An unexpected invitation

In the witness box, Ian Wilkinson, the only surviving lunch guest, told the court he’d been surprised but “very happy” to accept Patterson’s lunch invitation.

The 71-year-old said his relationship with Erin was “friendly” and “amicable.” He’d been a guest at her wedding in 2007 but considered her more of an acquaintance than a close friend.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Patterson helped to broadcast his church services on YouTube, and she attended his sermons, on and off, he said.

“She just seemed like an ordinary person,” he told the jury.

Wilkinson said he didn’t really understand why they’d been invited to lunch, but it became apparent when they’d finished eating the meal of Beef Wellington, beans and mash.

“Erin announced that she had cancer,” Wilkinson told the jury. “She said that she was very concerned because she believed it was very serious, life-threatening.”

Wilkinson said Patterson asked for advice about how to tell her children about, in her words, “the threat to my life.”

Wilkinson said Don Patterson offered some advice about being honest, but the conversation ended after about 10 minutes when one of the lunch guests noticed the children returning. Wilkinson suggested a quick prayer.

“I prayed a prayer asking God’s blessing on Erin, that she would get the treatment that she needed, that the kids would be okay, that she’d have wisdom in how she told the kids,” he testified.

Patterson had never been diagnosed with cancer, the court heard.

Prosecutor Nanette Rogers SC put to Patterson on the stand: “I suggest that you never thought you would have to account for this lie about having cancer because you thought that the lunch guests would die.”

“That’s not true,” Patterson replied.

Patterson said she didn’t explicitly tell her guests that she had cancer, but acknowledged she allowed them to believe she may have a serious medical issue because she was exploring possible surgery for another problem – one that she was too embarrassed to reveal.

The secret Patterson hid for years

Patterson said she’d always been self-conscious about her weight.

As a child, her mother weighed her every week to make sure she wasn’t getting too heavy. “I never had a good relationship with food,” she said.

Since her 20s, Patterson said she would binge and purge. Around the time of the fatal lunch in July 2023, she said she was doing it two to three times a week, maybe more.

“Who knew about it?” her defense lawyer Mandy asked Patterson. “Nobody,” she said.

Patterson told the jury she had resolved to do something about her weight “once and for all,” and booked a consultation for potential gastric bypass surgery with a clinic in Melbourne in September. Evidence showed an appointment had been made.

“I didn’t want to tell anybody what I was going to have done,” Patterson told the court. “I was really embarrassed about it, so I thought perhaps letting (her in-laws) believe I had some serious issue that needed treatment might mean they’d be able to help me with the logistics around the kids,” she said.

Instead, it was her lunch guests who needed serious medical attention.

Hours after the meal Saturday, they started to become ill and went to hospital the next morning with vomiting and diarrhea, the court heard.

By Monday morning, their condition had deteriorated, and doctors arranged for their transfer to Austin Hospital, a larger facility that provides specialist liver care.

Death cap mushrooms contain toxins that stop the production of protein in liver cells and the cells begin to die, leading to possible liver failure and death.

Treatments are available, but none are 100% effective, said Dr Stephen Warrillow, director of Austin Health’s intensive care unit.

“Once the amanita poison is within the body, unfortunately the body tends to recycle it internally,” said Warrillow, who treated all four lunch guests.

Gail Patterson, 70, and Heather Wilkinson, 66, were considered too weak for a liver transplant and died on August 4 from multiple organ failure, he said. Don Patterson, 70, received a transplant but died on August 5.

Ian Wilkinson was in an induced coma on life support but responded to treatment and was eventually discharged in September.

“We thought he was going to die,” said Warrillow. “He was very close.”

Foraged mushrooms

Patterson told the court she took up foraging for mushrooms in early 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, when she would take long walks with her children in the countryside.

Native to Europe, death cap mushrooms arrived in Australia by accident, expert mycologist Tom May told the court. They grow near oak trees and only appear above ground for a couple of weeks before decaying, he said.

Most sightings in Victoria are in April and May, and some people upload photos of them to the citizen science website iNaturalist, May added.

Christine McKenzie, a retired former poisons information specialist at the Victorian Poisons Information Centre, told the court she spotted death cap mushrooms in Loch – about 28 kilometers (17 miles) from Patterson’s home – and uploaded them to iNaturalist on April 18, 2023.

She’d been out walking with her husband, grandson and dog, and said she disposed of the mushrooms to avoid accidental poisoning but conceded that more could grow.

Citing analysis of cellphone tower connections, the prosecution alleges it’s possible Patterson saw McKenzie’s post and went to the same location on April 28 to pick the mushrooms.

Store records show that within two hours of the alleged visit, Patterson bought a dehydrator, which the prosecution said she used to dry the toxic mushrooms.

Patterson concedes she bought the dehydrator, saying there is a “very small season” of availability for wild mushrooms and she wanted to preserve them, and “a whole range of things.” She denied foraging for mushrooms in Loch.

May, the fungus expert, said that on May 21, 2023, he saw death cap mushrooms growing in Outtrim, about 19 kilometers (11 miles) from Leongatha, and posted the sighting to iNaturalist.

“I don’t think I typed the street name in, but I put a very precise latitude-longitude geocode with the observation,” he said.

Prosecutors said analysis of Patterson’s cellphone movements placed her in the Outtrim region on May 22, when they say it’s possible Patterson picked the mushrooms.

The defense said broader analysis of her phone records suggests it’s possible her cellphone picked up different base-station signals within her own home. “These records are consistent with the accused never leaving the house,” said Mandy.

Patterson denied ever foraging for mushrooms in Outtrim, and said she couldn’t remember ever visiting the iNaturalist website and did not see the reported sightings.

Patterson’s explanation

On August 1, three days after the lunch, Patterson was in hospital, having been convinced by doctors to stay after earlier discharging herself against their advice.

They had impressed on her the importance of being treated for death cap mushroom poisoning because symptoms are known to worsen with time.

Her children should be there too, they said, because she said they had eaten some of the leftovers on Sunday night, albeit with the mushrooms and pastry scraped off.

It was in hospital on August 1 that Patterson said she had a conversation with Simon, her estranged husband, that made her start thinking about how toxic mushrooms had come to be in the meal.

Patterson said she told Simon that she had dried mushrooms in a dehydrator, and he replied: “Is that how you poisoned my parents, using that dehydrator?”

Erin Patterson told the jury that Simon’s comment had caused her to do “a lot of thinking about a lot of things.”

“It got me thinking about all the times that I’d used (the dehydrator), and how I had dried foraged mushrooms in it weeks earlier, and I was starting to think, what if they’d gone in the container with the Chinese mushrooms? Maybe, maybe that had happened.”

In his evidence, Simon Patterson denied ever suggesting to Erin that she poisoned his parents with the dehydrator. “I did not say that to Erin,” he said.

The next day, on August 2, Patterson dropped her children at school, then returned home, retrieved the dehydrator, and dumped it at a waste and recycling center. She was seen on closed-circuit television.

Asked about her actions, Patterson said child protection officers were due to visit her house that afternoon, and she was “scared” about having a conversation about the meal and the dehydrator.

“I was scared that they would blame me for it … for making everyone sick,” she said. “I was scared they’d remove the children,” she added.

Analysis showed remnants of death cap mushrooms in the dehydrator, the prosecution said.

Patterson acknowledged that when she dumped the dehydrator, she knew that doctors suspected death cap mushroom poisoning. She also accepted that she did not tell medical staff that foraged mushrooms may have been in the meal.

Patterson said she had diarrhea after the lunch but brushed it off as a bout of gastro. She was not as ill as her lunch guests – and during her testimony, she offered a reason why.

The orange cake

Gail Patterson had brought an orange cake to lunch to share, and Erin Patterson testified that after the guests left, she found herself eating slice, after slice, after slice.

After consuming about two-thirds of the cake, she made herself throw up, she told the court.

In her closing address, prosecutor Rogers said no evidence was offered suggesting expelling tainted food can lessen the impact of amanita toxin.

To the jury, she said, “we suggest (you) reject her evidence about vomiting after the meal as a lie.”

In his closing argument, defense lawyer Mandy asked why, if it was a lie, Patterson hadn’t been more precise about when she vomited? “She surely would have said to you that it happened as soon as the guests left, because the earlier the better,” he said to the jury.

During her testimony, Patterson also offered an explanation about how the death cap mushrooms came to be in the meal.

Patterson said she dried store-bought and foraged mushrooms in her dehydrator and would store them in plastic containers in the pantry. If one box was full, she’d start another, she said.

Patterson said that, back in April, she had bought dried mushrooms from an Asian grocer in Melbourne, but didn’t use them at the time because they were “too pungent.” Instead, she stored them in a plastic container in the pantry.

Mandy asked her: “Do you have a memory of putting wild mushrooms that you dehydrated in May or June of 2023 into a container which already contained other dried mushrooms?”

“Yes, I did do that,” Patterson said.

Patterson said that, on July 29, as she cooked the lunch, she tasted the mixture of garlic, shallots and mushrooms and decided it was “a little bland,” so she added dried mushrooms that had been stored in a plastic container in her pantry.

Mandy asked her what she had believed to be in the plastic container in the pantry.

“I believed it was just the mushrooms that I bought in Melbourne,” Patterson said.

“And now, what do you think might have been in that tub?” Mandy asked.

“Now I think that there was a possibility that there were foraged ones in there as well,” she said.

Closing arguments

The Crown contends there was no Asian grocer and that Patterson faked illness after the meal to suggest that she, too, had suffered symptoms of death cap mushroom poisoning.

Rogers alleged Patterson initially left hospital because she knew that neither she, nor her children, had consumed the poisoned lunch.

When Patterson was examined on Monday, July 31, a doctor found “no clinical or biochemical evidence of amanita poisoning or any other toxicological substance” in her system, Rogers said.

“By that stage, all four of the lunch guests were in induced comas,” she added.

Of allegations Patterson faked her illness following the lunch, Mandy said it made no sense that she’d refuse medical help and discharge herself from hospital early, if she was pretending to have eaten poisoned mushrooms.

“If you’re pretending to be sick, you’re going to be saying to the medical staff, ‘Hook me up, pump me full of drugs, I am very, very sick. Please,’” Mandy said.

Furthermore, he said it was possible to have milder symptoms of amanita poisoning, depending on how much was consumed, according to expert evidence that said weight and age were also factors.

Under cross-examination, Rogers put it to Patterson that she had two faces: A public one where she appeared to have a good relationship with her in-laws, and a private one expressed in her Facebook chat groups, where she vented to friends that she’d had enough of the family.

In messages to Facebook friends read out in court, Patterson expressed her frustration that her in-laws would not get involved in her dispute with Simon over child support.

“I’m sick of this shit I want nothing to do with them,” she wrote in December 2022. “I thought his parents would want him to do the right thing but it seems their concern about not wanting to feel uncomfortable and not wanting to get involved in their sons personal matters are overriding that so f*** em.”

And another message read: “This family I swear to f***ing god.”

Asked by her defense counsel Mandy how she felt about that statement now, an emotional Patterson said: “I wish I’d never said it … I feel ashamed for saying it, and I wish the family didn’t have to hear that I said that.

“They didn’t deserve it.”

In his closing arguments, Mandy characterized the terse exchanges as signs of a “brief spat” that was “resolved amicably.”

Mandy said there was no motive for triple murder, and that there were in fact several reasons why Patterson would not want to kill her guests. She had no money issues, lived in a big house, and had almost full-time custody of her two young children, who were very close to their grandparents, he said.

The defense argues that Patterson unknowingly picked death cap mushrooms, dried them in her dehydrator and stored them in the pantry, until the day she inadvertently threw them into the pan.

Mandy said some of the “ridiculous” propositions included that Patterson planned to kill four lunch guests and “thought it would all be passed off as some kind of strange case of gastro, where everyone died, except her.”

To the prosecution’s allegation that Patterson had “blitzed” the death cap mushrooms into a powder to hide them in the meal, he said: “Why would you need to hide mushrooms in a mushroom paste? It doesn’t make any sense.”

The moment in hospital when Erin said Simon asked her if she had used the dehydrator to poison his parents was “when the wheels start turning,” Mandy said.

“She starts panicking and she starts lying from that point,” he said.

“What followed from this moment were actions taken to conceal … the fact that foraged mushrooms went into the meal because she feared if that was found out, she would be held responsible.”

However, Rogers said Patterson had complete control over events and used it to “devastating effect.”

The cook had “told too many lies,” said Rogers, as she urged the jury to reject Patterson’s claims that she didn’t know the meal was laced with toxins.

“We say there is no reasonable alternative explanation for what happened to the lunch guests, other than the accused deliberately sourced death cap mushrooms and deliberately included them in the meal she served them, with an intention to kill them,” Rogers said.

The jury is expected to retire to consider their verdict this week – their decision must be unanimous.

Pope Leo XIV has said the Catholic Church must establish a culture that refuses to tolerate abuse in “any form,” as he thanked a Peruvian journalist for reporting on allegations of abuse inside a powerful Catholic group.

Leo’s remarks, the first he has made publicly on the church’s abuse scandals since his election to the papacy on May 8, were contained in a message sent for the performance of a play which dramatizes the work of an investigative journalist, Paola Ugaz, who has faced a long campaign of legal actions and death threats due to her reporting.

“It is urgent to ingrain throughout the Church a culture of prevention that does not tolerate any form of abuse — neither of power or authority, nor of conscience or spirituality, nor sexual,” Leo wrote in a message read on 20 June. “This culture will only be authentic if it is born of active vigilance, transparent processes, and sincere listening to those who have been hurt.”

The pope said the work of journalism was essential to implementing that culture of prevention, as he praised Ugaz and other Peruvian journalists for their reporting on abuse scandals inside the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (Sodality of Christian Life, or SCV), a hugely influential Catholic society which had deep ties to Peru’s powerful and wealthy.

Pope Leo, who spent years working as a missionary and bishop in Peru, came face-to-face with the SCV case when working in the country with Ugaz, and several survivors have said he was crucial in ensuring action was taken against the now dissolved group.

In his message, the first American pope said it was vital the church followed “a concrete path of humility, truth, and reparation” when it came to tackling abuses and cited a landmark 2018 letter from Pope Francis, in which he pledged the church’s “commitment to guarantee the protection of minors and vulnerable adults”. Leo insisted that the response to abuse cannot simply be a “strategy” but requires a “conversion” by the church, which for decades has been grappling with devastating revelations of sexual abuse by priests and other church leaders.

The pope’s praise of journalists’ work in exposing abuse scandals is significant, given that some bishops have in the past criticized the media for its reporting on them. Leo XIV, however, said the journalists who had reported on the Sodalitium had done so with “courage, patience, and fidelity to the truth” and had faced “unjust attacks.”

The pope said the church recognized the “wound” in “so many children, young people, and adults who were betrayed where they sought solace” and “those who risked their freedom and their (good) names so that the truth would not be buried.”

The June 20 message from Leo was read at a performance in Lima, Peru, of the play “Proyecto Ugaz” (Project Ugaz), which highlights Ugaz’s years-long investigation into the Sodalitium. Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, one of the Vatican investigators into the Sodalitium group, read out the message with Ugaz on stage alongside him.

The work of journalists is vital, Leo insisted, in ensuring the church is a place where “no one suffers in silence” and where “the truth is not seen as a threat, but as a path to liberation. He praised Ugaz and fellow journalists for their courage in exposing the abuses.

Pope Leo also referenced “tensions” in Peru, which have been heightened following the removal of President Pedro Castillo in 2022, and he underlined the importance of a free media in a country where journalists have faced intimidation and attacks.

“In this time of profound institutional and social tensions, defending free and ethical journalism is not only an act of justice, but a duty of all those who yearn for a solid and participatory democracy,” he said. “Wherever a journalist is silenced, the democratic soul of a country is weakened. Freedom of the press is an inalienable common good. Those who conscientiously exercise this vocation cannot see their voices silenced by petty interests or fear of the truth.”

A few days after his election, the pope met media representatives in the Vatican and during that gathering he stressed his support for a free press and called for the release of imprisoned journalists. Ugaz was among those present at the meeting, and after his speech she greeted Leo with a broad smile, as she handed him a box of chocolates and a Peruvian scarf.

That meeting with the media, Leo explained in his message on June 20, affirmed the “sacred mission” of journalists to “become bridges between the facts and the conscience of the people.”