Belarus has freed Sergey Tikhanovsky, a key dissident figure and the husband of exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, following a rare visit by a senior US official, Tikhanovskaya’s team announced on Saturday.
Tikhanovsky, a popular blogger and activist who was jailed in 2020, arrived in Vilnius, Lithuania, alongside 13 other political prisoners, his wife’s team said. The release came just hours after Belarusian authorities announced that authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko met with US President Donald Trump’s envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, in Minsk.
A video published on his wife’s official Telegram account showed Tikhanovsky disembarking a white minibus, with a shaved head and broad smile. He pulled Tikhanovskaya into a long embrace as their supporters applauded.
“My husband is free. It’s difficult to describe the joy in my heart,” Tikhanovskaya told reporters. But she added her team’s work is “not finished” while over 1,100 political prisoners remain behind bars in Belarus.
Tikhanovsky was jailed after announcing plans to challenge Lukashenko in the 2020 election. Following his arrest, his wife ran in his stead, rallying large crowds across the country. Official results of the election handed Lukashenko his sixth term in office but were denounced by the opposition and the West as a sham.
As unprecedented protests broke out in the aftermath of the vote, Tikhanovskaya left the country under pressure from the authorities. Her husband was later sentenced to 19 1/2 years in prison on charges of organizing mass riots.
Other prominent dissidents remain in Belarusian jails, among them Nobel Peace Prize winner Ales Bialiatski, a human rights advocate serving a 10-year prison sentence on charges widely denounced as politically motivated. Also behind bars is Viktor Babaryka, a former banker who was widely seen in 2020 as Lukashenko’s main electoral rival, and Maria Kolesnikova, a charismatic leader of that year’s mass protests.
Released alongside Tikhanovsky was longtime Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty correspondent Ihar Karnei, the US government-funded broadcaster confirmed. Karnei, who had also worked with prominent Belarusian and Russian newspapers, had been serving a three-year service on extremism charges he rejected as a sham.
RFE/RL’s Belarusian service had been designated extremist in the country, a common label handed to anyone who criticizes Lukashenko’s government. As a result, working for it or spreading its content has become a criminal offense.
“We are deeply grateful to President Trump for securing the release of this brave journalist, who suffered at the hands of the Belarusian authorities,” the broadcaster’s CEO Stephen Capus said Saturday in a press release.
Karnei was detained several times while covering the 2020 protests. Unlike many of his colleagues, he chose to stay in Belarus despite the ensuing repression. He was arrested again in July 2023, as police raided his apartment seizing phones and computers.
Belarus also freed an Estonian national who had set up an NGO to raise funds for Belarusian refugees. According to the Estonian Foreign Ministry, Allan Roio was detained last January, and sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison on charges of establishing an extremist organization.
People trying to call friends and loved ones inside Iran have instead been met with strange, pre-recorded voice messages, which some experts believe may be part of the regime’s wider internet blackout.
“Life is full of unexpected surprises,” it continues, “and these surprises can sometimes bring joy while, at other times, they challenge us.
“The key is to discover the strength within us to overcome these challenges.”
The unsettling message, which lasts nearly 90 seconds, then goes on to recommend the listener close their eyes and imagine themself in a place that brings them “peace and happiness.”
While different variations have been reported, this version appears to have been the one most commonly heard by people outside Iran placing calls to mobile phones inside the country on Wednesday and Thursday. No similar message was reported when calling landlines.
The messages were widely heard after Iran imposed nationwide temporary restrictions on internet access on Wednesday, citing security concerns. This meant WhatsApp was down, so people abroad began calling their friends and family in Iran directly, rather than via the app. The message is reportedly not heard if the call is made through an app.
The initial assumption for many Iranians was that the messages were the result of an Israeli cyberattack. Others see the Iranian authorities as being behind them.
Alp Toker, the founder and director of NetBlocks, a non-governmental organization that monitors internet governance, believes the messages are an attempt by the Iranian government to limit telecommunications, as part of the wider internet censorship measures.
Toker added it was a phenomenon NetBlocks had seen in different places around the world when internet access was cut. “Sometimes it will have an advert for summer vacations and sometimes it will have some other nonsense,” he said.
According to Toker, the messages are text-to-speech generated. He believes they appear to have been set up rapidly.
“It’s in the format of a normal gateway answering message of the type you might get from a national gateway when a phone doesn’t answer,” he said. “It seems that they’ve gone with the settings, and there’s a little box where you can put in the settings and they’ve put something in there, pre-AI generated.”
Neither Israel nor Iran has made a public statement on the recorded phone messages.
Access to international internet services had been partially restored in parts of Iran on Saturday “after approximately 62 hours of severe disruption,” NetBlocks said.
“While some regions have seen improvements, overall connectivity remains below ordinary levels, continuing to hinder people’s ability to communicate freely and access independent information,” it added.
The semi-official Tasnim news agency reported that international internet services would resume by 8 p.m. local time Saturday, citing the communications minister. However, Tasnim later reported that this was not the case, citing the same minister.
According to the communications ministry, Iranians abroad can now contact their families inside Iran through domestic messaging apps.
The Iranian government has frequently restricted internet access in the country. During nationwide protests in 2022, authorities implemented multiple internet shutdowns in an effort to stifle dissent.
Pakistan has formally recommended US President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, citing his “decisive diplomatic intervention” following a spike in violence between India and Pakistan earlier this year.
The government praised Trump for leveraging his “pivotal leadership” in May, when several days of cross-border strikes marked the worst regional fighting between the two nuclear-armed nations since 1971, killing dozens and stoking fears of a wider war.
Islamabad and New Delhi agreed to a US-brokered truce on May 8, as one final burst of strikes ripped through parts of the long-disputed Kashmir region – to which both countries claim full sovereignty.
“At a moment of heightened regional turbulence, President Trump demonstrated great strategic foresight and stellar statesmanship through robust diplomatic engagement with both Islamabad and New Delhi,” Pakistan’s government said in a statement on Saturday.
The US president helped in “averting a broader conflict between the two nuclear states that would have had catastrophic consequences for millions of people in the region and beyond” the statement added.
“This intervention stands as a testament to his role as a genuine peacemaker and his commitment to conflict resolution through dialogue.”
Indian and Pakistani officials gave contradictory accounts of how the agreement on a truce was reached at the time. While Islamabad lauded the involvement of the White House, New Delhi downplayed it – keen to relay the ceasefire as a victory and saying the neighbors “directly” collaborated on the truce.
Governments, other institutions and certain individuals can nominate any living person or active organization for the Nobel Peace Prize. The winner is decided each year by the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
Trump has long sought to present himself as a global peacemaker.
Before his second term in office, the Republican leader ferociously criticized his predecessor President Joe Biden’s failed attempts to negotiate an end to Israel’s brutal campaign against Hamas in Gaza, and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Now, a new war is brewing in the Middle East after Israel unleashed mass strikes on Iran on June 13, prompting retaliatory attacks from Tehran – a week-long conflict that has already inflicted a bitter human cost.
More than 400 people have been killed in Iran, Iranian state broadcaster IRIB reported on Saturday, citing Iran’s health ministry. In Israel, at least 24 people have been killed, according to the Israeli government.
Israel says the attacks are targeting nuclear sites and high-ranking military officers, several of whom have been killed. Tehran has retaliated with drone and missile attacks deep into northern and southern Israel.
Earlier this week, Trump set out a self-imposed two-week timeline for a decision on US military involvement in Iran. After meeting with a top EU official and foreign ministers from Britain, France and Germany in Geneva, Switzerland, on Friday, Iran’s foreign minister said his country would not re-enter negotiations with the US while it remains under attack from Israel.
Just on Friday, Trump sought to stress his diplomatic successes in the Middle East and beyond, while suggesting he would not gain recognition for them.
“I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the War between India and Pakistan,” he posted on his Truth Social platform.
“I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do, including Russia/Ukraine, and Israel/Iran, whatever those outcomes may be.”
As tensions between Israel and Iran escalate, the airwaves are full of alarmist commentary. Military analysts and political leaders alike are warning that Tehran is ‘on the brink’ of possessing a nuclear weapon. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt even claimed, ‘Iran has all that it needs to achieve a nuclear weapon … and it would take a couple weeks to complete the production of that weapon.’ This is not just a misstatement. It is misinformation—and it risks pushing the United States into a hasty and unjustified war.
The reality is far more complex. Enriched uranium—even at weapons-grade levels—is only one component of a long, technically demanding process required to create a functional nuclear bomb. Understanding why this alarmism is premature requires a clear breakdown of what’s actually involved in building such a device.
According to U.S. experts and declassified intelligence assessments, a nuclear weapon requires at least the following elements:
Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU): Iran would need U-235 enriched to 90%, but that alone is insufficient.
Precision Shaping: The uranium must be machined into a flawless sphere, requiring high-end metallurgy and computing.
Explosive Lenses: Carefully placed charges must detonate simultaneously to compress the core—a method called implosion.
Trigger Mechanisms: These detonators must be precisely synchronized; even a microsecond delay renders the weapon ineffective.
Reflectors and Tampers: Elements like beryllium are required to maintain compression and sustain the chain reaction.
Weaponization: The bomb must be ruggedized into a functional assembly, including casing and electronics that can survive delivery.
Delivery Systems: The weapon must be fitted onto a missile, aircraft, or another platform capable of reaching its target.
In addition to enriched uranium and implosion mechanisms, a functional nuclear weapon requires several other complex components that Iran has not demonstrably mastered. These include a neutron initiator to trigger the chain reaction, precision fusing and arming systems, and reentry vehicle technology if the weapon is to be missile-delivered. A credible nuclear arsenal also demands sub-critical testing infrastructure to validate design functionality and safety protocols to control explosive yield. These technical requirements involve advanced engineering, testing, and materials—none of which are confirmed to exist in Iran’s program today.
Each of these steps represents a serious technological challenge. While Iran has demonstrated enrichment capabilities, there is no credible open-source evidence that it has mastered the other essential components. The most difficult hurdle—weaponization—remains the most classified and technically advanced part of the entire process.
Yet Israel’s recent week of strikes on Iranian nuclear and military facilities—including the deeply buried Fordow enrichment site near Qom—were reportedly driven by fears that Iran had crossed the 90% enrichment threshold. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Iran now possesses enough enriched uranium for ‘nine nuclear weapons’ and the IDF’s Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir warned of an ‘immediate operational necessity’ as Iran had ‘reached the point of no return.’ However, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and U.S. intelligence assessments have not publicly corroborated any progress toward assembling a usable bomb.
The Fordow facility, often portrayed as a doomsday site, is not a weapons lab. It is an enrichment plant—too deep to strike easily, but also too constrained to test, assemble, or launch a nuclear weapon. That fact alone should prompt the question: Why strike now?
Netanyahu’s warnings are not new. In 2012, he told NBC’s Meet the Press that Iran would have enough material for a bomb in ‘six or seven months,’ urging the U.S. to draw a ‘red line’ before it was ‘too late.’ The dire prediction never materialized. No bomb was built. No red line crossed. The episode offers a lesson in how worst-case scenarios, not verified facts, can drive the conversation.
Before the United States commits to military action, President Trump—and the American people—deserve clear answers: Does Iran possess the necessary components, the design knowledge, and the capacity to assemble and deliver a functioning weapon? Or are we risking war based on fear and incomplete intelligence?
We have been here before. In 2003, the U.S. invaded Iraq over weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. That war cost thousands of lives, almost three trillion dollars to the present, destabilized a region, and damaged U.S. credibility for decades. To repeat such a mistake would be strategic malpractice of the highest order.
None of this downplays the threat Iran poses. The regime’s support for proxy militias, its ballistic missile program, and its pattern of obstructing IAEA inspections are deeply troubling. But deterrence and diplomacy—not preemptive war—must be the first response. The United States retains a full suite of tools: cyber operations, regional missile defense, economic sanctions, and multilateral diplomacy. Military action should remain the final option—not the opening move.
As Australian novelist Kate Forsyth reminds us: ‘War is an unpredictable beast. Once unleashed, it runs like a rabid dog, ravening friend or foe alike.’ Let us not unleash that beast over uranium that is dangerous—but not yet detonatable.
President Trump, Congress, and our intelligence community must deliver a full, honest accounting. What does the United States know—not suspect—about Iran’s nuclear readiness? What pieces are still missing? What tools short of war can ensure they stay missing?
These are the questions that must be answered before another missile is fired. Panic is not a policy. Precision is.
Amid a week of daily attacks between Middle Eastern juggernauts Israel and Iran, President Donald Trump has repeatedly drilled home a key point.
‘IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON,’ the president wrote on social media.
And speaking with reporters in the Oval Office at the White House, Trump highlighted, ‘I’ve been saying for 20 years, maybe longer, that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.’
It’s a stance U.S. presidents have taken for a couple of decades. And it appears most Americans agree with Trump and his presidential predecessors when it comes to the possibility of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.
Nearly three-quarters (73%) of registered voters questioned in a new Fox News national survey said they think Iran poses a real security threat to the U.S. That’s a 13-point boost since Fox News last asked the question six years ago.
And the poll, conducted June 13-16, indicates wide support across the partisan spectrum. Majorities of Republicans (82%), Democrats (69%) and Independents (62%) agreed that Iran poses a threat.
The survey also showed that 78% of those questioned said they were very or extremely concerned about Iran obtaining a nuclear bomb. And eight in 10 said what happens in the Middle East does matter in the U.S.
Daron Shaw, a veteran GOP pollster and the Republican partner on the Fox News poll, said that ‘the increased sense that Iran constitutes a threat is real, but it also reflects the unique timing and circumstances surrounding this poll.’
‘The poll was in the field as images of Iranian missiles falling on Tel Aviv dominated television and the internet — the immediacy and clarity of the conflict undoubtedly contributes to how voters gauge what is at risk,’ noted Shaw, who is also a politics professor and chair at the University of Texas.
There was a similar response regarding the threat from Iran in a Ronald Reagan Institute national survey conducted earlier this month, before Israel’s initial attack last week sparked the daily bombardments by both nations.
Eighty-four percent of those questioned in the poll, which was shared first with Fox News, said preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons matters to U.S. security and prosperity.
Trump is weighing whether the U.S. should join Israel in striking Iran to cripple its nuclear program and prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
‘President Trump doesn’t often get a political softball sent his way. His decision to support Israel’s attacks on the Islamic Republic of Iran and the prospective decision to deal a limited but decisive blow to Iran’s nuclear ambitions by striking the Fordow facility can prove to be political mana from heaven,’ veteran political scientist Wayne Lesperance said.
Lesperance, president of New England College, noted that ‘If the President makes the case clearly and firmly to the American people, polling data suggests he would enjoy support from his own party, Democrats and Independents. What’s more, Trump’s decision and subsequent action would crowd out any of the issues or coverage like immigration, the budget, or tariffs in the near term. Politically, a decision to act against Iran is smart politics.’
But Lesperance cautioned that ‘this all assumes that the attacks are successful. It also assumes Americans are tolerant of the repercussions of backlash over the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran.’
Fox News’ Dana Blanton and Victoria Balara contributed to this report.
At least eight people are dead following an accident involving a hot air balloon in Brazil’s southern region of Santa Catarina on Saturday, according to the local governor.
“We are all shocked by the accident involving a balloon in Praia Grande, this Saturday morning. Our rescue team is already on site… So far, we have confirmed eight deaths” local governor Jorginho Mello said on X.
He said 21 people were on board, the other 13 survived.
Video posted to social media shows a hot air balloon catch fire while in the sky. The balloon then deflates and falls to the ground.
“We saw two people fall from above, and soon after the basket broke, and the balloon fell,” an eyewitness told local media Jornal Razão.
The eyewitness said she ran to see where the balloon fell and saw two survivors, “a woman covered in mud and in a state of shock, and a man with her who was limping,” as well as two bodies.
Praia Grande is a common destination for hot-air ballooning, a popular activity in some parts of Brazil’s south during June festivities that celebrate Catholic saints such as Saint John, AP reports.
Tesla has inked its first deal to build a grid-scale battery power plant in China amid a strained trading relationship between Beijing and Washington.
The U.S. company posted on the Chinese social media service Weibo that the project would be the largest of its kind in China when completed.
Utility-scale battery energy storage systems help electricity grids keep supply and demand in balance. They are increasingly needed to bridge the supply-demand mismatch caused by intermittent energy sources such as solar and wind.
Chinese media outlet Yicai first reported that the deal, worth 4 billion yuan ($556 million), had been signed by Tesla, the local government of Shanghai and financing firm China Kangfu International Leasing, according to the Reuters news agency.
Tesla said its battery factory in Shanghai had produced more than 100 Megapacks — the battery designed for utility-scale deployment — in the first quarter of this year. One Megapack can provide up to 1 megawatt of power for four hours.
“The grid-side energy storage power station is a ‘smart regulator’ for urban electricity, which can flexibly adjust grid resources,” Tesla said on Weibo, according to a Google translation.
This would “effectively solve the pressure of urban power supply and ensure the safe, stable and efficient electricity demand of the city,” it added. “After completion, this project is expected to become the largest grid-side energy storage project in China.”
According to the company’s website, each Megapack retails for just under $1 million in the U.S. Pricing for China was unavailable.
The deal is significant for Tesla, as China’s CATL and carmaker BYD compete with similar products. The two Chinese companies have made significant inroads in battery development and manufacturing, with the former holding about 40% of the global market share.
CATL was also expected to supply battery cells and packs that are used in Tesla’s Megapacks, according to a Reuters news source.
Tesla’s deal with a Chinese local authority is also significant as it comes after U.S. President Donald Trump slapped tariffs on imports from China, straining the geopolitical relationship between the world’s two largest economies.
Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk was also a close ally of President Trump during the initial stages of the trade war, further complicating the business outlook for U.S. automakers in China.
The demand for grid-scale battery installation, however, is significant in China. In May last year, Beijing set a new target to add nearly 5 gigawatts of battery-powered electricity supply by the end of 2025, bringing the total capacity to 40 gigawatts.
Tesla has also been exporting its Megapacks to Europe and Asia from its Shanghai plant to meet global demand.
Capacity for global battery energy storage systems rose 42 gigawatts in 2023, nearly doubling the total increase in capacity observed in the previous year, according to the International Energy Agency.
Recent arrests of Chinese nationals at the University of Michigan have resurrected concerns about CCP-owned farmland and property in the United States, particularly in Michigan, and caused some to draw parallels with the current conflict between Iran and Israel.
Earlier this month, two Chinese nationals were charged with allegedly smuggling a ‘dangerous biological pathogen’ into the U.S. to study at the University of Michigan in an incident that FBI Director Kash Patel described as a ‘sobering reminder that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues to deploy operatives and researchers to infiltrate our institutions and target our food supply, an act that could cripple our economy and endanger American lives.’
Later, a third Chinese national with connections to the university was arrested, renewing questions about China’s efforts to infiltrate and influence various sectors in the United States, including buying up farmland, which has been a growing concern nationwide.
A 2023 report from the United States Department of Agriculture found that ‘foreign persons held an interest in nearly 45 million acres of U.S. agricultural land,’ which represents 3.5% of all privately held agricultural land and 2% of all land in the country.
While China is not at the top of the list of countries in that report, the arrests in Michigan have prompted calls from Congress to ensure that the CCP, viewed by many as the nation’s top geopolitical adversary, is not buying up farmland in the United States.
Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts exclusively told Fox News Digital this week that China has been aggressively buying American agriculture, ‘which is why we need to have a heightened sense of vigilance around protecting our homeland.’
Ricketts, along with Democratic Sen. John Fetterman, introduced the bipartisan Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure (AFIDA) Improvements Act that seeks to implement recommendations published by the Government Accountability Office in January 2024, which found the AFIDA was ill-equipped to combat foreign ownership of American agricultural land.
‘China’s land purchases aren’t just about acreage—they’re about access,’ Michigan GOP Rep. John Moolenaar, chairman of the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the CCP, told Fox News Digital.
‘Even small parcels near military bases or critical infrastructure pose serious national security risks. In my home state, we’ve seen concerning cases like Gotion’s site near Camp Grayling. We need full transparency into who’s buying land and where—because the Chinese Communist Party shouldn’t be allowed to hide behind shell companies to gain a foothold in our country.’
China’s encroachment into Michigan’s agriculture was enough of a concern for Republican state Rep. Gina Johnsen to introduce legislation earlier this year banning foreign adversaries from buying up farmland.
‘Our state’s agricultural industry is a pillar of our economy. My community is an agricultural community,’ Johnsen said. Our farms provide food security, jobs, and economic stability for countless residents. However, there is growing concern about losing our farmland to countries of concern.’
Additionally, Chinese farmland has become a topic of conversation in the wake of revelations that Israel’s attack on Iran’s nuclear capabilities was aided by years of covert planning, surveillance and infiltration by Israeli intelligence.
Code-named ‘Am Kelavi’ (Rising Lion), the preemptive operation was the product of unprecedented coordination between the Israeli air force, the Military Intelligence Directorate, the Mossad and the country’s defense industries. For years, they worked ‘shoulder to shoulder’ to gather the intelligence files needed to eliminate Iran’s most sensitive military and nuclear assets.
As part of that operation, Israel was able to establish a drone base inside Iran, where Mossad operatives retrieved them from hiding spots to use against Iranian sites.
Bryan Cunningham, president of Liberty Defense and former CIA intelligence officer, told Fox News Digital that the Israeli operation is a ‘wake-up call’ for the United States about what a foreign adversary like China could potentially carry out in the United States.
‘As an intelligence officer, part of me says, I wish that the sources and methods of building these drone factories inside the target countries hadn’t been revealed,’ Cunningham said. ‘But on the other hand, it does serve as a wake-up call, hopefully for our policymakers, and it also ties in, and if I were the administration, I would make this tie in immediately and loudly with the Trump administration’s border strategy.’
Cunningham continued, ‘Our borders are where you’re most likely to actually intercept these kinds of toxins, explosives, flares, 3D-printed weapons, ceramic weapons, whatever it is. So if it were me and I were the Secretary of Homeland Security, I would be tying this all together. You know, it is important to get people out of the country that have committed violent or other serious crimes in the country, but it’s also really important to prevent people like these guys from bringing in those kinds of materials.’
The FBI is increasing its surveillance of Iranian-backed operatives inside the United States as Trump weighs strikes, a senior law enforcement official told Fox News on Friday.
Fox News Digital’s Deirdre Heavey, Lucas Tomlinson and Efrat Lachter contributed to this report.
Pope Leo XIV has saidthe 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.”
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.
