First Thing: US and Ukraine sign minerals deal

Trump says agreement gives Washington an incentive to continue to invest in Ukraine’s protection. Plus, unraveling the ancient psychedelics myth

Good morning.

The US and Ukraine have signed a deal to share profits and royalties from the future sale of Ukrainian minerals and rare earths after months of fraught negotiations.

The agreement will establish a fund that the administration of Donald Trump has said will start to pay back an estimated $175bn in aid provided to Kyiv since the war’s beginning. The US president has said the deal gives the US incentives to invest in Ukraine’s defense against Russia and its reconstruction, once a peace deal is agreed.

The Ukrainian prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said that the fund would be divided equally between the US and Ukraine, granting both partners the same voting rights, and that it would only pertain to new investments.

• Is it a done deal? Not 100% as it still needs to be approved by Ukraine’s parliament.

Trump officials contacted El Salvador president about Kilmar Ábrego García, sources say

The Trump administration has directly contacted the Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele, about the detention of Kilmar Ábrego García, the man wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, two sources have told the Guardian.

It comes after the US supreme court had ordered the administration to facilitate his return to the US so he could face immigration proceedings within the country. Ábrego García had legal protection from being deported to El Salvador, his country of origin.

The contacts produced no new developments after Bukele rejected the approach, the sources said, and are likely to be an effort by the Trump administration to create a paper trail that it can cite to show it has taken action. The US district judge Paula Xinis had previously ruled that Trump raising the matter in the Oval Office was not enough.

• Where is Ábrego García? Since the supreme court ruling, he has been moved out of the notorious mega-prison Cecot to another prison in El Salvador.

Kamala Harris says ‘courage is contagious’ in major speech excoriating Trump

Kamala Harris has said that the US is witnessing a “wholesale abandonment of America’s highest ideals” by its president in her most powerful speech since Trump returned to the White House.

Speaking to an audience of Democrats in San Francisco, the former vice-president called on Americans to keep organizing as she underlined that “fear isn’t the only thing that’s contagious. Courage is contagious.” She praised the universities, leaders and judges pushing back against Trump, as well as ordinary citizens.

In an indictment of Trump’s first 100 days in office, Harris said the turbulent start to the administration was by design, referencing the Project 2025 policy blueprint. “Please, let us not be duped into thinking everything is chaos. What we are, in fact, witnessing is a vessel being used for the swift implementation of an agenda that has been decades in the making.”

• What else did Harris urge Americans to do? Run for office and defend fundamental rights – but she predicted “things are probably going to get worse before they get better”.

In other news …

• Tesla has denied a report that its board looked to replace Elon Musk as its chief executive as backlash grew against his politics and profits slumped.

• Israel is battling its worst wildfires in a decade, with the military deployed to help firefighters as the flames approached Jerusalem.

• All new-build houses in England will be fitted with solar panels during construction by 2027, under new plans making this a legal requirement for housebuilders.

• Ugandan opposition politicians have accused the president of trying to crush dissent by slapping opponents with politically motivated charges ahead of next year’s elections.

Stat of the day: 15% chance that a quake above 8.0 magnitude will hit the Pacific north-west in next 50 years

The likelihood that an earthquake above 8.0 magnitude will hit the Pacific north-west region in the next 50 years is 15%, research shows. This could dramatically transform areas of the coast from northern California to Washington, causing huge sea level rises as the land sinks, and intensifying flood risks. The last massive earthquake in this region, which was in 1700 and was estimated to be between 8.7 and 9.2 magnitude, created a huge tsunami.

Don’t miss this: The ‘ancient psychedelics’ myth

When the Austrian anthropologist Bernd Brabec de Mori first arrived in Peru he believed, like most outsiders, that ayahuasca had been used in the western Amazon for thousands of years. But after marrying a woman of the local Shipibo tribe and living in the area for six years, he began to detect holes in this narrative – including through linguistic evidence (ayahuasca songs are often sung in non-Amazonian languages). Manvir Singh looks at the cracks in the stories societies tell about the history of psychedelics.

Climate check: Study reveals an ‘early warning sign’ of global heating upheaval

Arctic ecosystems are changing in unexpected ways, giving an “early warning sign” about the impacts that global heating is having on the planet, scientists studying plants in the region have said. The region, which is warming at four times the rate of the rest of the planet, has seen some increases in biodiversity – but the lead author warned that while on the surface this sounds positive, changes to fragile ecosystems can have serious consequences.

Last Thing: Snake on a train line – Japan’s busiest route brought to a halt

On Tuesday a kangaroo shut down an interstate in Alabama; on Wednesday, a snake brought a busy bullet train line to a standstill in Japan. Thousands of passengers were stranded after the meter-long reptile coiled itself around a power line, shorting the electricity supply.

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