Top Democrats have slammed Donald Trump’s plans to impose serious tariffs on America’s neighbors and allies, warning that they will hit working families and small businesses hard.

Chuck Schumer, the minority leader in the US senate, led the charge by saying the president’s threatened tariffs would likely “hit Americans in their wallets”. “It would be nice if Donald Trump could start focusing on getting the prices down instead of making them go up.”

Schumer added that the White House should set its sights on “competitors who rig the game, like China, rather than attacking our allies”.

Trump has set in train 25% import taxes for Canada and Mexico across all products other than Canadian energy which will face a 10% tariff. China will also have 10% tariffs, with the new impositions scheduled to start on Tuesday.

While the trio of affected countries are preparing retaliatory moves, with China saying it will lodge a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization against the US, Democratic leaders are flagging potentially devastating consequences domestically for American workers.

Ken Martin, who was chosen to be the next chair of the Democratic National Committee on Saturday, said that blanket tariffs would cost working families while Trump would ensure that corporations get a pass.

“He’s using American workers as pawns in his petty political games. If a president promised that they’d help my family get by, and then they did this, I’d be pretty pissed off. So, you should be pissed off,” Martin said in a statement.

Trump made a rare concession to his detractors on Sunday, admitting that their could be negative consequences of his hostile act. On his Truth Social feed, he said: “WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN? YES, MAYBE (AND MAYBE NOT!). BUT WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, AND IT WILL ALL BE WORTH THE PRICE THAT MUST BE PAID.”

Lest anyone confuse his statement with contrition or change of heart, Trump put out a separate post repeating his trolling invitation to Canada to join the union. “Canada should become our Cherished 51st State. Much lower taxes, and far better military protection for the people of Canada – AND NO TARIFFS!”

In a largely symbolic gesture, given Republican control of both chambers of Congress, two Democratic senators have introduced a bill to force Trump to seek congressional approval for implementing any tariffs on trading partners. The bill, crafted by Chris Coons from Delaware and Tim Kaine from Virginia, would require the president to explain his plan and its impact on the US economy and foreign policy.

“If the president is going abuse this power to bully and coerce our allies, Congress should take this authority back,” Coons said in a statement.

Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday, Kaine said that he was struck by the “irony” that Trump issued an emergency order on energy then days later slapped 10% tariffs on Canadian energy. “He is increasing prices at the pump, and you will start to see it in the next couple of days. At the same time he is saying there’s an energy emergency – the emergency is self created.”

Deep anxiety about the prudence of Trump’s aggressive move is also being expressed by parties who are normally allied with the president.

The US Chamber of Commerce, a powerful force in conservative politics, said that Trump was making a mistake in thinking that tariffs could solve the problem of immigration across US borders and fentanyl flowing into the country.

“The imposition of tariffs is unprecedented, won’t solve these problems and will only raise prices for American families and upend supply chains,” the chamber’s John Murphy told CNN.

European figures reacted with dismay to the turmoil. On Sunday, asked about Trump’s weekend moves, European Central Bank policymaker Klaas Knot said he expects new tariffs will lead to higher inflation and interest rates in the US that will likely weaken the euro.

The German opposition leader and frontrunner to become the next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, on Sunday expressed his concern. “Tariffs have never been a good idea for resolving trade policy conflicts,” he said at his CDU conservative party convention.

In Britain senior cabinet minister Yvette Cooper said that Trump’s tariff plans could have a “really damaging impact” on the global economy and growth. The top Labour figure said the UK wanted to break down trade barriers, not put them up. “Tariff increases really right across the world can have a really damaging impact on global growth and trade, so I don’t think it’s what anybody wants to see,” she said.

Other experts also warned about the potential impact.

“It’s only a matter of time before the EU is targeted,” said Marchel Alexandrovich, an economist at Saltmarsh Economics in London. “The fact that Canada is responding and putting up tariffs against US goods is a sign of things to come and demonstrates the risks to global trade.”

At the same time Canada said it will stand firm in the trade war.

“I think the Canadian people are going to expect that our government stands firm and stands up for itself,” Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s ambassador to the US told ABC News.

She added: “We’re not at all interested in escalating, but I think that there will be a very strong demand on our government to make sure that we stand up for the deal that we have struck with the United States.”

Investors are bracing for stock market falls after Canada and Mexico hit back against trade tariffs imposed by Donald Trump this weekend.

Trading on the brokerage IG’s weekend markets indicate shares are likely to fall on Monday, after the US president signed an order on Saturday to bring in sweeping tariffs this week, a move that could prompt a trade war with some of the country’s largest trading partners.

Technology stocks are expected to be hit, with the US’s Nasdaq index on track to fall 1.2% at the start of trading on Monday, according to IG. The official futures market opens on Sunday evening.

The Dow Jones index of 30 large US companies looked likely to fall by more than 0.7%, while the UK’s FTSE 100 – which ended last week at a record high – was on track for a 0.6% drop.

“The surprise for markets today isn’t so much Trump’s tariff announcements – largely as flagged,” said IG analyst Tony Sycamore. “It’s that Canada and Mexico retaliated immediately and that others, ie China and the EU, may follow their lead, resulting in a sharp contraction in global trade.”

Canadian and Mexican exports to the US will face a 25% tariff starting on Tuesday, and there will be a 10% levy on energy resources from Canada.

Trump said the move was in response to a “major threat” from illegal immigration and drugs, and demanded both countries staunch the flow of fentanyl and illegal immigrants.

Imports from China will face a 10% tariff on top of existing US charges.

Canada was swift to respond, with the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, announcing a tit-for-tat 25% tariff phased in across C$155bn (£86bn) worth of American products.

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, ordered her economy minister to implement tariff and non-tariff measures in response, while China’s commerce ministry pledged to file a “lawsuit” against the US at the World Trade Organization.

Trump’s tariffs included a retaliation clause to ratchet them up if Mexico, Canada or China tried to impose their own tariffs in response.

Analysts and energy traders have predicted that US motor fuel prices are likely to rise, due to tariffs on Canadian and Mexican oil.

Chris Weston, the head of research at the brokerage Pepperstone, predicted Trump’s announcement would lead to “some derisking” in the markets, and higher volatility on foreign exchanges.

“With Trump placing an additional 25% tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports and adding 10% to the current tariff rate on Chinese imports (with limited carve-outs), one can say that this outcome comes close to representing the most hardlined approach of all the possible scenarios we had considered,” Weston wrote.

“Talk of recession risk in Canada will surely increase and [it] should also raise the prospect that the Mexican central bank will cut the overnight rate by 50bp when Banxico meet on Thursday.”

Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, dropped to a one-week low about $99,078 on Sunday.

South Korea’s acting president, Choi Sang-mok, ordered government agencies to closely monitor any impact from the new tariffs on domestic firms and the South Korean economy.

Trump denied that the tariffs – which are paid when goods enter the US – would push up prices. “Tariffs don’t cause inflation,” he said. “They cause success.”

But economists expect the cost to be passed on to US consumers.

The Harvard economics professor Lawrence Summers, a former US secretary of the treasury, said the tariffs against Canada and Mexico are “inexplicable and dangerous”.

“Much of what we export, involves imported inputs. Cars move back-and-forth across the border between five and 10 times during assembly. This makes the whole of North America much less competitive, relative to Europe and Japan,” Summers posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Donald Trump on Saturday followed through with his promise to place tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China in retaliation over immigrants and illegal drugs that he says enter the US from those countries.

The White House said the tariffs would be implemented starting 1 February, but per the president’s executive order, titled Imposing Duties to Address the Flow of Illicit Drugs Across Our Northern Border, the tariffs will go into effect “on or after 12:01 a.m. eastern time on February 4, 2025”.

From Mar-a-Lago, Trump signed three executive orders placing tariffs of 25% on all goods from Canada and Mexico, and a 10% tariff on both Canadian oil exports and Chinese goods. All tariffs are being imposed under the authority of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. If the countries affected retaliate, White House officials have indicated, tariff rates will increase.

Here’s what we know about Trump’s tariffs so far:

What are the tariffs Trump issued?

The White House said it would place a 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico and a 10% tariff on China. How broad the tariffs will be is still unclear. Trump could make exemptions for certain sectors, such as oil and gas, or limit the tariffs to select groups.

Over the past week, as the deadline approached, some of Trump advisers appeared uncertain as to whether or when tariffs would be imposed. “I can’t tell you when,” Peter Navarro, Trump’s senior trade and manufacturing adviser, told CNBC on Friday.

With even Trump advisers struggling to keep up with his next moves, anything could happen before the imposition of the tariffs.

What is a tariff and why does Trump want to use it against certain countries?

A tariff is a tax levied on foreign goods imported into a country. The US is currently the largest goods importer in the world – in 2022, the value of imported goods in the US totalled $3.2tn.

Before entering office, Trump threatened tariffs on the US’s three biggest trading partners: China, Mexico and Canada. Specifically, he said he wanted to see a 25% tariff on Mexico and Canada and a 10% tariff on China, until the countries deal with immigrants and illegal drugs coming into the US.

Trump sees tariffs as a powerful bargaining chip – but it comes with a high price.

Trump frames tariffs as a policy that can apply pressure on US manufacturers and importers to produce goods domestically.

“All you have to do is build your plant in the United States, and you don’t have any tariffs,” Trump has said. But the global economy has been intertwined for decades. US farmers, for example, would not be able to produce the number of avocados Mexico produces for many years.

What this means is that importers will probably push the cost of tariffs on to consumers, causing prices to rise.

How will US consumers be affected by the tariffs?

A 25% tariff on all imports from Mexico and Canada will make consumer prices go up. Canada is a major exporter of crude oil, while Mexico exports many fresh fruits and vegetables. Mexico is also the largest auto parts exporter to the US. China is a major exporter of chips used in electronics like phones and laptops.

Altogether, the US imported $1.2tn worth of goods from Canada, Mexico and China combined in 2023.

It’s not just the imports that consumers buy directly. When tariffs push up the price of imports, that includes imported materials used to make other products domestically in the US. Higher prices for materials will eventually make their way to consumers.

The Tax Foundation, a bipartisan thinktank, estimates that a 25% tariff on Mexico and Canada and a 10% tariff on China, as a tax, would increase overall taxes by $1.2tn. Trump has celebrated the idea that the US government would receive more revenue through tariffs, but it would ultimately be US consumers footing the bill.

Americans have been bracing for the impact tariffs will have on prices. In a November Harris/Guardian poll, nearly two-thirds of Americans said they expected prices to go up if Trump implements broad tariffs.

Which federal laws give Trump the power to enact tariffs?

US federal law gives the president broad powers to enact tariffs without congressional approval.

Trump has the power to declare a national economic emergency to enact his tariffs. This would invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), which gives the president the power to manage imports during a national emergency.

Trump can also apply tariffs under section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, which gives the president power to impose tariffs on certain industries. This is what Trump used in 2018, when he hit Canada, Mexico and the European Union with tariffs on aluminum and steel.

How have other countries responded to Trump?

Leaders from Canada and Mexico suggested they would work with the Trump administration to address his concerns about immigration and illegal drugs. Canada said that it was in talks with American officials over the creation of a “North American fentanyl strike force”. Mexico, meanwhile, said it would create a similar group for immigration.

If this cooperation is not enough for Trump, Canada and Mexico will probably implement their own tariffs against US imports in retaliation, which would hurt American business. The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said on Friday that his country would bring “forceful but reasonable” tariffs against the US.

After Trump placed tariffs on Mexican steel and aluminum in 2018, Mexico responded with tariffs on pork, cheese and other goods, looking to hurt US manufacturers in retaliation. The US and Mexico eventually reached an agreement in 2019 to lift their tariffs.

Have a question about Trump tariffs? Wondering how they affect inflation, prices or the economy? We’re here to help. Email callum.jones@theguardian.com and we may answer your question in a future story

The EU is under mounting pressure to suspend a controversial minerals deal with Rwanda that has been blamed for fuelling the conflict in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Calls to freeze the agreement have grown after fighters from the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group captured the city of Goma in the eastern DRC, escalating a decades-old conflict and raising fears of a regional war.

With the people of Goma, in North Kivu province, going hungry and relief efforts paralysed, Belgium, the former colonial power in DRC and Rwanda, is leading calls for the EU to suspend the 2024 agreement intended to boost the flow of critical raw materials for Europe’s microchips and electric car batteries.

“The international community must consider how to respond, because declarations have not been enough,” said Belgium’s foreign minister, Bernard Quintin, last week during a visit to Morocco. “We have the levers and we have to decide how to use them.”

Diplomatic sources said Belgium had pressed for a suspension of the EU-Rwanda minerals agreement at several levels, including at a meeting of EU foreign ministers last Monday.

Brussels and Kigali signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on sustainable raw materials value chains in February 2024. The EU gets access to raw material sources that include tin, tungsten, gold, niobium and potential lithium and rare earth elements. Rwanda is the world’s largest extractor of the rare earth metal tantalum, which is used in chemical equipment. The EU is giving Kigali €900m (£750m) to develop its infrastructure in raw materials extraction, health and climate resilience.

The money comes from the global gateway, the EU’s €300bn answer to China’s belt and road initiative, which funds infrastructure projects around the world.

After the deal was signed, the infuriated Congolese president, Félix Tshisekedi, described it as “a provocation in very bad taste”.

Tshisekedi accuses Rwanda of plundering the DRC’s resources, and several UN reports say Rwanda uses the M23 group as a means to extract and then export minerals. Rwanda denies this and says its primary interest in eastern DRC is to eradicate fighters linked to the 1994 genocide.

The US government has also raised concerns that armed groups are benefiting from illegal trade in Congolese minerals, including gold and tantalum. “Significant quantities” of Congolese minerals are being moved by traders, supported by armed groups and security services, to Rwanda and Uganda, where they are sold on to international buyers, the US embassy in DRC has said. “In many cases, these minerals directly or indirectly benefit armed groups,” it said.

The UN has said Rwanda has “de facto control” over the M23 rebels, who are well-equipped and well-trained.

Hilde Vautmans, a Belgian liberal MEP who leads the European parliament’s EU Africa delegation, has backed calls to suspend the agreement. “Given the overwhelming evidence that Rwanda is involved in supporting the M23 rebels in eastern Congo, it is imperative that the EU takes urgent action,” she said, listing targeted sanctions, a freeze on EU development aid and the immediate suspension of the MoU.

A further 15 MEPs – Greens, liberals and leftwingers – have made the same demand for a suspension of the EU agreement. The MoU, they wrote in a recent letter, failed to take into account Rwanda’s role in eastern DRC and “unjustifiably grants international legitimacy to the Rwandan regime”.

“The EU must not be complicit in the humanitarian tragedy unfolding in North Kivu,” the letter said.

Emily Stewart, who works on transition minerals at the NGO Global Witness, said there was a “clear moral imperative” to suspend the agreement.

“The situation in Goma highlights the importance of ensuring that the energy transition does not further embed inequalities and conflict already experienced in mineral-rich regions. The current rush for minerals has the potential to embolden violent and bad-faith actors. To counter this, agreements and plans going forward for mining for transition minerals should be made in tandem with communities.”

The UK has suggested suspending aid to Rwanda, while Germany has cancelled meetings and said it was in talks with other donors about “further measures”.

The European Commission has so far brushed aside criticism of the 2024 deal with Rwanda: a spokesperson last Tuesday said critical materials were “essential to achieve the green and digital transition both within the EU and across the world”.

They said: “One of the main objectives of the partnership MoU with Rwanda is precisely to support the sustainable and responsible sourcing, production and processing of raw materials, and we will increase now in our work this traceability and transparency.”

At least 773 people were killed in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo’s largest city of Goma and its vicinity this week amid fighting with Rwanda-backed rebels who captured the city in a major escalation of a decade-long conflict, Congolese authorities have said.

The rebels’ advance into other areas was slowed by a weakened military that recovered some villages from them.

There were 773 bodies and 2,880 injured people in Goma’s morgues and hospitals, the Congolese government spokesperson Patrick Muyaya told a briefing in the capital, Kinshasa, on Saturday, adding that the death toll could be higher.

“These figures remain provisional because the rebels asked the population to clean the streets of Goma. There should be mass graves and the Rwandans took care to evacuate theirs,” said Muyaya.

Hundreds of Goma residents were returning to the city on Saturday after the rebels promised to restore basic services including water and power. They cleaned up the neighbourhoods littered with debris from weapons and filled with the stench of blood.

“I’m tired and don’t know which way to go. On every corner [there] is a mourner,” said Jean Marcus, 25, one of whose relatives was among those killed in the fighting.

M23 is the most potent of more than 100 armed groups vying for control in Congo’s mineral-rich east, which holds vast deposits critical to much of the world’s technology. They are backed by about 4,000 troops from neighbouring Rwanda, according to UN experts, far more than in 2012, when they first captured Goma and held it for days in a conflict driven by ethnic grievances.

As the fighting raged on with the M23 rebels on Saturday, the Congolese army recaptured the villages of Sanzi, Muganzo and Mukwidja in South Kivu’s Kalehe territory, which had fallen to the rebels earlier this week, according to two civil society officials, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of fears for their safety.

The central African nation’s military has been weakened after it lost hundreds of troops, and foreign mercenaries surrendered to the rebels after the fall of Goma.

UN peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix said on Friday that the M23 and Rwandan forces were about 37 miles (60km) north of South Kivu’s provincial capital of Bukavu, covering almost the same distance in the previous two days since they started advancing along Lake Kivu on the border with Rwanda. Lacroix said the rebels “seem to be moving quite fast”, and capturing an airport a few kilometres (miles) away “would be another really significant step”.

The seizure of Goma resulted in a dire humanitarian crisis, the UN and aid groups said. Goma serves as a humanitarian hub, critical for many of the six million people displaced by the conflict in eastern Congo. The rebels said they will march all the way to Kinshasa, 1,000 miles (1,600km) to the west.

UN spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric told a briefing on Friday that the World Health Organization and its partners conducted an assessment with Congo’s government between 26 and 30 January and reported that 700 people have been killed and 2,800 injured in Goma and the vicinity. Dujarric confirmed to AP that the deaths occurred during those days.

The rebel advance has left in its wake extrajudicial killings and forced conscription of civilians, UN human rights office spokesman Jeremy Laurence said on Friday.

He said: “We have also documented summary executions of at least 12 people by M23” over 26 to 28 January, adding that the group has occupied schools and hospitals in the province and is subjecting civilians to forced conscription and forced labour.

Congolese forces have been accused of sexual violence as fighting rages on in the region, Laurence said, adding the UN is verifying reports that Congolese troops raped 52 women in South Kivu.

Goma’s capture has brought humanitarian operations to “a standstill, cutting off a vital lifeline for aid delivery across eastern (Congo),” said Rose Tchwenko, country director for the Mercy Corps aid group in Congo.

“The escalation of violence toward Bukavu raises fears of even greater displacement, while the breakdown of humanitarian access is leaving entire communities stranded without support,” she said.

Five Salvadorian environmental defenders who were exonerated of bogus civil war charges will face retrial this week amid growing evidence of political interference.

Miguel Ángel Gámez, Alejandro Laínez García, Pedro Antonio Rivas Laínez, Antonio Pacheco and Saúl Agustín Rivas Ortega, were acquitted in October over the alleged killing of an army informant in 1989. The court in Cabañas in northern El Salvador ruled that the state had failed to prove a crime had taken place, or that the defendants, former leftwing guerrilla fighters, were linked to any wrongdoing.

The defendants, who were at the forefront of a 13-year grassroots-led campaign to ban metal mining, were arrested in January 2023 amid warnings that President Nayib Bukele was planning to overturn the historic 2017 law.

The environmental leaders, who are all over 60 and suffer from a range of chronic medical issues, spent nearly two gruelling years fighting the charges, including nine months in which they were held in overcrowded prisons.

But their celebrations were short-lived. The attorney general, a close political ally of Bukele, successfully appealed the verdict in early December and the men face a retrial on the same charges of murder and illicit association.

The state cannot introduce new evidence or witnesses at the retrial, which opens on Monday 3 February. But in an unusual move, the appeals court judges ordered the new trial – and any future appeals – to take place in San Vicente, a different jurisdiction, where the court’s presiding magistrate was appointed during Bukele’s first term.

In late December, the mining ban the five men had campaigned for was overturned after 57 of Bukele’s allies in the 60-seat legislature voted for the president’s legislation. The move came as a new poll by the Central American University (UCA) found that almost two-thirds (61%) of Salvadorians oppose a return to mining.

Last week, hundreds of leading human rights, environmental and faith-based organizations, and academics and lawyers released a letter calling on Bukele to drop the “politically motivated charges” against the five environmental leaders, and reinstate the mining ban.

“We always suspected that the prosecution of the Santa Marta environmental leaders was politically motivated – and that it would lead to a miscarriage of justice. The government’s success in overturning the innocent verdict and overturning the mining ban shows that our suspicions were correct,” said Pedro Cabezas, coordinator of the Central American Alliance Against Mining.

The mining ban was passed unanimously by lawmakers in March 2017 amid mounting concern about the densely populated Central American country’s dwindling water resources.

Bukele’s interest in mining is part of a broader effort to promote and secure international investment for industries that include bitcoin, tourism and fossil fuel exploration – which critics warn risk exacerbating forced displacement, social conflict, economic inequality, and land and water shortages.

Since sweeping to power in 2019, Bukele and his allies have adopted authoritarian crackdowns on gangs, human rights organizations and political opponents, alongside steps to “effectively co-opt democratic institutions”, replacing independent judges, prosecutors and officials with political allies, according to Human Rights Watch.

Mary Lawlor, the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders, said: “This appears to be a case of retaliation for human rights activism. Given the new context, with the government reopening the country to mining, the trial is even more significant. I’m hoping the court will send a strong message, upholding the right to defend rights, which is going to be vital in the months ahead in El Salvador.”

The five environmental activists are among more than 70,000 people detained since Bukele declared a state of emergency and suspended basic rights after a surge in gang violence in March 2022.

“To completely ignore science and the vocal opposition of a wide range of Salvadoran civil society and communities is unconscionable, undemocratic and puts people’s lives at risk,” said Caren Weisbart of Common Frontiers, a Canada-based international solidarity group. “El Salvador’s new mining law is a major step backward in the country’s efforts to prioritize environmental protection.”

Ukraine and Russia have traded blame for a deadly missile strike that killed at least four people in the dormitory of a boarding school situated in a part of Russia’s Kursk region held by Ukrainian forces.

Some of the war’s fiercest battles in recent months have been taking place in the Kursk region that borders Ukraine, where Kyiv forces have held swathes of the land since staging a major cross-border incursion last August.

Ukraine’s armed forces said on the Telegram messaging app that Russia launched an aerial bomb from Russian territory that struck a boarding school in Sudzha, killing at least four. The boarding school housed people preparing for evacuation.

As of 10pm (2000 GMT) on Saturday, 84 people had been rescued or received medical assistance, the statement said. Four of the injured were in a serious condition. Rescue efforts to clear rubble were proceeding.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the attack on Sudzha, about 7.5 miles (12km) from the border with Ukraine, showed how Russia fights the war.

“They destroyed the building even though dozens of civilians were there,” Zelenskyy wrote on X. “This is how Russia waged war against Chechnya decades ago. They killed Syrians the same way. Russian bombs destroy Ukrainian homes the same way.”

Russia’s defence ministry said early on Sunday on Telegram that Ukraine’s forces launched “a targeted missile strike on a boarding school in the city of Sudzha” from the territory of Ukraine.

Russia’s acting governor of the Kursk region, Alexander Khinshtein, also blamed Kyiv forces for the strike and said there was no reliable information yet about the number of potential victims.

A Ukrainian military spokesperson, Oleksiy Dmytrashkivskyi, had earlier said in a video posted on Facebook that nearly 100 people were under rubble at the site, which he said housed mostly elderly and infirm people.

Reuters was not able to verify the claims by either side independently, and the scope of the attack remained unclear.

Both sides deny targeting civilians in the war that Russia launched with its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Thousands of civilians, however, have been killed, the vast majority of them Ukrainian.

• Russia launched a barrage of drones and missiles against Ukraine on Saturday, killing at least 15 people and damaging dozens of residential buildings as well as energy infrastructure across the country, Ukrainian officials said. In the central city of Poltava, a Russian missile struck a residential building, killing 11 people and wounding 16, including four children, Ukraine’s emergency services said, adding that 22 people were rescued from rubble and emergency crews worked well into the night.

• In Kharkiv, north-eastern Ukraine, one person was killed and four wounded in a drone attack, the mayor said. Three police officers were killed during attacks as they patrolled streets in a village in the north-eastern region of Sumy, regional officials said. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Russia used missiles, attack drones and aerial bombs in carrying out the overnight attacks on Ukrainian targets and they showed “we need more support in defending ourselves against Russian terror”. The Institute for the Study of War, a US thinktank, said Russian forces were “likely leveraging ballistic missiles in strike packages since Ukraine only has a few air defence systems suitable for intercepting such missiles”.

• Russian forces struck a boarding school housing people preparing for evacuation in a part of Russia’s Kursk region held by Ukrainian forces, killing at least four people on Saturday, Ukraine’s military said. Zelenskyy said the attack destroyed the boarding school in the border town of Sudzha “even though dozens of civilians were there”. The Ukrainian military’s general staff said on Saturday said that as of 10pm rescue efforts were proceeding and 84 people had been rescued from the rubble or received medical assistance, with four of the injured in a serious condition. Russia’s defence ministry blamed Ukrainian forces for the strike.

• A Ukrainian drone attack killed a civilian in the Russian region of Belgorod bordering Ukraine, the regional governor said on Sunday. “He died from his injuries before the ambulance crew arrived,” Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Telegram. The attack took place in the village of Malinovka, about 8km (five miles) east of the border, he said. Ukraine denies targeting civilians, as does Russia.

• An explosion at a Ukrainian army recruitment centre in the western city of Rivne killed one person and wounded six, police said. Authorities did not say what caused the explosion at 4.15pm local time on Saturday or reveal details on the casualties. There was no air alert over Rivne at the time, according to the regional governor’s Telegram channel.

• A man with a hunting rifle shot dead a Ukrainian army recruitment soldier and escaped with a conscript on Saturday before both were caught by police, authorities said. The recruitment official was escorting mobilised men to a training centre and had stopped at a petrol station in the Poltava region when the incident took place. Police have launched a murder inquiry.

• Moscow claimed its forces were pressing in on the key eastern Ukrainian city of Toretsk, whose capture would enable Russia to obstruct Ukrainian supply routes. Russia’s defence ministry said on Saturday its troops “liberated” the village of Krymske in the north-eastern suburbs of Toretsk, in the Donetsk region. The claim could not be confirmed.

• The US wants Ukraine to hold elections, potentially by the end of the year, especially if Kyiv can agree to a truce with Russia in the coming months, Donald Trump’s top Ukraine official has said. Speaking to Reuters, Keith Kellogg said Ukrainian presidential and parliamentary elections, suspended during the war with Russia, “need to be done”. “Most democratic nations have elections in their time of war. I think it is important they do so,” said Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia. But because of the Russian invasion, Ukraine is under martial law, which constitutionally does not allow elections. Trump and Kellogg have both said they are working on a plan to broker a deal in the first several months of the new administration to end the three-year-old war.

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy said excluding Ukraine from talks between the US and Russia about the war in Ukraine would be “very dangerous” and asked for more discussions between Kyiv and Washington to develop a plan for a ceasefire. Speaking to the Associated Press on Saturday, the Ukrainian president said Russia did not want to engage in ceasefire talks or to discuss any kind of concessions, which the Kremlin interpreted as losing at a time when its troops had the upper hand on the battlefield. Zelenskyy said Donald Trump could bring Vladimir Putin, his Russian counterpart, to the table with the threat of sanctions targeting Russia’s energy and banking system, as well as continued support of the Ukrainian military. “I think these are the closest and most important steps,” he said, following Trump’s comments on Friday that American and Russian officials were “already talking” about ending the war.

• The UN on Saturday condemned a Russian missile attack on the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa that wounded at least seven people and damaged historic buildings. “Unesco condemns the missile attack on the historic centre of Odesa last night, a world heritage site, severely damaging at least two cultural buildings placed under Unesco conventions’ protection,” the UN agency said. “Our team is already at work to promptly support the urgent documentation of damage and identify with the Ukrainian authorities the required emergency interventions,” it said, adding that a Unesco mission would be deployed to Odesa.

Syria’s interim president has made his first trip abroad, travelling to Saudi Arabia in a move that is likely to be an attempt to signal Damascus’s shift away from Iran as its main regional ally.

Ahmed al-Sharaa, who was once aligned with al-Qaida, landed in Riyadh alongside his government’s foreign minister, Asaad al-Shaibani. The two men travelled on a Saudi jet, with a Saudi flag visible on the table behind them.

Saudi state television trumpeted the fact that the first trip by Sharaa, first known internationally by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, was to Riyadh.

Syria’s new three-star, tricolour flag flew next to Saudi Arabia’s at the airport as Sharaa, in a suit and tie, walked off the plane. He was scheduled to meet the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, on the trip.

Saudi Arabia was one of the Arab nations that poured money into insurgent groups that tried to topple the former president Bashar al-Assad after Syria’s 2011 Arab spring protests turned into a bloody crackdown. However, its groups found themselves beaten back as Assad, supported by Iran and Russia, fought the war into a stalemate in Syria.

That changed with the December lightning offensive led by Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). The group was once affiliated with al-Qaida but has since denounced its former ties.

Sharaa and HTS have carefully managed their public image since, with the interim president favouring an olive-coloured military look similar to that of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Women have been appointed to roles and Sharaa has tried to maintain ties to Syria’s Christian and Shia Alawite populations.

That also includes keeping Iran and Russia largely at arm’s length. Iran has yet to reopen its embassy in Damascus, which had been a key node in running operations through its self-described “axis of resistance” that included Assad’s Syria, Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia and other partners. Russia would like to maintain access to air and sea bases it has in Syria, but took in Assad when he fled Syria during the advance.

The moves appear aimed at reassuring the west and trying to get crippling sanctions on Syria lifted. Rebuilding the country after more than a decade of war is likely to cost hundreds of billions of dollars, without mentioning covering the needs of Syria’s people, millions of whom remain impoverished.

The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, visited Damascus in January and said Riyadh had been “actively engaging in dialogue” to lift sanctions against Syria. Saudi Arabia, unlike Sharaa’s key allies in Turkey and Qatar, restored ties with Assad in 2023 alongside most of the Arab world. Getting sanctions lifted could go a long way in cementing their relationship.

Meanwhile, Syria’s interim government still faces challenges from the Islamic State group and other militants in the country. On Saturday, a car bomb exploded in Manbij, a city in Syria’s Aleppo governorate, killing four civilians and wounding nine, Sana reported, citing civil defence officials.

Turkish-backed Syrian rebels had seized Manbij in December, part of a push by Ankara to secure Syrian territory close to its border for a buffer zone.

Syria’s interim president has made his first trip abroad, travelling to Saudi Arabia in a move that is likely to be an attempt to signal Damascus’s shift away from Iran as its main regional ally.

Ahmed al-Sharaa, who was once aligned with al-Qaida, landed in Riyadh alongside his government’s foreign minister, Asaad al-Shaibani. The two men travelled on a Saudi jet, with a Saudi flag visible on the table behind them.

Saudi state television trumpeted the fact that the first trip by Sharaa, first known internationally by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, was to Riyadh.

Syria’s new three-star, tricolour flag flew next to Saudi Arabia’s at the airport as Sharaa, in a suit and tie, walked off the plane. He was scheduled to meet the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, on the trip.

Saudi Arabia was one of the Arab nations that poured money into insurgent groups that tried to topple the former president Bashar al-Assad after Syria’s 2011 Arab spring protests turned into a bloody crackdown. However, its groups found themselves beaten back as Assad, supported by Iran and Russia, fought the war into a stalemate in Syria.

That changed with the December lightning offensive led by Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). The group was once affiliated with al-Qaida but has since denounced its former ties.

Sharaa and HTS have carefully managed their public image since, with the interim president favouring an olive-coloured military look similar to that of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Women have been appointed to roles and Sharaa has tried to maintain ties to Syria’s Christian and Shia Alawite populations.

That also includes keeping Iran and Russia largely at arm’s length. Iran has yet to reopen its embassy in Damascus, which had been a key node in running operations through its self-described “axis of resistance” that included Assad’s Syria, Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia and other partners. Russia would like to maintain access to air and sea bases it has in Syria, but took in Assad when he fled Syria during the advance.

The moves appear aimed at reassuring the west and trying to get crippling sanctions on Syria lifted. Rebuilding the country after more than a decade of war is likely to cost hundreds of billions of dollars, without mentioning covering the needs of Syria’s people, millions of whom remain impoverished.

The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, visited Damascus in January and said Riyadh had been “actively engaging in dialogue” to lift sanctions against Syria. Saudi Arabia, unlike Sharaa’s key allies in Turkey and Qatar, restored ties with Assad in 2023 alongside most of the Arab world. Getting sanctions lifted could go a long way in cementing their relationship.

Meanwhile, Syria’s interim government still faces challenges from the Islamic State group and other militants in the country. On Saturday, a car bomb exploded in Manbij, a city in Syria’s Aleppo governorate, killing four civilians and wounding nine, Sana reported, citing civil defence officials.

Turkish-backed Syrian rebels had seized Manbij in December, part of a push by Ankara to secure Syrian territory close to its border for a buffer zone.

Spain’s former football chief Luis Rubiales will go on trial in Madrid on Monday over the unsolicited kiss he planted on the World Cup winner Jenni Hermoso, a gesture that stunned millions of TV viewers and unleashed a backlash against sexism in sport.

Rubiales, 47, is accused of sexual assault as well as coercion after allegations that he tried to force Hermoso, 34, into publicly declaring that the kiss, which occurred as she celebrated her team’s victory in the 2023 World Cup in Australia, was consensual.

Rubiales, who eventually resigned as president of the Spanish football federation (RFEF) after initially describing the encounter as a “consensual peck”, denies the charges.

Spanish prosecutors are seeking a prison term of two and a half years, although in Spain those who receive sentences of less than two years can usually avoid prison by paying damages as long as they have no previous convictions.

Hermoso, Spain’s all-time top scorer who plays for Tigres in Mexico, will take the stand at Madrid’s high court on Monday.

The outrage and protests over the incident overshadowed the women’s victory while galvanising a #MeToo movement in Spanish football and triggering a broader debate over sexism in Spanish society.

Also on trial for their suspected roles in putting pressure on Hermoso are the former head coach of the women’s national team Jorge Vilda, the former RFEF sporting director Albert Luque and the federation’s former marketing chief Rubén Rivera.

Rubiales and his co-defendants will testify on or after 12 February once the court has interviewed the rest of the witnesses.

Spain’s high court concluded last year that there was enough evidence for a trial, ruling that the kiss “was not consensual and was a unilateral and unexpected move”.

Rubiales clutched his crotch on the final whistle of the victory against England on 20 August 2023 while standing near Spain’s Queen Letizia and her daughter Infanta Sofía.

During the medal presentation, he lifted Hermoso off her feet then grabbed her by the head and appeared to pull her toward him to kiss her on the lips in front of a packed stadium and a global TV audience. A video of the incident swiftly went viral.

Hermoso’s first reaction, according to changing-room footage, was to tell teammates: “Hey, I didn’t like it.”

In a later statement, she said the incident had left her feeling “vulnerable and a victim of aggression”. She described the kiss as an “impulsive act, sexist, out of place and without any type of consent from my part”.

Amid the uproar, Rubiales dismissed critics of the kiss as “idiots and stupid people”, before offering an apology widely seen as half-hearted. He said the kiss was “without bad faith at a time of maximum effusiveness” and has cast himself as a victim of a campaign by “false feminists”.

Prosecutors will argue that Rubiales coerced Hermoso after pulling her aside on the bus to the airport and asking her to approve a statement downplaying the incident, which she refused to do.

Vilda is then alleged to have approached Hermoso’s brother, Rafael, on the flight back to Madrid and warned him her career would suffer unless she agreed to record a video supporting Rubiales’ claim that the kiss was consensual.

Rubiales has called on his daughters to testify, while several of Hermoso’s teammates will also provide evidence.

Amid the protests triggered by the incident, Rubiales’ mother, Ángeles Béjar, was admitted to hospital for a few days after locking herself in a church and going on hunger strike in support of her son, protesting against the “inhumane and bloodthirsty” persecution against him.

A streamlined Mercedes raced by the Formula One greats Stirling Moss and Juan Manuel Fangio in 1955 set a record for a grand prix car on Saturday, selling at auction for €51.15m (£42.7m).

The sleek, silver W196 R Stromlinienwagen, one of only four complete examples in existence, was sold by RM Sotheby’s at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, on behalf of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS).

The car had a price estimate of more than €50m and the bidding rapidly reached €40m in €5m increments but eased off before a final hammer figure of €46.5m. The final price includes the buyers’ premium. The buyer was not immediately named.

The costliest car ever sold at auction was a 1955 Mercedes 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé that changed hands for €135m in May 2022.

The most expensive grand prix car previously sold at auction was another ex-Fangio Mercedes W196 from 1954, which fetched $29.6m at Goodwood, England, in 2013.

The IMS car was the first W196 R to become available for private ownership with the streamlined body fitted.

The car was driven to victory by the five times world champion Fangio at the non-championship Buenos Aires grand prix in 1955, but with a more conventional cigar-shaped body on the same chassis, and fully open wheels.

His team-mate Moss then raced it with the wider, streamlined body extending over the wheels at the season-ending Italian grand prix at Monza, retiring after setting the fastest lap at an average speed of 134mph.

That grand prix marked the end of an era for the Mercedes stable’s Silver Arrows, as the firm withdrew from factory-sponsored motorsport in 1955 after a Le Mans 24 Hours disaster that killed 84 people. Mercedes returned to Formula One as an engine provider in 1994 and with its own works team from 2010.

The car sold on Saturday, chassis number 00009/54, had been donated to the IMS by Mercedes in 1965 and was auctioned to raise funds for the museum’s restoration efforts and acquisitions with more of a US focus.

“It’s a beautiful car, it’s a very historic car, it’s just a little bit outside our scope window,” said the curator Jason Vansickle. “We’ve been fortunate to be stewards of this vehicle for nearly 60 years and it has been a great piece in the museum but with this auction and the proceeds raised, it really will allow us … to be better in the future.”

A flagship programme to create malaria vaccines has been halted by the Trump administration, in just one example of a rippling disruption to health research around the globe since the new US president took power.

The USAid Malaria Vaccine Development Program (MVDP) – which works to prevent child deaths by creating more effective second-generation vaccines – funds research by teams collaborating across institutes, including the US university Johns Hopkins and the UK’s University of Oxford.

Earlier this week, it told partners to stop work, after the president and his allies ordered a freeze on US spending. Researchers warned that the impact of the abrupt halt on other programmes could fuel the spread of drug-resistant HIV, and put medical progress back by years.

The MVDP’s aim is “to reduce the impact of malaria on children living in malaria-endemic areas of the world”. In sub-Saharan Africa, approximately 450,000 under-5s are killed by malaria each year.

While the introduction of two malaria vaccines in 2024 was hailed as transformative, MVDP-funded research aims to make them much more effective and longer-lasting.

A senior academic who has been involved with the programme for a number of years said the sudden halt would set back research, and was likely to include ongoing trials in humans and animals.

They said MVDP-funded projects were often testing a new vaccine in humans for the first time, meaning “huge safety implications of suddenly shutting down – you are absolutely obliged to follow [participants] up and make sure they stay safe.”

The USAid funding freeze and stop or suspend work orders cover an initial period of 90 days while a review is carried out, according to official statements.

However, multiple sources in the health research field said they were unclear who would have the expertise to carry out such a review, with many senior officials at US health bodies having been fired.

Tom Drake, senior policy analyst at the Center for Global Development, said that the impact of cuts to research funding were less visible and less immediate than the implications for the provision of life-saving programmes around the world “but is no less real”.

“The advent of malaria vaccines is one of the greatest global health achievements of our time, and is a direct result of funding by the MVDP and many others,” he said.

“Even if other funders step in to plug the gaps in malaria vaccine funding, there is always an opportunity cost, and so some other development research issue will be neglected as a result.”

Prof Kelly Chibale of the H3D research centre at the University of Cape Town said a project working to create a platform to manufacture the active pharmaceutical ingredients necessary for antiretrovirals in South Africa was at risk.

“We are urgently looking for alternative funding mechanisms to continue this important work, retain the team members and ensure the sustainability of the platform,” he said. “The project will also suffer if our collaborators in the US lose staff in this period of uncertainty.”

Prof Kenneth Ngure of the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology in Kenya and president-elect of the International Aids Society, said researchers on projects testing HIV prevention options such as injectable drugs and vaginal rings globally had received stop work orders.

Even if projects are reinstated after a 90-day pause, there will still be “a lot of damage”, he said.

“It’s like you’re having a car speeding on a highway. Then you apply emergency brakes. There are so many things that can go wrong,” he said.

“I’ve been doing HIV prevention research for the last 20 years; nothing like this has happened. The thing that came closest to this was Covid, and when Covid came, we were able to [find] other ways of continuing with our programmes.”

Some products, such as injectable HIV prevention drugs, are not yet available outside research settings, he said, leaving participants with no alternative source to continue treatment.

If the level of drugs in a participant’s body falls to nonprotective levels, it not only puts them at risk of infection, but means their infection is more likely to develop drug resistance. That makes their treatment more complicated, and if they then infect someone else, the resistance will spread.

Projects that had recently been completed and were ready for data analysis had been affected, Ngure said. “Human beings have given their time. It’s also an ethical obligation for you. When you have done a study, you need to finish that study and you need to share the findings.”

He said: “There’s need for reconsideration of this decision. We’ve had huge support from the US government, many infections have been averted, and we are now starting to talk about controlling the HIV pandemic in the coming years. But when you’ve done all this, if you then stop, we start going backwards. And we can go backwards for many years, if not decades.”

Approached for comment, a state department spokesperson referred to a waiver issued on Wednesday for life-saving humanitarian assistance.

A man accused of attacking Salman Rushdie as he was being introduced at a literary lecture in New York state in 2022 is going on trial this week in a case likely to create global headlines.

The trial could upend life in the tiny upstate New York village of Mayville, whose population of less than 1,500 is not accustomed to finding itself at the center of a media circus covering the attempted assassination of one of the world’s most famous writers.

Hadi Matar, 26, of New Jersey, is accused of attempted murder and assault in the attack in Chautauqua, allegedly stabbing the author 10 times, in the abdomen and neck. Rushdie later lost sight in one eye and sustained nerve and liver damage.

The trial, which starts on Tuesday with jury selection, was postponed from January 2023, when Matar’s defense team requested the manuscript of Rushdie’s memoir Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder, and again in October, after Matar’s defense appealed for a change of venue, arguing that an impartial jury of Matar’s peers could not be found in Chautauqua county.

The author has credited a series of “man-made miracles” for surviving the attack.

“There was a slash right the way across my neck here, but it didn’t seem to cut the artery … there’s three stab wounds down the centre of my torso, but they missed the heart,” he told CBC Radio’s The Current. “That’s what we call good luck.”

After refusing a plea deal for a 20-year sentence, Matar also faces federal terrorism-related charges, including providing “material support and resources” to the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah.

Prosecutors in the federal case argue that Matar’s attack was not random but motivated by the fatwa, or death threat, issued by Iran’s leadership against Rushdie over the author’s 1988 novel The Satanic Verses, which many Muslims considered to be blasphemous.

Rushdie spent years in hiding after the fatwa was issued in 1989, but began to reemerge in the late 1990s. He has traveled mostly freely over the past two decades and become a fairly frequent fixture on the literary circuit and television shows.

Matar, who was born in the US but holds dual citizenship with Lebanon, has pleaded not guilty to both charges, and has been held without bail at the Chautauqua county jail. His mother has indicated he was radicalized during a trip to see his father in Lebanon in 2018.

Rushdie, 77, and Henry Reese, who co-founded Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum to grant sanctuary to writers exiled under threat of persecution, and whom Rushdie has credited for helping to save his life, are expected to testify.

But prosecutors in Matar’s trial have said jurors likely will not hear about the fatwa. “We’re not going there,” district attorney Jason Schmidt said during a recent hearing.

Schmidt said presenting a motive was unnecessary since the attack was witnessed and recorded on cellphones by members of the audience.

Schmidt previously told reporters that his “biggest hurdle” would be picking a fair and impartial jury due to the level of publicity surrounding the incident. Matar’s lawyer, Nathan Barone, told the court he fears the current global unrest would influence their feelings toward his client.

“We’re concerned there may be prejudicial feelings in the community,” said Barone, who also has sought a change of venue for the trial. With tensions around religious-motivated violence running high, the judge in the case has ordered both parties to avoid statements to the media.

In an interview with the Rochester Post-Journal, Barone said he has concerns about “inherent and implicit bias” toward Arab Americans and the Muslim or Arab American community in Chautauqua county.

“There’s a segment of the population that looks at them or hears about them and they form a stereotype,” Barone said, adding that he would have liked to see the trial moved to one of the boroughs of New York City or Erie county, where there is a bigger Arab American population.

After he was arrested, Matar gave an interview to the New York Post in which he described taking a bus to Buffalo from his home in Fairlawn, New Jersey, and a Lyft to Chautauqua, 40 miles away. He then purchased a ticket to the festival and slept outside the night before Rushdie’s talk.

“I don’t like the person. I don’t think he’s a very good person,” Matar told the newspaper. “He’s someone who attacked Islam. He attacked their beliefs, the belief systems.” Matar also praised the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini as “a great person” but would not say whether he was following Khomeini’s fatwa.

Nasser Kanaani, a spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, said Tehran was not involved. “We don’t consider anyone deserving reproach, blame or even condemnation, except for [Rushdie] himself and his supporters. In this regard, no one can blame the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Kanaani added: “We believe that the insults made and the support he received was an insult against followers of all religions.”

Ron Kuby, who represented Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind cleric who headed the Egyptian-based militant group al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya, said it was no surprise Matar refused to take a deal with prosecutors.

“I suspect he thought he was going to be killed in the course of this attack so his expectations were low. He was fortunate enough to survive it so he’s probably going to continue the fight inside the courtroom and in prison,” he said.

Kuby said he wondered if Matar would opt for a traditional defense by trying to create reasonable doubt and challenge eyewitness accounts or instead talk about his motives behind the attack.

“Is he or his lawyer going to put on a more ideological or religiously inspired defense and talk about the religious values that motivated him to try to kill Rushdie, The Satanic Verses, and try to put on a political defense?” Kuby said.

In Knife, Rushdie himself described the attack vividly, writing, “Death was coming at me … it struck me as anachronistic”, and described his alleged assailant as “a sort of time traveler, a murderous ghost from the past”.

The courtroom collision of Rushdie and his alleged attacker is likely to be fascinating, especially if Matar tries to turn the trial into a justification of attacking the writer for the offense his work caused.

“Matar allegedly tried do it on that stage that day, and may continue to do it in the courtroom even though it’s going to result in his conviction,” said Kuby. “Sometimes people prefer to get a conviction than to give up their conviction.”

The NSW transport minister, Jo Haylen, has apologised after using her ministerial driver to chauffeur her and some friends to and from a three-hour private lunch on the Australia Day weekend – at a cost of $750.

“I made the wrong decision,” Haylen said on Sunday when apologising and confirming she would repay the money for the 13-hour, 446km trip to the Hunter Valley.

Asked why she didn’t just book an Uber, the minister told reporters: “In retrospect, I should have.”

The logbook shows on 25 January the trip started at 8am and ended at 8.50pm and was coded as a “business trip during working day”.

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The ministerial car reportedly drove from Sydney to pick up Haylen at her holiday house at Caves Beach – almost 100km north of the city. She and five others, including close friend and fellow minister Rose Jackson, were then ferried to the restaurant at Brokenwood Wines in Pokolbin.

The car later took them back to Caves Beach before the driver returned to Sydney. Ministerial cars and drivers can be used for private purposes under the rules in NSW.

On Sunday, Haylen said her actions were within the existing guidelines but were not appropriate and did not meet the “pub test”.

“Look, we did have a long lunch and we did drink and eat … the question is how we got to and from the lunch and we got that wrong. I got that wrong,” she said.

But Haylen rejected the opposition’s call for her to resign.

“I’m owning it, and I think that people understand sometimes that you make mistakes,” she said. “I’ve made a mistake here and that’s why I’m apologising and repaying the cost. Nobody’s perfect.”

The Coalition had called for Haylen and Jackson to resign or for the premier, Chris Minns, to sack them. Minns said using a chauffeur for a private lunch was “clearly unacceptable”.

“It’s not on for drivers to be used in this way,” the Labor leader said on Sunday. “I’ve asked the Cabinet Office to provide advice on changing the guidelines so this can’t happen again.”

While the use of the car was within the guidelines, “with those rights come responsibilities”, the state opposition leader, Mark Speakman, said.

He argued Haylen had shown “contempt for the taxpayer”.

“The use of a taxpayer-funded Kia van to take her around that area near Newcastle and the Hunter Valley is a disgrace … we’ve got two ministers of the crown off on a jolly at taxpayer expense – up presumably in the Hunter Valley.

“It is not just a government car – it’s an eight-seater government van.”

Haylen said how the trip was logged was the responsibility of the premier’s department. She described the driver as “a very good man and an absolute professional”. He had had all of his required rest breaks, she said.

“I didn’t keep him waiting,” she said. “We did have a private lunch that went for around three hours so he took us to the lunch and returned us home.”

Haylen said she had spoken to the premier about the incident.