Donald Trump’s 10% tariff on all imports from many countries, including the UK, has come into force after 48 hours of turmoil.

US customs agents began collecting the unilateral tariff at US seaports, airports and customs warehouses at 12.01am ET (04:01 GMT), with higher levies on goods from 57 larger trading partners due to start next week – including from the EU, which will be hit with a 20% rate.

Keir Starmer was expected to spend the weekend speaking to foreign leaders about the tariffs, after calls with the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, and the Italian PM, Giorgia Meloni, on Friday in which the leaders agreed that an “all-out trade war would be extremely damaging”.

Starmer was “clear the UK’s response will be guided by the national interest” and officials would “calmly continue with our preparatory work, rather than rush to retaliate”, a No 10 spokesperson said.

Up until now, UK ministers have avoided voicing any criticism of Trump as they sought to secure a trade agreement with the US – hoping for some exemption from the tariffs. However, the UK government has drawn up a list of products that could be hit in retaliation, and was consulting with businesses on how any countermeasures could affect them.

Ralph Goodale, the high commissioner for Canada in the UK, told BBC’s Radio 4 Today programme that the US needed to “feel the pain” and Canada would stand firm.

He said: “The action taken by the US government is completely illogical. It will damage the United States itself. It will raise costs in the United States. It will eliminate jobs in the United States, it will reduce growth in the United States and we have to make it abundantly clear not just that that is going to happen rhetorically, but the US has to feel the pain, because ultimately it will be Americans who will persuade their government to stop this foolishness.”

Trump’s announcement of the tariffs on Wednesday shook global stock markets to their core, wiping out $5tn in stock market value for S&P 500 companies by Friday’s close, a record two-day decline. The prices of oil and commodities plunged, as investors fled to the safety of government bonds.

“This is the single biggest trade action of our lifetime,” said Kelly Ann Shaw, a trade lawyer at Hogan Lovells and former White House trade adviser during Trump’s first term.

While speaking at a Brookings Institution event on Thursday, Shaw said she expected that over time the tariffs would evolve as countries started negotiating lower rates for themselves, but she called the change “huge”.

Shaw said: “This is a pretty seismic and significant shift in the way that we trade with every country on Earth.”

Australia, the UK, Colombia, Argentina, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are among countries initially hit with the 10% tariff.

At 12.01 ET on Wednesday, Trump’s higher “reciprocal” tariff rates of 11% to 50% are due to take effect. EU imports will face a 20% tariff, while Chinese goods will be hit with a 34% tariff, bringing Trump’s total new levies on China to 54%.

Canada and Mexico were exempt from Trump’s latest duties because they are still subject to a 25% tariff related to the US fentanyl crisis for goods that do not comply with the US-Mexico-Canada rules of origin.

Reuters contributed to this report

Donald Trump’s vast overhaul of US trade policy this week has called time on an era of globalization, alarming people, governments and investors around the world. No one should have been surprised, the US president said.

The announcement of 10% to 50% tariffs on US trading partners tanked stock markets after Trump unveiled a “declaration of economic independence” so drastic it drew comparison with Britain’s exit from the European Union – Brexit.

But Trump, who won re-election promising that tariffs would make America great again, has advocated for the return of widespread tariffs with “great consistency” for decades. “I’ve been talking about it for 40 years,” he noted in the White House Rose Garden.

Many businesses, economists and politicians believe Trump’s trade plan is wrongheaded, flawed and risky. Some have even suggested it might have been written by ChatGPT. But he is unquestionably right when it comes to the number of decades he has argued for it.

“This is so unusual for Trump. He’s a conventional politician in one way: he doesn’t believe in much deeply,” Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. Tariffs are different. “This one thing, he seems to deeply believe in.”

As far back as 1987, when a fame-hungry real estate tycoon took out full-page ads in newspapers, the now president called for such a strategy. Other major economies are the “greatest profit machines ever created”, he argued way back when. “‘Tax’ these wealthy nations, not America.”

Eight years after the start of his first term and just 10 weeks into his second, he has finally set about seriously delivering that dream – and cast aside warnings it may deteriorate into a nightmare.

On the campaign trail last year, Trump made no secret of his vision: tariffs would unshackle the US economy, he promised, revitalize its industrial heartlands and unlock a gigantic financial windfall for the federal government.

But after pitching this big, beautiful and bold reconstruction of the global economic order, the early actions of the second Trump administration were strikingly smaller, messier and altogether more hesitant than trailed.

The focus, at first, narrowed dramatically from the world to just a handful of nations: China, Canada and Mexico. While China was hit hard, sweeping tariffs on Canada and Mexico were interrupted by a dizzying array of deadlines, delays and dispensations.

Tariffs were increased on steel and aluminum. But Trump’s trade agenda was largely characterized by threats and spats: rhetoric, but not reality.

On Wednesday, dubbed “liberation day” by Trump and his aides, he did his best to draw a sharp line under weeks of wavering, doubt and confusion – and imposed the universal and “reciprocal” tariffs he pledged so many times to introduce while fighting to regain the White House.

Defying the stark forecasts and concerns of mainstream economists and corporations, Trump went with his gut. “That was true of the Brexiteers, was it not? They really believed it deeply from the core of their souls,” said Sabato.

At one point during his address, Trump switched from president to historian. “In 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax,” he said, setting the stage for a sharp reduction in tariffs on foreign goods. “Citizens, rather than foreign countries, would start paying the money necessary to run our government.”

Decades of US prosperity “came to a very abrupt end” with the Great Depression from 1929, Professor Trump opined before his class of aides, cabinet secretaries and supporters. “It would have never happened if they had stayed with the tariff policy,” he claimed. “It would have been a much different story.”

Actual historians took issue with this account. “It’s what we would call a lie. False. Not true,” said Andrew Cohen, professor of history in the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. “He’s wrong. No one thinks that. Even conservative economists don’t think that. Even protectionist economists don’t think that.”

Months into the depression, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 – which hiked tariffs on hundreds of imports in a bid to boost the US economy – is widely considered to have prolonged, and even deepened, the crisis. No other president has tried the same tactic again – until now.

The swift rebuttal to Trump’s analysis of the past was surpassed only by the response to his ambitious predictions for the future.

The president has promised a new Golden Age, with millions of new jobs, billions more dollars’ worth of US exports and trillions of dollars in tariff revenues. Outside his administration, skepticism is high.

“The Trump tariffs mark a liberation from the benefits of free trade for American businesses and consumers,” said Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy at Cornell University, and a former official at the International Monetary Fund. “Trump has taken the hatchet to trade with practically every major US trading partner, sparing few allies or rivals,” he added, with action that will be “severely disruptive to the US economy, with the effects felt by American consumers and businesses in practically every industry”.

Who pays the price? The rest of the world, according to the president and his aides. But import tariffs are paid by the companies and consumers that import the goods from the rest of the world – in this case, US companies and consumers – rather than the overseas companies exporting them.

Trump’s tariffs will increase the average US household’s costs by $3,800, according to the Yale Budget Lab.

“These tariff increases are likely to be some of the biggest tax increases in US history and will result (if fully implemented) in some of the highest tariff rates the US has ever seen,” wrote Jeremy Horpedahl, adjunct scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, who noted that they could exceed the post-Smoot-Hawley levels of 1930.

“Like all tariffs, some large portion of these new levies will be paid by US consumers and businesses in the form of higher prices,” added Horpedahl.

If Trump is right, and his decades-old dream revives the world’s largest economy, enriching its citizens and transforming its industrial base into a manufacturing powerhouse, his administration will be one of the most successful in modern memory.

But if he’s wrong, the very Americans who elected him to rapidly bring down the cost of living are likely to be hit hardest.

“It’s either going to be Trump and his team or it’s going to be a large majority of experienced mainstream economists,” said Sabato. “I know where my bet is.”

Wall Street suffered its worst week since the onset of the Covid-19 crisis five years ago as investors worldwide balked at Donald Trump’s risky bid to overhaul the global economy with sweeping US tariffs.

The US president doubled down on his plan on Friday, insisting he would not back down even as the chairman of the Federal Reserve warned it would likely raise prices and slow down economic growth.

A stock-market rout continued apace, with the benchmark S&P 500 falling 322 points, or 6%, and the Dow Jones industrial average retreating 2,231.07 points, or 5.2%, in New York. The Dow’s two-day slump has wiped out $6.4tn in value, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

The tech-focused Nasdaq Composite, meanwhile, sank 5.8%, and entered bear market territory, having fallen more than 20% since peaking in December.

Over the week, the S&P 500 fell 9.1%, its worst five-day trading stretch since March 2020.

Trump sought to reverse the slide, but an insistence that his policies “will never change” in an all-caps social media post appeared to only reinforce apprehension over his strategy.

“ONLY THE WEAK WILL FAIL!” he wrote on Truth Social, his social media platform.

China outlined plans to retaliate, setting the stage for an all-out trade war between the world’s two largest economies, as other governments worldwide pulled together their response.

The sweeping package of tariffs unveiled by Donald Trump on Wednesday includes an exemption for the energy sector, which is a clear sign of the president’s fealty to his big oil donors over the American people, advocates say.

Reports also indicated that Trump only signed off on the details of his bid to drive the world into a new economic era hours before it was unveiled. The US president decided on the final plan at about 1pm on Wednesday, according to the Washington Post. He announced it at 4pm.

The US market declines capped another dismal day for global indices. The FTSE 100 fell 5% in London. The CAC 40 declined 4.3% in Paris. The Nikkei 225 dropped 2.8% in Tokyo.

“It is now becoming clear that the tariff increases will be significantly larger than expected,” the Fed chair Jerome Powell said. “The same is likely to be true of the economic effects, which will include higher inflation and slower growth.”

Mobile phone footage of the last moments of some of the 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers killed by Israeli forces in an incident in Gaza last month appears to contradict the version of events put forward by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).

The five-minute video, which the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said on Saturday was recovered from the phone of one of the men killed, appears to have been filmed from inside a moving vehicle, and shows a red fire engine and clearly marked ambulances driving at night, using headlights and flashing emergency lights.

The vehicle stops beside another that appears to have been driven off the road. Two men get out to examine the stopped vehicle, and then gunfire erupts before the screen goes black.

The Israeli military has said its soldiers “did not randomly attack” any ambulances, insisting they fired on “terrorists” approaching them in “suspicious vehicles”.

Lt Col Nadav Shoshani, a military spokesperson, said troops opened fire on vehicles that had no prior clearance to enter the area, and were driving with their lights off.

Fifteen Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers, including at least one UN employee, were killed in the incident in Rafah on 23 March, in which the UN says Israeli forces shot the men “one by one” and then buried them in a mass grave.

According to the UN humanitarian affairs office (Ocha), the PRCS and civil defence workers were on a mission to rescue colleagues who had been shot at earlier in the day, when their clearly marked vehicles came under heavy Israeli fire in Rafah’s Tel al-Sultan district. A Red Crescent official in Gaza said there was evidence of at least one person being detained and killed, as the body of one of the dead had been found with his hands tied.

The shootings happened one day into the renewed Israeli offensive in the area close to the Egyptian border after the breakdown of a two-month ceasefire with Hamas. Another Red Crescent worker on the mission is reported missing.

Gaza is one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a civilian now that Israeli forces have resumed their military campaign with even more ferocity, but for the first responders who rush towards the wreckage of bombed buildings, the risks are multiplied many times over.

The 15 paramedics and rescue workers whose bodies were found last weekend in a bulldozed pit outside Rafah knew they were putting their lives in peril to try to save others, but they could not have been prepared for what awaited them in the early hours of 23 March.

Saleh Moamer, a 45-year-old Red Crescent ambulance officer and paramedic, had already come close to death twice, his brother, Bilal, recalled. Earlier in the war Saleh was assigned to transport patients between hospitals when his vehicle came under Israeli army fire. The driver was killed instantly and a bullet lodged in Saleh’s chest near his heart. Administering first aid on himself he slid below his seat and steered the vehicle out of the line of fire by following directions given over the radio by his colleagues.

Saleh spent three months in hospital then returned to work. Not long after, on a rescue mission near Rafah, his ambulance was shot at again and he was wounded in the right shoulder. He and Bilal talked about how he had used up all his luck and the third time would be fatal. It was half-joke, half deadly serious, and turned out to be prophetic.

“He said that whatever was intended for him, would happen,” Bilal said.

Before he went out on his night shift on 22 March, Saleh bought bulk quantities of household goods for his wife, their six children, and his brother’s two children who they had been looking after since their father was killed in the conflict.

“He said it would benefit them in the future. It was as if he had a feeling he would not return,” Bilal said.

Saleh joined the Red Crescent during the 2008-09 Israeli invasion of Gaza. He had studied business administration at Al-Azhar University, but his urge to do something immediate to help people amid the turmoil and bloodshed led him to train as a paramedic.

“What kept him going, despite the dangers, was his drive to save innocent lives,” Bilal said, describing his older brother as cheerful and friendly but profoundly dedicated.

“He was deeply passionate about his work and spent most of his time in the ambulance and emergency department,” he said. “When he finished his work in the ambulance, he would head to the vehicle maintenance department at the Red Crescent, fixing any electrical problems. He even formed a team to visit the homes of the injured to check on them. If he had any medicine or medical supplies, he would seek outpatients in need.”

When the dispatch call came early on Sunday 23 March that people had been injured in an airstrike on the Tel al-Sultan area of Rafah, Saleh took an ambulance to the scene. Seeing the extent of the damage he called for more ambulances, collected the wounded he could find and returned to base, according to his brother.

On arriving back he learned that radio contact had been lost with another ambulance also dispatched to the site. That ambulance, which was being driven by Saleh’s colleague, Mustafa Khafaja, had come under intense Israeli fire and by the time he heard they were missing at about 4.30am, Khafaja and his fellow paramedic Ezz alDin Shatt were already dead, according to the third man in the ambulance, Munther Abed, who had survived but was detained by Israeli soldiers. Abed later described them as special forces.

Before dawn, Saleh drove back to the scene and could only see the empty ambulance in an area of sandy dunes in Tel al-Sultan known as Hashashin, Bilal said. He drove back to the ambulance station in al-Mawasi, a few miles up the coast, and organised a rescue convoy of Red Crescent ambulances, a bright red civil defence fire truck and a UN vehicle. In all, 13 paramedics and rescue workers drove to Hashashin to look for their missing colleagues, and that was the last time they were seen alive.

Bound and made to lie on the ground, Abed, the detained paramedic from the first ambulance, saw one rescue vehicle after another ambushed by waiting Israeli forces. Later he saw a military digger excavate a pit and the vehicles being thrown in before a bulldozer covered it over.

The families of the missing first responders spent a whole week in agony before receiving the call that bodies had been found. Bilal, his surviving brother and his parents rushed to the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, hoping Saleh would not be among the remains, but that hope was quickly smashed.

“When the bodies arrived, they were wrapped in white shrouds with their names written on them. I was the one who uncovered my brother’s face, and I began to wonder if it was really him,” Bilal said. The bodies had been in the ground for a week. They confirmed it was Saleh by the ring on his finger.

“There were marks from restraints on Saleh’s wrists where the Israeli army had bound him. His fingers were also broken,” he said. Two other witnesses have told the Guardian that some of the victims had had their hands or feet bound.

Israel’s military has said its “initial assessment” of the incident found that its troops had opened fire on several vehicles “advancing suspiciously toward IDF troops without headlights or emergency signals”, and has claimed, so far without evidence, that Hamas fighters and other militants had been using the ambulances for cover.

For Bilal, the Israeli claim that the ambulances were carrying terrorists, was a further insult. “These paramedics were providing humanitarian services. They did not pose any threat or carry weapons. What was their crime for them to be killed like this?” he asked.

Among the other families who dashed to the morgue at Nasser hospital was a 63-year-old father, Sobhi Bahloul, searching for his son, Mohammad, a volunteer Red Crescent paramedic.

Finding his body, Sobhi said he went into shock and could not cry. “Perhaps I wasn’t fully conscious of what was happening,” he said. “[The dead] were still in their uniforms, covered in blood and dirt. I was able to recognise Mohammad’s features with difficulty. I moved closer until my face was right in front of his, and only then was I certain it was him. Then we pulled his ID from his trouser pocket.”

Sobhi said: “The gunshot wounds were clear – shots to the chest and his wrist. It looked like he had raised his hand to shield himself, and the bullets went through his hand into his chest and out of his back. There were more than four bullets, all in the chest and heart area. I believe he died instantly.”

Like Saleh, Mohammad was passionate about his work as a paramedic. He graduated from Al-Azhar University with a degree in nursing, then took a series of intensive courses, obtained an ambulance driving licence, trained as a paramedic, and had continued studies in health administration at Al-Quds Open University. He had been volunteering since 2018 and had hoped it would become a paid job, but the absence of a salary did not dim his commitment.

“We hardly saw him at home,” his father recalled. “He was constantly at the hospital, with the ambulance teams. He was courageous and proactive, never waiting for instructions – always taking the initiative.”

“I raised my children to love goodness and to do good deeds,” Sobhi said. “We had a principle in our home: do good without expecting thanks or praise. Mohammad lived by this principle.

“We never expected this to happen – not even in our worst nightmares,” Sobhi added. “They went to save lives, only to become victims themselves.”

Left-leaning organizations say that more than 500,000 people are expected to take to the streets to protest in Washington DC, Florida and elsewhere around the country on Saturday to oppose Donald Trump’s “authoritarian overreach and billionaire-backed agenda”.

MoveOn, one of the organizations planning the day of protest they’re calling Hands Off along with dozens of labor, environmental and other progressive groups, said that more than 1,000 protests are planned across the US, including at state capitols.

“This is shaping up to be the biggest single-day protest in the last several years of American history,” Ezra Levin, a founder of Indivisible, one of the groups planning the event, said on a recent organizing call.

The largest event is expected to be on the National Mall in Washington DC, where members of Congress, including the Democrats Jamie Raskin of Maryland, Maxwell Frost of Florida and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, are scheduled to speak to crowds.

“This is a nationwide mobilization to stop the most brazen power grab in modern history,” says the website for the protest. “Trump, Musk, and their billionaire cronies are orchestrating an all-out assault on our government, our economy, and our basic rights – enabled by Congress every step of the way.

“They want to strip America for parts – shuttering social security offices, firing essential workers, eliminating consumer protections, and gutting Medicaid – all to bankroll their billionaire tax scam. They’re handing over our tax dollars, our public services, and our democracy to the ultra-rich. If we don’t fight now, there won’t be anything left to save.”

The protests come after the stock market plummeted this week following Trump’s 1 April announcement of tariffs. Despite the economic fallout, Trump said on Friday: “My policies will never change.”

Trump’s approval rating this week fell to 43%, his lowest since taking office, according to a Reuters poll.

After Trump was first elected to the White House in 2016, at least 470,000 people – three times the size of the crowd at Trump’s inauguration – joined the Women’s March protest in Washington DC, and millions more rallied around the country, making it the largest single-day protest in US history.

Dietary changes could reduce the pain of endometriosis for half of those living with the disease, a new study suggests. The largest international survey ever conducted on diet and endometriosis, involving 2,599 people, found 45% of those who stopped eating gluten and 45% of those who cut out dairy reported experiencing an improvement in their pain.

When women cut down on coffee or other caffeine in their diet, 43% said their pain was reduced, while 53% of women who cut back on alcohol reported the same.

Philippa Saunders, senior author of the study and professor of reproductive steroids at the University of Edinburgh, said: “It really feels like we are on the cusp of something pretty big with understanding how diet affects endometriosis symptoms.

“It is so important for women if they feel they can do something for themselves to tackle the pain of endometriosis – that is tremendously empowering.”

Endometriosis occurs when cells similar to those in the lining of the womb grow in other parts of the body. It affects one in 10 women of reproductive age in the UK.

However, there is very little research into the causes of the disease or how to treat it – beyond surgery, which is often only a short-term fix, or managing symptoms through hormonal contraceptives like the pill, which many women dislike because of side effects. It takes an average of almost seven years for women to receive a diagnosis of endometriosis due to lack of awareness about the disease.

The new study, led by Edinburgh University and published last week in the American medical Association’s journal JAMA Network Open, asked volunteers about changes to their diet and about dietary supplements used to try to improve their symptoms. Researchers believe that the women who cut out gluten or dairy and reported feeling less pain may have experienced changes in their gut bacteria.

Reducing caffeine may work because it can affect sleep, and pain often feels worse when people are tired. Cutting back on alcoholic drinks is potentially impactful because alcohol has a similar effect on cells to oestrogen – the hormone that fuels endometriosis.

Endometriosis largely causes pain in the pelvic area, which is often worse during periods, but many sufferers report sciatic pain, with others experiencing breast pain or a flu-like joint pain affecting the whole body.

The womb-like tissue of endometriosis is able to grow new nerve cells – the cells that transmit pain sensations – and make existing nerve cells more active. The pain signals this sends to the brain are increased even more by inflammation – an overreaction of the immune system. It is this inflammation that could be tackled by dietary changes, experts believe.

Cutting back on certain foods may reduce bacteria in the gut that powers inflammation. The study found almost 40% of respondents reported reduced pain from endometriosis after cutting out processed food like ready meals, ice-cream and sweets, which are known to alter gut bacteria.

Almost a third of women said their pain improved after cutting out garlic and onion, which could relieve so-called “endo belly” – uncomfortable bloating sufferers can experience.

Experts say people should check with their doctor before making dietary changes. Larger studies, with women randomly assigned to different diets, are still needed to gather compelling evidence on how diet might affect endometriosis, and could include measurements of people’s inflammation and pain.

The Edinburgh study relied on self-reported pain levels and surveyed people from 51 countries, including 1,115 people from the UK.

Francesca Hearn-Yeates, who led the study from the University of Edinburgh, said: “Women are in need of anything that can help with the pain of endometriosis. This condition is so under-researched and there is so much to discover, but there is growing evidence that gut bacteria could play a part in symptoms, and that explains why many women have experimented with changing their diets, and why we have found that this appears to work for many.”

Jo Hanley, specialist adviser for Endometriosis UK, said: “We follow with interest studies on the potential impact and role of diet and nutrition in the management of endometriosis.

“There is a need for more high-quality evidence but I’ve heard many a success story from individuals where dietary changes have led to improved pain, although unfortunately others have reported no improvements.

“An anti-inflammatory diet can help reduce the body’s inflammation response, and anti-inflammatory foods can include fruit, vegetables, beans, chickpeas, wholegrains, nuts, seeds and olive oil, with some fish and poultry.

“Foods that contain refined sugars, carbohydrates, unhealthy fats, dairy, red and processed meats … can create inflammation in the body. I would advise keeping a food and symptom diary, which will help to identify any food triggers that could be flaring symptoms such as constipation and bloating, which make pain worse.”

Ying Cheong, professor of reproductive medicine at the University of Southampton, said: “While these self-reported benefits are promising, further clinical research is needed to confirm the true impact of specific dietary changes.”

Dr Nilufer Rahmioglu, senior research scientist at Nuffield Department of Women’s and Reproductive Health within the University of Oxford, said: ‘This study provides valuable insights into the lived experiences of individuals with endometriosis who have explored dietary modifications and supplements to manage their pain.

“While it cannot assess causality, the findings highlight the need for further rigorous research into these potential non-hormonal strategies.”

Eighteen people, including nine children, have been killed in a Russian missile strike on Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s home city, a Ukrainian official said.

A further 61 people were injured in the attack on Kryvyi Rih on Friday, including a three-month-old baby and elderly residents, the regional governor, Serhii Lysak, said. Forty remain in hospital, including two children in critical condition and 17 in a serious condition.

“The missile struck an area right next to residential buildings – hitting a playground and ordinary streets,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram.

He blamed the daily strikes on Russia’s unwillingness to end the war: “Every missile, every drone strike proves Russia wants only war,” he said, urging Ukraine’s allies to increase pressure on Moscow and bolster Ukraine’s air defences.

“The United States, Europe, and the rest of the world have enough power to make Russia abandon terror and war,” he said.

“There can never be forgiveness for this,” said Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the city’s defence council. “Eternal memory to the victims.”

Local authorities said the strike damaged about 20 apartment buildings, more than 30 vehicles, an educational building and a restaurant.

The Russian defence ministry claimed on Friday it had carried out a high-precision missile strike with a high explosive warhead on a restaurant where a meeting had taken place with unit commanders and western instructors.

Russian military claimed the strike killed 85 military personnel and foreign officers and destroyed 20 vehicles. The military’s claims could not be independently verified. The Ukrainian General Staff rejected the claims.

A later drone strike on Kryvyi Rih killed one woman and wounded seven other people.

Eighteen people, including nine children, have been killed in a Russian missile strike on Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s home city, a Ukrainian official said.

A further 61 people were injured in the attack on Kryvyi Rih on Friday, including a three-month-old baby and elderly residents, the regional governor, Serhii Lysak, said. Forty remain in hospital, including two children in critical condition and 17 in a serious condition.

“The missile struck an area right next to residential buildings – hitting a playground and ordinary streets,” Zelenskyy wrote on Telegram.

He blamed the daily strikes on Russia’s unwillingness to end the war: “Every missile, every drone strike proves Russia wants only war,” he said, urging Ukraine’s allies to increase pressure on Moscow and bolster Ukraine’s air defences.

“The United States, Europe, and the rest of the world have enough power to make Russia abandon terror and war,” he said.

“There can never be forgiveness for this,” said Oleksandr Vilkul, the head of the city’s defence council. “Eternal memory to the victims.”

Local authorities said the strike damaged about 20 apartment buildings, more than 30 vehicles, an educational building and a restaurant.

The Russian defence ministry claimed on Friday it had carried out a high-precision missile strike with a high explosive warhead on a restaurant where a meeting had taken place with unit commanders and western instructors.

Russian military claimed the strike killed 85 military personnel and foreign officers and destroyed 20 vehicles. The military’s claims could not be independently verified. The Ukrainian General Staff rejected the claims.

A later drone strike on Kryvyi Rih killed one woman and wounded seven other people.

World leaders should be ashamed of their neglect of people whose lives were “hanging by a thread” at a time of surging violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the international charity leader Jan Egeland has said.

In a stinging attack on aid cuts and the “nationalistic winds” blowing across Europe and the US, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s head told the Guardian how people were living out in the open, in overcrowded, unsanitary displacement encampments around the city of Goma, where 1.2 million people have had to flee from their homes as the M23 rebels advanced through the DRC’s North and South Kivu provinces.

“The level of global neglect experienced by civilians in eastern DRC should shame world leaders,” he said, adding that European countries and others had ignored the suffering for years.

“We hope that a Europe and the US, which is very self-centred, where nationalistic winds are blowing, where aid is being cut and international solidarity is not what it was, will open their eyes to the immense suffering that is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” said Egeland, who has just returned from a visit to the area.

“[I saw] overflowing latrines, 25 people sleeping in a classroom where they have to drag their few belongings out every morning because the classroom is used for school, then every afternoon return to the classroom to sleep overnight. It’s really subhuman,” he said.

Eastern DRC has long suffered from violence, and the camps in Goma, capital of North Kivu province, host people who have been displaced for years.

However, conditions have deteriorated since the M23 rebellion launched in 2022. The Rwandan-backed group has managed to seize large parts of eastern DRC, including Goma and other key towns, since January.

Egeland said the humanitarian situation had been complicated by M23 forcing displaced people to leave the camps, often giving them only 72 hours to move on. Many people had returned to their homes, where there was relative safety now that the M23 had taken control.

He warned, however, that a political settlement was needed now as well as aid, especially in the form of cash, to ensure displaced people could buy food and rebuild their homes and livelihoods in places devastated by years of conflict.

Egeland said charities were struggling because they often had still not been paid for work done last year because of President Donald Trump’s freezing of US aid spending in January, and even projects that had been approved by Washington had not yet received money.

He said that while support from Norway, which had fast-tracked pre-existing pledges, had allowed the NRC to continue working, other humanitarian organisations were struggling.

“At a time of enormous needs – because of the recent increase in fighting – and of opportunity [to help] the many who can return, the money is not coming in,” he said. “It means people are not helped, they linger in camps with worsening conditions, that children cannot go to school.”

Girl Scout cookies contain lead, arsenic, cadmium, aluminum and mercury at levels that often exceed regulators’ recommended limits, as well as concerning amounts of a toxic herbicide, a new class action lawsuit alleges.

The suit bases its allegations on a December 2024 study commissioned by the GMO Science and Moms Across America nonprofits that tested 25 cookies gathered from across several states, and found all contained at least four out of five of the heavy metals.

Lead was found in all but one cookie, and all samples contained glyphosate, a highly toxic and controversial weed killer that is banned in many countries because it’s so dangerous.

Girl Scouts took aim at the study in a blog post. “The health and safety of Girl Scouts and cookie customers is our top priority,” it stated. “Rest assured: Girl Scout Cookies are safe to consume.”

It added: “Our trusted baking partners continue to ensure the integrity of our recipes and the safety of all Girl Scout Cookie products in accordance with federal regulations and Global Food Safety initiative standards.”

However, the lawsuit states: “While the entire sales practice system for Girl Scout Cookies is built on a foundation of ethics and teaching young girls sustainable business practices, defendants failed to uphold this standard themselves.”

The lawsuit seeks $5m in damages and asks a New York state court to order Girl Scouts of America to affix a warning to the cookies.

The heavy metals are especially dangerous for young children, and can cause brain damage and developmental issues. Glyphosate exposure in children is linked to liver inflammation and hormone disruption, among other issues.

About 200m boxes of the cookies are sold annually.

Thin mints showed the highest levels of glyphosate, and the Peanut Butter Patties, S’mores, Caramel deLites and gluten-free Toffee-tastic had the highest levels of toxic metals. Though the report compared its findings to the federal limits on metals in water, the US Food and Drug Administration typically limits the amount of lead in food to two parts per billion (ppb) to 10 ppb. All but three cookies exceed 2 ppb.

The non-profit Girl Scouts said heavy metals occur naturally in soil, suggesting that its cookies contained “trace amounts”, which is common in food and not a safety issue. However, the levels found in most of the cookies are higher than what’s considered trace amounts.

It also stated that glyphosate is found “nearly everywhere” in the food chain. Glyphosate is often in produce and processed foods, and the levels found in the cookies – with the exception of the Thin Mints – are lower than the EPA’s recommended intake for an adult. But it is unclear what the impact on children might be.

Organic produce and processed foods broadly contain no or much lower levels of glyphosate and other pesticides.

The high levels of metal contamination are also not unique to Girl Scout cookies – cinnamon in Gerber baby food was found to contain lead and sued for violating California’s Proposition 65 limits in 2021.

Vineet Dubey, an attorney who sued Gerber but is not involved in the Girl Scout lawsuit, said the toxins likely stem from Gerber and Girl Scouts “buying inexpensive ingredients and from places that are known to have problems with polluted soil, air and water”.

She lived 3,500 years ago – but facial reconstruction technology has brought a woman from late bronze age Mycenae back to life.

The woman was in her mid-30s when she was buried in a royal cemetery between the 16th and 17th centuries BC. The site was uncovered in the 1950s on the Greek mainland at Mycenae, the legendary seat of Homer’s King Agamemnon.

Dr Emily Hauser, the historian who commissioned the digital reconstruction, told the Observer: “She’s incredibly modern. She took my breath away.

“For the first time, we are looking into the face of a woman from a kingdom associated with Helen of Troy – Helen’s sister, Clytemnestra, was queen of Mycenae in legend – and from where the poet Homer imagined the Greeks of the Trojan war setting out. Such digital reconstructions persuade us that these were real people.”

Hauser, a senior lecturer in classics and ancient history at the University of Exeter, said: “It is incredibly exciting to think that, for the first time since she was laid beneath the ground over 3,500 years ago, we are able to gaze into the actual face of a bronze age royal woman – and it truly is a face to launch a thousand ships.

“This woman died around the beginning of the late bronze age, several hundred years before the supposed date of the Trojan war.”

A digital artist, Juanjo Ortega G, has developed the lifelike face from a clay reconstruction of the same woman that was made in the 1980s by Manchester University, pioneers of one of the major methods in facial reconstruction.

Hauser, whose book Mythica: A New History of Homer’s World, Through the Women Written Out of It will be published next week, said that technical developments in forensic anthropology and DNA analysis, as well as radiocarbon dating and 3D digital printing, have led to dramatic improvements in reconstructions of the ancient world.

“We can – for the first time – peer back into the eyes of the past.”

The woman had been buried with an electrum face mask and a warrior kit of weapons – including three swords that were assumed to be associated with the man buried next to her, but are now thought to have belonged to her.

Hauser said: “The traditional story is that, if you have a woman next to a man, she must be his wife.” Facial similarities had previously been noted, but DNA has confirmed that these were brother and sister rather than husband and wife.

“This woman was buried there by virtue of her birth, not her marriage. That tells us a different story about how important she was … Data that is coming out is suggesting that far more of what archaeologists call warrior kits are associated with women than with men in these late bronze age burials, which is completely overturning our assumptions of how women are associated with war.”

She added that archaeological evidence and DNA analysis were allowing “the real women of ancient history to step out of the shadows”.

The condition of the woman’s bones suggests that she suffered from arthritis in her vertebrae and hands, perhaps “evidence of repeated weaving, a common and physically wearing activity among women, and one which we have seen Helen undertaking in the Iliad,” Hauser said.

“So this is such a wonderful way to connect real women’s experiences to the ancient myths and tales.”

Multiple maternal and child health programs have been eliminated or hollowed out as part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) layoffs, prompting alarm and disbelief among advocates working to make Americans healthier.

The fear and anxiety come as a full accounting of the cuts remains elusive. Federal health officials have released only broad descriptions of changes to be made, rather than a detailed accounting of the programs and departments being eviscerated.

“Pediatricians, myself included, are losing sleep at night – worried about the health of the nation’s children,” said Dr Sue Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

“The one that stands out to me is the Maternal and Child Health Bureau. There is no way to make our country healthier by eliminating expertise where it all starts, and it all starts at maternal and child health.”

The health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, announced HHS would eliminate 10,000 jobs as part of a restructuring plan. Together with cuts already made by Elon Musk’s unofficial “department of government efficiency”, HHS is likely to lose 20,000 workers – roughly one-quarter of its workforce.

“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl,” Kennedy said. “We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic.”

Piecemeal and crowd-sourced information, which has filled the vacuum left by a lack of information from the health department, appears to show maternal health programs slated for elimination, many without an indication of whether they will be reassigned. The Guardian asked HHS to comment on the cuts but did not receive a response.

The picture of cuts was further muddied on Thursday when Kennedy told reporters, according to Politico: “We’re going to do 80% cuts, but 20% of those are going to have to be reinstalled, because we’ll make mistakes.”

In the aftermath of the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, there’s been much conservative criticism of public health agencies, particularly the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Pandemic policy continues to be an animating force within the Republican party, whose supporters are cynical about the value of federal public health programs following federal vaccine mandates.

The cuts to maternal health programs may serve a second purpose for Republicans.

Such programs have come under fire in some conservative states, in part because the experts involved investigate deaths that could have been prevented with abortion services – now illegal or severely restricted in nearly two dozen conservative states.

As part of the restructuring, the administration announced 28 divisions would be folded into 15, including the creation of a new division, called the “Administration for a Healthy America”, or “AHA”.

The administration argued the “centralization” would “improve coordination of health resources for low-income Americans and will focus on areas including, primary care, maternal and child Health, mental health, environmental health, HIV/Aids and workforce development”.

Meanwhile, experts in HIV/Aids, worker health and safety, healthcare for society’s most vulnerable, and experts in maternal and child health have received “reduction in force” notices, a federal term for layoffs, or have been placed on administrative leave with the expectation of being eliminated.

“It certainly appears there was a particular focus on parts of HHS that dealt with women’s or reproductive health,” said Sean Tipton, chief policy officer at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, about the cuts.

He added: “How in the world you can justify the CDC eliminating the division of maternal mortality is beyond me.”

Among the divisions hard-hit was the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), an operating division of HHS like the CDC, which housed the the Maternal and Child Health Bureau. HRSA lost as many as 600 workers.

The CDC’s division of reproductive health, which studies maternal health, appeared to have been nearly eliminated, according to multiple reports, with some of the division’s portfolio also expected to be folded into AHA.

The entire staff of a gold-standard maternal mortality survey, a program that was called the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, was also put on leave, Stat reported. The epidemiologist in charge of the CDC survey, Jennifer Bombard, wrote to colleagues on Tuesday: “[T]he entire CDC PRAMS team, including myself, has received the Reduction in Force (RIF) notice from HHS today.”

A HRSA hotline that had fielded calls from new moms seeking mental health support was also cut, Stat reported. Layoffs at the Administration for Children and Families have jolted providers of federally backed high-quality childcare for low-income families, a program called Head Start.

The CDC’s only experts on infertility were laid off, just days after Trump described himself as the “fertilization president” at an event marking Women’s History Month. The team had collected congressionally mandated statistics on fertility clinics’ success rates. Without the workers, it is unclear who at the department will help fertility clinics comply with the law.

“I’m astounded, sad, perplexed,” said Barbara Collura, president of Resolve: The National Infertility Association. “Infertility impacts one in six people globally, and now we don’t have anybody at the CDC who knows anything about infertility and IVF?”

A division of the CDC called the National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention also appeared to be gutted, with the director Jonathan Mermin placed on administrative leave. Among the center’s many tasks, it worked to curb the spread of congenital syphilis, a debilitating disease that is on the rise in the US.

The March of Dimes, an influential non-profit whose mission is to improve the health of mothers and babies, said the cuts “raise serious concerns” at a time when maternal mortality rates remain “alarmingly high”.

“As an OB-GYN and public health leader, I can’t overstate the value these resources and programs – and our partners across CDC, HRSA, and NIH – have brought to families and frontline providers,” said Dr Amanda Williams, the interim chief medical Officer at the March of Dimes.

“We rely on the data, research, clinical tools and partnerships built by the Division of Reproductive Health (DRH) and HRSA to protect maternal and infant health – especially in communities hit hardest.”

Heads of National Institutes of Health (NIH) centers were also forced out – and, apparently, offered reassignment to the Indian Health Service to be stationed in Alaska, Montana or Oklahoma, the journal Nature reported. Such large-scale reassignments are unprecedented, according to Stat.

Among those to be placed on leave was one of the federal government’s pre-eminent leaders of research, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Dr Jeanne Marrazzo. Marrazzo had expertise in sexually transmitted infections and women’s reproductive tract infections – a background that gave health advocates hope of curbing the US’s sky-high STD rates. Dr Diana Bianchi, director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, was also forced out.

“These cuts are significant,” Kressly said. “And the policy and program changes that are made because the cuts impact real people in real communities, and I’m not just talking about the people who lost their jobs.”

The guitarist and singer Amadou Bagayoko of the Malian music duo Amadou & Mariam has died aged 70 after an illness, his family said, paying tribute to the Grammy-nominated blind musician.

Amadou and his wife, Mariam Doumbia, formed a group whose blend of traditional Malian music with rock guitars and western blues sold millions of albums across the world.

Among other achievements the couple, who met at the institute for the young blind in the Malian capital, Bamako, composed the official song for the 2006 football World Cup in Germany and played at the closing ceremony concert for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

“He had been ill for a while,” Amadou’s son-in-law Youssouf Fadiga told Agence-France Presse.

Their France-based manager, Yannick Tardy, who had spoken to Mariam by phone, said Amadou had been taken to a clinic after feeling fatigue, and had died later that day.

Confirming the musician’s death to AFP, the Malian culture minister, Mamou Daffé, said he felt “dismay” at the loss.

After meeting in 1976, when Amadou was 21 and Mariam 18, the pair discovered they had similar tastes in music.

They began touring together from the 1980s, mixing traditional west African instruments such as the kora and balafon with the Pink Floyd and James Brown records from their youth.

They sang songs to raise awareness of the problems facing their peers living with blindness and disabilities.

A few decades later their 2004 album, Dimanche à Bamako (Sunday in Bamako), brought them worldwide success backed up by the title track.

Amadou and Mariam became one of Africa’s bestselling duos, playing alongside the likes of Damon Albarn of Blur and Gorillaz, and the Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour – a childhood idol.

They played at festivals including Glastonbury, shared bills with Coldplay, U2 and Stevie Wonder, and played for Barack Obama at the concert marking the US president’s Nobel Peace prize award.

“There were many musicians, many artists there. And Barack Obama came to meet us,” Amadou told AFP in a 2024 interview.

“We talked a bit. Barack Obama told us that he liked our music. Malian music, too. We were very, very happy,” Mariam added.

Besides a Grammy nomination in 2010, Amadou & Mariam won prizes at the BBC radio awards and France’s Victoires de la Musique.

Amadou Bagayoko is survived by three children.