Five people have been shot in an attack in the southern Swedish city of Örebro, authorities have said, triggering a massive emergency response.

Police said the shooting, at a campus housing an adult education centre and other learning facilities, was being treated as “an attempted murder, arson and aggravated weapons offence”.

Authorities said students were being held indoors at the campus and in nearby secondary schools and they urged people to keep clear of the area. “The danger is not yet over. People must stay away,” local police said on their website.

It was not immediately clear whether the perpetrator was among the five shot. Police said no officers were hurt during the violence, which happened at about 12.30pm local time on Tuesday.

The county council said four people had been admitted to Örebro university hospital after what it described as “deadly violence at a school”. It gave no further information about their ages or the extent of their injuries.

The justice minister, Gunnar Strömmer, told the Swedish public broadcaster SVT: “The news of an attack at Örebro is very serious,” adding that the government was in close contact with police.

A teacher at the facility, Lena Warenmark, told the broadcaster she had been confined to her study for more that an hour after hearing “gunshots very close”. She said she heard “probably 10 shots” in total, with a short pause between two bursts.

Warenmark said there had been unusually few students present at the campus as many had just gone home after sitting an exam.

Andreas Sundling, 28, was among those who barricaded themselves inside the campus. “We heard three bangs and loud screams,” he told Expressen newspaper. “Now we’re sitting here waiting to be evacuated from the school. The information we have received is that we should sit and wait.”

Ambulances, rescue services and police were at the scene in the city, about 125 miles (200km) west of Stockholm. Police said they would hold a media conference at 3.30pm (2.30pm GMT).

Campus Risbergska, where the shooting is believed to have occurred, serves students mainly over the age of 20 but also offers primary and upper secondary school courses as well as classes in Swedish for immigrants, vocational training and programmes for people with disabilities.

School attacks are rare in Sweden but several serious incidents have taken place in recent years. In March 2022, an 18-year-old student stabbed two teachers to death at a high school in the southern city of Malmö.

Two months earlier, a 16-year-old was arrested after wounding another student and a teacher with a knife at a school in the small town of Kristianstad.

In October 2015, three people were killed in a racially motivated attack at a school in the western town of Trollhättan. The sword-wielding assailant was later killed by police.

Five people have been shot in an attack in the southern Swedish city of Örebro, authorities have said, triggering a massive emergency response.

Police said the shooting, at a campus housing an adult education centre and other learning facilities, was being treated as “an attempted murder, arson and aggravated weapons offence”.

Authorities said students were being held indoors at the campus and in nearby secondary schools and they urged people to keep clear of the area. “The danger is not yet over. People must stay away,” local police said on their website.

It was not immediately clear whether the perpetrator was among the five shot. Police said no officers were hurt during the violence, which happened at about 12.30pm local time on Tuesday.

The county council said four people had been admitted to Örebro university hospital after what it described as “deadly violence at a school”. It gave no further information about their ages or the extent of their injuries.

The justice minister, Gunnar Strömmer, told the Swedish public broadcaster SVT: “The news of an attack at Örebro is very serious,” adding that the government was in close contact with police.

A teacher at the facility, Lena Warenmark, told the broadcaster she had been confined to her study for more that an hour after hearing “gunshots very close”. She said she heard “probably 10 shots” in total, with a short pause between two bursts.

Warenmark said there had been unusually few students present at the campus as many had just gone home after sitting an exam.

Andreas Sundling, 28, was among those who barricaded themselves inside the campus. “We heard three bangs and loud screams,” he told Expressen newspaper. “Now we’re sitting here waiting to be evacuated from the school. The information we have received is that we should sit and wait.”

Ambulances, rescue services and police were at the scene in the city, about 125 miles (200km) west of Stockholm. Police said they would hold a media conference at 3.30pm (2.30pm GMT).

Campus Risbergska, where the shooting is believed to have occurred, serves students mainly over the age of 20 but also offers primary and upper secondary school courses as well as classes in Swedish for immigrants, vocational training and programmes for people with disabilities.

School attacks are rare in Sweden but several serious incidents have taken place in recent years. In March 2022, an 18-year-old student stabbed two teachers to death at a high school in the southern city of Malmö.

Two months earlier, a 16-year-old was arrested after wounding another student and a teacher with a knife at a school in the small town of Kristianstad.

In October 2015, three people were killed in a racially motivated attack at a school in the western town of Trollhättan. The sword-wielding assailant was later killed by police.

Donald Trump has fired the opening salvo of his trade war, imposing tariffs on China on Tuesday that sparked instant retaliation from Beijing, amid fears for the global economic repercussions.

Moments after US tariffs of 10% came into effect, China swiftly announced an anti-trust investigation into Google. China’s finance ministry also announced 15% tariffs on coal and liquefied natural gas, and 10% on crude oil, farm equipment, large-displacement vehicles and pickup trucks from the US.

China’s commerce ministry and its customs administration said on Tuesday that to “safeguard national security interests” the country was imposing export controls on a raft of critical minerals: tungsten, tellurium, ruthenium, molybdenum and ruthenium-related items.

The commerce ministry also said it was adding the US companies PVH Group and Illumina Inc to its unreliable entity list, opening them to restrictions or penalties, without detailing what the companies were accused of. PVH is a clothing company that owns brands including Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein. Illumina is a biotech company specialising in genomic sequencing that recently partnered with Nvidia on health-related AI tech.

In December, China launched an antitrust investigation into Nvidia, after a tightening of US export controls on hi-tech products popular in China. On Tuesday, the Financial Times reported that Beijing was considering adding US chipmaker Intel to the list of companies being investigated by China’s antitrust regulator. China is Intel’s largest market, and Nvidia’s second-largest after the US.

Most of Google’s services such as search and email are blocked in China. But the company still makes money in China from Chinese companies advertising overseas and from Chinese phone-makers using its Android operating system.

“The unilateral imposition of tariffs by the US seriously violates the rules of the World Trade Organization,” China’s finance ministry said in its statement announcing the retaliatory tariffs. “It is not only unhelpful in solving its own problems, but also damages the normal economic and trade cooperation between China and the US.”

Earlier, the US president pulled back from the brink of an economic conflict with Canada and Mexico, however, delaying threatened duties for another month after 11th-hour talks.

For exports from China, the US has scrapped an exemption through which shipments valued at less than $800 (£644) have not faced tariffs. Popular Chinese retailers such as Shein and Temu have relied on the exemption to sell cheap goods in the US.

After a call with Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, on Monday, Trump agreed to postpone tariffs of 25% on Mexico – the latest of several delays – after she offered to send 10,000 of the country’s troops to its border with the US.

Talks with Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, also prompted Trump to postpone 25% tariffs on the country. Canada is implementing a $1.3bn border plan, Trudeau said, and will appoint a fentanyl tsar, list cartels as a terrorists and “ensure 24/7 eyes on the border”.

As the US readied higher tariffs on China on Monday, the White House announced that Trump would speak later this week with China’s president, Xi Jinping. Beijing earlier pledged to hit back with “countermeasures” and file a legal case against the US at the World Trade Organization.

Economists have warned Trump’s tariff plans risk raising prices for millions of Americans, only weeks after he pledged, upon taking office, to “rapidly” bring them down.

Addressing reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump maintained that tariffs were a “very powerful” means of strengthening the US economically and “getting everything else you want”.

Every country wanted to agree a way to avoid US tariffs, the president claimed. “In all cases, they all wanna make deals.”

Trump had conceded over the weekend that they could cause “a little pain” in the US. “WILL THERE BE SOME PAIN? YES, MAYBE (AND MAYBE NOT!),” he wrote on social media. “BUT WE WILL MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, AND IT WILL ALL BE WORTH THE PRICE THAT MUST BE PAID.”

The reaction in global financial markets, which had recovered some of their losses on Monday after Trump’s one-month delay, was mixed on Tuesday.

In Hong Kong, the Hang Seng share index jumped by almost 2.8%, while South Korea’s Kospi rose by 1.3%. The FTSE 100 fell 31 points to 8,551 shortly after opening in London.

Sterling dropped by half a cent against the US dollar to $1.24, while the euro was down a similar amount at $1.03.

The Canadian dollar, which slumped to a 20-year low on Monday before rebounding, weakened – to 1.445 to the dollar.

Chinese markets remain closed because of the lunar new year holiday and will reopen on Wednesday.

Additional reporting by Graeme Wearden

Donald Trump wants to negotiate an agreement with Ukraine under which Kyiv would guarantee supplies of rare earth resources – critical elements used in electronics – in exchange for US military aid.

The US president was immediately accused of exploiting Russia’s invasion for material gain, with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, calling the plan “selfish”. However, Ukrainian media reported that the idea may have originated in Kyiv as an incentive to keep weapon shipments flowing into the country.

Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, Trump said he wanted “equalisation” from Ukraine for Washington’s “close to $300bn” in support.

“We’re telling Ukraine they have very valuable rare earths,” Trump said. “We’re looking to do a deal with Ukraine where they’re going to secure what we’re giving them with their rare earths and other things.”

“Rare earths” refers to a group of 17 elements prized for their unique magnetic and electrochemical properties. They are used in many modern products, from smartphones to electric vehicle batteries to cancer treatment drugs.

China is by far the world’s largest producer of rare earths, accounting for about 70% of global production. The elements have been designated as critical by the US Geological Survey for sectors including national defence, and Washington has sought to reduce its reliance on Beijing.

Scholz criticised Trump’s transactional foreign policy, saying “it would be very selfish, very self-centred”. Germany is Ukraine’s second-largest military donor after the US.

Such resources would be better used for Ukraine’s reconstruction after the war, Scholz said, speaking after a meeting of EU leaders in Brussels on Monday.

The Kyiv Independent cited a source in Ukraine’s presidential office as saying that a deal over the country’s resources with allies was in fact part of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “victory plan”, which includes a mix of economic and security incentives and demands of western allies.

Zelenskyy presented the proposal to foreign leaders during the US presidential campaign, knowing that a Trump administration would add to pressure on Kyiv to come to an agreement with Moscow.

The plan offers deals on strategic mineral deposits in Ukraine that Zelenskyy said were worth trillions of dollars. Those included uranium, titanium, lithium and graphite, which are not rare earth metals, but also unnamed “other strategically valuable resources”.

Moscow said on Tuesday that Trump’s desire for rare earth metals was a clear offer to Ukraine to buy US assistance.

“It would be better of course for the assistance to not be provided at all, as that would contribute to the end of this conflict,” said the Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov.

Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Russia has made gradual but steady advances in the east of the country in recent months despite record casualties.

European and US shipowners have sold at least 230 ageing tankers into the “shadow fleet” used by Russia to evade western sanctions on its oil exports and help fund its war against Ukraine, an international investigation reveals.

The shipowners have made more than $6bn (£4.8bn) since Russia’s 2022 invasion by selling the vessels to buyers in countries such as India, Hong Kong, Vietnam or Seychelles that are not participating in the economic sanctions against Moscow, the investigation found.

It said Greek owners had sold the largest number of tankers, offloading 127 vessels, with UK companies selling 22 and German and Norwegian owners 11 and eight. Most would otherwise have been sold for scrap at a fraction of the price, it said.

In total, owners from 21 of the 35 countries that have placed sanctions on the oil trade with Russia had sold tankers into the shadow fleet, the investigation, led by a Dutch investigative outlet, Follow the Money (FTM), and involving newsrooms in nine countries, revealed.

Western governments say ships from the shadow fleet are being used to carry Russian oil, conduct espionage activities for Moscow and chart – and sometimes destroy – vital undersea infrastructure such as cables.

The team, working with the independent Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), whose researchers believe the 600-strong shadow fleet is shipping about 70% of all Russian oil exports, analysed hundreds of maritime freight and ship registration records.

The report cited the case of two 15-year-old Greek-owned tankers that were sold to a Hanoi-based company, renamed and reflagged from Malta to Panama, that later collected 120m litres of Russian oil from the Russian Baltic port of Ust-Luga, near the Estonian border.

After the G7 and EU introduced an oil price cap in late 2022 barring companies registered on their territories from facilitating sales of Russian oil above a certain price, prices for vessels that could be registered in non-western jurisdictions soared.

“A lot of European shipowners had old tonnage that they thought wasn’t really worth much,” an analyst at Lloyd’s List, the specialist shipping newspaper, told the consortium. “All of a sudden it doubled in value – so they scrambled to sell it.”

The Belgian marine transport group CMB.Tech sold five tankers for $135m that ended up in the fleet in 2022 and early 2023. A spokesperson told the Belgian newspaper De Tijd, part of the consortium, that it was not responsible for the vessels after the sale.

In late 2023 the EU introduced new rules requiring companies selling vessels to third countries to check they were not used to bust sanctions – but 32 European-owned tankers have been sold into the shadow fleet since then.

More recently, the EU and US have gone further, partly because many tankers in the shadow fleet do not have western insurance, never put into European ports so cannot be checked, and are so decrepit they could cause an environmental catastrophe.

Individual tankers are now barred from EU ports and services if found to be transporting Russian oil or involved in “dangerous shipping practices”. About 70 have been put under sanctions by the bloc, with reports 74 more will follow.

There are, however, no reports of plans to introduce specific measures outlawing the sale of vessels into the shadow fleet, partly because of resistance from member states with important shipping sectors, such as Greece, Cyprus and Malta.

Donald Trump Jr has been accused of killing a protected duck while hunting in the Venice lagoon.

Andrea Zanoni, a regional counsellor in Veneto, said a video of a hunting trip in northern Italy showed Trump Jr with the body of a rare ruddy shelduck (Tadorna ferruginea).

“This is a species protected throughout Europe by the EU birds directive and of course by Italian law … [which] criminally punishes its killing and possession,” he said. “Veneto and Italy are not the property of the USA,” he added in a post on Facebook.

Trump Jr can be seen shooting ducks from a foxhole in a lagoon in the video from Field Ethos, an outdoor lifestyle publication he co-founded. In one clip, he points at a distinctive rusty orange duck among the bodies of half a dozen waterfowl.

“This is actually a rather uncommon duck for the area,” he says. “Not even sure what it is in English, but incredible shoot.”

The ruddy shelduck, known in India as the Brahminy duck, is a migratory bird that winters in south Asia and breeds in south-east Europe. Its global conservation status is not under threat but environmentalists have raised concerns about its future as climate breakdown shifts its breeding range.

Zanoni said killing the protected bird was a crime and questioned Trump Jr’s right to hunt in Italy as a non-resident.

Massimo Buconi, the president of the Italian Hunting Federation, pushed back on the claim that foreigners were not able to hunt in Italy but said the law would have indeed been broken if the bird in the video was confirmed as a ruddy shelduck.

“At a glance it looks like a ruddy shelduck,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s protected in America, but in Europe, and in Italy, it is protected. You cannot hunt it.”

Zanoni said the video appeared to have been filmed in the Pierimpie’ valley near Venice, in a special conservation area. He said he had asked the regional authority “what sanctions it intends to impose” on the parties involved, such as suspending or revoking the licence of the company that authorised the hunt.

A Green member of the national parliament, Luana Zanella, has escalated the matter to the environment ministry.

Neither Zanoni nor Trump Jr immediately responded to a request for comment from AFP.

Field Ethos did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian. The voiceover of the video said the trip took place on private land and that it took measures to respect the local environment.

Trump Jr visited Venice in December with his girlfriend, according to Italian media reports. The 48-year-old is an avid trophy hunter. In 2020 he was granted a permit to hunt an Alaskan grizzly bear. Earlier that year a week-long “dream hunt” with Trump Jr had been auctioned at a trophy hunting convention in Nevada.

The Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, was among Europe’s far-right leaders who attended the inauguration of Trump Jr’s father. The Italian leader had visited Trump Sr’s Mar-a-Lago golf club in Florida earlier that month, during which Trump described her as “a fantastic woman” who is “really taking Europe by storm”.

Zanoni said: “The current Meloni government now seems to be kept on a leash by the new US political direction.”

The coach of Spain’s men’s football team, Luis de la Fuente, has told the forced kiss trial of ex-federation chief Luis Rubiales that he initially knew nothing of the scandal’s scale or efforts to silence it.

Rubiales provoked worldwide outrage for the kiss on Jenni Hermoso after she helped Spain beat England in the 2023 World Cup final in Australia.

The scandal forced Rubiales to resign in disgrace that year and has made Hermoso an icon of the fight against macho culture and sexism in sport.

Prosecutors are seeking two and a half years in prison for Rubiales, one year for sexual assault for the forced kiss and 18 months for allegedly coercing Hermoso, 34, to downplay the incident.

Rubiales, 47, has called the kiss an innocuous “peck between friends celebrating” and denied any coercion.

De la Fuente told the national court just outside Madrid that on the trip back to Spain he knew nothing about a press statement prepared in Hermoso’s name to hush the growing furore.

The men’s team coach, appointed during Rubiales’ 2018-2023 tenure, said he found out about the kiss on the plane but was “unaware of the scale” of the backlash.

He denied participating in a crisis meeting between top federation officials on 23 August 2023, saying he “didn’t exchange a word” with federation press chief Patricia Pérez Requena.

“They told me, ‘We’re getting into a huge mess with the kiss business’, but we went on to speak about matters that concerned me,” De la Fuente said.

Former communications director Pablo García Cuervo, sacked by the federation after the scandal erupted, defended his role in the drafting of the statement.

He told the court he wrote it from an interview Hermoso had given to Spanish media and obtained her permission.

He denied asking Hermoso to appear in a video with Rubiales as the scandal grew back home because he feared she would “change her version”.

“Hermoso is a rather influence-prone and pretty manipulable person, so she can change her opinion,” Cuervo said.

Hermoso told the opening day of the trial on Monday that she felt “disrespected” after a non-consensual kiss that “should not happen in any social or work setting”.

The trial is due to continue until 19 February.

The coach of Spain’s men’s football team, Luis de la Fuente, has told the forced kiss trial of ex-federation chief Luis Rubiales that he initially knew nothing of the scandal’s scale or efforts to silence it.

Rubiales provoked worldwide outrage for the kiss on Jenni Hermoso after she helped Spain beat England in the 2023 World Cup final in Australia.

The scandal forced Rubiales to resign in disgrace that year and has made Hermoso an icon of the fight against macho culture and sexism in sport.

Prosecutors are seeking two and a half years in prison for Rubiales, one year for sexual assault for the forced kiss and 18 months for allegedly coercing Hermoso, 34, to downplay the incident.

Rubiales, 47, has called the kiss an innocuous “peck between friends celebrating” and denied any coercion.

De la Fuente told the national court just outside Madrid that on the trip back to Spain he knew nothing about a press statement prepared in Hermoso’s name to hush the growing furore.

The men’s team coach, appointed during Rubiales’ 2018-2023 tenure, said he found out about the kiss on the plane but was “unaware of the scale” of the backlash.

He denied participating in a crisis meeting between top federation officials on 23 August 2023, saying he “didn’t exchange a word” with federation press chief Patricia Pérez Requena.

“They told me, ‘We’re getting into a huge mess with the kiss business’, but we went on to speak about matters that concerned me,” De la Fuente said.

Former communications director Pablo García Cuervo, sacked by the federation after the scandal erupted, defended his role in the drafting of the statement.

He told the court he wrote it from an interview Hermoso had given to Spanish media and obtained her permission.

He denied asking Hermoso to appear in a video with Rubiales as the scandal grew back home because he feared she would “change her version”.

“Hermoso is a rather influence-prone and pretty manipulable person, so she can change her opinion,” Cuervo said.

Hermoso told the opening day of the trial on Monday that she felt “disrespected” after a non-consensual kiss that “should not happen in any social or work setting”.

The trial is due to continue until 19 February.

The Rwanda-backed M23 rebels who seized the city of Goma in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo last week have declared a unilateral ceasefire starting on Tuesday.

The Congo River Alliance, a coalition of militias including M23, said it was declaring the ceasefire “for humanitarian reasons”. Flows of aid, food and other basic goods into the city were all but cut off by the M23 advance, and in recent days humanitarian organisations and the international community have stepped up calls for the creation of safe corridors to get vital items in.

On Monday the UN said at least 900 people had died in last week’s fighting between the rebels and Congolese forces. It added that warehouses and offices belonging to aid organisations had been looted, and warned of the spread of mpox, cholera, measles and other diseases due to lack of access to medical care.

Foreign ministers from the G7 advanced economies urged parties in the conflict to return to negotiations on Monday and called for a “rapid, safe and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief for civilians”.

Goma, a city of 2 million people and a humanitarian hub for displaced people, is at the heart of a region with trillions of dollars in mineral wealth. During the M23 takeover hospitals were overwhelmed by people injured in the fighting, and dead bodies lay in the streets for days. About 300,000 internally displaced people were forced to flee camps on the city’s outskirts.

Last week M23 was reported to be advancing beyond Goma and in the direction of Bukavu, the capital of neighbouring South Kivu province, but on Monday the group claimed it had no intention of seizing more territory. “It must be made clear that we have no intention of capturing Bukavu or other areas,” it said in a statement. “However, we reiterate our commitment to protecting and defending the civilian population and our positions.”

The M23 rebels are backed by 4,000 troops from neighbouring Rwanda, according to UN experts, far more than in 2012 when they first briefly captured Goma then withdrew after international pressure.

M23 is the latest in a string of ethnic Tutsi-led insurgent groups that have operated in mineral-rich eastern DRC since a 2003 deal was meant to end wars that had killed 6 million people, mostly from hunger and disease.

Rwanda says its primary interest is to eradicate fighters linked to the country’s 1994 genocide. The Congolese government and several UN reports say in fact Rwanda uses the group as a means to extract and then export valuable minerals for use in products such as mobiles phones.

Two regional blocs – the Southern African Development Community and the East African Community (EAC) – will on Friday and Saturday hold a joint summit in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, about the conflict.

Kenya’s president, William Ruto, on Monday said Félix Tshisekedi, the DRC president, and the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame, would attend. Last week, Tshisekedi snubbed an emergency virtual summit organised by the EAC.

Congolese authorities have in the past said they are open to talks, but that they must factor in previous peace agreements. Rwanda and the rebels have accused the DRC of failing to meet demands of previous deals.

Associated Press contributed to this report

The Metropolitan police officer at the centre of Sam Kerr’s criminal trial did not mention being upset by being called “stupid and white” by the footballer in his first statement about the incident, a court has heard, and only included it in a further statement 11 months later.

On Monday, Kingston crown court heard that Kerr, 31, the captain of the Australian women’s football team and Chelsea’s star striker, called PC Stephen Lovell “fucking stupid and white” after he doubted her claim of being “held hostage” by a taxi driver after a night out with her partner Kristie Mewis in January 2023.

On Tuesday, it was revealed that the Crown Prosecution Service, the body which has the final say on whether a criminal prosecution can go ahead in England and Wales, initially decided against charging Kerr as the evidence did not meet the required threshold.

But the CPS decided to charge Kerr with racially aggravated intentional harassment after a second statement was provided by Lovell in December 2023, 11 months after the incident first happened. He said her comments had left him “shocked, upset and humiliated”. She denies the charges.

During cross-examination on Tuesday, Kerr’s defence barrister, Grace Forbes, asked Lovell about this first statement, which was submitted on 30 January 2023. She put it to Lovell: ““Your first statement made no mention of stupid and white having had an impact.”

Lovell said it did not.

She then accused Lovell of submitting a second statement in December 2023 “because the CPS declined to charge Kerr”, saying “only a year later did you make mention of these words having had an impact on you… The CPS didn’t identify charge. You knew that was the obstacle?”

“No,” Lovell said.

“You are claiming this impact purely to get a criminal charge over the line?” she asked him again.

“No,” he said.

Lovell was also asked about Kerr’s status as a well-known sports star. Forbes suggested to him: “You made an assumption about her that she was a troublemaker, that she was difficult and, because of what she does for a living, she was an arrogant person?”

In response, Lovell said he did not know what Kerr did for a living.

Forbes disputed his denial, saying “you told her very early on, that you knew exactly who she was”. Lovell said he did not recall saying that but he knew she was a “famous football player” after a colleague had informed him.

Kerr claimed she called the police because she and Mewis believed they were being kidnapped by their cab driver.

Bill Emlyn Jones, for the prosecution, asked Lovell to read out sections from this second statement. In it, he described Kerr’s comments as leaving him “shocked, upset” and “feeling humiliated”. On the comments about his race specifically, he said “they were too far and I took great offence to them”.

The trial continues.

Babies the former nurse Lucy Letby was convicted of murdering were in fact the victims of “bad medical care” or deteriorated as a result of natural causes, an expert panel has concluded.

Outlining what the senior Conservative MP David Davis described as “one of worst injustices of recent times”, the international team told a press conference there was “no medical evidence” to support claims of deliberate harm.

A panel of experts, chaired by Dr Shoo Lee, examined the cases of 17 babies whom Letby was charged with murdering or harming at the Countess of Chester hospital in north-west England.

Lee, an emeritus professor at the University of Toronto, said the 14 experts had found “so many problems with the medical care” of the babies and nothing to support the claim they were attacked. “In summary, ladies and gentlemen, we did not find any murders,” he told a press conference in Westminster on Tuesday.

The press conference came as the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), the body that investigates potential miscarriages of justice, announced it had received a “preliminary application” from Letby’s legal team.

A CCRC spokesperson said it was not possible to say how long it would take to come to a decision on whether to refer the case back to the court of appeal, which it can do if it believes there is a real possibility the convictions will be quashed.

Letby, now 35, is serving 15 whole-life prison terms after being convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to kill another seven at the Countess of Chester hospital. She has twice been refused permission to appeal against her convictions by the court of appeal. A public inquiry is under way on the basis that she is guilty.

Letby was convicted of murdering four of the seven babies by injecting air into their bloodstreams and attempting to kill several others by the same method.

She was also convicted of harming two babies by poisoning them with insulin, pumping air into their feeding tube, force-feeding one with milk, and causing trauma to the abdomen.

Lee, who chaired the expert panel, said the prosecution’s claim that Letby had injected air into babies’ bloodstreams had “no evidence in fact”.

For the first time, experts suggested what they described as plausible alternative explanations for the deterioration of the infants – but ruled out deliberate harm.

A 31-page summary report, published on Tuesday, concluded that the Countess of Chester’s neonatal unit was overworked, understaffed, had plumbing issues and was staffed by “inadequate numbers of appropriately trained” clinicians. It said there were “numerous problems” in the care of the 17 babies, including a failure to properly carry out “basic medical procedures, delays in their treatment and the misdiagnosis of diseases”.

Lee said: “If this had happened at a hospital in Canada, it would be shut down.”

In one example, he said the panel had concluded that Child 1 – a one-day-old twin boy Letby was convicted of murdering by injecting with air – had in fact died as a result of thrombosis due to a failure to begin his infusion until four hours after he was intubated, risking the development of clots.

Another baby, a 10-week-old girl whom Letby was convicted of murdering on her fourth attempt, in fact died as a result of complications linked to respiratory distress syndrome and chronic lung disease, the panel concluded.

Lee claimed doctors had failed to respond to routine warnings about her deterioration and did not treat her with appropriate antibiotics. He added: “This was likely a preventable death.”

The panel also cast doubt on the supposed insulin poisonings, which were the foundation of the prosecution case. Jurors in Letby’s original trial were told that the insulin and c-peptide levels of two infants meant they must have been deliberately injected with insulin. Letby’s original legal team did not contest that claim, yet the jury was told that Letby was the only person who could have poisoned both babies.

Mark McDonald, Letby’s new barrister, said the report had “demolished” the medical case against her and was “overwhelming evidence that this conviction is unsafe”. He said the failure of Letby’s original legal team to produce any medical experts to give evidence in her defence meant that “all you were left with was the evidence of prosecution experts”.

He said: “This is fresh evidence. This is new evidence. It’s compelling evidence because of the nature of people who are giving that evidence – and it wasn’t heard by the jury.”

Lee said the expert panel included “some of the most experienced and distinguished paediatric specialists in the world”, from the US, the UK, Germany, Sweden and Japan.

One of the UK’s most eminent neonatologists, Prof Neena Modi, a former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, is one of the 14 experts who analysed the cases of 17 babies Letby allegedly harmed.

Modi said there were “very, very plausible reasons for these babies’ deaths” and that, across all 17 cases, there was a combination of babies being “in the wrong place, delivered in the wrong place, delayed diagnosis and inappropriate or absent treatment”.

Jesse Eisenberg, who received widespread recognition for his role as the Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, has said he no longer wants to be “associated with someone like that”.

Eisenberg received his first Oscar nomination for his performance in the 2010 film, which portrayed the founding of the social networking website and was directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin.

“It’s like this guy is … doing things that are problematic, taking away factchecking,” Eisenberg told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Tuesday. “[There are] safety concerns. Making people who are already threatened in the world more threatened.”

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, announced last month it would no longer use independent factcheckers on its social media sites, and would replace them with “community notes”. Similar to the system used on X, these give users the power to challenge the accuracy of posts.

Zuckerberg, now chief executive of Meta, said third-party moderators were “too politically biased” and it was “time to get back to our roots around free expression”.

The move came as Zuckerberg and other technology executives sought to improve relations with US president Donald Trump, who had criticised Meta’s factchecking policy as censorship of rightwing voices.

After the changes were announced, Trump praised Zuckerberg’s decision. Zuckerberg, X chairman Elon Musk, and Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, were all present at the president’s inauguration last month.

Eisenberg said he was “concerned” by the developments. The actor, who is currently promoting the Oscar-nominated A Real Pain, which he wrote, directed and stars in, added: “These people have billions upon billions of dollars, like more money than any human person has ever amassed and what are they doing with it?

“Oh, they’re doing it to curry favour with somebody who’s preaching hate.

“That’s what I think … not as like a person who played in a movie. I think of it as somebody who is married to a woman who teaches disability justice in New York and lives for her students are going to get a little harder this year.”

Last week, Trump signed a legal settlement that will see Meta pay out roughly $25m (£20m) over the suspension of his accounts after the 6 January Capitol riots in 2021.