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Deadly Israeli air strikes have been reported in Gaza, as Israel’s defence minister said its military would expand its offensive and seize large areas of the Palestinian territory – incorporating them into what he described as “security zones”.

Israel Katz said the expanded operation aimed to “destroy and clear the area of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure”, and would require a large-scale evacuation of Palestinians.

Later, at least 19 Palestinians, including nine children, were killed in a strike on a UN clinic sheltering displaced families in the northern town of Jabalia, the nearby Indonesian hospital said.

The Israeli military said it targeted “Hamas terrorists” hiding there.

Overnight strikes across Gaza killed at least 20 more people, according to local hospitals.

The Civil Defence said its first responders recovered the bodies of 12 people, including children and women, from a home in the southern Khan Younis area.

Rida al-Jabbour said a neighbour and her three-month-old baby were among the dead.

“From the moment the strike occurred we have not been able to sit or sleep or anything,” she told Reuters news agency.

The Israeli military said it was looking into the reports.

The Civil Defence said the strike in Jabalia later on Wednesday hit two rooms in a clinic run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) which was being used as a shelter.

Video verified by the BBC showed dozens of people and ambulances rushing to the building. Smoke was seen billowing from a wing where two floors appeared to have collapsed.

The Israeli military said in a statement that it targeted Hamas operatives who were “hiding inside a command-and-control centre that was being used for co-ordinating terrorist activity and served as a central meeting point”.

“Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of aerial surveillance and additional intelligence,” it added.

There was no immediate comment from Unrwa.

There were also reports of extensive Israeli air strikes and shelling along the Egypt border overnight and there is a growing sense that a new major Israeli ground offensive is looming in Gaza.

Israeli Army Radio said on Wednesday that Israeli tanks and ground forces had begun to advance into central and eastern parts of the southernmost city of Rafah.

This week, Israel’s military ordered an estimated 140,000 people in Rafah to leave their homes and issued new evacuation orders for parts of northern Gaza.

Israel has already significantly expanded a buffer zone around the edge of Gaza over the course of the war, and seized control of a corridor of land cutting through its centre.

Israel launched its renewed Gaza offensive on 18 March, blaming Hamas for rejecting a new US proposal to extend the ceasefire and free the 59 hostages still held captive in Gaza.

Hamas, in turn, accused Israel of violating the original deal they had agreed to in January.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum in Israel, which represents many hostages’ relatives, said they were “horrified to wake up” to the news of the expanded military operation.

The group urged the Israeli government to prioritise securing the release of all hostages still held in Gaza.

In his statement announcing plans to seize more territory, Katz also urged Gazans to act to remove Hamas and free remaining Israeli hostages, without suggesting how they should do so.

The humanitarian situation across Gaza has dramatically worsened in recent weeks, with Israel refusing to allow aid into the Gaza Strip since 2 March – the longest aid blockage since the war began.

Last month the UN announced it was reducing its operations in Gaza, one day after eight Palestinian medics, six Civil Defence first responders and a UN staff member were killed by Israeli forces in southern Gaza.

The Israeli military launched a campaign to destroy Hamas in response to an unprecedented cross-border attack on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

More than 50,399 people have been killed in Gaza during the ensuing war, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Actor Val Kilmer, who starred in some of the biggest movies of the 1980s and 90s, including Top Gun and Batman Forever, has died at the age of 65.

He also appeared in 1991’s The Doors – playing the legendary band’s frontman Jim Morrison – plus the Western Tombstone and crime drama Heat.

Kilmer died of pneumonia on Tuesday in Los Angeles, his daughter Mercedes told US media. She said her father had been diagnosed with throat cancer in 2014 but later recovered.

Tracheotomy surgery affected his voice and curtailed his acting career, but he returned to the screen to reprise his role as fighter pilot Iceman alongside Tom Cruise in 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick.

Paying tribute, Heat director Michael Mann said: “While working with Val on Heat I always marvelled at the range, the brilliant variability within the powerful current of Val’s possessing and expressing character.

“After so many years of Val battling disease and maintaining his spirit, this is tremendously sad news,” Mann wrote on Instagram.

Actor Josh Gad posted: “RIP Val Kilmer. Thank you for defining so many of the movies of my childhood. You truly were an icon.”

“See ya, pal. I’m going to miss you”, US actor Josh Brolin wrote alongside a picture of himself and Kilmer on Instagram.

“You were a smart, challenging, brave, uber-creative firecracker. There’s not a lot left of those”, he added.

Actor James Woods wrote: “His rendition of Doc Holliday in Tombstone was what every actor dreams of achieving. So many wonderful performances. Sad to lose him so soon.”

Will Kemp, who appeared in 2004 film Mindhunters with Kilmer, wrote: “So many great memories of working with him. He was fun, unpredictable, generous and overall very kind to me when I was very new to the job.”

Born Val Edward Kilmer on 31 December 1959, Kilmer grew up in a middle-class family in Los Angeles.

His parents were Christian Scientists, a movement to which Kilmer would adhere for the rest of his life.

Aged 17, he became the then-youngest pupil to enrol at the Julliard School, in New York, one of the world’s most prestigious drama conservatories.

He made his name in the comedies Top Secret! in 1984 and Real Genius the following year, before cementing his acting credentials as Iceman, the nemesis to Crusie’s character Maverick in 1986’s Top Gun, one of the decade’s defining movies.

Kilmer went on to star in fantasy Willow and crime thriller Kill Me Again – both alongside British actress Joanne Whalley, who he married in 1988. The couple had two children.

He further proved his dynamic and versatile talents when he convincingly portrayed rock frontman Morrison in The Doors, 20 years after the singer’s death.

Tombstone, in which Kilmer played gunfighter Doc Holliday, and Heat, in which he appeared alongside Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, were also hits.

He took over Batman’s cape from Michael Keaton for Batman Forever in 1995, which achieved box office success but mixed reviews, and Kilmer pulled out of the next Batman movie.

In 1997, he appeared in The Saint as the master criminal and master of disguise – based on Leslie Charteris’ books, which had also inspired the 1960s TV show starring Roger Moore.

Kilmer voiced both God and Moses in animated film The Prince of Egypt, and starred as Marlon Brando’s crazed sidekick in The Island of Dr Moreau in 1996 – but that film became one of Hollywood’s most notorious flops.

Its director John Frankenheimer declared he would never work again with Kilmer, who had gained a reputation for being difficult on set.

He played a gay private detective who teamed up with Robert Downey Jr’s petty thief in 2005’s Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.

In 2021, Kilmer released a documentary chronicling the highs and lows of his life and career. Val, which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival, features 40 years of home recordings, including him speaking with a voice box post-cancer surgery.

He had continued acting, but his comeback with a cameo appearance as Iceman in the long-awaited Top Gun sequel was particularly poignant.

Cruise said at the time: “I’ve known Val for decades, and for him to come back and play that character… he’s such a powerful actor that he instantly became that character again.”

Kilmer was also an artist, often creating paintings inspired by his film roles.

Film critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that his role in The Doors summed up his appeal and persona.

“There was something sort of dark and troubling and sensual and kind of self-destructive about him,” she said.

“It was a quality that meant he was never just the bland Hollywood pretty boy that led so many roles. There was something else going on underneath the surface.”

US entertainment journalist KJ Matthews echoed that, telling BBC Radio 5 Live: “He’s your bad boy, he’s edgy, good looking, definitely Hollywood star looks.

“And I like the way he played roles. He always played them in an unconventional, unpredictable way.

“When Val Kilmer was attached to a project, you just knew he was going to do something interesting with that character.”

The return of United States President Donald Trump to the White House has been fuelled by the “America First” ethos.

This has two big elements – a radical rethinking of the role played by the US on the international stage and “protectionist” economic policies.

Trump is reflecting a broader shift within America, towards the right of the political spectrum.

As our documentary, Trump, Tariffs and Us, has discovered, he has garnered support for this new direction from many different elements within American society, not least Irish America.

Whereas previous US presidents, predominantly those from the Democratic Party, have taken a keen interest in Northern Ireland and the peace process – think Bill Clinton and Joe Biden – Trump seems, currently at least, to have his focus elsewhere rather than on what may be happening in Belfast.

While there has long been bipartisan support for Northern Ireland peace building in Washington, it was the Democrats that were most closely associated with ensuring the process stayed high on the agenda of Capitol Hill.

But, as the former US Northern Ireland special envoy Richard Haass tells us in the programme, that generation of politicians has “moved on”.

Senator Ted Kennedy passed away in 2009 while other figures, such as Senator Chris Dodd, have stepped away from politics.

Instead, much of Irish America seems to have inched closer to the Republican Party and the policies of Trump.

This shift away from the Democrats has been noted by the publisher of the Irish American newspaper, the Irish Echo.

“Despite the threat to the Irish unauthorised immigrants, the undocumented immigrants, I have seen Irish America move to the right,” Máirtín Ó Muilleoir said.

“A majority now have moved to Trump because they see it in their self-interest to do so.

“We [the Irish Echo] endorsed Kamala Harris and we’re swimming against the tide.

“Some of the bedrocks of Irish America, just outside Manhattan, I have seen those not only move to Republicans but move very firmly to Republican candidates. I don’t see a time when the Democrats take those seats back.”

Irish American band the Dropkick Murphys known to many for their iconic song I’m Shipping Up to Boston, which featured heavily in the Martin Scorsese film The Departed, is still deeply rooted in trade union politics.

Lead singer Ken Casey said his regular, on-stage commentary against the US president had caused the band to lose listeners, “loads” of whom now supported Trump’s view of the world.

“I have many friends that came over from Ireland in their 20s to Boston, first generation, and they’re already on the Trump train – saying ‘close the door behind us’,” said Mr Casey.

“I was taught as an Irish-American I could never have those thoughts towards another immigrant because my family was able to come here and climb the economic ladder.

“A lot of my friends have gone to the ‘dark side’ and a tonne of the band’s fans.”

Trump has won strong support from the Irish American law enforcement community.

Treasurer of the New York Correctional Department’s Emerald Society Brian Sharkey believes the Democrats abandoned the issue of law and order to the Republicans.

“They [Irish Americans] are hoping Trump can change things. He is a big supporter of law and order, and he’s not a phoney,” said Mr Sharkey, a former correctional officer on New York’s Rikers Island.

“Right now there is a big problem in the city [New York] and there is a big problem with crime in general in New York State.”

He described Joe Biden as “the worst president of my lifetime” and has little time for Mr Biden’s strong sense of Irishness.

“He’s a typical politician, able to put on the Irish blarney, talk about his Irish grandmother,” he said.

Trump has won support, too, from some people with a unionist background and for whom the United States is now home.

Originally from north Belfast, Michael George has become friendly with the Trump family through his banking career in Manhattan.

He sees some merit in the president’s tariffs as policy tools.

“He wants to try and encourage free and fair tariffs,” said Mr George.

“He says he is going to do reciprocal tariffs. Well, if the Europeans tariff us why shouldn’t we tariff them?”

Mr George believes the widespread use of tariffs on foreign imports is a tactical move that will end in negotiation.

Trump’s “America First” vision seems to enjoy support from diverse parts of American society for now. Whether that remains the case, only time will tell.

Trump, Tariffs and Us, is on Sunday 30 March at 22:30 BST on BBC iPlayer and BBC One Northern Ireland. It was produced for BBC Northern Ireland by Clean Slate TV.

Muslims around the world have begun celebrating Eid al-Fitr, one of the biggest celebrations in the Islamic calendar.

Eid al-Fitr – which means “festival of the breaking of the fast” – is celebrated at the end of Ramadan, a month of fasting for many adults, as well as spiritual reflection and prayer.

Donald Trump has said he “couldn’t care less” if carmakers raise prices after his 25% tariffs on foreign-made vehicles comes into effect.

Some analysts have warned that Trump’s charges on businesses importing vehicles could lead to the temporary shutdown of significant car production in the US, increase prices, and strain relations with allies.

But speaking to NBC News on Saturday, the US president said he hoped foreign carmakers raise prices as it means “people are gonna buy American-made cars. We have plenty”.

On Wednesday, Trump announced new import taxes of 25% on cars and car parts entering the US from overseas, which go into effect on 2 April. Charges on businesses importing vehicles are expected on 3 April, and taxes on parts are set to start in May or later.

When asked about what his message was to car bosses, he said: “The message is congratulations, if you make your car in the United States, you’re going to make a lot of money”.

He went on to say: “If you don’t, you’re going to have to probably come to the United States, because if you make your car in the United States, there is no tariff.”

The 25% import tax on carmakers was briefly implemented but then paused at the beginning of March following pleas from major carmakers in North America like Ford, General Motors and Stellantis.

But Trump told NBC he did not plan to delay imposition of the car tariffs any further, saying he would consider negotiating “only if people are willing to give us something of great value. Because countries have things of great value, otherwise, there’s no room for negotiation”.

Trump’s comments come as Downing Street sources said the UK would not hesitate to retaliate against US tariffs if needed.

The UK is in last-minute negotiations with the White House and is trying to get an exemption, arguing that – unlike other countries – the UK has a relatively equal trading relationship with the US. The prime minister Sir Keir Starmer has said he does not want to jump into a trade war.

Several major economies have also vowed to retaliate in response to Trump’s tariffs.

Germany has said it “will not give in” and that Europe must “respond firmly”, France’s president branded the move “a waste of time” and “incoherent”, Canada calling it a “direct attack”, and China accused Washington of violating international trade rules.

For many years, well-off Nigerians have sent their children to prestigious British boarding schools – but now some of those institutions are setting up campuses in Africa’s most populous nation.

Last year, Charterhouse launched a primary school in the city of Lagos and will open a secondary school this September.

Rugby School will also begin offering secondary education in September. Other well-known institutions, such as Millfield, Wellington School and Harrow, are also exploring opportunities in Nigeria.

This obviously all comes with a price tag for Nigerian parents – but the country’s well-heeled elite have historically sent their children to the UK for secondary education, drawn to the British curriculum’s rigour, prestige and global opportunities.

“I’m actually excited about it,” says Karima Oyede, a British-Nigerian management consultant, whose son is currently in year 10 at Rugby in the UK but will be moving to its Lagos school in September.

Her family has been meaning to relocate to Nigeria for a while but has not done so earlier because of the children’s education.

“Having the opportunity to experience the British system in his country of origin is the best of both worlds,” she says.

Nigeria already has a proliferation of private schools but high-quality, internationally recognised education within the country will appeal to many parents, particularly those who wish to preserve their children’s cultural identity.

“African parents love the fact that they are giving their children international standing so they can compete with their counterparts in any other part of the world, but they don’t want their children to lose their African-ness,” says Ijay Uwakwe-Okoronkwo, the founder of Nkuzhi Learning Foundation in Nigeria’s capital, Abuja.

The educational consultant, who advises parents and schools on international boarding options, explains the more relaxed, less respectful attitude children return with after going to school abroad is not always appreciated.

This cultural dilemma extends to the growing conversation around LGBTQ issues. Same-sex relationships and public displays of affection are illegal in Nigeria and homosexuality is not openly discussed or promoted.

It is something that the new crop of British schools has taken on board. For example, while Charterhouse UK displays a rainbow flag, the Nigeria school does not.

“We’re a British independent school but sitting firmly within Nigerian cultural needs,” says John Todd, head of Charterhouse Nigeria.

“There’s this huge concern about Western cultural views.

“For parents here, we know it’s a really big issue. It’s a reason parents are worried about the UK schools.

“I’m not making a judgement – it’s just the way it is.”

British institutions in Nigeria have no choice but to “follow the law of the land”, he acknowledges, adding: “We are 100% compliant.”

Recognising Nigeria’s deeply religious society, Charterhouse also permits parents to take their children home from the boarding house for Sunday church services, with the expectation that they return by Monday morning.

There are several reasons behind the growing interest of prestigious British schools in opening campuses in Nigeria.

While regions like the Middle East and China are already saturated with international schools, Africa is relatively virgin territory.

“Nigeria is the gateway to Africa, and Africa is kind of the last continent for British schools to establish in,” says Mark Brooks, an export champion for the UK’s Department for Business and Trade.

He organises annual events in Nigeria where about 20 British schools meet prospective students and parents.

“Nigeria has an incredible reputation for producing driven, high-achieving students,” says Mr Brooks.

“There is no school I work with that hasn’t recently had a Nigerian student serve as head boy or deputy head boy. A student may join the sixth form and end up being the head boy within a year.

“I’ve brought hundreds of head teachers to Nigeria over the years, and the word is out in the UK that we need to take Nigeria seriously.”

Timing has also proved key, as the cost of sending children to the UK has soared. Just three years ago, the exchange rate of the local currency was 500 naira to £1; now it stands at 2,200 naira.

On top of that, the Labour government in the UK recently imposed 20% VAT on private school fees.

Beyond tuition, families face additional expenses like flights for both students and visiting parents.

Establishing these schools in Nigeria allows families to maintain the same standard of education while significantly reducing the financial strain.

The annual fees at Charterhouse UK, for example, are around £60,000 ($78,000), whereas the fees at its Lagos campus are equivalent to approximately £15,000.

“Our main classroom teachers are expatriates, but 90% of the staff are local,” says Mr Todd.

By employing local people in roles such as assistant teachers, administration, finance, human resources, marketing, facilities, security, gardeners, drivers, PAs and secretaries, the school can significantly reduce costs compared to the UK, where labour is much more expensive.

A vast education gap already exists in Nigeria, with many parents opting for private education of varying quality. Many struggle to pay the higher fees rather than sending their children to government schools, which are often free but plagued by poorly trained teachers and frequent strikes.

As a result, the arrival of British schools may not drastically change Nigeria’s education system.

However, they could pose a threat to established elite schools like the British International School in Lagos and The Regent School in Abuja, which opened in the early 2000s.

Such schools have long been top choices for those able to pay the annual tuition fees that often reach tens of thousands of dollars.

“Rugby School Nigeria is coming also to support, develop and learn from the schools currently in Nigeria,” says Mr Brooks, who is in charge of the school’s marketing.

“We are coming to help with partnerships as well, teacher training, and a whole range of initiatives.”

Mr Todd believes the Nigerian market is large enough to accommodate all the new schools without threatening existing ones. About 40% of the 200 million population is under 14.

He expects the greatest impact to be felt in the UK.

While Charterhouse UK typically has a long waiting list and should not be affected, less sought-after boarding schools may experience a decline in enrolment owing to the new competition in Nigeria.

“Interest in our secondary school is very strong,” says Mr Todd. “We already have Nigerian parents in the UK sending their children to the Charterhouse in Nigeria for September.”

In fact, reaching out to Nigerians in the UK has been one of their key marketing strategies.

“You get this premier brand at a lower price, and every Nigerian has an aunt or uncle in Lagos” who can be a guardian, he adds.

It could be that this trend extends to British universities. Nigeria’s tertiary education system faces even greater challenges than its secondary sector, with many students opting to study abroad.

In 2023, Nigeria ranked among the top 10 countries for UK student visas, according to UK government data.

But with foreign exchange difficulties and stricter visa regulations, studying abroad is becoming increasingly challenging – and universities that rely on higher international tuition fees appear to be suffering.

Earlier this month, British MP Helen Hayes, chair of the parliamentary Education Committee, acknowledged the UK’s higher education sector was in trouble.

“Dozens of universities are making redundancies and cuts to courses, trying to stay afloat amid uncertainty over where their money is coming from,” she said when announcing a session to consider the sector’s future.

If enough Nigerian students can no longer go to the UK to study, British universities may find it profitable to come to them, as they have elsewhere in the world.

In fact, Nigeria’s premier university, the University of Ibadan, was established in 1948 as a campus of the University of London, with degrees awarded carrying the same value and prestige.

Ms Uwakwe-Okoronkwo believes many Nigerian parents would appreciate this opportunity, as it would allow their children to stay in Nigeria long enough to mature before potentially moving abroad, if they choose to do so.

“Many parents are worried about sending their children out of the nest too early,” she says.

For Ms Oyede, whose daughter will also be starting at Rugby School in Lagos come September, the timing of all this could not be better.

She says the British school opening has already been an “incentive to return home”.

The prospect of university opportunities would be a welcome bonus.

Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani is a freelance Nigerian journalist and novelist based in Abuja and London.

“It’s just weird to talk about your sexual feelings to your parents,” says 15-year-old Ben*.

His parents, Sophie and Martin, two professionals in their 40s, nod understandingly. They are discussing the kinds of “big issues” Ben’s social media usage throws up, and for Ben their conversations about sex and pornography are “the worst”.

The family – minus Ben’s little sister, who is too young to join the discussion – are gathered in their living room to dissect the smash-hit Netflix drama Adolescence, which they watched the previous evening.

The series follows the story of 13-year-old protagonist Jamie, who is accused of murdering a female peer after being exposed to misogynistic online material and subjected to cyberbullying.

Both of Ben’s parents are concerned their own son’s behaviour is being impacted by the material he is exposed to, and Ben, who is worried himself, is trying to set limits on his own phone use.

Given their concerns, and how they overlap with the themes of Adolescence, the family agreed to watch the programme together and allowed BBC News to sit in on their discussion, which ranged from the relevance of Andrew Tate to whether boys and girls can be friends.

Ben is sitting on the sofa in the living room scrolling on his phone before the conversation begins.

The parents take their seats looking relaxed despite the difficult subjects they are about to discuss. Photos of loved ones line the bookshelves in the family’s living room, and a piano stands against the wall.

Sophie and Martin have worked hard to create a “very open” household, Sophie says, where “all topics are on the table”. While watching the programme, Sophie made a list of things to talk about with Ben.

A confident and outspoken teenage boy, Ben is well-liked by fellow pupils at his single-sex state secondary school. But the qualities that make him popular with his peers often land him in trouble with his teachers, who give him detentions or send him to isolation for making what his mother describes as “inappropriate comments”.

In the show, Jamie and his peers use language associated with the “manosphere” – websites and online forums promoting misogyny and opposition to feminism – and incel culture. Incels, short for involuntary celibate, are men who blame women because they are unable to find a sexual partner. It is an ideology that has been linked to terror attacks and killings in recent years.

Perhaps surprisingly, “incel” wasn’t a familiar term to Ben, and his dad Martin had to explain it as they watched the programme.

“People just call each other ‘virgins’. I’ve not heard ‘incel’ before,” Ben tells his parents. He suggests the term might have “dropped off” social media for young people in recent years, reflecting the pace at which the conversation moves online.

Ben tells his parents there are elements of the show he recognises, including its depiction of the fights and cyberbullying at school. But he thinks it is only a “rough picture” of what it’s like to be a teenager today, and that it was principally made for “an adult who isn’t online”.

For example, it neglects to show the good side of social media alongside its dangers, he says, and some details – including the secret emoji codes one character claims children use – ring false.

It is for this reason that Martin, who says he enjoyed the tense drama, also feels the show is playing on every parent’s “worst nightmare” about their child’s phone use, meaning it sometimes favours theatrics over realism in an attempt to “shock” adults into action.

Andrew Tate, an influencer and central figure of the shadowy online world of the manosphere, is mentioned by name in the drama and has been the cause of much concern among parents and teachers. But Ben says that while Andrew Tate was “popular” at his school about two years ago, he is now “old news”.

Ben has noticed the way Tate combines health and wellbeing with politics. “Some of his things, like ‘exercise for an hour a day’ – fair enough, that’s correct. But then he combines it with far-right ideas, like ‘the man should go out and work and the wife should stay at home’,” Ben says.

Both parents agree that Tate is not to blame for misogyny. As far as they’re concerned, he is symptomatic of “a bigger social problem”.

This problem is represented starkly in the bleak picture Adolescence paints of male-female friendships in the social media age. Protagonist Jamie doesn’t have any female friends, and appears to view relations with the opposite sex through a lens of dominance and manipulation.

Sophie is concerned that interactions between boys and girls are distant and impersonal in Ben’s peer group. She says Ben doesn’t have many opportunities to mix with girls his age.

And she worries her son is getting most of his information about how to interact with girls from social media. “It’s really twisted,” she says. “They don’t know how to behave around each other.”

She asks her son a question: “If you don’t know how to talk to girls when you’re feeling awkward, if you’re like, ‘Eurgh, I don’t know how to dress’, where do you go for help?”

“Online,” Ben says.

“So it goes full circle,” says his mum. “That’s where they get information.”

Ben isn’t embarrassed that he’s “used ChatGPT for like two years” to get this sort of advice. “Or TikTok,” he adds.

Sophie says Ben learned most about friendship with the opposite sex during a visit to a cousin’s house, who attends a mixed school and has female friends.

She recalls Ben’s cousin reprimanding him after Ben asked whether the cousin was attracted to a female friend.

“I don’t remember him getting annoyed with me like that, but okay,” Ben says.

They debate their varying recollections of events until they land on a version on which they can agree: “His cousin was like, ‘No, that’s my friend. I don’t think of them in that way,’” Sophie says.

“That was really eye-opening for him,” she says. Turning to Ben, she recalls: “You came back from it, and you were like, ‘It’s much better [at my cousin’s], girls and boys are friends.’”

In the Netflix drama, it is revealed that Jamie’s victim Katie had been subjected to misogynistic bullying after a male classmate shared intimate images of her without her consent.

Jamie’s discussion of this incident with a child psychologist, played by Erin Doherty, is pivotal to the programme’s acclaimed third episode.

Ben has seen this kind of abuse of trust among his peers too. “There’s a guy near here, and [a picture of] his genitals got leaked on a massive group chat with loads of people,” he says. “That was a big thing on TikTok.”

The series kicks off with an episode in which police question Jamie about the sexualised images of adult women he has shared on his Instagram page, hinting at the ease with which young teenagers can access pornography.

This feels familiar to Ben, who thinks porn is the “biggest issue” among his peer group. He knows boys who are “addicted” to it: “They rely on it. There are people in my year who’ll have such a bad day unless they watch it.”

Ben squirms a little while talking about pornography, staring at the wall or fiddling with his phone.

He seems more comfortable talking about the other forms of concerning content young people come across online.

He estimates that “one in 10” videos he watches on his phone contain distressing material, including scenes of extreme violence. And Ben’s parents are under no illusions that their son is “safe” just because he is upstairs on his computer – unlike Jamie’s parents in the show.

For Martin and Sophie, the solution lies in giving children better opportunities to “participate” in society and build their self-esteem.

They say they are also keen for their son to have “wide range” of male role models to learn from. Ben, who has paused to check his phone several times in the course of their discussion, re-engages with the conversation.

He is animated in his praise for his sports coaches, whose “really strong morals” he admires.

The parents nod, evidently pleased by his enthusiasm. They say they pack their son’s life with activities in an attempt to get him off his phone. But this is expensive, they say, and puts poorer students at a disadvantage.

Sophie says of the show’s main character, Jamie: “He doesn’t have sport. He doesn’t feel good about himself. His dad looks away when he fails.”

Adolescence shows that children with limited opportunities to build their self-esteem are more “vulnerable” to the predatory messages of misogynistic influencers, Sophie says.

Both parents agree tech companies, the government, schools and families all have a responsibility to offer young people a convincing alternative to the siren call of the manosphere.

They insist parents can’t do it alone. As Sophie says: “It’s a tsunami and someone’s given me an umbrella.”

Ben thinks what happens online is too often dismissed by adults as being irrelevant to the real world. He thinks this is a mistake; social media should be treated “like real life – because it is real life”, he says.

*All names in this article have been changed.

A woman says police overreacted by trying to ban her from a park over allegations she was illegally foraging for mushrooms.

Louise Gather said a police officer came to her home and attempted to issue her with a community resolution report after she visited Bradgate Park, in Leicestershire, in search of magpie inkcaps – a rare kind of fungi.

It follows a complaint by the Bradgate Park Trust, which runs the park, that Mrs Gather picked mushrooms illegally because it is a designated site of special scientific interest (SSSI).

The 38-year-old insisted she had not picked any mushrooms during her visit in November, and that Leicestershire Police’s actions had been “a bit excessive”.

Mrs Gather, from Derby, revealed details of the community resolution order on TikTok this week.

Under the terms of the community resolution report, an informal agreement between a complainant and an alleged offender, Mrs Gather was told she would not face prosecution or get a criminal record if she stuck to its terms.

These also included her agreeing not to take items from the park in the future, and that she would look into what an SSSI is.

However, police have subsequently admitted that the order was not valid because the officer dealing with the case mistakenly got her husband to sign the agreement, rather than her.

Mrs Gather said the first time she became aware of any problem was on 25 November, when an officer from Leicestershire Police came to her home and said a complaint had been made.

She said: “It seems someone had followed me, taken pictures of my car registration and passed them on to police.

“I was out when [the officer] came but my husband was home – and he thought I’d been in a car accident or something.

“The police officer was pretty good about it – I think he just wanted to get it sorted as quickly as possible – but he got my husband to sign something, which was an informal agreement that I don’t go back to the park – so he’d go.

“It turns out that was a mistake and the officer’s boss phoned me on Thursday to say it had been rescinded. He was very, very apologetic.

“The whole thing feels a bit silly. I don’t think much common sense has been used.

“It was a bit excessive to send a policeman to my house – especially as I didn’t pick anything from the park.

“I understand Bradgate Park is an SSSI. Why would I want to do anything to harm that environment?”

“I do sometimes forage, usually for wild garlic and wild leeks,” said Mrs Gather.

“And on that day I was looking for magpie inkcaps, which are quite rare, and I had been tipped off they were growing there.

“My interest in fungi started a few years ago. I started to notice them while I was walking the dog then I’d go home and look them up. It moved on from there.

“Magpie inkcaps were on my mushroom bucket list. Occasionally I do forage mushrooms, but on that day I didn’t pick anything.

“I spoke to a couple of volunteers and had a lovely conversation with them.

“They told me where they thought I might find what I was looking for – and I did find them.

“I had my foraging basket but I didn’t put anything in it. I was happy – I was there about an hour and even had lunch in the cafe.

“There were rangers buzzing about on their buggies. Nobody seemed to think anything was wrong at the time. Nobody asked to look in my basket.”

According to Leicestershire Police, the complainant said it was reported Mrs Gather had a small knife, which meant they did not feel able to approach her.

She said: “I had my tiny mushroom foraging knife. That’s all. It has a lock blade but I don’t think I even got it out.”

A spokesperson for Leicestershire Police said a report of a woman picking mushrooms had been received, and added: “Inquiries were carried out into the report and an officer visited the woman’s home address, where a community resolution was issued in relation to the offence.

“Bradgate Park is a site of special scientific interest (SSSI), which is covered by the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and Nature Conservation Act 2004.

“The park is of high conservation value and should be protected as part of his heritage.

“The removal of any item from the park is an offence and officers will carry out inquiries into any reports of this nature which are made to us.”

The Bradgate Park Trust declined to comment.

The Woodland Trust’s guidelines on foraging say:

• Minimise damage and take only what you plan to consume
• Seek permission and look especially at sites of conservation importance
• Know what you are picking. Some species are rare, inedible or poisonous
• Know the law. Under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, it is illegal to dig up or remove wild plants (including algae, lichens and fungi) from the land on which it is growing without permission from the landowner or occupier

Whether you like the new Snow White film or you hate it, it’s hard to escape the debate around its lead actress, Rachel Zegler.

The 23-year-old star has dominated conversation about the film, as people either blame her for its poor reviews or leap to her defence, saying she’s being unfairly maligned.

And this debate is not new for Zegler.

Way before Snow White came out, she has been at the centre of the storm, with many criticising her take on the original film and her political views, including those on US President Donald Trump and his voters.

Others defended her, and expressed discomfort at seeing such a young actress suffer a pile-on.

Film critic Kelechi Ehenulo calls Zegler a victim of “culture wars”, and warns actors from underrepresented backgrounds (Zegler is Latina) often find themselves becoming “targets for backlash”.

So how did we get to this point – and where does Zegler go from here?

Let’s start with the film itself.

Disney’s live-action version of the classic fairy tale Snow White was released earlier this month, and has faced a slew of underwhelming reviews (the Observer’s Wendy Ide described it as “toe-curlingly terrible”.) US reviewers have been somewhat more positive – but despite it topping the North America box office chart, it hasn’t made as much money as expected.

On social media, some people have been quick to point their finger at Zegler, arguing she hampered the release.

They include Jonah Platt, the son of Snow White producer Marc Platt. Earlier this week, he took aim at Zegler in a fiery social media post. It has since been deleted, but was screenshotted by multiple outlets including the New York Post.

He said Zegler had “[dragged] her personal politics” into the film’s promotional campaign, adding: “Her actions clearly hurt the film’s box office.”

Platt didn’t respond to a request for comment from BBC News.

The controversies started much earlier.

Before the film was released, Zegler faced abuse online by people who disagreed with her casting in the role of a character deemed to have skin “as white as snow”.

Zegler made headlines after her comments, in 2022, about the original film. “There’s a big focus [in the original] on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her. Weird! So we didn’t do that this time.”

Zegler also said the original film was “extremely dated when it comes to the ideas of women being in roles of power”, adding: “People are making these jokes about ours being the PC Snow White, where it’s like, yeah, it is – because it needed that.”

Many saw those words as a rebuke against Disney’s tradition.

The Daily Mail branded it a “woke tirade” and an article this week in Variety said she “trashed the beloved original Snow White”.

City AM’s film editor Victoria Luxford says criticism of the original film “was never going to work out well. These films are marketed on nostalgia, on making you feel like you did when you saw the original, so to speak of it negatively seemed puzzling”.

Zegler declined to comment on this piece.

But Anna Smith, film critic and host of the Girls On Film podcast, told BBC News that some of the headlines may have be misleading.

“Zegler pointed out that times and attitudes have changed, and that the new Snow White has been adapted for the current age. This is the case with many remakes and reboots, many of which do not make the headlines with comments about ‘woke’ culture.”

Zegler’s political views have also sparked a backlash.

Last summer, she thanked fans for their response to the film’s trailer in a post on X, adding, “and always remember, free Palestine”.

According to the Variety article, Marc Platt – mentioned above – flew to New York to speak directly with Zegler after the post.

Neither Zegler nor Platt have responded to a request for a comment on that.

Zegler also stoked controversy with her views after the 2024 US presidential election. Writing on Instagram, she said she hoped “Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace”.

She later apologised for what she had said.

Some commend her for speaking her mind. Ehenulo says that she is “not the first and certainly not the last actor to be speaking about politics”.

And Luxford told me she was “hard-pressed” to imagine the film’s core audience, children under 10, being swayed by her politics.

But film critic Conor Riley said that her comments about Trump didn’t “help the stability of the movie’s release”.

He notes that Gal Gadot, who plays Snow White’s stepmother, the Evil Queen, has also faced a backlash from some people. Gadot, who is Israeli, has been vocal in her support of the country.

The timing of the film also didn’t help, he added.

“Ultimately, [Zegler] became a lightning rod for controversy, not just due to her own actions, but because Snow White landed at the intersection of Hollywood’s creative stagnation, racial politics, international conflict, and America’s deep ideological divide,” he said.

Some, like Luxford, argue that some of the pile-on comes from “a place of prejudice”.

“She’s a young Latina woman with political opinions that don’t align with certain groups, who are quick to voice their anger,” she said.

Zegler is far from the first young female actress to find herself facing a toxic backlash. Recently, Stranger Things actor Millie Bobby Brown criticised press articles about her appearance, saying “this isn’t journalism, this is bullying”.

Smith notes that women in positions of prominence are more likely to be targeted in this way.

“When women in the public eye are criticised, there is often bias at work. Regardless of the topic, the way it’s dealt with, talked about and reported will often differ compared to the way men are treated,” she said.

Ehenulo, for her part, calls on the industry to do more to protect their stars.

“What irks me is how easy [people of colour] actors become targets for backlash on social media and yet the culture of silence from studios, news outlets and social media platforms says it all,” she said.

“That lack of public protection… means the toxicity continues to fester and rise. It’s the Wild West out there and I can’t see it getting better when this has been normalised to such an extent.”

We put those claims to Disney, but they declined to comment.

The big roles keep coming for Zegler. She is now signed up to star in Evita in the West End this summer, and on Friday, she made a splash in a different way – reading a CBeebies Bedtime Story.

At the end of the story, Zegler tells young viewers: “To be a powerful princess you just need to be wonderful, brilliant you!” For some, this is a message that encapsulates Zegler herself.

“I don’t know if she’s going to be doing another Disney film anytime soon,” says Luxford, “but she’s 23, she’s a Golden Globe winner, and she’s a very talented actor.”

The head of a charity co-founded by the Duke of Sussex has called his brand “toxic” and claimed it hindered the group, after he and several others quit the organisation earlier this week.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Sentebale chairwoman Dr Sophie Chandauka said she first felt tensions with Prince Harry a year ago.

Dr Chandauka separately told Sky News the way the duke handled his departure from the charity – set up in 2006 in honour of mother Diana to help people in southern Africa living with HIV and Aids – amounted to “harassment and bullying at scale”.

A source close to the former trustees and patrons said they “fully expected this publicity stunt”.

“They remain firm in their resignation, for the good of the charity, and look forward to the adjudication of the truth,” the source added.

BBC News has approached Sentebale for comment.

Prince Harry has said he, and co-founder Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, stepped down because the relationship between the charity’s trustees and Dr Chandauka “broke down beyond repair”.

But Dr Chandauka strongly defended her record as chair, adding: “The number-one risk for this organisation was the toxicity of its lead patron’s brand.”

Dr Chandauka, who was on Sentebale’s board before becoming chair, accused Prince Harry of wanting “to force a failure and then come to the rescue”.

But she told them: “The team is resolved that Sentebele will live on, with or without you.”

Elsewhere, she argued various controversies around Prince Harry following his relocation to the US had affected the charity’s ability to diversify its donor pool and hire people.

“When you start to interview people, they’re asking questions about, well, these mixed messages around the patron,” she said.

She said she first felt tension between Prince Harry and herself a year ago.

She also claimed the duke’s team asked her to defend his wife Meghan from negative publicity.

“I said no, we’re not setting a precedent by which we become an extension of the Sussex PR machine,” she said.

In a separate interview with Sky News, Dr Chandauka was sharply critical of the way in which Prince Harry resigned.

She said the only reason she was speaking up is because the duke this week “authorised the release of a damaging piece of news to the outside world without informing me or my country directors, or my executive director”.

“And can you imagine what that attack has done for me, on me and the 540 individuals in the Sentebale organisations and their family?” she said.

“That is an example of harassment and bullying at scale.”

Prince Harry founded Sentebale in 2006. The charity has been hugely important to him and a massive part of his adult life.

So his decision to walk away from it, along with his co-founder Prince Seeiso, is hugely significant.

In a joint statement on Wednesday, the duke and Prince Seeiso said they were resigning from their roles with “heavy hearts” and in “solidarity with the board of trustees”.

“It is devastating that the relationship between the charity’s trustees and the chair of the board broke down beyond repair, creating an untenable situation,” they said.

They said the trustees “acted in the best interest of the charity” by asking Dr Chandauka to step down, but her decision to take legal action to retain her position was “further underscoring the broken relationship”.

They added they would be sharing their concerns with the Charity Commission “as to how this came about”.

Dr Chandauka said she had “blown the whistle” about issues including what she described as abuse of power, bullying, sexism and racism.

She said her work at Sentebale had been “guided by the principles of fairness and equitable treatment for all”, and that she had reported the trustees to the UK Charity Commission.

The charity itself has confirmed a “restructuring” of its board.

Former trustees Timothy Boucher, Mark Dyer, Audrey Kgosidintsi, Dr Kelello Lerotholi and Damian West described their decision as “nothing short of devastating” for all of them.

They said they had lost trust and confidence in the chairwoman but her legal action to block them from removing her meant they had no other option than to resign.

The Charity Commission has said it was “aware of concerns” over Sentebale’s governance, adding: “We are assessing the issues to determine the appropriate regulatory steps.”

Head to the grocery store in the US and the shelves are stocked with jars of St Dalfour strawberry spread and Bonne Maman raspberry preserves – some of the more than $200m (£154m) in jams that Europe sends to America each year.

But try looking for American-made jelly in Europe, and you’re likely to come up short.

The US exports less than $300,000 in jam each year to the bloc.

It’s an imbalance that US company JM Smucker, one of the biggest sellers of such products in America, blames on a 24%-plus import tax its fruit spreads face in the EU.

“The miniscule value of US exports to the European Union is entirely attributable to the high EU tariff,” the company wrote in a letter to the White House this month, asking the Trump administration to address the issue as it prepares to levy “reciprocal” tariffs on America’s biggest trading partners.

“Reciprocal US tariffs on EU jams and jellies would serve to level the playing field,” the company said, noting that the highest US jam tariff is currently just 4.5%.

Globally, Trump’s push to deploy tariffs against close trading partners – many of which have average tariff levels similar to America’s – has generated anger and bafflement, while drawing warnings from economists about higher prices and other potential economic pain.

Some businesses in the US have echoed those concerns, but Trump’s calls for tariffs are also channelling longstanding frustrations many firms feel about foreign competition and policies they face abroad.

Smucker’s letter was one of hundreds submitted to the White House, seeking to influence the next set of tariffs, expected to be unveiled on 2 April.

Apple farmers raised the big disparity in import duties their fruit faces in countries such as India (50%), Thailand (40%) and Brazil (10%), as well as sanitary rules in countries such as Australia they said unfairly block their exports.

Streaming businesses flagged digital taxes in Canada and Turkey that they said “unfairly target and discriminate” against US companies.

The oil and natural gas lobby criticised regulations in Mexico that require partnership with the state-owned oil company and other policies.

The White House itself spotlighted uneven ethanol tariffs in Brazil (18%, compared with 2.5% in the US), car tariffs in Europe (10%, compared with 2.5% in the US) and motorcycles in India (until a few years ago, 100% vs 2.4% in the US).

Trump has suggested that his plan for reciprocal tariffs will help remedy such grievances, pumping up his announcement as “Liberation Day”.

But even the businesses seeking action on their own issues have expressed hesitation about the president’s tariff-first, ask-questions-later strategy, which risks retaliation and a wider trade war.

With 2 April looming, there remains widespread uncertainty about the goals and scope of White House plans, especially as Trump launches a broadside of other duties.

“We’re going to be nice,” he said this week, at the same time as he announced potentially devastating tariffs on foreign cars and car parts. “I think people will be pleasantly surprised.”

India has already said it would lower its tariffs on motorcycles – an apparent bet that Trump’s tariffs are a strategy designed to gain leverage for trade talks.

But analysts warned that those hoping that Trump plans to use his reciprocal tariffs to negotiate changes elsewhere may be disappointed, as the president has also indicated he could be satisfied by simply hitting back.

“Some days it’s about revenge and just equalising things and other days it’s about lowering tariffs and then other days, third days, it’s about bringing manufacturing to the United States,” said William Reinsch, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington thinktank.

“He’s used them all at different times – there’s not a single thread here that you can rely on.”

The mismatch between the blunt tool of tariffs and the more niche issues firms want the White House to champion has led to a delicate dance, as businesses suggest tariffs in their own interest, while also hoping to avoid the repercussions of the kind of sweeping duties that Trump has suggested might be on the table.

For example, steel manufacturer NorthStar BlueScope Steel, which employs 700 people in the US melting steel from recycled metal, urged Trump to expand tariffs on steel and aluminium to parts.

At the same time, however, it asked for an exemption for the raw materials it needs, such as scrap metal.

Likewise, the lobby group for JM Smucker and other big food manufacturers, the Consumer Brands Association, warned against “overly broad and sweeping tariffs” that might end up making it more expensive for its members to import ingredients like cocoa, which are not made in the US.

“I don’t necessarily want the current administration to say, well, we’ll impose a tariff,” Tom Madrecki, the group’s vice president of supply chain resiliency, said at a recent forum about tariffs, hosted by Farmers for Free Trade.

“It’s this careful balance between yes, I want you to take an America First trade policy and action to counter unfair trade policies abroad … but maybe not quite in that way.”

Wilbur Ross, who served as Trump’s commerce secretary in his first term, said he thought business worries would dissipate as Trump’s plans become clear, calling 2 April a “big step”.

But he noted that the president saw little downside to using tariffs, viewing them as either a source of new revenue, or a way to reduce imports and encourage more manufacturing.

“He’s very committed,” he said. “People should have known that something like this was coming because he’s been talking about it for many, many years.”

Republicans, traditionally the pro-trade party, have stayed supportive of Trump’s strategy, even as tariff announcements have been blamed for the recent stock market sell-off and weakness in recent surveys of business and consumer confidence.

At a recent hearing on trade, Representative Jodey Arrington, a Republican who represents Texas, acknowledged that there might be “some pain associated on the front end” but maintained Trump’s focus on the issue would create opportunities for his constituents in the end.

“It just seems to me that it’s un-American to not fight for our American manufacturers, producers and workers to simply have an even playing field,” he said.

“We’re simply attempting … to reset those relationships such that we’re playing by the same set of rules,” he added. “Then everyone wins.”

A major earthquake in Myanmar on Friday has caused more than 1,600 deaths and led to the collapse of numerous structures.

Even though the south-east Asian nation is a high risk region for earthquakes, neighbouring Thailand and China – which were also affected by the quake – are not.

The Thai capital, Bangkok, sits more than 1,000km (621 miles) from the epicentre of Friday’s earthquake – and yet an unfinished high-rise building in the city was felled by it.

Here we will explain what caused this earthquake, and how it was able to have such a powerful effect so far away.

The earth’s upper layer is split into different sections, called tectonic plates, which are all moving constantly. Some move alongside each other, whilst others are above and below each other.

It is this movement that causes earthquakes and volcanoes.

Myanmar is considered to be one of the most geologically “active” areas in the world because it sits on top of the convergence of four of these tectonic plates – the Eurasian plate, the Indian plate, the Sunda plate and the Burma microplate.

The Himalayas were formed by the Indian plate colliding with the Eurasian plate, and the 2004 Tsunami as a result of the Indian plate moving beneath the Burma microplate.

Dr Rebecca Bell, a reader in tectonics at Imperial College London, said that to accommodate all of this motion, faults – cracks in the rock – form which allow tectonic plates to “slither” sideways.

There is a major fault called the Sagaing fault, which cuts right through Myanmar north to south and is more than 1,200km (746 miles) long.

Early data suggests that the movement that caused Friday’s 7.7-magnitude earthquake was a “strike-slip” – where two blocks move horizontally along each other.

This aligns with the movement typical of the Sagaing fault.

As the plates move past each other, they can become stuck, building friction until it is suddenly released and the earth shifts, causing an earthquake.

Earthquakes can happen at up to 700km (435 miles) below the surface. This one was just 10km from the surface, making it very shallow. This increases the amount of shaking at the surface.

The earthquake was also very large – measuring 7.7 on the moment scale. It produced more energy than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, according to the US Geological Survey.

The size of the earthquake was because of the type of fault, said Dr Bell.

“The straight nature [of the fault] means earthquakes can rupture over large areas – and the larger the area of the fault that slips, the larger the earthquake,” she explained.

“There have been six magnitude 7 or greater earthquakes in this region in the last century.”

This straight fault also means a lot of the energy can be carried down its length – which extends for 1200km south towards Thailand.

How earthquakes are felt at the surface is also determined by the type of soil.

In soft soil – which is what Bangkok is built on – seismic waves (the vibrations of the earth) slow down and build up, getting bigger in size.

So Bangkok’s geology would have made the ground shaking more intense.

While dramatic footage has emerged of high-rise buildings in Bangkok swaying during the quake – knocking water from rooftop pools – the unfinished headquarters for the auditor-general’s office Bangkok’s Chatuhak district appears to be the only skyscraper to collapse.

Prior to 2009, Bangkok did not have a comprehensive safety standard for constructing buildings to withstand earthquakes, according to Dr Christian Málaga-Chuquitaype, a senior lecturer in earthquake engineering at Imperial College London.

This means that older buildings would have been particularly vulnerable.

This is not unusual, as earthquake-resistant buildings can be more expensive to construct and Thailand, unlike Myanmar, does not frequently experience earthquakes.

Dr Emily So, a professor of architectural engineering at the University of Cambridge, noted that older buildings can and have been strengthened, such as in California, western Canada and New Zealand.

Prof Amorn Pimarnmas, president of the Structural Engineers Association of Thailand, said that while there were regulations in 43 provinces on earthquake-proofing buildings, less than 10% of buildings are estimated to be quake-resistant.

Yet the building that collapsed was new – in fact, it was still under construction when the earthquake hit – and the updated building standards would have applied.

Dr Pimarnmas said Bangkok’s soft soil may have also played a part in its collapse, as it can amplify ground motions three or four times over.

He added: “However, there are other assumptions such as material (concrete and reinforcements) quality and some irregularity in [the] structural system. These remain to be investigated in detail.”

Having studied the video, Dr Málaga-Chuquitaype said it appears a “flat slab” construction process was being favoured – which is no longer recommended in earthquake-prone areas.

“A ‘flat slab’ system is a way of constructing buildings where floors are made to rest directly on columns, without using beams,” he explained.

“Imagine a table supported only by legs, with no extra horizontal supports underneath.

“While this design has cost and architectural advantages, is performs poorly during earthquakes, often failing in a brittle and sudden (almost explosive) manner.”

Mandalay in Myanmar was much closer to where the ground slipped and would have experienced significantly more severe shaking than Bangkok.

Although Myanmar regularly experiences earthquakes, Dr Ian Watkinson, a lecturer in earth sciences at Royal Holloway University, thought it was unlikely that many buildings were constructed to be earthquake-proof.

“General poverty, major political upheaval, alongside other disasters – e.g. the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 – has distracted the country from concentrating on the unpredictable risks from earthquakes,” he said.

“This means that, in many cases, building design codes are not enforced, and construction happens in areas that could be prone to enhanced seismic risk, for example flood plains and steep slopes.”

Parts of Mandalay and its buildings also lie along the floodplain of the Ayerwaddy River. This makes them very vulnerable to a process called liquefaction.

This happens when the soil has a high water content, and the shaking causes the sediment to lose its strength and behave like a liquid. This increases the risk of landslides and building collapses, as the ground can no longer hold them up.

Dr So warned that there was “always a chance” of further damage to buildings near a fault line due to aftershocks – tremors that follow an earthquake, which can be caused by the sudden transfer of energy into nearby rock.

“Most of the time aftershocks are smaller than the main shock, and tend to decrease in size and frequency over time,” she said.

The number of people known to have died following the devastating earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 1,600, with people in some areas telling the BBC they had been left to dig through rubble for their loved ones with their bare hands.

An acute lack of equipment, patchy communication networks and wrecked roads and bridges were also hampering the search for survivors.

The quake has flattened much of Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city. There was applause when rescuers pulled a woman alive from the wreckage of a 12-storey apartment block some 30 hours after it collapsed, but the Red Cross says more than 90 people may still be trapped there.

In a nearby township, rescue workers found the bodies of 12 preschool children and a teacher under a building housing a kindergarten.

Cracks and surface distortions to the main highway between the biggest city Yangon, the capital Nay Pyi Taw and Mandalay had caused severe transport disruptions, UN humanitarian agency OCHA said.

There were also shortages of medical supplies including trauma kits, blood bags, anaesthetics, essential medicines and tents for health workers, it said.

Although rescue teams have been at work since yesterday and international aid has begun to enter the country, help is yet to reach the worst-hit areas and ordinary people have been trying to dig survivors out by hand.

Widely shared footage shows two men moving rubble to pry out a young woman trapped between two concrete slabs.

The BBC has spoken to locals who said that people were screaming for help from under the debris.

Elsewhere, other rescue workers have been listening out for signs of life. ”We can only rescue people when we hear them,” one said.

Earlier on Saturday, a rescue team in the Sintkai township in Mandalay’s Kyaukse district pulled out a number of people trapped in the debris of a private school. Six of them – five females and one male – had died by the time the rescue teams arrived. Among the victims were students, teachers and school staff.

A lack of equipment is greatly slowing down the rescues, a worker told BBC Burmese: “We are making do with the equipment we have. We have been trying for hours to pull out a girl trapped under the collapsed school.”

Another worker in Mandalay told a BBC reporter in Yangon that communication had been near impossible.

“The main thing is that we don’t have internet lines, we don’t have phone lines, so it’s very difficult to connect with each other. The rescue team has arrived. But we don’t know where it will go, because the phone lines are down.”

A Mandalay resident said people were doing their best in the chaotic circumstances.

“There is no coordination in the rescue efforts, no one to lead them, or tell them what to do. Locals have had to fend for themselves. If they find dead bodies in the debris, they don’t even know where to send the bodies; hospitals are overwhelmed and unable to cope,” the resident said.

The junta has put the number of damaged buildings in the Mandalay region, the epicentre of the earthquake, at more than 1,500. Power outages have exacerbated the situation, and according to officials restoring power could take days.

Mandalay airport is not functional as the runways were damaged during the earthquake. The military council said that it had been working to resume operations and a temporary hospital, medical relief camp and shelter have been set up there.

Less than 25km (15 miles) from Mandalay in Sagaing, the older of two bridges connecting the regions has completely collapsed and the newer one has developed cracks, cutting off access for rescue teams.

“Right now, there are not enough people even for emergency rescue. We can’t pick up bodies, there are so many people trapped. We can’t cross either bridge, so we are all trapped in the rubble. Please help emergency rescuers come and rescue us,” a local resident told BBC Burmese.

The recently constructed capital Nay Pyi Taw, where the military junta is headquartered, has been hit by aftershocks and small tremors. The city has seen extensive damage with high numbers of casualties, collapsed buildings and buckled roads.

Meanwhile, even while the junta has made a rare international appeal for aid, it has continued air strikes and drone attacks against the ethnic armies and armed groups it has been fighting in the country’s four-year civil war.

BBC Burmese confirmed that seven people were killed in an air strike in Naungcho in northern Shan state. This strike took place around 15:30 local time, less than three hours after the quake struck.

Pro-democracy rebel groups fighting to remove the military from power have reported aerial bombings in Chang-U township in the central Sagaing region, the epicentre of the quake. There are also reports of airstrikes in regions near the Thai border.

The UN’s special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, urged the junta to cease bombing raids.

“The problem is that you still have military operations going on right now… Military strikes by the military junta,” he told the BBC.

“I’m calling upon the junta to just stop, stop any of its military operations. This is completely outrageous and unacceptable.”

Myanmar’s military junta has continued to bomb parts of the war-torn country following the major earthquake there, which has killed more than 1,600 people.

The UN has described the attacks as “completely outrageous and unacceptable”.

Special Rapporteur Tom Andrews told the BBC that it was “nothing short of incredible” that the military was continuing to “drop bombs when you are trying to rescue people” after the earthquake.

He called on the military regime, which seized power in a coup nearly four years ago to stop all military operations.

“Anyone who has influence on the military needs to step up the pressure and make it very clear that this is not acceptable,” he said.

“I’m calling upon the junta to just stop, stop any of its military operations,” he added.

BBC Burmese confirmed that seven people were killed in an air strike in Naungcho in northern Shan state. This strike took place around 15:30 local time, less than three hours after the quake struck.

Pro-democracy rebel groups that are fighting to remove the military from power have reported aerial bombings in Chang-U township in the north-western Sagaing region, the epicentre of the quake. There are also reports of airstrikes in regions near the Thai border.

The National Unity Government (NUG), which represents the ousted civilian administration, said in a statement that its armed forces would begin a two-week pause in “offensive military operations, except for defensive actions” in areas affected by the earthquake, from Sunday.

The 7.7 magnitude earthquake that struck Sagaing was also felt in neighbouring countries. It was followed by reports of destruction coming from nearby Mandalay – Myanmar’s second largest city – as well as the capital, Nay Pyi Taw, which is more than 150 miles (241km) away.

The junta says 1,644 people are known to have died and many more are believed to be trapped under rubble.

The quake comes after four years of civil war in Myanmar that followed a military coup in 2021. The coup triggered huge protests, with thousands taking to the streets daily, demanding the restoration of civilian rule.

What initially began as a civil disobedience campaign soon evolved into a widespread insurgency involving pro-democracy and ethnic rebel groups – which eventually sparked an all-out civil war.

Four years on, violent fighting has continued between the military on the one hand, and ethnic armies and armed resistance groups on the other.

The junta, which has suffered continual and humiliating defeats and lost vast swathes of territory, is increasingly relying on air attacks to crush resistance to its rule.

Large parts of the Sagaing region, the epicentre of the earthquake, are now under the control of pro-democracy resistance groups.

A BBC investigation revealed that nearly four years after seizing power in a coup, the military now controls less than a quarter of the country.

The investigation revealed that ethnic armies and a patchwork of resistance groups now control 42% of the country’s land mass, while much of the remaining area remains contested.

It’s in aerial combat that the military regime has the upper hand. Resistance groups lack the capacity to fight back in the air.

The military has a history of carrying out indiscriminate aerial bombardments that have destroyed schools, monasteries, churches, and hospitals. In one of the deadliest airstrikes, more than 170 people were killed, including many women and children.

The UN body investigating human rights violations in the country has warned that the military junta is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against its own people.

The military’s aerial warfare is being sustained by continued support from Russia and China. Despite UN calls for an arms embargo in response to the coup, both China and Russia have sold the junta sophisticated attack jets and provided training on how to use it.

Russia and China have also now sent aid and rescue teams into Myanmar. But UK-based Burmese rights activist Julie Khine said: “It’s hard to trust the sympathy now, when they’re also the same countries supplying the military junta with deadly weapons used to kill our innocent civilians.”

There is also widespread concern that the military will use aid as a weapon in the civil war.

Myanmar’s military has a longstanding practice of denying aid to areas where resistance groups are active.

The UN’s Tom Andrews told the BBC that during past relief efforts, the military blocked aid and arrested aid workers.

“What we know from past humanitarian disasters, natural disasters, is that the junta does not reveal the truth. It also has a habit of blocking humanitarian aid from getting to where it is most needed,” he said.

“They weaponise this aid. They send it to those areas that they have control of and they deny it to areas that they do not.

“So you have areas in which the most acute needs exist and you have literally aid trying to get in, trucks blocking the way, people being arrested and that has been the pattern of their response to natural disasters in the past.

“I’m afraid I’m fully expecting that that will be the case with this disaster.”

A green shimmer, like a curtain of light being drawn across the night sky, formed beside the impossibly bright stars above Nuuk late on Friday evening.

The appearance of the spectacular northern lights – a common wonder in these parts – seemed to mark the end of a hugely significant day in the arctic, one that brought icebound Greenland’s hopes and challenges into the sharpest relief.

It was a day in which an acquisitive foreign power had sent an uninvited delegation to the world’s largest island with an uncomfortable message.

On a brief visit to a remote US military base in the far north of Greenland, US Vice-President JD Vance may have tried at times to soften his boss’s stated aim of simply annexing the autonomous Danish territory.

“We do not think that military force is ever going to be necessary,” Vance said, perhaps attempting to sound reassuring.

But the vice-president’s overarching message remained stark and intimidating: the world, the climate, and the Arctic region are changing fast, and Greenland needs to wake up to threats posed by an expansionist China; long-standing Western security partnerships have run their course; the only way the island can protect itself, its values and its mineral wealth is by abandoning weak and miserly Danish overlords and turning instead to the muscular and protective embrace of the US.

“We need to wake up from a failed, 40-year consensus that said that we could ignore the encroachment of powerful countries as they expand their ambitions,” Vance told US troops at America’s Pituffik military base.

“We can’t just bury our head in the sand – or, in Greenland, bury our head in the snow – and pretend that the Chinese are not interested in this very large landmass.”

If you look at a map of the world that has the north pole at its centre, rather than the equator, it is easy to see how Greenland suddenly switches from being an easily overlooked smudge of uninhabited territory and into a key strategic landmass. It is at the heart of what many analysts now accept as an emerging power struggle between China, the US, and Russia, for control of the arctic, its minerals and its shipping lanes.

But the speed and contempt with which the Trump White House has rejected its traditional reliance on Western allies – Nato in particular – has left its partners bewildered.

“Not justifiable,” was the bristling response of Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen after hearing Vance attack her government as he stood on its sovereign territory.

But 1,500km (930 miles) south of the Pituffik base, in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, the American story vied for attention with a very different local event on Friday.

“We will prevail,” a smiling crowd sang, at a ceremony to celebrate the formation of a new coalition government for Greenland.

The mood felt mostly joyful and communal, with people locking arms and swaying gently as a band played inside the town’s house of culture.

It was a powerful reminder of the shared values that bind Greenland’s tiny, and overwhelmingly native Inuit population together – the need for consensus and co-operation in an often hostile natural climate, the desire to protect and celebrate Inuit culture and the wish to be respected by outsiders, be they from familiar but distant Denmark or marginally closer America.

“There are many ways to say things. But I think the way [Trump] is saying it is not the way. It’s like a threat,” said Lisbeth Karline Poulsen, 43, a local artist attending the ceremony.

Her reaction appeared to capture the broader mood here – a recent poll showed just 6% of the population support the idea of being part of the US.

Under its new government, and with overwhelming public support, Greenland is beginning a slow, very cautious move towards full independence from Denmark.

It’s a process that will likely take many years, and which will involve lengthy dialogue with both Copenhagen and Washington.

After all, Greenlanders well understand that their economy needs to be far more developed if their bid for independence is to stand any realistic chance of success.

But they need to balance that development against realistic fears of exploitation by powerful outside commercial forces.

Which brings us to the fundamental confusion, in Greenland and beyond, about the Trump administration’s approach towards their territory.

On his visit, Vance mentioned Greenland’s aspirations for independence, and implied that America’s real intention was not a sudden annexation of the island, but something far more patient and long-term.

“Our message is very simple, yes, the people of Greenland are going to have self-determination. We hope that they choose to partner with the United States, because we’re the only nation on earth that will respect their sovereignty and respect their security.”

If that is genuinely the American pitch – Trump’s messaging remains more aggressive than Vance’s – then Greenlanders can surely relax a little and take their time.

There are still large reserves of goodwill towards the US here, and a keen interest in doing more business with American companies.

On the security front, a 74-year-old treaty with Denmark permitting the US to increase its military presence in Greenland at any time – from new bases to submarine harbours – should surely take care of Washington’s concerns about countering the threat from China, just as it did during the Cold War years.

What remains puzzling is Donald Trump’s impatience – the same impatience he’s displayed in attempting to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine.

Short of owning Greenland, America could get everything it desires and needs from this vast island without much difficulty. Instead, many people in Nuuk feel they’re being bullied.

It’s a deeply counterproductive approach, which has already forced Washington into one humiliating climbdown – cancelling a planned cultural tour by Vance’s wife, Usha, to Nuuk and another town in the face of planned local protests.

A slower, more respectful, behind-the-scenes sort of engagement would, surely, make more sense.

But that’s not to every politician’s taste.