Residents scrambled desperately through collapsed buildings on Sunday searching for survivors as aftershocks rattled the devastated city of Mandalay, two days after a massive earthquake killed more than 1,600 people in Myanmar and at least 17 in neighbouring Thailand.

The initial 7.7-magnitude quake struck near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay early on Friday afternoon, followed minutes later by a 6.7-magnitude aftershock.

The tremors collapsed buildings, downed bridges and buckled roads, with mass destruction seen in the city of more than 1.7 million people, the country’s second largest.

One rescue worker said most operations in the city were being conducted by small, self-organised resident groups that lack the required equipment.

“We have been approaching collapsed buildings, but some structures remain unstable while we work,” he said, asking not to be named because of security concerns.

Scores of people were feared trapped under collapsed buildings across Mandalay but most could not be reached or pulled out without heavy machinery, another humanitarian worker and two residents said.

“People are still stuck in the buildings, they can’t take people out,” said a resident who asked not to be named.

Elsewhere in the city tea shop owner Win Lwin picked his way through the remains of a collapsed restaurant on a main road in his neighbourhood, tossing bricks aside one by one.

“About seven people died here” when the quake struck on Friday, he told AFP. “I’m looking for more bodies but I know there cannot be any survivors.

“We don’t know how many bodies there could be but we are looking.”

On Sunday morning, a small aftershock struck, sending people scurrying out of a hotel for safety, after a similar tremor felt late Saturday evening.

Truckloads of firefighters gathered at one of Mandalay’s main fire stations to be dispatched to sites around the city.

The night before, rescuers had pulled a woman out alive from the wreckage of a collapsed apartment building, with applause ringing out as she was carried by stretcher to an ambulance.

Myanmar’s ruling junta said in a statement on Saturday that at least 1,644 people were killed and more than 3,400 injured in the country, with at least 139 more missing.

But with unreliable communications, the true scale of the disaster remains unclear in the isolated military-ruled state, and the toll is expected to rise significantly.

The US Geological Service’s predictive modelling estimated Myanmar’s death toll could top 10,000 and losses could exceed the country’s annual economic output.

Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing issued an exceptionally rare appeal for international aid on Friday, indicating the severity of the calamity. On Sunday he called on “all military and civilian hospitals, as well as healthcare workers” to “work together in a coordinated and efficient manner”, according to state-run media.

Previous military governments have shunned foreign assistance, even after major natural disasters.

Myanmar has already been ravaged by four years of civil war sparked by a military coup in 2021.

Anti-junta fighters in the country have declared a two-week partial ceasefire in quake-affected regions starting on Sunday, the shadow National Unity Government said in a statement. The military reportedly continued airstrikes after the quake, including just hours afterwards.

The government in exile said it would “collaborate with the UN and NGOs to ensure security, transportation, and the establishment of temporary rescue and medical camps” in areas that it controls, according to the statement, which was released on social media.

Aid agencies have warned that Myanmar is unprepared to deal with a disaster of this magnitude.

The UN’s humanitarian agency, OCHA, said a severe lack of medical supplies as well as damage to infrastructure such as roads was hampering efforts to respond to earthquake. The agency said hospitals and health facilities had also sustained extensive damage or had been destroyed.

In some of the country’s hardest hit areas, residents told Reuters that government assistance was scarce so far, leaving people to fend for themselves. The entire town of Sagaing near the quake’s epicentre was devastated, said resident Han Zin.

“What we are seeing here is widespread destruction – many buildings have collapsed into the ground,” he said by phone, adding that much of the town had been without electricity since the disaster hit and drinking water was running out.

“We have received no aid, and there are no rescue workers in sight.”

About 3.5 million people were displaced by the raging civil war, many at risk of hunger, even before the quake struck.

But some aid and rescue personnel were beginning to arrive. Indian military aircraft made multiple sorties into Myanmar on Saturday, including ferrying supplies and search-and-rescue crews to Naypyitaw, the purpose-made capital, parts of which have been wrecked by the earthquake.

The Indian army will help set up a field hospital in Mandalay, and two navy ships carrying supplies are heading to Myanmar’s commercial capital of Yangon, said Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.

Multiple teams of Chinese rescue personnel have arrived, including one that crossed in overland from its southwestern province of Yunnan, China’s embassy in Myanmar said on social media.

A 78-member team from Singapore, accompanied by rescue dogs, was operating in Mandalay on Sunday, Myanmar state-media said.

Across the border in Thailand, rescuers in Bangkok worked Sunday to pluck out survivors trapped when a 30-storey skyscraper under construction collapsed after the Friday earthquake.

The Bangkok Metropolitan Authority said 32 people were injured and 83 still unaccounted for – most from the site of a 30-storey tower block under construction that collapsed when the magnitude 7.7 quake struck on Friday.

Dozens more were still trapped under the immense pile of debris where the skyscraper once stood.

Workers at the site used large mechanical diggers in an attempt to find victims still trapped on Sunday morning.

Sniffer dogs and thermal imaging drones have also been deployed to seek signs of life in the collapsed building, close to the Chatuchak weekend market popular among tourists.

Authorities said they would be deploying engineers to assess and repair 165 damaged buildings in the city on Sunday.

Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report

Rising through the mist of the forest at dawn, with spires reaching more than 200ft, few sights on earth have impressed travellers like the temples and pagodas of Bagan. “Jerusalem, Rome, Kiev, Benares,” wrote the Scottish journalist and colonial administrator James George Scott in 1910, “none of them can boast the multitude of temples, and the lavishness of design and ornament”.

Lying close to the major Sagaing fault line in the centre of Myanmar, the 2,200 11th-century Buddhist monuments have long been susceptible to seismic events. “The last earthquake in 2016 caused considerable damage to key monuments,” said Dr Stephen Murphy, a senior lecturer in Asian art at Soas University of London. He added that it was unclear whether Friday’s earthquake had caused a similar scale of damage.

The stupas and temples were constructed on the banks of the Irrawaddy River by the first unified Burmese kingdom and one of the world’s greatest Buddhist civilisations.

Bagan’s founder, Anawrahta Minsaw, started out with a heroic single combat against his step-brother in about 1044, going on to conquer surrounding nations. One legend, recorded on inscriptions at Bagan, is that he brought back 30,000 prisoners skilled in carving, painting, masonry and many other useful skills, including “men cunning in perfumes, odours, flowers and the juices of flowers”.

The cultural effect was profound: more than 10,000 religious shrines were said to have been built, many decorated with intricate detail that has survived earthquakes and ill-judged restorations by the military junta in the 1990s.

Declared a Unesco world heritage site in 2019, the city has suffered under political turmoil and violence. Foreign tourism has plummeted in the last 20 years from about 200,000 to a few thousand visitors. “We took many visitors until 2017,” says Marc Leaderman at the travel company Wild Frontiers. “It’s a site comparable to Angkor Wat and we’re obviously deeply saddened for the people of Myanmar and Thailand.”

The site has remained hugely important to local people with more than 400,000 visiting in 2023. Ashley Thompson, a professor of south-east Asian art at Soas, said: “For populations subjected to sustained political violence over past decades, the glimmers Bagan provides of past prosperity can also sustain hope, even as its Buddhist imperial symbolism can be instrumentalised by those in the highest echelons of power.”

The site is also home to a museum housing the Myazedi inscription, a pillar dated to 1,113 sometimes called the Burmese Rosetta Stone. It carries four ancient languages, including the earliest known example of Burmese. “The potential cultural loss Bagan is again facing may pale with respect to the loss of life, but will have an enduring impact on a country where today so many people struggle to simply survive,” said Thompson.

For six months after it became impossible, Ahmed Wael Dababish still dreamed of a simple reunion: the day he could once again hug his wife, Asma, his two daughters and his young son.

A nurse from Gaza, Dababish last saw his family in the early hours of one night in December 2023, when Israeli troops attacked a school where they had sought shelter.

Soldiers ordered men into the courtyard, then detained many of them, including Dababish. He was held incommunicado for 13 months without charge, trial, access to a lawyer, or any communication with his family. So when an Israeli shell killed Asma, 29, and their youngest daughter, three-year-old Ghina, in August 2024, there was no way to send news to him.

He was released in February under the ceasefire deal after turning 33 in prison, and was briefly overwhelmed when he saw his father and cousins waiting to welcome him home.

“It was amazing to see someone I knew,” he said. The joy at being surrounded by familiar, beloved faces, after a year of hunger, torture and isolation from everyone he knew, lasted until he asked about his wife and children.

Dababish’s father called up a photo on his phone to help break the unbearable news. It showed Ghina, his baby, laid out for burial beside her young cousin. “This is the moment I still cannot believe,” Dababish said, breaking down again at the memory. “It never crossed my mind that they could be killed.”

As he sobbed, his two surviving children, six-year-old Muadh and eight-year-old Aisha, tried to comfort him with hugs.

His tragedy is not unique. The Observer spoke to three Palestinians from Gaza whose immediate family were killed while they were held by the Israeli military or in Israeli civilian prisons without charge or trial. They only learned about their losses when they were released months later.

The three men are civilians – a nurse, a civil servant and a headteacher of a primary school – who say they have never taken up arms. They had no access to a lawyer in jail and were not allowed to communicate with their families.

Legal rights groups say there are likely to be many other detainees from Gaza who have lost close family in Israeli attacks, but have not been told of their deaths.

Family visits, letters or calls have been banned for Palestinians held by Israel since 7 October 2023, when Hamas launched its surprise attack on Israel, and televisions and radios have been removed from cells.

“They are enforcing this isolation on prisoners. They do not want them to know anything about their families and their loved ones,” said Tala Nasir of the Palestinian prisoners’ rights organisation Addameer.

Prisoners who are able to secure legal representation can sometimes get news from their lawyers, but there are certainly hundreds and probably thousands of detainees from Gaza who do not have a lawyer.

Most are held under Israel’s unlawful combatants law, which allows indefinite detention without producing evidence. The state can hold someone for 45 days before allowing access to a lawyer or bringing them in front of a judge to authorise the detention. At the start of the war, those periods were extended to 180 and 75 days respectively.

Amnesty International said the system “legalises incommunicado detention, enables enforced disappearance and must be repealed”. Despite thousands of detentions, there have been no known trials of anyone captured in Gaza since 7 October 2023.

There is no government provision of lawyers to Palestinian detainees and it is impossible for legal aid groups to support prisoners on the scale now needed, said Jessica Montell, executive director of HaMoked, an Israeli group with decades of experience fighting for Palestinian rights through the Israeli courts.

“I’m sure it is the case that the vast majority of Gaza detainees have not seen a lawyer,” said Montell, adding that HaMoked’s teams have visited a few dozen detainees from Gaza, out of thousands held inside Israel. “There’s nothing like a public defender’s office that is going to meet with all of them. There is no obligation on the state to provide lawyers.”

Bureaucratic obstacles and the remoteness of many detention camps and prisons further limit visits. When lawyers do manage to meet detainees from Gaza, breaking painful news is a regular part of their discussions, according to Nasir.

“Many of the prisoners we were following had one or two of their family members killed in Gaza and they did not know at all. It’s so heartbreaking, and it’s really hard for the lawyer to tell this information to the prisoner.”

In December, the Israeli state said it was holding more than 3,400 Palestinians from Gaza under the unlawful combatants law, in response to a high court petition from campaign group the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI).

At least 1,000 people detained in Gaza after 7 October 2023 were released under the ceasefire agreement that broke down this month, but thousands are still in jail. Tal Steiner, director of PCATI, said Israeli prisons were holding about 1,500 detainees from Gaza and that “it would be reasonable to estimate that several hundred [Palestinian] detainees are still being held in military camps.”

The Israeli military declined to say how many Palestinians from Gaza it holds, or how many have met lawyers, but said it did not limit the content of legal meetings held with prisoners or what documents lawyers could bring to them. “Many detainees have already exercised their right to meet with a lawyer,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement. “Israel rejects claims that there is a policy of isolating Palestinian detainees from the outside world.”

The Israeli military, the statement added, respected national and international law in its treatment of detainees and rejected all allegations concerning systemic abuse.

Civil servant Ibrahim Dawood is among those freed during the ceasefire. He said he never had access to a lawyer and was physically attacked when he asked for a chance to prove his innocence.

“My friends taught me some words in Hebrew, how to ask the soldiers politely for a meeting with the officer, asking only for justice. They would beat me on the way there and back,” he said. “I kept telling them that they should listen to me and not accuse me of things I didn’t do.” He spent 13 months in prison in the Negev desert, arriving there badly injured after an Israeli attack on the school where he was sheltering with his family.

Ill health, hunger and the beatings weighed on him, but just as bad was the mental pain of being separated from his family, he said. “I didn’t know anything about their fate and knew they had no information about what was happening to me.”

The relief of release, when it came, was very fleeting. He found out that the family home in al-Fakhura, near Jabaliya, had been destroyed in an Israeli airstrike that killed his father, sister, his sister-in-law and her three children. The moment when he heard the news – and collapsed in grief – was captured on video and widely shared on social media.

“The people who should have welcomed me home had been taken from me by the [Israeli] army. On top of the pain of injury and captivity came the pain of losing beloved relatives who I will never see again.”

His surviving family is fragmented between the north and south, and he cannot find space to bring his wife, children and widowed mother together under one roof.

The Israel Prison Service (IPS), which runs civilian jails, said “all prisoners are detained according to the law”. Asked about the abuse and isolation described by Dababish and Dawood, a spokesperson said: “We are not aware of the claims you described and as far as we know, no such events have occurred under IPS responsibility.”

Dababish said he also never saw a lawyer and that Israeli officials had accused him of being a Hamas member because he was a nurse in a state-run hospital. Hamas has governed Gaza for nearly two decades. “I responded that I was a displaced person with my wife and children in an evacuation school, in an area the army had designated as safe.”

The lack of contact with the outside world, or any due process, violates the Geneva conventions, rights groups say. Dababish said it added to the agonies of detention, deepening prisoners’ despair.

“It felt like we were living in a grave. You couldn’t know anything about what was happening outside, where your family was, what was going on.”

His home was bombed, so he is living with his parents and two surviving children in a school turned shelter – which sparks painful memories of the night he was detained – and has little sense of security.

All his family’s worst tragedies have played out in similarly repurposed schools – meant to be places of relative safety for civilians fleeing Israel’s war on Hamas. His wife and daughter were killed in another school, when a shell hit a classroom in the Sheikh Radwan district of Gaza City. “They were displaced in an evacuation shelter. They did nothing wrong,” he said.

Haunted by loss and memories of detention, he is trying to keep going for his children.

“I went to the hospital, registered my name again for work and am waiting for them to call me.”

Hamas has allegedly agreed to free five living Israeli hostages in exchange for a 50-day ceasefire, as the militant group released a video of a hostage making an appeal for his freedom.

Hamas’s chief, Khalil al-Hayya, reportedly said on Saturday that the militant group expressed willingness to release the five hostages over the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr, which begins on Sunday, after a proposal it received two days ago from Egypt and Qatar, Reuters has reported.

“Two days ago, we received a proposal from the mediators in Egypt and Qatar. We dealt with it positively and accepted it,” Khalil al-Hayya said in a televised speech.

“We hope that the [Israeli] occupation will not undermine [it],” said Hayya, who leads the Hamas negotiating team in indirect talks aimed at securing a ceasefire in the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza that erupted in October 2023.”

Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said after “a series of consultations pursuant to the proposal that was received from the mediators, Israel conveyed a counter-proposal in full coordination with the US’’.

Netanyahu’s government insists on the release of 10 of the 24 hostages believed to still be alive in Gaza, according to media reports quoting officials in Israel. Of the 251 hostages taken during Hamas’s 2023 attack on Israel, 58 remain in Gaza including 34 who the Israeli military says are dead. Hamas is reportedly open to releasing their bodies.

In exchange, Israel is supposed to release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

Khalil added that Hamas’s weapons are a “red line” and it will not disarm as long as Israel’s military occupies Gaza.

Israel is not actively participating in negotiations for a ceasefire deal taking place in Doha between Egypt, Qatar and Hamas, despite increasing efforts to reach an agreement before Eid al-Fitr.

The news came three days after security sources told Reuters that Egypt, one of the mediators in the Gaza ceasefire negotiations, had received positive indications from Israel over a new ceasefire proposal that would include a transitional phase.

Last week Israel resumed its military operation in Gaza, shattering the calm of the ceasefire with Hamas. According to the Palestinian health ministry, 921 people have been killed in the renewed assault.

On Saturday, Hamas’s armed wing released footage showing an Israeli hostage in Gaza calling on the government to secure his release, the second such video shared by the militant group within days.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum campaign group identified the man as Elkana Bohbot, who was abducted from the site of a music festival in southern Israel during Hamas’s attack on 7 October 2023, which triggered the war.

The footage lasts more than three minutes and shows Bohbot speaking in Hebrew and repeatedly raising his hands in desperation as he pleads for his freedom.

The Guardian could not verify when or where in the Gaza Strip the video was recorded.

In the clip, Bohbot said the bombardment could cost him his life, and pleaded to be reunited with his wife and son.

In a separate development, Israel’s military admitted on Saturday it had fired on ambulances in the Gaza Strip after identifying them as “suspicious vehicles”. Hamas condemned the attack as a “war crime” that killed at least one person.

The incident took place last Sunday in the Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood in the southern city of Rafah, close to the Egyptian border.

The Gaza health ministry said at least 50,082 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza and another 113,408 have been wounded since the beginning of the war.

AFP and Reuters contributed to this report.

A Swedish journalist who was detained on his arrival in Turkey to cover protests over the jailing of Istanbul’s mayor has been arrested on terror-related charges and for “insulting the president”, the Turkish presidency has said.

Joakim Medin, who works for the Dagens ETC newspaper, “has been arrested on charges of ‘membership in an armed terrorist organisation’ and ‘insulting the president’”, the presidency said on Sunday.

Medin was detained on Thursday when his plane landed in Turkey, and sent to prison the next day.

In a bulletin published by its so-called Disinformation Combat Centre, the presidency said Medin was “known for anti-Turkey news and his closeness to the terrorist organisation PKK,” the banned Kurdish militant group.

“This arrest decision has no connection whatsoever to journalistic activities,” it added.

The jailing of Medin came just hours after the authorities released the last of 11 journalists arrested in dawn raids on Monday for covering the protests, among them AFP photographer Yasin Akgul.

Turkish authorities have also deported BBC journalist Mark Lowen, who had been covering the protests, after holding him for 17 hours on Wednesday, saying he posed “a threat to public order”, the broadcaster said.

Turkey’s communications directorate said Lowen had been deported “due to a lack of accreditation”.

Turkish prosecutors had already opened an investigation into Medin in 2023 over a demonstration he joined in Stockholm in which a puppet of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was hung from its feet, according to the presidency’s statement on Sunday.

It said the Swedish journalist was among 15 suspects believed to have carried out, organised or publicised the demonstration.

The protest infuriated Turkish authorities, who alleged it was orchestrated by PKK members and summoned Sweden’s ambassador to Ankara.

The chair of a charity set up by Prince Harry has accused him of “harassment and bullying at scale” after he and several others quit the organisation earlier this week.

The Duke of Sussex was said to have initiated the campaign by the “unleashing of the Sussex machine”.

Dr Sophie Chandauka, the chair of the charity Sentebale, which helps children and adolescents struggling to come to terms with diagnoses of HIV and Aids, told Trevor Phillips on Sky News: “The only reason I’m here … is because at some point on Tuesday, Prince Harry authorised the release of a damaging piece of news to the outside world without informing me or my country directors, or my executive director. That is an example of harassment and bullying at scale.”

On Tuesday, Prince Harry quit as patron of the charity. He released a joint statement with co-founder Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, claiming they had been forced to step down “in support of and solidarity with” the board of trustees who had also resigned, due to a dispute with Chandauka, which reportedly arose from a decision to focus fundraising in Africa.

Harry and Seeiso wrote that the relationship “broke down beyond repair, creating an untenable situation”.

Sky News reported that one of its sources, who is “close to the former trustees of the Sentebale charity”, said that Chandauka’s accusation that she was bullied by Prince Harry and the “Sussex machine” was completely baseless.

In a statement earlier this week, Chandauka said: “There are people in this world who behave as though they are above the law and mistreat people, and then play the victim card and use the very press they disdain to harm people who have the courage to challenge their conduct.

“Beneath all the victim narrative and fiction that has been syndicated to the press is the story of a woman who dared to blow the whistle about issues of poor governance, weak executive management, abuse of power, bullying, harassment, misogyny, misogynoir – and the cover-up that ensued.”

Sentebale was set up in 2006 by Harry after spending two months in Lesotho during his gap year in 2004.

The prince’s acrimonious departure from the charity comes five years after he told a Sentebale dinner party in 2020: “When I lost my mum … you took me under your wing. You looked out for me for so long. Together, you have given me an education about living, and this role has taught me more about what is right and just than I could ever have imagined,” he told dinner guests. “We are taking a leap of faith, so thank you for giving me the courage to take this next step.”

Representatives for Harry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the allegations.

Keir Starmer should fight back strongly against Donald Trump if he imposes punitive tariffs on British exports, senior UK and EU diplomats said on Saturday night, amid heightened fears that the US president could trigger a global trade war with devastating effects on the UK economy.

British government officials in London and Washington are working frantically this weekend to try to persuade Trump not to slap duties on more key UK industries on what he is calling “liberation day” on Wednesday. The US president has already announced plans for 25% levies on imports of cars, steel and aluminium to the US.

One vital battleground now is over Washington’s threat to impose blanket reciprocal 25% tariffs on all countries that impose VAT on US exports. These countries include the UK and EU nations. The US does not impose VAT on its imports.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) warned last week that a 20% increase in tariffs between the US and the rest of the world would cut UK growth by 1% and “entirely eliminate” the £9.9bn of fiscal headroom that the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, restored in the public finances by a painful programme of welfare and other cuts in her spring statement last week.

Starmer appears to be waiting to judge how to react, based on the level of any tariffs imposed on the UK.

He is said by government officials to be ready to “act in the national interest” if Trump does hit the UK hard. But his team also says that he will be “pragmatic” if need be – suggesting he may not retaliate immediately, in the hope of talking Trump round over time and with the aim of creating the conditions for signing a wider UK-US trade deal.

Starmer has already been warned by the Liberal Democrats against “appeasing” Trump by reducing a major tax for US tech firms at the same time as imposing savage welfare cuts including on disabled people.

Diplomats now say Starmer, who has refused to issue a word of criticism of Trump since his return to the White House, must be prepared to retaliate or run the risk that the US president simply deploys the same tactic again and again, knowing his opponent will not fight back.

Speaking to the Observer, the former UK ambassador to Washington Kim Darroch said Starmer should learn from the experience over recent days of the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, who appears to have softened Trump’s tariff threat by warning of strong Canadian retaliation and making clear his displeasure at the US president over this threats towards his country’s sovereignty – an approach that has lifted his Liberal party substantially in the polls. Carney said: “It is clear that the United States is no longer a reliable partner.”

Lord Darroch said: “It’s understandable that, faced with deeply damaging US tariffs on British cars, steel and aluminium, the government should think about concessions like reducing digital tax. But they need to be wary of giving Trump wins; tariffs are his all-purpose forcing mechanism and he’ll use them again and again if he sees them working. And they should note the dramatic turnaround in Canadian politics, where on the back of a robust and defiant response to US tariff threats, Mark Carney’s Liberals have gone from 14 points behind the Canadian Conservative party at the end of January to eight points ahead last week.”

It is expected that Trump may impose less punitive tariffs on the UK than on member states of the EU, which he believes have taken an anti-US approach on trade over decades.

João Vale de Almeida, former EU ambassador to the US and the UK, said he did not expect the UK to retaliate in the way the EU was bound to. But he said it was important that Starmer hit back in some way by criticising the way the US president used tariffs as a tool of policy.

“He [Starmer] should at least condemn the tariffs, as they are bad for everyone,” Vale de Almeida said.

In her spring statement last week, Reeves – who is said to oppose retaliating to US tariffs – said the “global economy had become more uncertain” but at no point mentioned that it was Trump who had fuelled the uncertainty and created the conditions in which a global trade war is now entirely possible.

Carney, by contrast, has taken on Trump, telling him on Wednesday that Canada would retaliate against the US with tariffs of its own, potentially escalating a damaging trade conflict between the neighbouring countries. But Carney and Trump then sounded a more friendly note after a phone call on Friday. Carney’s office described it as a “very constructive conversation”, while Trump said in a social media post that the call was extremely productive.

An Opinium poll for the Observer shows that, after the spring statement, just 11% of UK voters expect the economy to improve over the next 12 months, with 23% saying it will stay the same and 61% that it will get worse.

About 17% said they expected their finances to get better, 38% that they would stay the same and 41% that they would get worse.

Voters in this country rate the UK economy relatively poorly compared with other large economic nations, particularly China. The UK economy is rated better than China’s by just 9% of UK voters, with 10% saying it is about the same and 43% saying it is worse. Only 15% say the UK economy is better than that of the US, with 16% saying it is about the same and 36% saying it is worse.

Keir Starmer should fight back strongly against Donald Trump if he imposes punitive tariffs on British exports, senior UK and EU diplomats said on Saturday night, amid heightened fears that the US president could trigger a global trade war with devastating effects on the UK economy.

British government officials in London and Washington are working frantically this weekend to try to persuade Trump not to slap duties on more key UK industries on what he is calling “liberation day” on Wednesday. The US president has already announced plans for 25% levies on imports of cars, steel and aluminium to the US.

One vital battleground now is over Washington’s threat to impose blanket reciprocal 25% tariffs on all countries that impose VAT on US exports. These countries include the UK and EU nations. The US does not impose VAT on its imports.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) warned last week that a 20% increase in tariffs between the US and the rest of the world would cut UK growth by 1% and “entirely eliminate” the £9.9bn of fiscal headroom that the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, restored in the public finances by a painful programme of welfare and other cuts in her spring statement last week.

Starmer appears to be waiting to judge how to react, based on the level of any tariffs imposed on the UK.

He is said by government officials to be ready to “act in the national interest” if Trump does hit the UK hard. But his team also says that he will be “pragmatic” if need be – suggesting he may not retaliate immediately, in the hope of talking Trump round over time and with the aim of creating the conditions for signing a wider UK-US trade deal.

Starmer has already been warned by the Liberal Democrats against “appeasing” Trump by reducing a major tax for US tech firms at the same time as imposing savage welfare cuts including on disabled people.

Diplomats now say Starmer, who has refused to issue a word of criticism of Trump since his return to the White House, must be prepared to retaliate or run the risk that the US president simply deploys the same tactic again and again, knowing his opponent will not fight back.

Speaking to the Observer, the former UK ambassador to Washington Kim Darroch said Starmer should learn from the experience over recent days of the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, who appears to have softened Trump’s tariff threat by warning of strong Canadian retaliation and making clear his displeasure at the US president over this threats towards his country’s sovereignty – an approach that has lifted his Liberal party substantially in the polls. Carney said: “It is clear that the United States is no longer a reliable partner.”

Lord Darroch said: “It’s understandable that, faced with deeply damaging US tariffs on British cars, steel and aluminium, the government should think about concessions like reducing digital tax. But they need to be wary of giving Trump wins; tariffs are his all-purpose forcing mechanism and he’ll use them again and again if he sees them working. And they should note the dramatic turnaround in Canadian politics, where on the back of a robust and defiant response to US tariff threats, Mark Carney’s Liberals have gone from 14 points behind the Canadian Conservative party at the end of January to eight points ahead last week.”

It is expected that Trump may impose less punitive tariffs on the UK than on member states of the EU, which he believes have taken an anti-US approach on trade over decades.

João Vale de Almeida, former EU ambassador to the US and the UK, said he did not expect the UK to retaliate in the way the EU was bound to. But he said it was important that Starmer hit back in some way by criticising the way the US president used tariffs as a tool of policy.

“He [Starmer] should at least condemn the tariffs, as they are bad for everyone,” Vale de Almeida said.

In her spring statement last week, Reeves – who is said to oppose retaliating to US tariffs – said the “global economy had become more uncertain” but at no point mentioned that it was Trump who had fuelled the uncertainty and created the conditions in which a global trade war is now entirely possible.

Carney, by contrast, has taken on Trump, telling him on Wednesday that Canada would retaliate against the US with tariffs of its own, potentially escalating a damaging trade conflict between the neighbouring countries. But Carney and Trump then sounded a more friendly note after a phone call on Friday. Carney’s office described it as a “very constructive conversation”, while Trump said in a social media post that the call was extremely productive.

An Opinium poll for the Observer shows that, after the spring statement, just 11% of UK voters expect the economy to improve over the next 12 months, with 23% saying it will stay the same and 61% that it will get worse.

About 17% said they expected their finances to get better, 38% that they would stay the same and 41% that they would get worse.

Voters in this country rate the UK economy relatively poorly compared with other large economic nations, particularly China. The UK economy is rated better than China’s by just 9% of UK voters, with 10% saying it is about the same and 43% saying it is worse. Only 15% say the UK economy is better than that of the US, with 16% saying it is about the same and 36% saying it is worse.

South Korean police have launched a probe into a man suspected of accidentally igniting the country’s worst wildfires in history while cleaning his grandparents’ gravesites, an investigator has said.

More than a dozen fires have been fanned by high winds and dry conditions, killing 30 people and burning more than 48,000 hectares (118,610 acres) of forest, with officials calling it the worst of its kind recorded in South Korea, with the fires exposing the harsh reality of global heating.

In North Gyeongsang province’s Uiseong – the hardest-hit region with 12,800 hectares of its woodland affected – a 56-year-old man was suspected of mistakenly starting a fire while tending to his grandparents’ gravesites on 22 March, an official from the provincial police said.

“We booked him without detention for investigation on Saturday on suspicions of inadvertently starting the wildfires,” the official, who declined to be named, told AFP on Sunday.

Investigators will summon him for questioning once the on-site inspection is complete, which could take more than a month, the official said.

The suspect’s daughter reportedly told investigators that her father tried to burn tree branches that were hanging over the graves with a cigarette lighter.

The flames were “carried by the wind and ended up sparking a wildfire,” the daughter was quoted as saying to the authorities, Yonhap news agency reported.

The police, who have withheld the identities of both, declined to confirm the account to AFP.

The fires have been fuelled by strong winds and ultra-dry conditions, with the area experiencing below-average rainfall for months, following South Korea’s hottest year on record in 2024.

Among the 30 dead is a helicopter pilot, who died when his aircraft crashed in a mountainous area.

The blaze also destroyed several historic sites, including the Gounsa temple complex in Uiseong, which is believed to have been originally built in the seventh century.

The inferno has also laid bare South Korea’s demographic crisis and regional disparities, as rural areas are both underpopulated and disproportionately elderly.

Most employees at the US Institute of Peace, a congressionally created and funded thinktank now taken over by Elon Musk’s unofficial “department of government efficiency”, received email notices of their mass firing late Friday, the latest step in the Trump administration’s government downsizing.

The emails, sent to personal accounts because most staff members had lost access to the organization’s system, began going out about 9pm, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisal.

One former senior official at the institute said that among those spared were several in the human resources department and a handful of overseas staffers who had until 9 April to return to the United States. The organization employs about 300 people.

Others retained for now are regional vice-presidents who will be working with the staff in their areas to return to the US, according to one employee who was affected.

An executive order last month from Donald Trump targeted the institute, which seeks to prevent and resolve conflicts, and three other agencies for closure. Board members, who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, and the institute’s president were fired. Later, there was a standoff as employees blocked Doge members from entering . Doge staff gained access in part with the help of the Washington police.

A lawsuit ensued, and the US district judge Beryl Howell chastised Doge representatives for their behavior but did not reinstate the board members or allow employees to return to the workspace.

A White House spokesperson, Anna Kelly, said in an email Saturday that the institute “has failed to deliver peace” and that Trump “is carrying out his mandate to eliminate bloat and save taxpayer dollars”.

The letter to employees said that as of Friday, “your employment with us will conclude”, according to one longtime employee who shared part of the communication. A second email, obtained by the AP, said the terminations were at the direction of the president.

Workers were given until 7 April to clear out their desks.

Mary Glantz, a former foreign service officer who was working as a senior adviser at the institute, said she was not surprised by the late-night firings, calling it part of Doge’s playbook.

Glantz studied how Russia has fomented conflicts around the world and analyzed options for resolving them. She hoped her research could be continued and used elsewhere. She said the institute plays a unique role because of its narrow focus on conflict resolution.

“We are the other tool in the tool box,” she said. ”We do this work so American soldiers don’t have to fight these wars.”

George Foote, a former institute lawyer fired this month who is with one of the firms providing counsel in the current lawsuit, said lawyers were consulting Saturday to discuss possible next steps. He said employees are not part of the pending lawsuit, so they would have to file separate cases.

Thousands of people worldwide protested Elon Musk and his efforts with Donald Trump to dismantle the US federal government on Saturday, with rallies held in front of nearly every Tesla showroom in the US and many around the world – a concerted effort to go after the billionaire’s deep pockets as the CEO of the electric vehicle maker.

Protest organizers asked people to do three things: don’t buy a Tesla, sell off Tesla stock and join the “Tesla Takedown” movement.

“Hurting Tesla is stopping Musk,” reads one of the group’s taglines. “Stopping Musk will help save lives and our democracy.”

On Saturday, with more than 200 events planned worldwide, protests kicked off midday in front of Tesla showrooms in Australia and New Zealand and then rippled across Europe in countries including Finland, Norway, Denmark, Germany, France, the Netherlands and the UK. Each rally was locally organized with original themes. In Ireland, it was “Smash the Fash”, and Switzerland had “Down with Doge”. Photos posted to Bluesky by Tesla Takedown showed demonstrators in San Jose, California, close to where Tesla was previously headquartered, and Austin, Texas, where its headquarters are now.

Musk, the world’s richest person, heads the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), which he’s tasked with slashing federal budgets in the US, including laying off thousands of workers, though he said in an interview Thursday: “Almost no one has gotten fired.” He’s gone after the Social Security Administration, the Department of Education, the National Park Service and several more departments and agencies, causing widespread backlash and criticism. Musk and Tesla did not return requests for comment.

In San Francisco, a crowd of around 200 people gathered in front of the Tesla showroom. Protesters spilled into the busy street and onto the median, confusing the self-driving Waymos trying to get around people darting back and forth.

A boombox blasted We’re Not Gonna Take It by Twisted Sister and cars drove by honking enthusiastically. Even passing postal trucks, public buses and fire engines honked in support. People propped up signs with slogans like “Burn your swastikar before it burns you” and “No Doge bags”. Others flew massive American flags mounted upside down.

The block-long Tesla showroom was emptied of all cars, and only a few security guards stood inside, with some San Francisco police outside. At one point, a group of four men wearing red Maga hats and black Doge shirts walked through the crowd, but everything remained calm.

“I’m out here protesting because what I see is a hostile takeover of our country,” said Myra Levy, who was holding a sign that said “Pinche Ladrón” (“fucking thief”). “That is not OK for me. That is not OK for all of us.”

Her friend, Karen Heisler, emphatically added: “We did not vote for this.”

In Berkeley, California, the Tesla showroom has shut down every Saturday for the last month because of the weekly protests, according to salespeople from neighboring retailers. Only security guards have stayed on to guard the building. It’s been the scene of lively demonstrations that have included a mariachi band and a 10-foot cardboard Cybertruck for people to spray-paint. Earlier this month, the showroom’s front door was splattered with red paint. The showroom manager declined to comment.

In New York City, several hundred anti-Tesla protesters gathered outside the EV company’s Manhattan showroom on Saturday. Sophie Shepherd, 23, an organizer with Planet Over Profit, explained that the rally was not about protesting electric cars.

“We’re here to protest Musk, who has essentially held a Tesla car show on the White House lawn,” she said. “We want to disrupt his business as much as possible, so that includes all Teslas, and not just the Cybertruck.”

Marty, 82, said he was attending the New York City rally “because I’m worried about my country”. In the 1960s, he protested the Vietnam war. “Now, it’s the overthrow of our country by oligarchs,” he said. The rally, he went on, was a message to “this guy Elon who is buying our government”.

On Friday, the New York police department said its officers were searching for two suspects who allegedly carved the word “Nazis” and a swastika on the doors of a Tesla Cybertruck in Brooklyn this week, part of an uptick in attacks on Tesla vehicles and facilities across the US since Trump took office.

In Washington DC, organizers planned a rally in front of a new Tesla showroom in Georgetown, making the theme “Tesla Takedown Dance Party”. “Dump the meme stock, join dance lines,” read the flyer. “The stakes couldn’t be higher but that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun!”

“The hypocrisy is so deep,” said Manissa Maharawal, an assistant professor at American University who has studied anti-tech protests and points out that Tesla has received billions in government funding. “It’s this company that’s been subsidized in a lot of ways by the government, but now the CEO is trying to dismantle the government because he thinks he knows better than everyone, because he comes from the tech industry.”

In the US, protests happened in nearly every state, across the north-east, south and midwest through to the west coast. States with the most planned rallies included Massachusetts, New York, Florida, Texas, Washington and California, totaling more than 100. Several protests also took place throughout Canada.

In London, dozens of demonstrators gathered at a Tesla showroom along the three-lane A40 in West London.

“Musk is hugely abhorrent. He is funding the far right, and meaning that any Republicans who speak out end up not being funded in their next election,” said gay rights campaigner Nigel Warner.

“It’s too overwhelming to do nothing,” said Louise Cobbett-Witten, who has family in the US and was protesting at the Tesla dealership in west London. “There is real solace in coming together like this. Everyone has to do something. We haven’t got a big strategy besides just standing on the side of the street, holding signs and screaming.”

Tesla Takedown organizers reiterated the need for people to continue to speak out and protest against Musk, Trump and Doge. The stakes are high and “no one is coming to save us”, they say on their website.

Maharawal, from American University, said she was struck by that sentiment, saying: “For there to be a nationwide and global protest saying ‘no one’s coming to save us’ just speaks to the level of anger and desperation right now.”

Organizers have also been careful to distance themselves from the violent vandalism that has been carried out against Tesla showrooms. Dozens of Tesla facilities have been attacked in the middle of the night with molotov cocktails, gunshots or graffiti saying things like “Fuck Elon” and “Tesla Is Fascist”.

Trump has vowed to designate any violence against Tesla dealerships as domestic terrorism.

Tesla Takedown organizers condemn the vandalism. “We are a non-violent grassroots protest movement,” the group says. “We oppose violence and destruction of property. Peaceful protest on public property is not domestic terrorism.”

Harry Taylor contributed reporting

A rapper signed to fellow lyricists Future and Waka Flocka Flame died on his 39th birthday in his home town of Atlanta after injuring his leg while running from police and jumping fences, according to authorities as well as multiple media reports.

The death of 39-year-old Young Scooter, born Kenneth Edward Bailey, was confirmed by Atlanta’s Fulton county medical examiner’s office, as Variety first reported.

In a statement on Friday, Atlanta police – without identifying Bailey – said that they responded to initial reports of shots being fired at a home on William Nye Drive SE and that a woman was being dragged back inside.

“Once officers arrived they knocked on the door. A male opened the door and immediately shut the door on the officers,” the Atlanta police lieutenant Andrew Smith said, adding that police subsequently cordoned off the area to search it for a suspect.

“During the process of establishing the perimeter, two males fled out of the rear of the house,” Smith said. “One male returned back into the house. The other male jumped two fences as he was fleeing. When officers located him on the other side of the fence, he appeared to have suffered an injury to his leg.”

He added: “Just to be very clear, the injury that was sustained was not via the officers on scene. It was when the male was fleeing.”

According to the medical examiner’s office, Bailey was taken to the Grady Marcus trauma center and died there from his injuries.

His cause of death was not immediately determined, with an autopsy pending.

Born in Waterboro, South Carolina, Bailey entered the hip-hop scene in Atlanta at a young age where he maintained a “consistent presence … during its commercial boom in the 2010s”, Variety wrote.

Besides appearing on songs by other rappers including Future and Young Thug, Bailey worked with Juicy J, Kodak Black and Rick Ross.

Speaking to Complex in 2013 about his creative process, Bailey said: “I don’t really care what I say on a beat as long as it’s about some money.

“When you try to think hard and write it out, that’s when it’s gonna be fucked up.”

Last March, he released one of his latest projects, Trap’s Last Hope, featuring songs including Grind Dont Stop, Ice Game, Free Bands and Letter to God.

The acclaimed Russian stage director Dmitry Krymov the winner of many of Moscow’s top theatre prizes before his exile due to public criticism of the invasion of Ukraine, has spoken angrily of the impact of the war ahead of his first work with British actors. The Moscow-born director, 70, plans to use Dickens’s two stories Great Expectations and Hard Times to create a new performance.

Arriving in London this weekend for a short stay, Krymov, who is regarded by many western theatre pundits as among the best directors in the world, told the Observer he wants to link British and Russian performers and audiences, despite the divisions caused by President Vladimir Putin.

“It is because of this that we wanted to create our Dickens show,” he said, before the first of his acting workshops. The rehearsals have been set up by Margaret Cox, the writer and producer who is also the daughter of the Scottish Succession star Brian Cox, in collaboration with one of Krymov’s former students, Lucie Dawkins of Scrum Theatre in Hammersmith. “My brother, the actor Alan Cox, and I have long admired Krymov, so we have been supporting him in any way we can,” said Cox.

Krymov hopes to create more of the kind of cultural exchanges that have recently been blocked both by sanctions and bad feeling towards Russia. His anger and sorrow at leaving Moscow, where he was a key cultural figure, are now a driving force behind his work, he said, although he recognises the pitfalls of using entertainment to send out a political message. “It’s a process. Expressing your pain in artistic form is not easy at all; you just want to shout out what you think in direct, unprintable text,” he said.

His period of exile, which began when he signed a letter of protest in 2022, the day after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has given him new energy, he suspects. “As the saying goes: ‘What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger’. So, I hope to prove with my activity now that we are in this unexpected crack in the earth’s crust, that not everything is subject to the laws of physics. In other words, I try not to fall into the abyss, but stage performances on the crack’s edge.”

That February day three years ago, Krymov had flown to the US with his wife, Inna, ready to carry on work on a production of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard in Philadelphia. But on landing, friends and concerned colleagues back in Moscow warned him it would now be too dangerous to return to Russia.

In an interview with the broadcaster Voice of America, Krymov compared the threat of the invasion to that posed by the second world war. Immediately, seven of the nine different shows he had running in theatres across Moscow were shut down. His name was removed from the posters of the remaining two; they have now also been closed.

Until that point Krymov had been both critically admired and popular in Russia, famously using experimental techniques and winning many Golden Masks, the equivalent of an Olivier award or a Tony award on Broadway. He is also the child of well-known parents; a director, Anatoly Efros, born in territory now inside Ukraine, and a critic, Natalya Krymova.

Krymov, who took his mother’s name, had already been critical of Putin, signing an open protest letter after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, but he had been left to work relatively unchecked.

As an exile, he travelled first to Latvia, France and Israel, before settling in New York and setting up an actors’ workshop there. He has since argued against strict cultural boycotts, which he sees as potentially counterproductive. “The desire to destroy everything Russian on a national basis is also nationalism,” he has said.

During his stay in London this week, Krymov will answer questions after a screening of his show Все тут, or “Everyone Is Here” – based on Our Town, a classic of American theatre by Thornton Wilder – at Ciné Lumière South Kensington.

This weekend he said he was looking forward to gaining an understanding of British talent, adding that all actors who move from a film set to the stage of a theatre are moving “from Disneyland to an empty space”.

He had, he added, no clear idea of London’s theatrical style yet, although he has seen the difference between Broadway and off-Broadway shows. “In the Russian tradition, people come to the theatre in search of answers to questions that concern them, while on Broadway, people come to have a good time.”

In Russia, he said, he hoped that, despite the war, “the basic need to hear something important, something not written in the newspapers or said out loud, will still remain.”