Four more people have been pulled from rubble nearly 60 hours after a powerful 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck Myanmar on Friday, killing at least 1,700 people in the South East Asian country.

The survivors were rescued from a collapsed school building in the northern Sagaing region, from which a body was also recovered, Myanmar’s fire service said.

Hundreds of people remain missing, with search and rescue efforts under way in both Myanmar and neighbouring Thailand.

The death toll has risen to 18 people in the Thai capital, Bangkok, where 76 workers are still missing following the collapse of a high-rise building that had been under construction.

Friday’s earthquake occurred near Myanmar’s second-largest city Mandalay, along the Sagaing fault – with tremors affecting several other nations.

Although rescue efforts have been under way since Friday, and international aid is starting to reach Myanamar, there have been delays in reaching the worst-hit areas, leaving locals to attempt to dig survivors out by hand.

On Saturday night, an elderly woman was rescued in Myanmar’s capital, Nay Pyi Taw, after being trapped for 36 hours under the rubble of a hospital.

Footage showed her being carried on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance, surrounded by emergency workers.

Twenty-nine people were also rescued from a collapsed apartment block in Mandalay, the local fire authority said on Sunday.

The earthquake struck around 12:50 local time (06:20 GMT) on Friday, just 10km (6.2 miles) from the surface – meaning its effects at ground level were felt more strongly than a deeper quake.

A second earthquake struck 12 minutes later, with a magnitude of 6.4 and an epicentre 18km (11 miles) south of Sagaing, the regional capital, which sits near Mandalay.

Aftershocks have continued since. On Sunday a magnitude-5.1 tremor was recorded north-west of Mandalay.

In Bangkok, where soft soil made the shaking more intense, an unfinished tower block collapsed, burying many who had been working at the site.

Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said on Sunday that rescuers had detected signs of life under the rubble at the site, but cautioned that they were weak.

“Anomalies” have been found in the steel used in the building’s construction, and samples have been collected for testing, Thailand’s Industry Minister Akanat Promphan told the media on Sunday.

Families have been anxiously waiting for updates. One woman in Thailand, whose husband was working on the tower when it collapsed, told the BBC she would wait “for as long as it takes”.

International rescue teams have been joining the disaster effort, with several countries sending assistance to Myanmar. These include:

• China sending an 82-person rescue team
• A 51-strong team arriving from Hong Kong on Sunday
• India sending an aid flight carrying a rescue team and emergency supplies
• Malaysia’s foreign ministry saying it would send a 50-person team to support disaster relief operations
• The Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Ireland, South Korea, Russia, New Zealand and the US are also sending rescue teams
• UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy pledging £10m in aid to help “those most in need”

Meanwhile, Myanmar’s ruling military junta has continued bombing parts of the civil war-gripped country. The UN described the attacks as “completely outrageous and unacceptable”.

Pro-democracy rebel groups that are fighting to remove the military from power have reported aerial bombings in the Chaung-U township in the Sagaing region.

The military regime seized power in a coup in 2021, but it no longer controls many parts of the country, which are divided among rebel groups.

The National Unity Government, which represents the ousted civilian administration, said 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.

People in Myanmar could face further displacement when the monsoon season arrives.

Last year there was “severe flooding which damaged homes [and] sanitation facilities”, Lauren Ellery, of the International Rescue Committee, told BBC Breakfast.

“We are coming into monsoon season again in May, with rain starting in April,” she said.

Donald Trump has said he is “very angry” and “pissed off” with Russian President Vladimir Putin after weeks of attempting to negotiate a ceasefire in Ukraine.

In an NBC News interview, the US president said he was angry with Putin for attacking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s credibility, and threatened to impose a 50% tariff on countries buying Russian oil if he did not agree to a ceasefire.

“If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault – which it might not be… I am going to put secondary tariffs… on all oil coming out of Russia,” he said.

The comments mark a shift in Trump’s tone toward Putin and Russia.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

European leaders had worried that Trump was cosying up to Putin as negotiations on a ceasefire in Ukraine continued.

Over the past six weeks, Trump has harangued Zelensky in the Oval Office and demanded numerous concessions from Ukraine’s president. In turn, he has flattered Putin and largely given in to the Russian president’s demands.

This appears to be a departure from that dynamic. It is the first time the US has seriously threatened Russia with consequences for dragging its feet in ceasefire negotiations, which would seem to put the diplomatic ball back in Moscow’s court.

NBC News reported that, in a 10-minute phone interview, Trump said he was very angry and “pissed off” when Putin criticised the credibility of Zelensky’s leadership, although the president has himself called Ukraine’s leader a dictator and demanded that he hold elections.

• Putin floats idea of UN-led Ukrainian government
• Starmer accuses Putin of ‘playing games’ over peace deal
• Zelensky hopes US will ‘stand strong’ on Russia’s demands

“You could say that I was very angry, pissed off, when… Putin started getting into Zelensky’s credibility, because that’s not going in the right location,” Trump said.

“New leadership means you’re not gonna have a deal for a long time,” he added.

When speaking about Putin, Trump said that the Kremlin knew of his anger, but noted that he had “a very good relationship” with the Russian leader and “the anger dissipates quickly… if he does the right thing”.

If Russia does not follow through with a ceasefire, Trump threatened to target its economy further if he thought it was Putin’s fault.

“There will be a 25% tariff on oil and other products sold in the United States, secondary tariffs,” Trump said, noting that the tariffs on Russia would come in a month without a ceasefire deal.

Secondary tariffs are sanctions on countries that do business with another country. They could constitute up to 50% on goods entering the US from countries still buying oil from Russia. The biggest such buyers by a long margin are China and India.

Zelensky wrote on social media following the interview that “Russia continues looking for excuses to drag this war out even further”.

He said that “Putin is playing the same game he has since 2014”, when Russia unilaterally annexed the Crimean peninsula.

“This is dangerous for everyone – and there should be an appropriate response from the United States, Europe, and all our global partners who seek peace.”

Trump said he would speak to Putin later in the week.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbour, Ukraine, in February 2022. It currently controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory.

Over 100,000 people fighting for Russia’s military have now died as the war in Ukraine enters the fourth year, according to data analysed by BBC Russian, independent media group Mediazona and volunteers who have been counting deaths since February 2022.

Ukraine last updated its casualty figures in December 2024, when President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged 43,000 Ukrainian deaths among soldiers and officers. Western analysts believe this figure to be an under-estimate.

Also in the NBC interview on Sunday, Trump said he was “not joking” when he said he would not rule out seeking a third term in the White House, despite it being prohibited by the US Constitution.

“A lot of people want me to do it,” Trump said. “But, I mean, I basically tell them we have a long way to go.”

During the call with NBC, he also again threatened to bomb Iran if it did not agree to a nuclear deal. Trump earlier this month sent a letter to the regime demanding negotiations.

“It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before,” he said, noting he would also impose secondary tariffs.

On Sunday, Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian said the country would not enter into direct negotiations with Washington concerning their nuclear programme, but indirect talks were possible.

“We don’t avoid talks; it’s the breach of promises that has caused issues for us so far,” he said. “They must prove that they can build trust.”

Sir Keir Starmer and Donald Trump have agreed “productive negotiations” about an economic deal between the UK and US will “continue at pace”, Downing Street has said, ahead of a looming deadline on US tariffs.

The Sunday night phone call between the pair comes after sources at No 10 said the government was prepared to retaliate against US trade taxes if needed.

British negotiators are trying to win a last-minute exemption ahead of Trump’s 25% levy on car imports, which is expected to come in on Wednesday.

Trump has imposed a series of tariffs targeting goods from other countries in the first few months of his second term in the White House, with threats of wider taxes also being imposed.

The prime minister has previously said he does not want to jump into a trade war with the US. But Sir Keir has also said the UK “reserves the right” to introduce reciprocal tariffs on the US if a deal to exempt the UK cannot be reached.

The government has argued the UK has a relatively equal trading relationship with the US, compared to its other partners.

The independent Office for Budget Responsibility has warned a reciprocal trade war would wipe billions off economic growth and all but eliminate the headroom Chancellor Rachel Reeves has to stay within her self-imposed fiscal rules.

It is unclear how the UK would retaliate if tariffs do come into effect. There are a range of options available, from duties on sectors where British products are particularly important to the US, to focusing on specific products like Harley Davidson motorcycles.

UK car exports are worth about £7.6bn per year, and the US is the second largest market for UK cars after the European Union, according to car industry body the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).

Trump’s plan is expected a to hit British luxury car makers such as Rolls-Royce and Aston Martin.

The US president argues his measures will help American manufacturers and protect jobs, despite warnings prices could go up for consumers.

Earlier on Sunday, Trump said that he “couldn’t care less” if carmakers raise prices as it meant “people are gonna buy American-made cars”.

During a meeting between the prime minister and president at the White House last month, Trump hinted at “a real trade deal”, which could see the UK avoid the kind of tariffs he has been threatening other countries with.

Also in their call on Sunday, the two leaders discussed continuing to pressure Russia over the Ukraine war, Downing Street’s spokesperson said.

“Discussing Ukraine, the prime minister updated the president on the productive discussions at the meeting of the Coalition of Willing in Paris this week,” they said.

“The leaders agreed on the need to keep up the collective pressure on Putin.”

No 10 said Trump began the call by sending King Charles III his best wishes, after the monarch experienced temporary side effects during cancer treatment earlier in the week.

The two leaders agreed to stay in contact in the coming days, No 10 added.

France’s Marine Le Pen faces a make-or-break moment on Monday, as a judge rules on whether she should be banned from the next presidential election.

The hard-right leader, who is ahead of all her rivals in the 2027 race, will be in court at 10:00 local time (09:00 BST) for the verdict of a party-funding trial targeting her National Rally (RN) party.

At the trial’s conclusion in November, the state prosecutor demanded guilty verdicts for Le Pen and 24 others accused of using EU parliamentary money to pay party salaries.

But to general surprise the prosecutor also said that Le Pen’s punishment should be not just a €300,000 (£250,000) fine and prison term, but also ineligibility from running for public office for five years.

Crucially, he said the ineligibility should kick in straightaway – and not be suspended pending the appeal that Marine Le Pen is expected to file if convicted.

The three judges are not obliged to follow the prosecutor’s recommendations.

But if they do, it would mean Le Pen, who is 56, being barred from standing in a presidential election in which she is tipped as a potential winner.

“It’s my political death they are after,” she said in November.

Many French commentators – and not only those who support Le Pen – have warned of grave consequences for democracy if the judiciary is seen as interfering in the choice of the country’s leader.

“The justice system has the fate of Marine Le Pen in its hands… For her to be convicted for any wrong-doing is perfectly normal. But stopping her from running in the presidential [election] – that’s another matter entirely,” wrote veteran analyst Franz-Olivier Giesbert in the centre-right Le Point magazine.

“Is it not hazardous – not to say perilous – to give to judges the task of determining whether this or that candidate has the capacity to run for office?” said Bruno Jeudi, editor of La Tribune Dimanche newspaper on Sunday.

Marine Le Pen told the same newspaper: “Personally I’m not nervous. But I can see why people think I might be. The judges have the power of life or death over the movement. But I don’t think they will go so far as to do it.”

Various scenarios for the verdict are under scrutiny.

First, Le Pen could be cleared of blame in the EU parliamentary money affair. This is widely seen as unlikely.

Second, the judges could convict her but make the ineligibility not automatic. In that case, she would immediately appeal and the ineligibility would not apply until after a second trial (and conceivably a third to the high court of appeal).

That would leave her free to run in 2027, though with the handicap of a conviction for misuse of public money. However it is far from clear that a conviction would do her cause much damage, given the series of party funding scandals that have affected all French parties over the years.

Third, the judges could follow the prosecutor and order automatic ineligibility. In this case she would appeal, and the other parts of the sentence (fine and prison) would be suspended. However she would be unable to run in 2027.

Fourth, the court could give her a shorter term of automatic ineligibility – say one year – making it theoretically possible for her to run.

2027 would be Marine Le Pen’s fourth presidential race, and the one offering the greatest chance of victory.

A poll in the right-wing newspaper JDD Sunday gave her between 34-37% of the first round vote, well ahead of any of her possible rivals.

In the last two presidentials, she fell foul of the two-round system which allowed opponents of left, centre and right to rally behind a single candidate – Emmanuel Macron – to keep her from power.

But years of “detoxification” after she eclipsed her father Jean-Marie Le Pen at the head of the party have made the anti-RN vote far less cohesive than it used to be, while victories for the hard-right in other countries have helped lift the taboo of an RN government.

If Le Pen is barred from running, her logical replacement would be Jordan Bardella, the 29-year-old party president who was being groomed to be her eventual prime minister.

However party insiders admit there has been little internal preparation for what would be widely seen as a huge and destabilising political earthquake.

One result of Le Pen being declared unable to run in 2027 could be to weaken still further the minority French government of Prime Minister François Bayrou. With 120 members in the National Assembly, the RN has the power to vote with the left in a vote of no-confidence to bring the government down.

Until now, Marine Le Pen has held back her troops. She might feel less inclined to, if she feels she has been the victim of an establishment stitch-up.

An American surgeon who’s been working in two Gaza hospitals for the past three weeks has said that wounded Palestinian patients have died because of the lack of equipment and supplies.

Dr Mark Perlmutter says that doctors have had to work in operating rooms without soap, antibiotics or x-ray facilities, as Israel has resumed its offensive against Hamas in Gaza.

A 15-year-old girl who was hit by Israeli machine gun fire while riding her bicycle was one of the many wounded children that Dr Perlmutter said he had to operate on.

The Israeli government has said the renewed attacks that its military is carrying out in Gaza are aimed at forcing Hamas to release all the remaining hostages.

Dr Perlmutter spoke to the BBC shortly after the end of his second trip to Gaza – the first one was around a year ago. Critical of Israel’s conduct in the Strip, he has previously called for an arms embargo and said its attacks on Gaza constitute genocide, which Israel vehemently denies.

This time, he worked in Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah in the centre of the territory and then in Nasser hospital in the south of Gaza.

He has been working for Humanity Auxilium in Gaza as part of a wider World Health Organization (WHO) programme.

He was in Nasser hospital when it was hit by an Israeli air strike, targeting Ismail Barhoum, the Hamas finance chief.

Hamas said that Barhoum was being treated for injuries that he suffered in an earlier Israeli attack. The Israeli military denied this, saying he was in the hospital “in order to commit acts of terrorism”.

Dr Perlmutter has told the BBC that Barhoum was in the hospital to receive further medical treatment. He says that as a patient in hospital, Barhoum had a right to be protected under the Geneva Convention.

The human cost of the latest Israeli offensive was exemplified for Dr Perlmutter by two 15-year-olds – including the girl on the bicycle – who were brought into the operating room in each of the hospitals he was working in, a week apart.

“They were both macerated and shredded by Apache gunships,” Dr Perlmutter says.

The girl will, in his words, “be lucky if she keeps three of her limbs”.

Dr Perlmutter says that people at the scene told the ambulance crew who brought the young girl into the hospital that she was hit by gunfire from an Israeli military helicopter.

He says that she had been riding her bicycle by herself and she arrived at the hospital without a backpack or anything else that might have aroused suspicion. Graphic images from the operating table show catastrophic wounds to her leg and arm.

The boy was driving in a car with his grandmother after receiving warnings to evacuate from the north, Dr Perlmutter says.

“Then the car was attacked by two Apache gunships. The grandmother was shredded at the scene and died,” he said.

“The boy came in without a foot on his right side, the vascular repair on his left side took five hours – the nerve repair on his left side failed and he had a blackened hand the next day that required amputation at the level of his elbow – his left leg will require multiple surgeries for reconstruction and he has a chest wound. He may not have survived.”

Dr Perlmutter has also provided graphic photos of the boy’s wounds.

In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it “does not target uninvolved individuals.”

“The IDF operates in accordance with international law, targeting only military objectives while taking feasible measures to mitigate harm to civilians,” it told the BBC.

The statement also said that the IDF had not been provided with “sufficient information” to directly address the incidents that Dr Perlmutter described.

“The IDF takes action to address irregular incidents that deviate from its orders. The IDF examines such incidents and takes appropriate measures where justified,” it said.

Under such conditions, Dr Perlmutter stressed the commitment and dedication of the Palestinian medical staff – above and beyond the efforts of foreign doctors like himself.

“The stress levels on us are not even approachable to what happens even to the Palestinian medical students that work with us, whose stress levels are insane, as with the nurses and the techs in the operating room, let alone the Palestinian surgeons,” he said.

“They all abandon their families, they volunteer and often work without pay. They work the same hours that we do – and we get to go home in a month, which they don’t. They still have to return to the squalor of their tents where there’s often 50 people living in a tent built for 20 – and sharing one toilet.”

Most hospitals across Gaza are out of operation or barely managing to function. Dr Perlmutter compared the medical facilities in Gaza to where he lives in North Carolina. There are multiple trauma centres there, but they would have been overwhelmed, he says, if they had to deal with the mass influx of casualties that resulted from the first day of Israel’s resumption of its war against Hamas.

“The small community hospital, Al-Aqsa, is a tenth the size of any of the facilities in my home state – maybe smaller – and it did well to manage those horrible injuries – nevertheless, because of lack of equipment, many, many of those patients died, who would certainly not have died at a better equipped hospital,” he said.

On Saturday the UN’s humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher described the current situation in Gaza as dire.

“All entry points into Gaza are closed for cargo since early March. At the border, food is rotting, medicine expiring and vital medical equipment is stuck,” he said.

“If the basic principles of humanitarian law still count, the international community must act to uphold them.”

On 2 March the Israeli government closed border crossings with Gaza and halted humanitarian aid. It said this was in response to what it called the refusal by Hamas of a new US proposal to extend the first stage of the ceasefire and hostage release deal, rather than negotiating a second phase.

“When Israel resumed its attacks, it was almost identical to when they bombed incessantly when I was here a year ago,” Dr Perlmutter says. “The only difference is now instead of bombing people in buildings, they were bombing people in tents.”

The Israeli army has regularly claimed that Hamas operates from areas where civilians are taking shelter. It says that it does not target civilians and takes measures to avoid civilian casualties.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) last year issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant over alleged war crimes, saying it found reasonable grounds to believe that “each bear criminal responsibility… for the war crime of intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population”.

They deny this, and Netanyahu condemned the warrants as “antisemitic”.

Israeli attacks have killed more than 15,000 Palestinian children in Gaza, the Hamas-run health ministry has reported.

And since the IDF broke a ceasefire and resumed its strikes on 18 March, 921 Palestinians have been killed, the ministry said.

Dr Perlmutter warns that if there are more mass casualty events in Gaza from Israeli attacks, the lack of supplies in the two hospitals he’s been working in means that more Palestinians will die from wounds that could have been treated.

Recruitment agents who scam foreign nationals applying to work in the UK care sector have been exposed by BBC secret filming.

One of the rogue agents is a Nigerian doctor who has worked for the NHS in the field of psychiatry.

The Home Office has acknowledged the system is open to abuse, but the BBC World Service’s investigation shows the apparent ease with which these agents can scam people, avoid detection, and continue to profit.

Our secret filming reveals agents’ tactics, including:

• Illegally selling jobs in UK care companies
• Devising fake payroll schemes to conceal that some jobs do not exist
• Shifting from care to other sectors, like construction, that also face staff shortages

Reports of immigration scams have increased since a government visa scheme – originally designed to let foreign medical professionals work in the UK – was broadened in 2022 to include care workers.

To apply for the visa, candidates must first obtain a “Certificate of Sponsorship” (CoS) from a UK employer who is licensed by the Home Office. It is the need for CoS documents that is being exploited by rogue relocation agents.

“The scale of exploitation under the Health and Care Work visa is significant,” says Dora-Olivia Vicol, CEO of Work Rights Centre, a charity that helps migrants and disadvantaged people in the UK access employment justice.

“I think it has turned into a national crisis.”

She says there is “systemic risk inherent” in the sponsorship system, because it “puts the employer in a position of incredible power” and has “enabled this predatory market of middlemen to mushroom”.

The BBC sent two undercover journalists to approach relocation agents working in the UK.

One met Dr Kelvin Alaneme, a Nigerian doctor and founder of the agency, CareerEdu, based in Harlow, Essex.

His website states his business is a “launchpad for global opportunities catering to young Africans”, claiming to have 9,800 “happy clients”.

Believing the BBC undercover journalist was well connected in the UK care sector, Dr Alaneme tried to recruit her to become an agent for his business, saying it would be very lucrative.

“Just get me care homes. I can make you a millionaire,” he said.

As a potential business partner, our journalist was then given unprecedented insight into how immigration scams by agents like Dr Alaneme actually work. Dr Alaneme said he would pay £2,000 ($2,600) for each care home vacancy she was able to procure, and offered £500 ($650) commission on top.

He then said he would sell the vacancies to candidates back in Nigeria.

Charging candidates for a job is illegal in the UK.

“They [the candidates] are not supposed to be paying because it’s free. It should be free,” he said, lowering his voice.

“They are paying because they know it’s most likely the only way.”

The BBC began investigating him following a series of online complaints about his relocation services.

Praise – from south-east Nigeria and in his mid 30s – was one of those who complained, claiming he paid Dr Alaneme more than £10,000 ($13,000) for a job in the UK. He says he was told he was going to be working with a care company called Efficiency for Care, based in Clacton-on-Sea. It was only when he arrived that he realised the job didn’t exist.

“If I had known there was no job, I would have not come here,” he says. “At least back home in Nigeria, if you go broke, I can find my sister or my parents and go and eat free food. It’s not the same here. You will go hungry.”

Praise says he messaged Efficiency for Care and Dr Alaneme for months, asking when he could start working. Despite promises of assistance from Dr Alaneme, the job never materialised. Almost a year later, he found a position with another care provider willing to sponsor him to remain in the UK.

Our investigation found that Efficiency for Care employed – on average – 16 people in 2022, and 152 in 2023. Yet a letter sent from the Home Office to the company dated May 2023 – and seen by the BBC – showed it had issued 1,234 Certificates of Sponsorship to foreign workers between March 2022 and May 2023.

Efficiency for Care’s sponsorship licence was revoked in July 2023. The care company can no longer recruit from abroad, but continues to operate.

It told the BBC it strongly refutes the allegation it colluded with Dr Alaneme. It said it believed it lawfully recruited staff from Nigeria and other countries. It has challenged the Home Office’s revocation of its sponsorship licence, it said, and the matter is now in court.

• Outside of the UK – watch on YouTube

In another secretly filmed meeting, Dr Alaneme shared an even more sophisticated scam involving sponsorship documents for jobs that did not exist.

He said the “advantage” of having a CoS that is unconnected to a job “is that you can choose any city you want”.

“You can go to Glasgow. You can stay in London. You can live anywhere,” he told us.

This is not true. If a migrant arrives in the UK on a Health and Care Work visa and does not work in the role they have been assigned, their visa could be cancelled and they risk being deported.

In the secret filming, Dr Alaneme also described how to set up a fake payroll system to mask the fact the jobs are not real.

“That [a money trail] is what the government needs to see,” he said.

Dr Alaneme told the BBC he strenuously denied services offered by CareerEdu were a scam or that it acted as a recruitment agency or provided jobs for cash. He said his company only offered legitimate services, adding that the money Praise gave him was passed on to a recruitment agent for Praise’s transport, accommodation and training. He said he offered to help Praise find another employer free of charge.

The BBC also carried out undercover filming with another UK-based recruitment agent, Nana Akwasi Agyemang-Prempeh, after several people told the BBC they had collectively paid tens of thousands of pounds for care worker positions for their friends and family that, it transpired, did not exist.

They said some of the Certificates of Sponsorship Mr Agyemang-Prempeh gave them had turned out to be fakes – replicas of real CoS issued by care companies.

We discovered Mr Agyemang-Prempeh had then begun offering CoS for UK jobs in construction – another industry that allows employers to recruit foreign workers. He was able to set up his own construction company and obtain a sponsorship licence from the Home Office.

Our journalist, posing as a UK-based Ugandan businessman wanting to bring Ugandan construction workers over to join him, asked Mr Agyemang-Prempeh if this was possible.

He replied it was – for the price of £42,000 ($54,000) for three people.

Mr Agyemang-Prempeh told us he had moved into construction because rules are being “tightened” in the care sector – and claimed agents were eyeing other industries.

“People are now diverting to IT,” Mr Agyemang-Prempeh told the undercover journalist.

More than 470 licences in the UK care sector were revoked by the government between July 2022 and December 2024. Those licensed sponsors were responsible for the recruitment of more than 39,000 medical professionals and care workers from October 2020.

Mr Agyemang-Prempeh later asked for a downpayment for the Certificates of Sponsorship, which the BBC did not make.

The Home Office has now revoked his sponsorship licence. Mr Agyemang-Prempeh’s defence, when challenged by the BBC, was that he had himself been duped by other agents and did not realise he was selling fake CoS documents.

In a statement to the BBC, the Home Office said it has “robust new action against shameless employers who abuse the visa system” and will “ban businesses who flout UK employment laws from sponsoring overseas workers”.

BBC investigations have previously uncovered similar visa scams targeting people in Kerala, India, and international students living in the UK who want to work in the care sector.

In November 2024, the government announced a clampdown on “rogue” employers hiring workers from overseas. Additionally, from 9 April, care providers in England will be required to prioritise recruiting international care workers already in the UK before recruiting from overseas.

Why won’t India buy even a single bushel of American corn?

That’s the question US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick raised recently while criticising India’s trade policies, taking a swipe at its market restrictions.

In another interview, Lutnick accused India of blocking US farmers and urged it to open its agricultural market – suggesting quotas or limits as a possible approach.

Agriculture is a key battleground in US President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war, with tit-for-tat or reciprocal tariffs set to kick in on 2 April.

Tariffs are taxes charged on goods imported from other countries.Trump has repeatedly branded India a “tariff king” and a “big abuser” of trade ties.

For years, Washington has pushed for greater access to India’s farm sector, seeing it as a major untapped market. But India has fiercely protected it, citing food security, livelihoods and interests of millions of small farmers.

To be sure, India’s transformation from a food-deficient nation to a food-surplus powerhouse is one of its biggest success stories.

In the 1950s and ’60s, the country relied on food aid to feed its population, but a series of agricultural breakthroughs changed that. India became self-sufficient in staples, and became the world’s largest milk producer. Rapid growth in horticulture, poultry and aquaculture expanded its food basket.

Today, India is not just feeding its 1.4 billion people but, as the world’s eighth-largest agri-produce exporter, also shipping grains, fruits and dairy worldwide.

Yet, despite such major gains, Indian agriculture still lags in productivity, infrastructure and market access. Global price volatility and climate change add to the challenge. Crop yields lag far behind the global best. Small landholdings worsen the problem – Indian farmers work with less than a hectare on average, while their American counterparts had over 46 hectares in 2020.

No surprise then that productivity remains low – agriculture employs nearly half of India’s workforce but accounts for just 15% of GDP. In comparison, less than 2% of the US population depends on farming. With limited manufacturing jobs, more people are stuck in low-paying farm work, an unusual trend for a developing country.

This structural imbalance also shapes India’s trade policies. Despite its farm surplus, India keeps tariffs high to shield its farmers from cheap imports. It maintains moderate to high tariffs – ranging from zero to 150% – on farm imports.

The weighted average tariff – the average duty rate per imported product – in India on US farm products is 37.7%, compared to 5.3% on Indian goods in the US, according to the Delhi-based think tank Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI).

Bilateral farm trade between India and the US is modest, at just $8bn (£6.2bn).

India mainly exports rice, shrimp, honey, vegetable extracts, castor oil and black pepper, while the US sends almonds, walnuts, pistachios, apples and lentils.

But as the two countries work on a trade deal, experts say Washington now wants to push “big-ticket” farm exports – wheat, cotton, corn and maize – to narrow its $45bn trade deficit with India.

“They’re not looking to export berries and stuff this time. The game is much bigger,” says Biswajit Dhar, a trade expert from the Delhi-based Council for Social Development think tank.

Pushing India to lower farm tariffs, cut price support and open up to genetically modified (GM) crops and dairy ignores the fundamental asymmetry in global agriculture, experts argue.

The US, for instance, heavily subsidises its agriculture and protects farmers through crop insurance.

“In some cases,” says Ajay Srivastava of GTRI, “US subsidies exceed 100% of production costs, creating an uneven playing field that could devastate India’s smallholder farmers.”

Farming is India’s backbone, supporting over 700 million people, nearly half the country’s population.

“The key thing to remember is that agriculture in the two countries is entirely different,” says Abhijit Das, former head of the Centre for WTO Studies at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade.

“The US has commercial agriculture, while India relies on intensive, subsistence farming. It’s a question of the livelihoods of millions of Indians versus the interests of US agribusiness.”

But India’s agricultural challenges aren’t just external. Mr Dhar says much of the sector’s struggles are “its own doing”. Farming has long been underfunded, receiving less than 6% of India’s total investment – funds meant for infrastructure, machinery and other long-term assets crucial for growth.

To protect millions of livelihoods, the government shields key crops like wheat, rice and dairy with import duties and price support. “But even that doesn’t inspire confidence,” he says.

Four years ago, tens of thousands of farmers held protests demanding better prices and legal guarantees of minimum government support-price for staples, mainly wheat and rice.

“Even relatively well-off farmers selling surpluses don’t see a turnaround anytime soon. And if they feel that way, imagine the plight of subsistence farmers,” says Mr Dhar.

Beyond domestic discontent, trade negotiations add another layer of complexity.

Mr Das says the real challenge for India will be how “to have an agreement with the US that takes into account US export interest in agriculture while balancing India’s interests in the farm sector”.

So what’s the way forward?

“India must not yield to US pressure to open its agriculture sector,” says Mr Srivastava. He warns that doing so would disrupt millions of livelihoods, threaten food security and flood local markets with cheap imports.

“India must prioritise its national interest and protect its rural economy. Trade cooperation should not come at the cost of our farmers, food sovereignty or policy autonomy.”

In the long run, experts say India must modernise its agriculture, making farming more remunerative, and become more competitive to boost exports. Unupom Kausik of agri-business Olam estimates that with top global yields, India could generate a surplus of 200 million metric tonnes of paddy – enough to supply global trade and combat hunger.

“In a way, Trump is holding up a mirror to us. We’ve done little to invest in agriculture’s productive capacity,” says Mr Dhar. “For now, buying time is the best strategy – maybe offering the US cheaper imports of industrial goods as a trade-off.”

But for the best outcome, he says, India will have to “play hardball. Basically, tell the US – we’re open to negotiations on other fronts, but don’t destabilise our agriculture”.

Clearly India’s challenge is to negotiate from a position of strength – offering just enough to keep Washington at the table while safeguarding its rural backbone. After all, in global trade as in farming, timing and patience often yield the best harvest. The jury is out on whether Trump is willing to wait.

Muslims around the world are 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.

Richard Chamberlain, the actor best known for his role in the 1960s medical drama Dr Kildare and leading role in Shogun, has died aged 90, his publicist has confirmed to the BBC.

Chamberlain earned the title “king of the mini-series” for his leading roles in Shogun and The Thorn Birds.

He died late on Saturday night local time (10:15 GMT Sunday) in Waimanalo, Hawaii, after suffering complications from a stroke, his publicist Harlan Boll confirmed – just hours before he would have turned 91.

Martin Rabbett, Chamberlain’s longtime partner, called him an “amazing and loving soul” in a statement.

• The Heartthrob king of the TV mini-series

He said: “Our beloved Richard is with the angels now. He is free and soaring to those loved ones before us.”

Rabbett added: “Love never dies. And our love is under his wings, lifting him to his next great adventure.”

Chamberlain’s big break came in 1961, when he became a household name as Dr James Kildare in Dr Kildare.

The show, based on a popular 1930s and 40s film series, attracted millions of viewers, turning Chamberlain into a beloved leading man and a teen idol.

The popularity Dr Kildare earnt Chamberlain meant that, for three consecutive years between 1963 and 1965, he was named the most popular male star by Photoplay magazine.

He went on to become the king of the 1980s TV mini-series, playing a western prisoner in Shogun and a catholic priest tempted by love in The Thorn Birds.

The latter won 60% of the US television audience and earned 16 Emmy nominations.

Though widely recognised as a romantic leading man, Chamberlain’s private life remained largely a mystery until later in his life.

He did not publicly address his sexuality until the release of his memoir, Shattered Love, in 2003, where he revealed that he was gay.

Throughout his 30-year relationship with actor-director Rabbett, they had kept their private life secret.

In his memoir, he recalled escorting glamorous actresses to premieres, explaining that he had been “desperately afraid” his sexuality would derail his career.

“I used to get chased by hot teenage girls,” he once told TV Guide. “I got 12,000 fan letters a week. And I felt somewhat besieged.”

Rabbett and Chamberlain separated in 2010 but remained close.

Born on 31 March 1934 in Beverly Hills, California, Chamberlain grew up on what he called “the wrong side of Wilshire Boulevard” – far from the wealth of Hollywood’s star-studded district.

The younger of two boys, his father, Charles, was a salesman who struggled with alcoholism and became a prominent figure in Alcoholics Anonymous, travelling the world to speak at conventions. His mother, Elsa, was a homemaker.

He initially studied painting at Pomona College, but a student theatre performance inspired him to pursue acting.

Interest from a Hollywood scout was put on hold as he was drafted into the US Army, where he rose to the rank of sergeant while stationed in South Korea.

Upon returning to California, Chamberlain took acting classes, landing several small TV roles before his breakout role as Dr Kildare.

Years later, Chamberlain recounted the psychological abuse he endured during his childhood.

He described how his father’s “lethal sneer” and emotionally abusive behaviour made him feel as if he were being “slashed with a machete”.

Chamberlain also spoke about the relief he experienced in finally not having to hide his sexuality later in life.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she is willing to walk into the “lion’s den” to sway US officials against Canadian tariffs – wooing the US president with meetings at Mar-a-Lago and cosying up with Trump-friendly media.

While many of Canada’s leaders – from Prime Minister Mark Carney to Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford – are talking tough on Donald Trump, Smith has been taking a notably softer approach.

But this tack has led to controversy – not only with her opponents, but also in her home province of Alberta, and with politicians who otherwise share her political leanings.

It has also put federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre on the defensive in the early days of the country’s short federal electoral race. Canadians are scheduled to vote on 28 April.

In January, while Trump was still president-elect, Smith had what she called a “friendly and constructive conversation” with him at Mar-a-Lago about the two countries’ shared energy relationship.

But an early March interview with right-wing US news outlet Breitbart made her friendliness with US Republican circles a liability for Poilievre and the federal Conservatives.

• Trump ‘respected Canada’s sovereignty’ in call, says Carney
• Carney talks tough on Trump threat – but can he reset relations?
• Doug Ford: The blunt-speaking Canadian taking fight to Trump

Smith, a former talk radio host and newspaper columnist, was asked by Breitbart News Washington bureau chief Matthew Boyle about the Poilievre-Trump relationship. In response, Smith said that the “unjust and unfair” tariffs threatened by Trump “actually caused an increase in the support for the Liberals”.

“And so that’s what I fear, is that the longer this dispute goes on, politicians posture, and it seems to be benefiting the Liberals right now,” she said.

“So I would hope that we could put things on pause is what I’ve told administration officials. Let’s just put things on pause so we can get through an election.”

Smith also told Breitbart that Poilievre brought a perspective that “would be very much in sync, I think, with the new direction in America”, adding that a Conservative government in Canada would help smooth relations with the US.

The interview resurfaced this week as federal leaders were busy campaigning ahead of April’s election, and Smith was quickly criticised by Poilievre’s political opponents. New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jagmeet Singh called the interview “shameful” and questioned Smith’s loyalty to Canada.

The Liberals, meanwhile, have used it as political ammunition to bolster their attack line that Trump and Poilievre are too similar for Canadians who want to stand up to the US.

Her comments were construed by some as asking Trump to delay tariffs so that a Conservative could win.

Some on social media even called Smith a “traitor” and accused her of pushing Trump to interfere with Canada’s elections – a point that she has strongly rebuffed.

“Interference is one thing,” Smith told the Alberta legislature on Monday. “Asking the US to refrain from [tariffs] is actually the opposite. I do not want to see anyone interfere in our elections.”

Poilievre, for his part, has attempted to dodge these attacks on the campaign trail. Asked about Smith’s remarks, he said: “People are free to make their own comments. I speak for myself.”

Later in the week, Smith found herself in more hot water after she refused calls to cancel a trip to Florida on Thursday, where she appeared at a PragerU fundraising event alongside Ben Shapiro, a right-wing pundit.

The two reportedly discussed how to help Canada elect “solid allies” to the Trump administration, according to Canada’s left-leaning media outlet the National Observer, which obtained audio of the event.

Smith’s chief of staff Rob Anderson has defended the trip, saying the premier is “going into the lion’s den to try and convince US decision makers to cancel or even delay tariffs for as long as possible,” adding that her approach is “as Albertan and Canadian as it gets”.

For political watchers in Alberta, Smith’s appearance on Breitbart and at PragerU is an extension of her friendlier approach to diplomacy with the US.

Smith has often argued that trade with the US is “mutually beneficial” for both economies.

She noted that her province sends most of its oil and gas to the US, and has criticised the federal Liberal government for environmental policies that she argues have blocked Alberta’s oil to other markets.

She has also refused to use oil as a bargaining chip to fight back against US tariffs – breaking from the position held by most other provincial leaders. Ford, by contrast, was willing to slap an export tariff on Ontario’s energy in retaliation.

Jared Wesley, a professor of political science at the University of Alberta and expert on politics in Western Canada, said that many Albertans were open to Smith’s unconventional approach if it meant securing gains for the province and for Canada.

But her recent comments on Breitbart have raised questions on whether “there were partisan considerations that were being thrown into the mix”, he said.

“A lot of Albertans are just trying to make sense of the purpose of these visits (to the US), because they are quite frequent,” Prof Wesley told the BBC.

This has created a political dilemma for Poilievre, he noted, who is now lagging in national polls behind Carney and the Liberals – a dramatic reversal after his party had been ahead since mid-2023.

“He’s been trying to distance himself from the Republican Trump wing of the global conservative movement,” Prof Wesley said. “And here is Danielle Smith saying that he’s part and parcel of it.”

Not everyone, however, opposes the premier’s approach. Barry Cooper, a longtime conservative political scientist in Alberta, noted that Smith’s approval rating – while one of the lowest among Canada’s premiers – has not budged at around 46%.

He added that Smith acknowledged Alberta’s interests differ from the rest of the country, and that she was focused on ensuring economic prosperity for the province by maintaining good ties with the US and being present at any negotiation tables.

“Whatever they say [in eastern Canada] makes absolutely no difference to the support that the premier is going to get, because she is standing up for this province,” Dr Cooper told the BBC. “And quite frankly, I don’t think she really cares too much.”

It is unclear whether Trump has been swayed at all by Smith’s lobbying, though the premier took credit on Friday for shifting Shapiro’s opinion on tariffs, after he spoke out against them.

The US president did reduce his threatened tariffs on Canadian energy products from 25% to 10%, but Canadian politicians – including Smith – have said that the better outcome is no tariffs at all.

Trump’s tone towards Canada has turned positive in recent days following his first phone call with Liberal leader and Prime Minister Carney. But it remains to be seen whether this will translate into any reprieve.

A 56-year-old man is being investigated in South Korea on suspicion of starting a deadly wildfire that killed 30 people.

The man, who has not been named, was performing an ancestral rite by a family grave on a hill in Uiseong county, North Gyeongsang province, at the time.

He has been booked – but not arrested – and will be called in for questioning once the investigation of the site has been completed. He denies the charges.

On Sunday, officials said the main fire had finally been brought under complete control – 10 days after it started, causing widespread damage to buildings, including historic temples.

Investigators reportedly spoke to the suspect’s daughter, who is said to have told them that the fire began as her father tried to burn tree branches hanging over the graves with a cigarette lighter.

The fires subsequently burned more than 48,000 hectares – equivalent to about 80% of the area of the capital, Seoul – according to the Korea Forest Service.

They also destroyed an estimated 4,000 structures, including homes, factories and a number of national treasures.

Goun Temple – a Unesco World Heritage Site – was among the structures destroyed in the blaze. It was built in AD618 and was one of the largest in the province.

Most of the casualties were people in their 60s and 70s.

Even though the main fire has been brought under control, smaller ones continue to reignite, authorities say.

Fuelled by strong and dry winds, the fires spread to several cities and counties.

Unseasonably warm weather, dry conditions and pine forests in the region also helped exacerbate the fires.

An investigation involving the police, fire authorities and forest management will be carried out next week.

South Korea’s acting President Han Duck-soo said the government would provide financial support for those who had been displaced by the fires.

Richard Chamberlain, who has died today at the age of 90, shot to fame as TV heartthrob Dr Kildare in the 1960s.

His dashing good looks won him legions of female fans, and guaranteed him work in a plethora of rather forgettable television movies.

But, in middle age, his career spiked again.

Chamberlain became king of the 1980’s TV mini-series: playing a western prisoner in Shogun and a catholic priest tempted by love in The Thorn Birds.

He denied being gay when confronted by a French magazine in 1989, and did not speak publicly about his homosexuality until he turned 70.

In interviews promoting his 2003 memoir, he advised other handsome leading actors to keep their sexuality to themselves.

“There’s still a tremendous amount of homophobia in our culture,” he said. “Please, don’t pretend that we’re suddenly all wonderfully, blissfully accepted.”

• Richard Chamberlain dies aged 90

George Richard Chamberlain was born on 31 March 1934, in Beverly Hills, California. He died one day before his 91st birthday.

His salesman father had a problem with drink, which affected young Richard’s childhood. He described himself as a “shy, serious, lugubrious kid, painfully thin, with a long, sad face”.

He admitted to being the most “uncooperative kid in school” but discovered a taste and a talent for athletics.

At Pomona College, he was bitten by the acting bug – and a role in Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man convinced him he had found his calling.

Paramount Studios was interested in him, but thoughts of an acting career were put on hold after he was called up, serving 16 months with the US Army, rising to the rank of sergeant while stationed in Korea.

On his discharge, he made a number of cameos in TV shows, including an episode of the popular Western, Gunsmoke.

Not everyone had Chamberlain picked as a future star.

He was handsome enough: with profiles at the time gushing over his “fine-lined aristocratic face, suggesting a young Florentine noble – straight out of the Renaissance”.

But, he was naturally diffident – which worked in his favour when he auditioned to play Dr James Kildare, a medical intern struggling to learn his profession, in NBC’s new primetime medical drama.

“Perhaps it was inevitable,” said one friend-and-rival. “Who else could look so anti-sceptic as Dick?”

The series ran for nearly 200 programmes across five seasons.

It broke new ground, by raising matters such as drug addiction – which had not previously been shown on US TV.

There was a huge reaction from female fans.

Chamberlain got 12,000 letters a week. In Pittsburgh, 450,000 people turned out to see him at a parade, and in New York, he nearly caused a riot when a child spotted him and called his name.

The studio made the most of this attention, releasing novels, comics and games featuring Chamberlain’s image.

Fans would even write in asking “Dr Kildare” to solve their various medical problems.

And Chamberlain had an unlikely hit single: Three Stars Will Shine Tonight, where romantic words were added to the show’s distinctive opening theme tune.

He won a Golden Globe Award for best TV actor in 1963. But, three years later audiences began to wane, and NBC pulled the plug.

Now an international star, Chamberlain struggled to leave Kildare behind.

In 1966, he hoped to break into films, but reviews slated his performance in the light romantic comedy, Joy in the Morning.

Audiences, they said, laughed in “all the wrong places”. So, he resolved to ignore Hollywood and make a living on the stage.

He got off to a rocky start when a musical version of Breakfast at Tiffany’s – in which he starred opposite Mary Tyler Moore – closed after just four shows.

The production is still seen as one of Broadway’s biggest ever turkeys. But a move to England gave him a chance of reinventing himself as a ‘serious actor.’

In 1967, there were starring roles in Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady and opposite Katherine Hepburn in a satirical comedy called The Madwoman of Chaillot.

And, two years later, he became the first American to play Hamlet at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre since the great John Barrymore in 1925.

This time, the reviews were excellent and he revisited the role of Denmark’s most tortured prince for a television version for Hallmark.

But Chamberlain was cast as Tchaikovsky in Ken Russell’s overblown biopic, The Music Lovers, in which he starred opposite Glenda Jackson.

The critics rubbished the film, in which great play was made of the relationship between a composer with repressed homosexual tendencies and his nymphomaniac wife, although it later became something of a cult success.

Chamberlain went on to play Lord Byron opposite Sarah Miles in Lady Caroline Lamb and the swashbuckling French swordsman Aramis in Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers.

He also appeared – along with half of Hollywood – in the Towering Inferno, as a crooked electrical engineer whose corner-cutting leads to the spectacular destruction of a 138 floor building.

In 1977, the TV series Roots – set in the era of American slavery – drew huge audiences and was nominated for nearly 40 Emmy awards.

It sparked a revival of the mini-series which drew Chamberlain back to television.

He beat Roger Moore and Albert Finney to be cast as John Blackthorn – a captive English navigator in 17th Century Japan – in Shogun.

The series was shown on NBC over five nights in 1980, with audiences reaching nearly 30 million.

Having won a Golden Globe, Chamberlain then picked up another as Father Ralph de Bricassart in The Thorn Birds, a priest torn between God and his sexual longing afor the actress, Rachel Ward.

It was even more successful than Shogun, winning an audience of 60% of television viewers and 16 Emmy nominations.

In the 1990s, Chamberlain’s career began to wane.

There were a succession of solid, rather than outstanding, performances in made-for-TV films and endless guest appearances in other people’s shows.

These included a sequel to The Thorn Birds called The Missing Years, with Amanda Donohoe replacing Rachel Ward.

In 2003, long after he had stopped playing romantic leading men, Chamberlain published his biography Shattered Love, in which, for the first time, he confirmed he was gay.

Despite a relationship of more than 30 years with the actor and director Martin Rabbett, with whom he’d once starred in the film Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold, they had kept their private life private.

“I thought there was something very, very deeply wrong with me,” he said, “and I wanted to cover it up. I remember making a pact with myself that I would never, ever reveal this secret, ever.”

Chamberlain and Rabbett went their separate ways in 2010.

In later years, Chamberlain was happy to play a gay man, notably in Desperate Housewives and Will & Grace.

He continued to perform in musical theatre, including touring productions of Spamalot, My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music.

But he never regretted hiding his sexuality to protect his career.

“I would have been a happier person being out of the closet and being free,” he told El Pais in 2024. “But I had other motives that made me happy. I was a working actor and for me, that was most important.”

He will be remembered as the king of the TV mini-series: the dashing leading man in everything from Dr Kildare to The Thorn Birds.

Despite attempts to reinvent himself as a serious stage actor, he was at his best on the small screen, entertaining millions watching at home on the sofa.

For, although there were always better actors than Richard Chamberlain, few rivalled his ability to hold a television audience.

Why won’t India buy even a single bushel of American corn?

That’s the question US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick raised recently while criticising India’s trade policies, taking a swipe at its market restrictions.

In another interview, Lutnick accused India of blocking US farmers and urged it to open its agricultural market – suggesting quotas or limits as a possible approach.

Agriculture is a key battleground in US President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war, with tit-for-tat or reciprocal tariffs set to kick in on 2 April.

Tariffs are taxes charged on goods imported from other countries.Trump has repeatedly branded India a “tariff king” and a “big abuser” of trade ties.

For years, Washington has pushed for greater access to India’s farm sector, seeing it as a major untapped market. But India has fiercely protected it, citing food security, livelihoods and interests of millions of small farmers.

To be sure, India’s transformation from a food-deficient nation to a food-surplus powerhouse is one of its biggest success stories.

In the 1950s and ’60s, the country relied on food aid to feed its population, but a series of agricultural breakthroughs changed that. India became self-sufficient in staples, and became the world’s largest milk producer. Rapid growth in horticulture, poultry and aquaculture expanded its food basket.

Today, India is not just feeding its 1.4 billion people but, as the world’s eighth-largest agri-produce exporter, also shipping grains, fruits and dairy worldwide.

Yet, despite such major gains, Indian agriculture still lags in productivity, infrastructure and market access. Global price volatility and climate change add to the challenge. Crop yields lag far behind the global best. Small landholdings worsen the problem – Indian farmers work with less than a hectare on average, while their American counterparts had over 46 hectares in 2020.

No surprise then that productivity remains low – agriculture employs nearly half of India’s workforce but accounts for just 15% of GDP. In comparison, less than 2% of the US population depends on farming. With limited manufacturing jobs, more people are stuck in low-paying farm work, an unusual trend for a developing country.

This structural imbalance also shapes India’s trade policies. Despite its farm surplus, India keeps tariffs high to shield its farmers from cheap imports. It maintains moderate to high tariffs – ranging from zero to 150% – on farm imports.

The weighted average tariff – the average duty rate per imported product – in India on US farm products is 37.7%, compared to 5.3% on Indian goods in the US, according to the Delhi-based think tank Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI).

Bilateral farm trade between India and the US is modest, at just $8bn (£6.2bn).

India mainly exports rice, shrimp, honey, vegetable extracts, castor oil and black pepper, while the US sends almonds, walnuts, pistachios, apples and lentils.

But as the two countries work on a trade deal, experts say Washington now wants to push “big-ticket” farm exports – wheat, cotton, corn and maize – to narrow its $45bn trade deficit with India.

“They’re not looking to export berries and stuff this time. The game is much bigger,” says Biswajit Dhar, a trade expert from the Delhi-based Council for Social Development think tank.

Pushing India to lower farm tariffs, cut price support and open up to genetically modified (GM) crops and dairy ignores the fundamental asymmetry in global agriculture, experts argue.

The US, for instance, heavily subsidises its agriculture and protects farmers through crop insurance.

“In some cases,” says Ajay Srivastava of GTRI, “US subsidies exceed 100% of production costs, creating an uneven playing field that could devastate India’s smallholder farmers.”

Farming is India’s backbone, supporting over 700 million people, nearly half the country’s population.

“The key thing to remember is that agriculture in the two countries is entirely different,” says Abhijit Das, former head of the Centre for WTO Studies at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade.

“The US has commercial agriculture, while India relies on intensive, subsistence farming. It’s a question of the livelihoods of millions of Indians versus the interests of US agribusiness.”

But India’s agricultural challenges aren’t just external. Mr Dhar says much of the sector’s struggles are “its own doing”. Farming has long been underfunded, receiving less than 6% of India’s total investment – funds meant for infrastructure, machinery and other long-term assets crucial for growth.

To protect millions of livelihoods, the government shields key crops like wheat, rice and dairy with import duties and price support. “But even that doesn’t inspire confidence,” he says.

Four years ago, tens of thousands of farmers held protests demanding better prices and legal guarantees of minimum government support-price for staples, mainly wheat and rice.

“Even relatively well-off farmers selling surpluses don’t see a turnaround anytime soon. And if they feel that way, imagine the plight of subsistence farmers,” says Mr Dhar.

Beyond domestic discontent, trade negotiations add another layer of complexity.

Mr Das says the real challenge for India will be how “to have an agreement with the US that takes into account US export interest in agriculture while balancing India’s interests in the farm sector”.

So what’s the way forward?

“India must not yield to US pressure to open its agriculture sector,” says Mr Srivastava. He warns that doing so would disrupt millions of livelihoods, threaten food security and flood local markets with cheap imports.

“India must prioritise its national interest and protect its rural economy. Trade cooperation should not come at the cost of our farmers, food sovereignty or policy autonomy.”

In the long run, experts say India must modernise its agriculture, making farming more remunerative, and become more competitive to boost exports. Unupom Kausik of agri-business Olam estimates that with top global yields, India could generate a surplus of 200 million metric tonnes of paddy – enough to supply global trade and combat hunger.

“In a way, Trump is holding up a mirror to us. We’ve done little to invest in agriculture’s productive capacity,” says Mr Dhar. “For now, buying time is the best strategy – maybe offering the US cheaper imports of industrial goods as a trade-off.”

But for the best outcome, he says, India will have to “play hardball. Basically, tell the US – we’re open to negotiations on other fronts, but don’t destabilise our agriculture”.

Clearly India’s challenge is to negotiate from a position of strength – offering just enough to keep Washington at the table while safeguarding its rural backbone. After all, in global trade as in farming, timing and patience often yield the best harvest. The jury is out on whether Trump is willing to wait.

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.”

• Disney holds small-scale Snow White premiere amid controversy

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.”

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 College 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.

Usher has kicked off a 10-night residency at London’s O2 Arena with a slick, two-hour show that was impressive and frustrating in equal measure.

The US pop star played more than 40 songs, including hits like Yeah, Burn, U Remind Me and OMG, with multiple costume changes and buttery-smooth choreography.

But the show, which comes to the UK after a 62-date run in the US, felt oddly rough around the edges – including a handful of on-stage stumbles and missed musical cues.

The momentum was frequently torpedoed by waffly, overlong video interludes – but Usher’s magnetic stage presence just about held the concert together.

Titled “Past, Present, Future”, the tour is billed as an “intimate” look at Usher Raymond IV’s 30-year career, as well as “a glimpse into the future”.

It comes as the star, one of the best-selling artists of the 2000s, is enjoying a career rebirth – following an acclaimed Super Bowl half-time show, and the release of his ninth studio album, Coming Home.

With 10 sold-out shows at the O2, he enters an elite group of artists who’ve played double-digit residencies at the venue, alongside Queen (10 shows in 2022), Bon Jovi (12 nights in 2010) and Prince (21 nights in 2007).

At its core, Past, Present, Future illustrates the skill with which the 46-year-old has navigated the evolving trends of the music industry.

We see a video clip of him, aged 14, dancing to his debut single, Call Me A Mack, then watch as he transforms into a teenage heartthrob, a confessional balladeer, an EDM party-starter, and an elder statesman of R&B.

He arrives from under the stage in a fog of dry ice and a cone of laser beams, apparently controlling the lights with his bare hands, before dancing to the middle of the arena with the molten fluidity of his idol, Michael Jackson.

Clad in a sparkly raincoat and wide-brimmed Pharrell hat, he races through hits like Coming Home, Hey Daddy and U Make Me Wanna, backed by a funky 10-piece band and a dance team that echoes his every move.

The choreography is a constant highlight. Usher’s moves are so effortless that they look unrehearsed, but such ease comes at a cost: Last year, he had to postpone the start of the tour after injuring his neck in practice.

At the O2, that pain seemed a distant memory, as he careened around the U-shaped stage on roller skates, pulling off a flawless moonwalk, and even freeze-framing in a handstand.

He might have fumbled a hat at one point, but it was one of his dancers who came closest to calamity – losing his balance during an elaborate chair routine, sending the chair spinning across the stage.

The band also suffered a mishap, missing Usher’s cue to extend the intro to Superstar, and coming in four bars early. Not disastrous, but still unusual for a show on this level.

The hits were punctuated by numerous interludes, narrated by Celeste, a glitch-prone “computer driven by AI technology to help Mr Raymond tell his story”, from teen wannabe to global superstar, against a backdrop of infidelity, tabloid infamy, redemption and survival.

The problem was his songs couldn’t support the weight of that story. With a few exceptions, Usher mostly sings about lusting after women in the club, and carnal pleasures in the bedroom.

The result was a weirdly disconnected show, where Usher followed a moving video about his absent father with a song about his ex, which he sung while straddling a motorbike.

Priapism was a running theme. Women in the audience were fed with cocktail cherries (“oh, it’s your first time?” Usher mugged into the camera) and part of the stage was turned into a strip club, complete with pole dancers, during Bad Girl.

That sort of tongue-in-cheek raunch has been a hallmark of Usher’s career, but it felt dated and shallow in a concert that promised an intimate look into his personality.

Perhaps he just wanted us to know that, deep down, he really, really likes sex.

Luckily, the songs still hold up. A trio of quiet storm ballads – Climax, Burn and Confessions Part II – had couples serenading each other, while a trio of women near me took the opportunity to slow dance a security guard who was mopping the floor.

To his credit, Usher sang everything live, with an airy falsetto that’s undiminished after 30 years on tour. During U Got It Bad, he held one sustained note for over 10 seconds.

At times, he struggled to hold the audience’s attention during the slow jams. The UK has always preferred him in club mode – and it was his three biggest-sellers, Yeah, OMG and DJ Got Us Falling In Love that really set the O2 alight.

Strangely it was one of those empty club anthems, I Am The Party, that ultimately carried the most meaning.

“Hopefully my [music] has been something to you,” Usher said over the introduction.

“Maybe we fell in love together, maybe we had a good time together, but something brought you here. And I just want you to know, I appreciate the connection.”

“If I didn’t have you to cheer me on, I wouldn’t continue to do this.”

Pop stars say this sort of thing all the time. But as he stood at the O2, drenched in sweat, remembering the father who abandoned him and soaking up the audience’s affection, Usher didn’t seem to be putting on an act.

By the encore, he’d given up all pretence of being a high-rolling playboy.

Instead, he bounded around the stage, giddily filming the audience on his phone, as they hollered out the chorus to Without You.

If only that performer had shown up earlier.

Myanmar is reeling following the huge earthquake which hit the country on Friday, 28 March.

The magnitude-7.7 tremor was felt elsewhere, including in Thailand and south-west China.

More than 1,700 people have died and more than 3,400 have been injured, say the leaders of the country’s military government. In Thailand, at least 18 lost their lives.

Here is what we know so far.

The earthquake’s epicentre was located 16km (10 miles) north-west of Myanmar’s city Sagaing, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said.

This is also near Myanmar’s second-largest city, Mandalay, with a population of about 1.5 million people – and about 100km (60 miles) north of the capital, Nay Pyi Taw.

The first earthquake struck at about 12:50 (06:20 GMT), according to the USGS. A second earthquake struck 12 minutes later, with a magnitude of 6.4. Its epicentre was 18km (11 miles) south of Sagaing.

Aftershocks have continued since – the latest on Sunday was a magnitude-5.1 tremor north-west of Mandalay, with a resident telling BBC Burmese it was the strongest they had felt since 28 March.

• Live: Follow the latest on the Myanmar earthquake
• Watch: Moment Bangkok high-rise under construction collapses
• Eyewitnesses describe horror in quake’s aftermath
• In pictures: Damaged buildings and buckled roads

The strong quake buckled roads, damaged bridges and flattened many buildings in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) – a country of some 55 million people.

It is considered one of the world’s most geologically “active” areas.

The ruling junta said 1,591 houses had been damaged in the Mandalay region. Scores of people remain trapped with rescuers searching “with bare hands”.

Strong tremors were also felt elsewhere, including in Thailand and south-west China.

• What caused the Myanmar earthquake – and why did it make a tower in Bangkok collapse?

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.

Videos also showed rooftop pools in Bangkok spilling over the sides of swaying buildings.

The official death toll now stands at 1,700. Many of the fatalities were in Mandalay.

More than 3,400 people were injured and 300 are missing.

The US Geological Survey’s modelling estimates Myanmar’s death toll could exceed 10,000, with losses surpassing annual economic output.

Rescue operations are ongoing, with one rescue team in Mandalay saying they were “digging people out with our bare hands”.

Meanwhile, in Bangkok, 18 people have been confirmed dead – 11 of them at the high-rise building (10 died at the scene, one died at the hospital), where 78 remain missing.

Getting information out of Myanmar is difficult.

Myanmar has been ruled by a military junta since a coup in 2021, complicating access to information.

The state controls almost all local radio, television, print and online media. Internet use is also restricted.

Mobile lines in the affected areas have been patchy, but tens of thousands of people also live without electricity, making it difficult for the BBC to reach residents.

Foreign journalists are rarely allowed into the country officially.

Some international aid – mainly from China and India – has begun to arrive after the military authorities issued a rare appeal.

Aid has also been sent from Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Russia.

Rescuers from several countries have joined the local efforts to locate and pull put any survivors.

The Red Cross has issued an urgent appeal for $100m (£77m).

The NUG has announced that its armed wing, the People’s Defence Force (PDF), will pause “offensive military operations” for two weeks in earthquake-affected areas, except for “defensive actions.”

Anti-coup PDF battalions have been fighting the military junta since the latter seized power in 2021.

The pause is set to begin on Sunday, but its impact is uncertain as many ethnic armed groups act independently of the NUG.

Meanwhile, the junta has continued airstrikes in some areas, with the UN condemning them as “completely outrageous and unacceptable.”

The Earth’s crust is made up of separate bits, called plates, that nestle alongside each other.

These plates often try to move but are prevented by the friction of rubbing up against an adjoining one.

But sometimes, the pressure builds until one plate suddenly jerks across, causing the surface to move.

They are measured on a scale called the Moment Magnitude Scale (Mw). This has replaced the Richter scale, which is now considered outdated and less accurate.

The number attributed to an earthquake represents a combination of the distance the fault line has moved and the force that moved it.

A tremor of 2.5 or less usually cannot be felt but can be detected by instruments. Quakes of up to five are felt and cause minor damage. The Myanmar earthquake at 7.7 is classified as major and usually causes serious damage, as it has in this instance.

Anything above 8.0 causes catastrophic damage and can totally destroy communities at its centre.

The UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) has warned about the possibility of several strong aftershocks in places affected by the earthquake.

It has advised people in the area, or tourists planning to travel to Myanmar, Thailand or Laos, to monitor local media and follow the advice of local authorities and tour operators.

The FCDO has also previously issued advice against travel to parts of Myanmar and all but essential travel to parts of Thailand and Laos.

Myanmar’s security situation “may deteriorate at short notice and the military regime can introduce travel restrictions at any time” amid an “increasingly volatile” conflict, it said.

The FCDO’s warning for parts of Thailand is “due to regular attacks in the provinces by the border with Malaysia” and its advice for Laos relates to “intermittent attacks on infrastructure and armed clashes with anti-government groups” in Xaisomboun province.

This earthquake and its aftershocks were relatively shallow – about 10km in depth.

That means the impact on the surface is likely to have been more devastating than a deeper earthquake, with buildings shaken much harder and more likely to collapse.

On 26 December 2004, one of the largest earthquakes ever recorded struck off the coast of Indonesia, triggering a tsunami that swept away entire communities around the Indian Ocean. That 9.1 magnitude quake killed about 228,000 people.

The largest ever earthquake registered 9.5 and was recorded in Chile in 1960.

Braids are one of the most popular hairstyles for black women, worn by celebrities and aunties alike – but questions are being raised about its effects on our health.

The process can last up to five hours as stylists deftly part small, evenly-spaced sections of hair, and gradually add in extensions.

Despite the long salon visits, braids have always been closely linked to convenience for me.

Growing up, they were for holidays, as the style meant that instead of fretting over how frizzy my hair would get, I could jump in the pool with no worries.

Braids are still what I turn to now when I want a few months break from all the detangling – or I want to try a new colour without the potential damage of hair dye.

But a new study suggests that the synthetic hair many black women use to achieve this style could be bad for their health.

The US non-profit organisation Consumer Reports tested samples from ten of the most popular brands of synthetic braiding hair, and found that all of them contained carcinogens, and in some cases, lead.

The research made an impact, as my Instagram feed and WhatsApp groups were flooded with links to the study, warning of the alleged risks hidden in our hair.

One of the messages was from my cousin, Rochelle, who does her braids herself every other month.

“Braids, famously, are called a protective style,” she later told me.

It’s a term typically used to describe several Afro hairstyles, including braids, locs and wigs, that reduce how much your hair is exposed to the elements and cut back on constant styling.

“The fact that this style is doing everything but protect us – it’s actually harming us – is actually quite wild to me.”

It is the lack of awareness among black women that is most concerning, she adds.

“People that are eating unhealthy food or smoking, they know that what they’re doing could harm their body, whereas if you’re putting braids in your hair, you’re not thinking that it’s harming you.”

James Rogers, the head of product safety testing at Consumer Reports, says that the results are a cause for concern because women have “constant contact” with harmful chemicals if their hair is in braids, often for months at a time.

“We believe that whenever you’re exposed to harmful chemicals, that it’s cumulative – it all adds up.”

But he also emphasised that more research was needed, saying: “We’re hoping that this begins the conversation, not only at the regulatory level, but also amongst our own communities, about sharing accurate information.”

Here at Josée’s Professional Braiding Studio in north London, the study certainly isn’t putting clients off.

Josée and her daughters Abigail and Naomi, who work with her in the salon, have seen interest from new customers, especially after they helped to create the wig worn by Elphaba in Wicked, one of highest-grossing movies of 2024.

“People were shocked by how versatile we can be with our braiding,” Abigail tells me, adding that her mum received several messages from clients telling them how proud they were.

Josée says that while the findings are “worrying”, it has been business as usual at the salon.

Some of her customers, however, have been rattled by the research.

It’s Kellie-Ann’s first time getting her braids done at Josée’s salon, but she has been wearing the style since she was a child.

She tells me she felt betrayed after reading the study: “I think it’s awful that companies have been doing this for years to black women and I think we deserve better.”

She’s now seeking out brands free from harmful chemicals and plastic – and says many of her friends are doing the same.

“A lot of women I’ve spoken to about it have agreed that biogradable would be better – it’s good for the planet as well.”

Ifeanyi has also worn braids since childhood, and says they are the easiest and most convenient style to handle while she’s busy studying at university.

She argues that the study is not alarming, pointing out that people may come into contact with carcinogens every day, in certain processed foods, alcohol and tobacco.

“Obviously you want be cautious – I just think that it’s not necessarily something to completely abandon the style or the hair for.”

She’s concerned that the social media posts she has seen will “scare people out of wanting to engage”, to the detriment of a critical source of income for black entrepreneurs working in the hair industry.

In 2021 Treasure Tress, a UK-based beauty subscription for black hair, found that black British women spent £168m a year on hair products. Earlier research by L’Oreal suggested that black women in the UK spend six times more on their hair than white women.

“I’d like to see more of a commitment to making sure that things are safer for us, rather than telling us that some of our historical, traditional practices as black women are wrong,” Ifeanyi says.

For some, changing attitudes towards synthetic hair are opening up business opportunities.

Tendai Moyo co-founded Ruka Hair in 2021, which specialises in extensions made from natural hair sourced from South East Asia, as well as biodegradable synthetic hair, made from collagen fibre.

She tells me they have seen a “huge uptick in demand”, especially in the US, where the study was published.

But she sees this as part of a wider trend, which stretches beyond concerns raised by the new research.

“We launched in the pandemic, and people were like, ‘Oh, but salons are closed’, but we were selling out because people don’t stop doing their hair.”

She tells me that black women “got to experiment” more with their hair during lockdown and were more willing to try out new products.

One of the biggest draws of traditional synthetic hair brands, however, is their low price, which has made experimenting with different styles and colours affordable for years.

But newer brands tend to have a higher price point – Tendai tells me that Ruka’s most popular synthetic hair type costs around 2.5 times more than several high street brands.

Ifeanyi says that, as a student, brands like Ruka are out of reach for her: “To purchase the hair is equivalent to the amount it would cost you to get the hairstyle done, so you’re essentially doubling the price.”

Tendai defends this by comparing it to choosing between “fast food and healthy food”.

She adds: “You can actually reuse our products if you’d like, and therefore you’re saving money in that way.”

Back at Josée’s salon, Naomi tells me that braiding is not just an important source of income, but a valued cultural practice that brings her family together.

“I call myself a braid baby because I’ve been braiding since I was 6 years old,” she says, telling me how her family would bond over the skill as her mum proudly looks on.

“It’s an empowering service to offer,” she adds, saying that it’s gratifying to do a job that leaves other women feeling uplifted.

Despite growing concerns about the effect it could have on our health, braiding is a precious heirloom for this family – and for many other black women – passed down from generation to generation.

As Ifeanyi tells me: “The form of extensions might change, but I don’t think the practice of getting braids is going anywhere.”

Researchers have discovered nearly 1.5 million pictures from specialist dating apps – many of which are explicit – being stored online without password protection, leaving them vulnerable to hackers and extortionists.

Anyone with the link was able to view the private photos from five platforms developed by M.A.D Mobile: kink sites BDSM People and Chica, and LGBT apps Pink, Brish and Translove.

These services are used by an estimated 800,000 to 900,000 people.

M.A.D Mobile was first warned about the security flaw on 20 January but didn’t take action until the BBC emailed on Friday.

They have since fixed it but not said how it happened or why they failed to protect the sensitive images.

Ethical hacker Aras Nazarovas from Cybernews first alerted the firm about the security hole after finding the location of the online storage used by the apps by analysing the code that powers the services.

He was shocked that he could access the unencrypted and unprotected photos without any password.

“The first app I investigated was BDSM People, and the first image in the folder was a naked man in his thirties,” he said.

“As soon as I saw it I realised that this folder should not have been public.”

The images were not limited to those from profiles, he said – they included pictures which had been sent privately in messages, and even some which had been removed by moderators.

Mr Nazarovas said the discovery of unprotected sensitive material comes with a significant risk for the platforms’ users.

Malicious hackers could have found the images and extorted individuals.

There is also a risk to those who live in countries hostile to LGBT people.

None of the text content of private messages was found to be stored in this way and the images are not labelled with user names or real names, which would make crafting targeted attacks at users more complex.

In an email M.A.D Mobile said it was grateful to the researcher for uncovering the vulnerability in the apps to prevent a data breach from occurring.

But there’s no guarantee that Mr Nazarovas was the only hacker to have found the image stash.

“We appreciate their work and have already taken the necessary steps to address the issue,” a M.A.D Mobile spokesperson said. “An additional update for the apps will be released on the App Store in the coming days.”

The company did not respond to further questions about where the company is based and why it took months to address the issue after multiple warnings from researchers.

Usually security researchers wait until a vulnerability is fixed before publishing an online report, in case it puts users at further risk of attack.

But Mr Nazarovas and his team decided to raise the alarm on Thursday while the issue was still live as they were concerned the company was not doing anything to fix it.

“It’s always a difficult decision but we think the public need to know to protect themselves,” he said.

In 2015 malicious hackers stole a large amount of customer data about users of Ashley Madison, a dating website for married people who wish to cheat on their spouse.

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 import charges could lead to the temporary shutdown of some US car production, with increased prices passed onto consumers.

But the US president told NBC News on Saturday that he hoped foreign carmakers will raise prices as it meant “people are gonna buy American-made cars – we have plenty”.

On Wednesday, Trump announced new 25% tariffs on cars and car parts entering the US to begin 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 continued: “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.”

Recent polling by BBC’s US partner CBS News suggests that consumers are worried the tariffs will raise prices, with 72% indicating that they believe costs will increase in the short-term. More than half of respondents said the Trump administration is not focusing enough on lowering costs for Americans.

• The US firms backing Trump’s fight over trade
• What are tariffs and why is Trump using them?
• Canada PM weighs response to ‘direct attack’ of Trump car tariffs
• Six things that could get more expensive under new taxes

Asked about this sentiment on Sunday, Trump’s senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing Peter Navarro asked people to put their trust in the US president.

“Trust in Trump,” Navarro told Fox News, adding that previous tariffs on China by the US have led to “prosperity and price stability”.

“The reason why we will not see inflation is because foreigners are going to eat most of it, they have to,” he said, adding that the US “is the biggest market in the world.”

Shawn Fain, the leader of union United Auto Workers, criticised Trump for his labour and immigration policies on CBS Face the Nation – but he said tariffs were a necessary “tool in the toolbox” to return manufacturing to the US.

“There is plenty of opportunity. And I’ve had companies tell us, point blank, that they’re going to have to bring product back here if those tariffs are implemented.”

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

But Trump told NBC that he did not plan to delay the tariffs on cars any longer, 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”.

In another interview with NBC News on Sunday, he threatened to impose secondary tariffs of 25-50% on Russian oil if he feels Vladimir Putin is stalling progress on Ukraine peace talks.

“If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault – which it might not be – but if I think it was Russia’s fault, I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia,” he told the outlet.

“There will be a 25% tariff on oil and other products sold in the United States, secondary tariffs,” Trump said, adding that tariffs on Russia would come within a month without a ceasefire deal.

Trump said Putin knows he is angry, but that he has “a very good relationship” with the Russian president.

He went on to say that “the anger dissipates quickly” but only if Putin “he does the right thing”.

Trump said he will speak to Putin again this week.

Analysts say the upcoming tariffs that Trump has planned could further strain relations with some of the US’s main trading partners.

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. 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”, while France’s president branded the move “a waste of time” and “incoherent”.

Canada has called it a “direct attack”, and China accused Washington of violating international trade rules.

“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.

A small plane flying from Iowa to Minnesota in the US crashed into a suburban home and caused it to catch on fire, officials said on Saturday.

The plane had taken off around 12:20 local time (17:20 BST) before crashing in a residential area of Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

Investigators said it was unclear how many people were onboard the plane, but Brooklyn Park Fire Chief Shawn Conway said there were no survivors among the passengers. No one inside the house was reported killed.

The National Transportation Safety Board said it intended to investigate the cause of the crash, which remains unclear.

The agency is enroute to the scene in Minnesota. It said it expected to be on the ground on Sunday.

“Once on site, the investigators will begin the process of documenting the scene and examining the aircraft. The aircraft will then be recovered to a secure facility for further evaluation,” the agency said in a statement.

Videos on social media show that the home the plane crashed into was engulfed by flames as members of the local fire department attempted to put it out.

Chief Conway said that it had developed into a “fully involved structure fire” by the time the fire department arrived at the scene.

Brooklyn Park, where the plane crashed, is a suburb of Minneapolis, about 11 miles to the north of the city of 82,000 in Minnesota.

The state’s Governor Tim Walz said that his team was “in touch with local officials on the scene in Brooklyn Park and we are monitoring the situation closely”.

“[I am] grateful to the first responders answering the call,” he added.

This incident follows a number of recent plane crashes and near misses that have caught the attention of the US public after President Donald Trump encouraged his cabinet to make cuts to federal agencies.

Hundreds of employees responsible for ensuring air safety were fired, according to the Associated Press.

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 fungus.

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 folding 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 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. If a site is an SSSI foraging is not permitted

A Roman coin that is believed to be the first of its kind found in the UK has sold for nearly £5,000.

Ron Walters, 76, from Kingswinford, West Midlands, found the coin with his metal detector in Wall Heath near Dudley last year.

Mark Hannam, from Fieldings Auctioneers in Stourbridge, said the coin was bought by a collector from Scotland for £4,700 on Friday.

“Even though it’s been in the soil for over 1,900 years, he’s very pleased to add it to his collection,” said Mr Hannam.

The coin, which dates to AD69, is thought to be the only one of its kind to be found in the British Isles.

It portrays the emperor Aulus Vitellius, who ruled for just eight months during a period of civil war known as the “Year of the Four Emperors”.

“To find a coin from AD69 is incredibly rare,” said Mr Hannam. “Most coins we find in this country are from the third and fourth centuries, and we are talking about a time when the gold was at its purest level.”

The farmer on whose land the coin was unearthed will keep half the proceeds from the sale and Mr Walters, as the finder, will get the rest.

“It’s not just the money,” he said before the sale. “It’s the historic value.

“It’s a once in a lifetime find.”

The coin went for considerably less than the only other similar artefact to go under the hammer, which was sold last year in Switzerland for around £50,000.

But Mr Walters told BBC Radio WM he was happy with the sale.

“Anything’s a bonus,” he said. “Normally the things that you find, you put in your collection because they’re not worth selling on.”

He is planning to put the proceeds towards some repairs to his motorhome – and to continue with his metal-detecting hobby.

“It’s surprising what comes up – not just coins, it can be anything.

“Belt buckles, buttons – they’ve all got a story to tell.”

Donald Trump has said he is “very angry” and “pissed off” with Russian President Vladimir Putin after weeks of attempting to negotiate a ceasefire in Ukraine.

In an NBC News interview, the US president said he was angry with Putin for attacking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s credibility, and threatened to impose a 50% tariff on countries buying Russian oil if he did not agree to a ceasefire.

“If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault – which it might not be… I am going to put secondary tariffs… on all oil coming out of Russia,” he said.

The comments mark a shift in Trump’s tone toward Putin and Russia.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

European leaders had worried that Trump was cosying up to Putin as negotiations on a ceasefire in Ukraine continued.

Over the past six weeks, Trump has harangued Zelensky in the Oval Office and demanded numerous concessions from Ukraine’s president. In turn, he has flattered Putin and largely given in to the Russian president’s demands.

This appears to be a departure from that dynamic. It is the first time the US has seriously threatened Russia with consequences for dragging its feet in ceasefire negotiations, which would seem to put the diplomatic ball back in Moscow’s court.

NBC News reported that, in a 10-minute phone interview, Trump said he was very angry and “pissed off” when Putin criticised the credibility of Zelensky’s leadership, although the president has himself called Ukraine’s leader a dictator and demanded that he hold elections.

• Putin floats idea of UN-led Ukrainian government
• Starmer accuses Putin of ‘playing games’ over peace deal
• Zelensky hopes US will ‘stand strong’ on Russia’s demands

“You could say that I was very angry, pissed off, when… Putin started getting into Zelensky’s credibility, because that’s not going in the right location,” Trump said.

“New leadership means you’re not gonna have a deal for a long time,” he added.

When speaking about Putin, Trump said that the Kremlin knew of his anger, but noted that he had “a very good relationship” with the Russian leader and “the anger dissipates quickly… if he does the right thing”.

If Russia does not follow through with a ceasefire, Trump threatened to target its economy further if he thought it was Putin’s fault.

“There will be a 25% tariff on oil and other products sold in the United States, secondary tariffs,” Trump said, noting that the tariffs on Russia would come in a month without a ceasefire deal.

Secondary tariffs are sanctions on countries that do business with another country. They could constitute up to 50% on goods entering the US from countries still buying oil from Russia. The biggest such buyers by a long margin are China and India.

Zelensky wrote on social media following the interview that “Russia continues looking for excuses to drag this war out even further”.

He said that “Putin is playing the same game he has since 2014”, when Russia unilaterally annexed the Crimean peninsula.

“This is dangerous for everyone – and there should be an appropriate response from the United States, Europe, and all our global partners who seek peace.”

Trump said he would speak to Putin later in the week.

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbour, Ukraine, in February 2022. It currently controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory.

Over 100,000 people fighting for Russia’s military have now died as the war in Ukraine enters the fourth year, according to data analysed by BBC Russian, independent media group Mediazona and volunteers who have been counting deaths since February 2022.

Ukraine last updated its casualty figures in December 2024, when President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged 43,000 Ukrainian deaths among soldiers and officers. Western analysts believe this figure to be an under-estimate.

Also in the NBC interview on Sunday, Trump said he was “not joking” when he said he would not rule out seeking a third term in the White House, despite it being prohibited by the US Constitution.

“A lot of people want me to do it,” Trump said. “But, I mean, I basically tell them we have a long way to go.”

During the call with NBC, he also again threatened to bomb Iran if it did not agree to a nuclear deal. Trump earlier this month sent a letter to the regime demanding negotiations.

“It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before,” he said, noting he would also impose secondary tariffs.

On Sunday, Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian said the country would not enter into direct negotiations with Washington concerning their nuclear programme, but indirect talks were possible.

“We don’t avoid talks; it’s the breach of promises that has caused issues for us so far,” he said. “They must prove that they can build trust.”

Why won’t India buy even a single bushel of American corn?

That’s the question US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick raised recently while criticising India’s trade policies, taking a swipe at its market restrictions.

In another interview, Lutnick accused India of blocking US farmers and urged it to open its agricultural market – suggesting quotas or limits as a possible approach.

Agriculture is a key battleground in US President Donald Trump’s escalating trade war, with tit-for-tat or reciprocal tariffs set to kick in on 2 April.

Tariffs are taxes charged on goods imported from other countries.Trump has repeatedly branded India a “tariff king” and a “big abuser” of trade ties.

For years, Washington has pushed for greater access to India’s farm sector, seeing it as a major untapped market. But India has fiercely protected it, citing food security, livelihoods and interests of millions of small farmers.

To be sure, India’s transformation from a food-deficient nation to a food-surplus powerhouse is one of its biggest success stories.

In the 1950s and ’60s, the country relied on food aid to feed its population, but a series of agricultural breakthroughs changed that. India became self-sufficient in staples, and became the world’s largest milk producer. Rapid growth in horticulture, poultry and aquaculture expanded its food basket.

Today, India is not just feeding its 1.4 billion people but, as the world’s eighth-largest agri-produce exporter, also shipping grains, fruits and dairy worldwide.

Yet, despite such major gains, Indian agriculture still lags in productivity, infrastructure and market access. Global price volatility and climate change add to the challenge. Crop yields lag far behind the global best. Small landholdings worsen the problem – Indian farmers work with less than a hectare on average, while their American counterparts had over 46 hectares in 2020.

No surprise then that productivity remains low – agriculture employs nearly half of India’s workforce but accounts for just 15% of GDP. In comparison, less than 2% of the US population depends on farming. With limited manufacturing jobs, more people are stuck in low-paying farm work, an unusual trend for a developing country.

This structural imbalance also shapes India’s trade policies. Despite its farm surplus, India keeps tariffs high to shield its farmers from cheap imports. It maintains moderate to high tariffs – ranging from zero to 150% – on farm imports.

The weighted average tariff – the average duty rate per imported product – in India on US farm products is 37.7%, compared to 5.3% on Indian goods in the US, according to the Delhi-based think tank Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI).

Bilateral farm trade between India and the US is modest, at just $8bn (£6.2bn).

India mainly exports rice, shrimp, honey, vegetable extracts, castor oil and black pepper, while the US sends almonds, walnuts, pistachios, apples and lentils.

But as the two countries work on a trade deal, experts say Washington now wants to push “big-ticket” farm exports – wheat, cotton, corn and maize – to narrow its $45bn trade deficit with India.

“They’re not looking to export berries and stuff this time. The game is much bigger,” says Biswajit Dhar, a trade expert from the Delhi-based Council for Social Development think tank.

Pushing India to lower farm tariffs, cut price support and open up to genetically modified (GM) crops and dairy ignores the fundamental asymmetry in global agriculture, experts argue.

The US, for instance, heavily subsidises its agriculture and protects farmers through crop insurance.

“In some cases,” says Ajay Srivastava of GTRI, “US subsidies exceed 100% of production costs, creating an uneven playing field that could devastate India’s smallholder farmers.”

Farming is India’s backbone, supporting over 700 million people, nearly half the country’s population.

“The key thing to remember is that agriculture in the two countries is entirely different,” says Abhijit Das, former head of the Centre for WTO Studies at the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade.

“The US has commercial agriculture, while India relies on intensive, subsistence farming. It’s a question of the livelihoods of millions of Indians versus the interests of US agribusiness.”

But India’s agricultural challenges aren’t just external. Mr Dhar says much of the sector’s struggles are “its own doing”. Farming has long been underfunded, receiving less than 6% of India’s total investment – funds meant for infrastructure, machinery and other long-term assets crucial for growth.

To protect millions of livelihoods, the government shields key crops like wheat, rice and dairy with import duties and price support. “But even that doesn’t inspire confidence,” he says.

Four years ago, tens of thousands of farmers held protests demanding better prices and legal guarantees of minimum government support-price for staples, mainly wheat and rice.

“Even relatively well-off farmers selling surpluses don’t see a turnaround anytime soon. And if they feel that way, imagine the plight of subsistence farmers,” says Mr Dhar.

Beyond domestic discontent, trade negotiations add another layer of complexity.

Mr Das says the real challenge for India will be how “to have an agreement with the US that takes into account US export interest in agriculture while balancing India’s interests in the farm sector”.

So what’s the way forward?

“India must not yield to US pressure to open its agriculture sector,” says Mr Srivastava. He warns that doing so would disrupt millions of livelihoods, threaten food security and flood local markets with cheap imports.

“India must prioritise its national interest and protect its rural economy. Trade cooperation should not come at the cost of our farmers, food sovereignty or policy autonomy.”

In the long run, experts say India must modernise its agriculture, making farming more remunerative, and become more competitive to boost exports. Unupom Kausik of agri-business Olam estimates that with top global yields, India could generate a surplus of 200 million metric tonnes of paddy – enough to supply global trade and combat hunger.

“In a way, Trump is holding up a mirror to us. We’ve done little to invest in agriculture’s productive capacity,” says Mr Dhar. “For now, buying time is the best strategy – maybe offering the US cheaper imports of industrial goods as a trade-off.”

But for the best outcome, he says, India will have to “play hardball. Basically, tell the US – we’re open to negotiations on other fronts, but don’t destabilise our agriculture”.

Clearly India’s challenge is to negotiate from a position of strength – offering just enough to keep Washington at the table while safeguarding its rural backbone. After all, in global trade as in farming, timing and patience often yield the best harvest. The jury is out on whether Trump is willing to wait.

Recruitment agents who scam foreign nationals applying to work in the UK care sector have been exposed by BBC secret filming.

One of the rogue agents is a Nigerian doctor who has worked for the NHS in the field of psychiatry.

The Home Office has acknowledged the system is open to abuse, but the BBC World Service’s investigation shows the apparent ease with which these agents can scam people, avoid detection, and continue to profit.

Our secret filming reveals agents’ tactics, including:

• Illegally selling jobs in UK care companies
• Devising fake payroll schemes to conceal that some jobs do not exist
• Shifting from care to other sectors, like construction, that also face staff shortages

Reports of immigration scams have increased since a government visa scheme – originally designed to let foreign medical professionals work in the UK – was broadened in 2022 to include care workers.

To apply for the visa, candidates must first obtain a “Certificate of Sponsorship” (CoS) from a UK employer who is licensed by the Home Office. It is the need for CoS documents that is being exploited by rogue relocation agents.

“The scale of exploitation under the Health and Care Work visa is significant,” says Dora-Olivia Vicol, CEO of Work Rights Centre, a charity that helps migrants and disadvantaged people in the UK access employment justice.

“I think it has turned into a national crisis.”

She says there is “systemic risk inherent” in the sponsorship system, because it “puts the employer in a position of incredible power” and has “enabled this predatory market of middlemen to mushroom”.

The BBC sent two undercover journalists to approach relocation agents working in the UK.

One met Dr Kelvin Alaneme, a Nigerian doctor and founder of the agency, CareerEdu, based in Harlow, Essex.

His website states his business is a “launchpad for global opportunities catering to young Africans”, claiming to have 9,800 “happy clients”.

Believing the BBC undercover journalist was well connected in the UK care sector, Dr Alaneme tried to recruit her to become an agent for his business, saying it would be very lucrative.

“Just get me care homes. I can make you a millionaire,” he said.

As a potential business partner, our journalist was then given unprecedented insight into how immigration scams by agents like Dr Alaneme actually work. Dr Alaneme said he would pay £2,000 ($2,600) for each care home vacancy she was able to procure, and offered £500 ($650) commission on top.

He then said he would sell the vacancies to candidates back in Nigeria.

Charging candidates for a job is illegal in the UK.

“They [the candidates] are not supposed to be paying because it’s free. It should be free,” he said, lowering his voice.

“They are paying because they know it’s most likely the only way.”

The BBC began investigating him following a series of online complaints about his relocation services.

Praise – from south-east Nigeria and in his mid 30s – was one of those who complained, claiming he paid Dr Alaneme more than £10,000 ($13,000) for a job in the UK. He says he was told he was going to be working with a care company called Efficiency for Care, based in Clacton-on-Sea. It was only when he arrived that he realised the job didn’t exist.

“If I had known there was no job, I would have not come here,” he says. “At least back home in Nigeria, if you go broke, I can find my sister or my parents and go and eat free food. It’s not the same here. You will go hungry.”

Praise says he messaged Efficiency for Care and Dr Alaneme for months, asking when he could start working. Despite promises of assistance from Dr Alaneme, the job never materialised. Almost a year later, he found a position with another care provider willing to sponsor him to remain in the UK.

Our investigation found that Efficiency for Care employed – on average – 16 people in 2022, and 152 in 2023. Yet a letter sent from the Home Office to the company dated May 2023 – and seen by the BBC – showed it had issued 1,234 Certificates of Sponsorship to foreign workers between March 2022 and May 2023.

Efficiency for Care’s sponsorship licence was revoked in July 2023. The care company can no longer recruit from abroad, but continues to operate.

It told the BBC it strongly refutes the allegation it colluded with Dr Alaneme. It said it believed it lawfully recruited staff from Nigeria and other countries. It has challenged the Home Office’s revocation of its sponsorship licence, it said, and the matter is now in court.

• Outside of the UK – watch on YouTube

In another secretly filmed meeting, Dr Alaneme shared an even more sophisticated scam involving sponsorship documents for jobs that did not exist.

He said the “advantage” of having a CoS that is unconnected to a job “is that you can choose any city you want”.

“You can go to Glasgow. You can stay in London. You can live anywhere,” he told us.

This is not true. If a migrant arrives in the UK on a Health and Care Work visa and does not work in the role they have been assigned, their visa could be cancelled and they risk being deported.

In the secret filming, Dr Alaneme also described how to set up a fake payroll system to mask the fact the jobs are not real.

“That [a money trail] is what the government needs to see,” he said.

Dr Alaneme told the BBC he strenuously denied services offered by CareerEdu were a scam or that it acted as a recruitment agency or provided jobs for cash. He said his company only offered legitimate services, adding that the money Praise gave him was passed on to a recruitment agent for Praise’s transport, accommodation and training. He said he offered to help Praise find another employer free of charge.

The BBC also carried out undercover filming with another UK-based recruitment agent, Nana Akwasi Agyemang-Prempeh, after several people told the BBC they had collectively paid tens of thousands of pounds for care worker positions for their friends and family that, it transpired, did not exist.

They said some of the Certificates of Sponsorship Mr Agyemang-Prempeh gave them had turned out to be fakes – replicas of real CoS issued by care companies.

We discovered Mr Agyemang-Prempeh had then begun offering CoS for UK jobs in construction – another industry that allows employers to recruit foreign workers. He was able to set up his own construction company and obtain a sponsorship licence from the Home Office.

Our journalist, posing as a UK-based Ugandan businessman wanting to bring Ugandan construction workers over to join him, asked Mr Agyemang-Prempeh if this was possible.

He replied it was – for the price of £42,000 ($54,000) for three people.

Mr Agyemang-Prempeh told us he had moved into construction because rules are being “tightened” in the care sector – and claimed agents were eyeing other industries.

“People are now diverting to IT,” Mr Agyemang-Prempeh told the undercover journalist.

More than 470 licences in the UK care sector were revoked by the government between July 2022 and December 2024. Those licensed sponsors were responsible for the recruitment of more than 39,000 medical professionals and care workers from October 2020.

Mr Agyemang-Prempeh later asked for a downpayment for the Certificates of Sponsorship, which the BBC did not make.

The Home Office has now revoked his sponsorship licence. Mr Agyemang-Prempeh’s defence, when challenged by the BBC, was that he had himself been duped by other agents and did not realise he was selling fake CoS documents.

In a statement to the BBC, the Home Office said it has “robust new action against shameless employers who abuse the visa system” and will “ban businesses who flout UK employment laws from sponsoring overseas workers”.

BBC investigations have previously uncovered similar visa scams targeting people in Kerala, India, and international students living in the UK who want to work in the care sector.

In November 2024, the government announced a clampdown on “rogue” employers hiring workers from overseas. Additionally, from 9 April, care providers in England will be required to prioritise recruiting international care workers already in the UK before recruiting from overseas.

Republican calls to investigate a group chat in which White House national security officials shared sensitive military information have intensified, with Oklahoma Senator James Lankford saying an inquiry would be “entirely appropriate”.

Lankford stopped short of calling on officials to resign when speaking to CNN on Sunday, but joined other Republicans who have broken with US President Donald Trump over the chat.

The Trump administration has downplayed the unclassified Signal messages, in which Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and others shared potentially classified details about an upcoming attack on Yemen.

Many Democrats have demanded that Hegseth and other officials resign over the incident.

Lankford joins fellow Republican and Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker, who penned a letter earlier in the week requesting the inspector general of the US Department of Defense look into the incident.

The letter said the discussion of sensitive military information on Signal, an online messaging application, with a journalist present in the chat “raises questions as to the use of unclassified networks to discuss sensitive and classified information”.

National Security Advisor Mike Waltz appears to have accidentally added The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to the chat before the officials discussed the upcoming strikes.

On Sunday, Republican senator Lankford said an independent investigation was warranted to answer lingering questions about the chat.

“One is obviously: How did a reporter get into this thread in the conversation?” Lankford asked.

“And the second part of the conversation is, when individuals from the administration are not sitting at their desk in a classified setting on a classified computer, how do they communicate to each other?”

But Lankford said calls for Hegseth to resign over the issue were “overkill”.

“I think he just joined an encrypted app,” he said. “I don’t see it as much of an issue because, again, they all believed that this was a closed circle of conversation.”

Lankford added: “I don’t see this as an issue of leadership.”

Lankford and Wicker are among few Republican lawmakers who have called for an investigation into the chat.

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• Four lingering questions about the chat
• The Atlantic editor speaks to the BBC about Signal chat

The Atlantic first reported details of the group chat after Mr Goldberg was added and followed the thread as top Trump administration officials discussed upcoming military strikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The magazine on Wednesday published the entire text thread, which showed the detailed and potentially classified rundown for a March air raids.

In the wake of the controversy, Waltz said he took full responsibility for the group chat. “I built the group,” he told Fox News on Tuesday, adding Mr Goldberg’s access was “embarrassing”.

Waltz was unable to explain how Mr Goldberg came to be on the chat, but said another, unnamed contact of his was supposed to be there in Mr Goldberg’s place.

“I can tell you for 100% I don’t know this guy,” Waltz said.

On Sunday, Mr Goldberg told NBC that Waltz had been “telling everyone that he’s never met me or spoken to me – that’s simply not true”.

Trump called the incident a “glitch” and said that it had “no impact at all” operationally, adding that the military strike against the Houthis was a success.

But former national security officials have raised concerns that allowing this to slide could pose major risks and encourage American adversaries.

Sue Gordon, a former Trump administration deputy director of national intelligence, told the BBC’s US partner CBS News that she was “glad the operation was successful. Now we need to deal with the fact that this should not have happened”.

“I don’t think we should rest on the fact that nothing bad happened this time,” she said.

“We don’t know whether that communications path has been penetrated. So we don’t know whether the state actors that have lots of resources are just sitting and working now.”

Those concerns have led many Democrats to call for greater accountability, with Mark Warner, the vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, saying that if a military officer or CIA agent had treated classified information in a similar manner they “would be fired – end of story”.

“I believe Secretary Hegseth should resign or be fired,” he told CBS News on Sunday. “I think Mike Waltz should resign or be fired. If no action is taken, what message does that send to the workforce?”

Trump had told NBC News a day before that he would not fire anyone involved in the group chat, and that he still had confidence in Waltz.

“I don’t fire people because of fake news and because of witch hunts,” he said.

Along with Waltz and Hegseth, the chat also included Vice-President JD Vance, director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA director John Ratcliffe, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and other senior leaders.

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 import charges could lead to the temporary shutdown of some US car production, with increased prices passed onto consumers.

But the US president told NBC News on Saturday that he hoped foreign carmakers will raise prices as it meant “people are gonna buy American-made cars – we have plenty”.

On Wednesday, Trump announced new 25% tariffs on cars and car parts entering the US to begin 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 continued: “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.”

Recent polling by BBC’s US partner CBS News suggests that consumers are worried the tariffs will raise prices, with 72% indicating that they believe costs will increase in the short-term. More than half of respondents said the Trump administration is not focusing enough on lowering costs for Americans.

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Asked about this sentiment on Sunday, Trump’s senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing Peter Navarro asked people to put their trust in the US president.

“Trust in Trump,” Navarro told Fox News, adding that previous tariffs on China by the US have led to “prosperity and price stability”.

“The reason why we will not see inflation is because foreigners are going to eat most of it, they have to,” he said, adding that the US “is the biggest market in the world.”

Shawn Fain, the leader of union United Auto Workers, criticised Trump for his labour and immigration policies on CBS Face the Nation – but he said tariffs were a necessary “tool in the toolbox” to return manufacturing to the US.

“There is plenty of opportunity. And I’ve had companies tell us, point blank, that they’re going to have to bring product back here if those tariffs are implemented.”

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

But Trump told NBC that he did not plan to delay the tariffs on cars any longer, 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”.

In another interview with NBC News on Sunday, he threatened to impose secondary tariffs of 25-50% on Russian oil if he feels Vladimir Putin is stalling progress on Ukraine peace talks.

“If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault – which it might not be – but if I think it was Russia’s fault, I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia,” he told the outlet.

“There will be a 25% tariff on oil and other products sold in the United States, secondary tariffs,” Trump said, adding that tariffs on Russia would come within a month without a ceasefire deal.

Trump said Putin knows he is angry, but that he has “a very good relationship” with the Russian president.

He went on to say that “the anger dissipates quickly” but only if Putin “he does the right thing”.

Trump said he will speak to Putin again this week.

Analysts say the upcoming tariffs that Trump has planned could further strain relations with some of the US’s main trading partners.

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. 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”, while France’s president branded the move “a waste of time” and “incoherent”.

Canada has called it a “direct attack”, and China accused Washington of violating international trade rules.

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.

• Follow updates on this story

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 1,200km 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.

Richard Chamberlain, the actor best known for his role in the 1960s medical drama Dr Kildare and leading role in Shogun, has died aged 90, his publicist has confirmed to the BBC.

Chamberlain earned the title “king of the mini-series” for his leading roles in Shogun and The Thorn Birds.

He died late on Saturday night local time (10:15 GMT Sunday) in Waimanalo, Hawaii, after suffering complications from a stroke, his publicist Harlan Boll confirmed – just hours before he would have turned 91.

Martin Rabbett, Chamberlain’s longtime partner, called him an “amazing and loving soul” in a statement.

• The Heartthrob king of the TV mini-series

He said: “Our beloved Richard is with the angels now. He is free and soaring to those loved ones before us.”

Rabbett added: “Love never dies. And our love is under his wings, lifting him to his next great adventure.”

Chamberlain’s big break came in 1961, when he became a household name as Dr James Kildare in Dr Kildare.

The show, based on a popular 1930s and 40s film series, attracted millions of viewers, turning Chamberlain into a beloved leading man and a teen idol.

The popularity Dr Kildare earnt Chamberlain meant that, for three consecutive years between 1963 and 1965, he was named the most popular male star by Photoplay magazine.

He went on to become the king of the 1980s TV mini-series, playing a western prisoner in Shogun and a catholic priest tempted by love in The Thorn Birds.

The latter won 60% of the US television audience and earned 16 Emmy nominations.

Though widely recognised as a romantic leading man, Chamberlain’s private life remained largely a mystery until later in his life.

He did not publicly address his sexuality until the release of his memoir, Shattered Love, in 2003, where he revealed that he was gay.

Throughout his 30-year relationship with actor-director Rabbett, they had kept their private life secret.

In his memoir, he recalled escorting glamorous actresses to premieres, explaining that he had been “desperately afraid” his sexuality would derail his career.

“I used to get chased by hot teenage girls,” he once told TV Guide. “I got 12,000 fan letters a week. And I felt somewhat besieged.”

Rabbett and Chamberlain separated in 2010 but remained close.

Born on 31 March 1934 in Beverly Hills, California, Chamberlain grew up on what he called “the wrong side of Wilshire Boulevard” – far from the wealth of Hollywood’s star-studded district.

The younger of two boys, his father, Charles, was a salesman who struggled with alcoholism and became a prominent figure in Alcoholics Anonymous, travelling the world to speak at conventions. His mother, Elsa, was a homemaker.

He initially studied painting at Pomona College, but a student theatre performance inspired him to pursue acting.

Interest from a Hollywood scout was put on hold as he was drafted into the US Army, where he rose to the rank of sergeant while stationed in South Korea.

Upon returning to California, Chamberlain took acting classes, landing several small TV roles before his breakout role as Dr Kildare.

Years later, Chamberlain recounted the psychological abuse he endured during his childhood.

He described how his father’s “lethal sneer” and emotionally abusive behaviour made him feel as if he were being “slashed with a machete”.

Chamberlain also spoke about the relief he experienced in finally not having to hide his sexuality later in life.

Four more people have been pulled from rubble nearly 60 hours after a powerful 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck Myanmar on Friday, killing at least 1,700 people in the South East Asian country.

The survivors were rescued from a collapsed school building in the northern Sagaing region, from which a body was also recovered, Myanmar’s fire service said.

Hundreds of people remain missing, with search and rescue efforts under way in both Myanmar and neighbouring Thailand.

The death toll has risen to 18 people in the Thai capital, Bangkok, where 76 workers are still missing following the collapse of a high-rise building that had been under construction.

Friday’s earthquake occurred near Myanmar’s second-largest city Mandalay, along the Sagaing fault – with tremors affecting several other nations.

Although rescue efforts have been under way since Friday, and international aid is starting to reach Myanamar, there have been delays in reaching the worst-hit areas, leaving locals to attempt to dig survivors out by hand.

On Saturday night, an elderly woman was rescued in Myanmar’s capital, Nay Pyi Taw, after being trapped for 36 hours under the rubble of a hospital.

Footage showed her being carried on a stretcher to a waiting ambulance, surrounded by emergency workers.

Twenty-nine people were also rescued from a collapsed apartment block in Mandalay, the local fire authority said on Sunday.

The earthquake struck around 12:50 local time (06:20 GMT) on Friday, just 10km (6.2 miles) from the surface – meaning its effects at ground level were felt more strongly than a deeper quake.

A second earthquake struck 12 minutes later, with a magnitude of 6.4 and an epicentre 18km (11 miles) south of Sagaing, the regional capital, which sits near Mandalay.

Aftershocks have continued since. On Sunday a magnitude-5.1 tremor was recorded north-west of Mandalay.

In Bangkok, where soft soil made the shaking more intense, an unfinished tower block collapsed, burying many who had been working at the site.

Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said on Sunday that rescuers had detected signs of life under the rubble at the site, but cautioned that they were weak.

“Anomalies” have been found in the steel used in the building’s construction, and samples have been collected for testing, Thailand’s Industry Minister Akanat Promphan told the media on Sunday.

Families have been anxiously waiting for updates. One woman in Thailand, whose husband was working on the tower when it collapsed, told the BBC she would wait “for as long as it takes”.

International rescue teams have been joining the disaster effort, with several countries sending assistance to Myanmar. These include:

• China sending an 82-person rescue team
• A 51-strong team arriving from Hong Kong on Sunday
• India sending an aid flight carrying a rescue team and emergency supplies
• Malaysia’s foreign ministry saying it would send a 50-person team to support disaster relief operations
• The Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Ireland, South Korea, Russia, New Zealand and the US are also sending rescue teams
• UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy pledging £10m in aid to help “those most in need”

Meanwhile, Myanmar’s ruling military junta has continued bombing parts of the civil war-gripped country. The UN described the attacks as “completely outrageous and unacceptable”.

Pro-democracy rebel groups that are fighting to remove the military from power have reported aerial bombings in the Chaung-U township in the Sagaing region.

The military regime seized power in a coup in 2021, but it no longer controls many parts of the country, which are divided among rebel groups.

The National Unity Government, which represents the ousted civilian administration, said 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.

People in Myanmar could face further displacement when the monsoon season arrives.

Last year there was “severe flooding which damaged homes [and] sanitation facilities”, Lauren Ellery, of the International Rescue Committee, told BBC Breakfast.

“We are coming into monsoon season again in May, with rain starting in April,” she said.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she is willing to walk into the “lion’s den” to sway US officials against Canadian tariffs – wooing the US president with meetings at Mar-a-Lago and cosying up with Trump-friendly media.

While many of Canada’s leaders – from Prime Minister Mark Carney to Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford – are talking tough on Donald Trump, Smith has been taking a notably softer approach.

But this tack has led to controversy – not only with her opponents, but also in her home province of Alberta, and with politicians who otherwise share her political leanings.

It has also put federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre on the defensive in the early days of the country’s short federal electoral race. Canadians are scheduled to vote on 28 April.

In January, while Trump was still president-elect, Smith had what she called a “friendly and constructive conversation” with him at Mar-a-Lago about the two countries’ shared energy relationship.

But an early March interview with right-wing US news outlet Breitbart made her friendliness with US Republican circles a liability for Poilievre and the federal Conservatives.

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Smith, a former talk radio host and newspaper columnist, was asked by Breitbart News Washington bureau chief Matthew Boyle about the Poilievre-Trump relationship. In response, Smith said that the “unjust and unfair” tariffs threatened by Trump “actually caused an increase in the support for the Liberals”.

“And so that’s what I fear, is that the longer this dispute goes on, politicians posture, and it seems to be benefiting the Liberals right now,” she said.

“So I would hope that we could put things on pause is what I’ve told administration officials. Let’s just put things on pause so we can get through an election.”

Smith also told Breitbart that Poilievre brought a perspective that “would be very much in sync, I think, with the new direction in America”, adding that a Conservative government in Canada would help smooth relations with the US.

The interview resurfaced this week as federal leaders were busy campaigning ahead of April’s election, and Smith was quickly criticised by Poilievre’s political opponents. New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jagmeet Singh called the interview “shameful” and questioned Smith’s loyalty to Canada.

The Liberals, meanwhile, have used it as political ammunition to bolster their attack line that Trump and Poilievre are too similar for Canadians who want to stand up to the US.

Her comments were construed by some as asking Trump to delay tariffs so that a Conservative could win.

Some on social media even called Smith a “traitor” and accused her of pushing Trump to interfere with Canada’s elections – a point that she has strongly rebuffed.

“Interference is one thing,” Smith told the Alberta legislature on Monday. “Asking the US to refrain from [tariffs] is actually the opposite. I do not want to see anyone interfere in our elections.”

Poilievre, for his part, has attempted to dodge these attacks on the campaign trail. Asked about Smith’s remarks, he said: “People are free to make their own comments. I speak for myself.”

Later in the week, Smith found herself in more hot water after she refused calls to cancel a trip to Florida on Thursday, where she appeared at a PragerU fundraising event alongside Ben Shapiro, a right-wing pundit.

The two reportedly discussed how to help Canada elect “solid allies” to the Trump administration, according to Canada’s left-leaning media outlet the National Observer, which obtained audio of the event.

Smith’s chief of staff Rob Anderson has defended the trip, saying the premier is “going into the lion’s den to try and convince US decision makers to cancel or even delay tariffs for as long as possible,” adding that her approach is “as Albertan and Canadian as it gets”.

For political watchers in Alberta, Smith’s appearance on Breitbart and at PragerU is an extension of her friendlier approach to diplomacy with the US.

Smith has often argued that trade with the US is “mutually beneficial” for both economies.

She noted that her province sends most of its oil and gas to the US, and has criticised the federal Liberal government for environmental policies that she argues have blocked Alberta’s oil to other markets.

She has also refused to use oil as a bargaining chip to fight back against US tariffs – breaking from the position held by most other provincial leaders. Ford, by contrast, was willing to slap an export tariff on Ontario’s energy in retaliation.

Jared Wesley, a professor of political science at the University of Alberta and expert on politics in Western Canada, said that many Albertans were open to Smith’s unconventional approach if it meant securing gains for the province and for Canada.

But her recent comments on Breitbart have raised questions on whether “there were partisan considerations that were being thrown into the mix”, he said.

“A lot of Albertans are just trying to make sense of the purpose of these visits (to the US), because they are quite frequent,” Prof Wesley told the BBC.

This has created a political dilemma for Poilievre, he noted, who is now lagging in national polls behind Carney and the Liberals – a dramatic reversal after his party had been ahead since mid-2023.

“He’s been trying to distance himself from the Republican Trump wing of the global conservative movement,” Prof Wesley said. “And here is Danielle Smith saying that he’s part and parcel of it.”

Not everyone, however, opposes the premier’s approach. Barry Cooper, a longtime conservative political scientist in Alberta, noted that Smith’s approval rating – while one of the lowest among Canada’s premiers – has not budged at around 46%.

He added that Smith acknowledged Alberta’s interests differ from the rest of the country, and that she was focused on ensuring economic prosperity for the province by maintaining good ties with the US and being present at any negotiation tables.

“Whatever they say [in eastern Canada] makes absolutely no difference to the support that the premier is going to get, because she is standing up for this province,” Dr Cooper told the BBC. “And quite frankly, I don’t think she really cares too much.”

It is unclear whether Trump has been swayed at all by Smith’s lobbying, though the premier took credit on Friday for shifting Shapiro’s opinion on tariffs, after he spoke out against them.

The US president did reduce his threatened tariffs on Canadian energy products from 25% to 10%, but Canadian politicians – including Smith – have said that the better outcome is no tariffs at all.

Trump’s tone towards Canada has turned positive in recent days following his first phone call with Liberal leader and Prime Minister Carney. But it remains to be seen whether this will translate into any reprieve.

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.”

• Disney holds small-scale Snow White premiere amid controversy

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.”