About 15 children’s backpacks lie torn apart in the rubble – pink, blue and orange bags with books spilling out of them.

Spiderman toys and letters of the alphabet are scattered among broken chairs, tables and garden slides at the remains of this preschool destroyed by the huge earthquake that hit Myanmar on Friday.

It is in the town of Kyaukse, about 40km (25 miles) south of Mandalay, one of the areas hit hardest by the 7.7 magnitude quake that killed at least 2,000 people.

Kywe Nyein, 71, weeps as he explains that his family are preparing to hold the funeral of his five-year-old granddaughter, Thet Hter San.

He says her mother was having lunch when the devastating earthquake began. She ran to the school, but the building had collapsed completely.

The little girl’s body was found about three hours later. “Fortunately, we got our beloved’s body intact, in one piece,” he says.

Locals say there were about 70 children, aged between two and seven, at the school on Friday, learning happily. But now there is little left except a pile of bricks, concrete and iron rods.

The school says 12 children and a teacher died, but locals believe the number is at least 40 – that is how many were in the downstairs section that collapsed.

Residents and parents are distraught. People say the whole town came to help with the rescue work and several bodies were retrieved on Friday. They describe mothers crying and calling out the names of their children long into the night.

Now, three days later, the site is quiet. People look at me with grief etched on their faces.

Aid groups are warning of a worsening humanitarian crisis in Myanmar, with hospitals damaged and overwhelmed, though the full scale of devastation is still emerging.

Before we arrived in Kyaukse, we had been in the capital, Nay Pyi Taw.

The worst-hit area we saw there was a building that had been residential quarters for civil servants. The whole ground floor had collapsed, leaving the three upper floors still standing on top of it.

There were traces of blood in the rubble. The intense stench suggested many people had died there, but there was no sign of rescue work.

A group of policemen were loading furniture and household goods on to trucks, and appeared to be trying to salvage what was still useable.

The police officer in charge would not give us an interview, though we were allowed to film for a while.

We could see people mourning and desolate, but they did not want to speak to the media, fearing reprisals from the military government.

We were left with so many questions. How many people were under the rubble? Could any of them still be alive? Why was there no rescue work, even to retrieve the bodies of the dead?

Just 10 minutes’ drive away, we had visited the capital’s largest hospital – known here as the “1,000-bed hospital”.

The roof of the emergency room had collapsed. At the entrance, a sign saying “Emergency Department” in English lay on the ground.

There were six military medical trucks and several tents outside, where patients evacuated from the hospital were being cared for.

The tents were being sprayed with water to give those inside some relief from the intense heat.

It looked like there were about 200 injured people there, some with bloodied heads, others with broken limbs.

We saw an official angrily reprimanding staff about other colleagues who had not turned up to work during the emergency.

I realised the man was the minister for health, Dr Thet Khaing Win, and approached him for an interview but he curtly rejected my request.

On the route into the city, people sat clustered under trees on the central reservation of the highway, trying to get some relief from the hot sun.

It is the hottest time of year – it must have been close to 40C – but they were afraid to be inside buildings because of the continuing aftershocks.

We had set out on our journey to the earthquake zone at 4am on Sunday morning from Yangon, about 600 km (370 miles) south of Mandalay. The road was pitch black, with no street lights.

After more than three hours’ driving, we saw a team of about 20 rescue workers in orange uniforms, with logos on their vests showing they had come from Hong Kong. We started to find cracks in the roads as we drove north.

The route normally has several checkpoints, but we had travelled for 185km (115 miles) before we saw one. A lone police officer told us the road ahead was closed because of a broken bridge, and showed us a diversion.

We had hoped to reach Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, by Sunday night.

But the diversion, and problems with our car in the heat, made that impossible.

A day later, we have finally reached the city. It is in complete darkness, with no street lights on and homes without power or running water.

We are anxious about what we will find here when morning comes.

“Incredible.” That was the single word uttered under her breath by Marine Le Pen as she stormed out of a Paris courtroom on Monday morning.

She left the court early – just before hearing that she was barred from running for office for five years after being found guilty of embezzlement of EU funds – almost certainly ruling her out from standing in the 2027 French presidential election.

Without even waiting for the judge to pronounce the full details of the sentence, the head of the National Rally knew that her political goose was cooked.

There would be no reprieve pending appeal. The bar on running for office was real and immediate.

A four-year prison sentence, of which two will be suspended, will be on hold pending appeal.

But her political plans are dead.

Le Pen’s incredulity can be better excused, perhaps, in the context of the moment.

A consensus had almost established itself across France’s political world that this ultimate sanction by the court could not, would not – in the end – take place.

It was not just Le Pen’s followers who said it. Her enemies agreed, from Jean-Luc Melenchon on the far left to Prime Minister François Bayrou in the centre and Justice Minister Gérard Darmanin on the right.

But they were all wrong. The judge said that the law was the law.

The law had in fact recently been toughened – by the very politicians who were now complaining about its application – to make the penalty for misuse of public funds very severe indeed. Well, said the judge in so many words, now let politicians suck up their own medicine.

Maybe Marine Le Pen was naive in not predicting this outcome. It certainly appears as if her National Rally party was singularly unprepared for it.

So as they met in an emergency session after the verdict, party leaders were in a dilemma.

Do they continue as if there is still a chance Marine Le Pen will run in 2027?

In theory there is still a (small) possibility. She has launched an appeal. The appeal could be accelerated and take place at the end of this year or early 2026. A verdict would follow in the spring.

A different decision at the appeal hearing could lessen the period of ineligibility, or remove it altogether – in which case she could still run. But the chances must be regarded as slim.

Or, should they proceed with plan B – that is to say, with naming party president Jordan Bardella as de facto the man who will run in Marine Le Pen’s place?

That might be a more realistic assessment of what lies ahead. But to turn to Bardella too quickly would be unseemly. And anyway, not everyone in the party is a fan.

By the evening the choice had been made: in a TV appearance Marine Le Pen came out fighting, saying she had no plans to retreat from the political scene.

Denouncing what she called a “political” decision by the judge and a “violation of the state of law”, she called for a swift appeal trial, so that her name could be cleared – or at least the ineligibility lifted – in time for the 2027 vote.

“There are millions of French people who believe in me. For 30 years I have been fighting against injustice. It is what I shall continue to do right to the end,” she said.

Fighting words – but in reality the future looks very unclear. And there are many unanswered questions.

What, for example, will the effect of the court decision be on the RN vote?

In the short term we can expect an outcry, and a boost to the party’s support. Why? Because what has happened fits so neatly into the RN narrative that the populist right is a victim of the “system”.

No-one likely to vote for the RN seriously holds it against Marine Le Pen for illegally financing her party using EU parliament funds. They all know that practically every French political party has resorted to similar underhand methods in the past.

By the same token, her “draconian” punishment – being banned from standing for the presidency – will be interpreted as a badge of honour: proof that she alone is standing up to the powers-that-be.

Longer term, though, the boost may not be so powerful. The truth is that Marine Le Pen is a huge asset to the RN. This battle-hardened, sentimental, cat-loving, tough-talking, long-suffering woman is held in affection by her supporters, who feel they know her personally.

Jordan Bardella is a popular figure too, but at just 29 it is hard to see him filling her shoes. If Marine Le Pen is indeed unable to run in 2027, the RN loses much of its appeal.

What is certain is that many would-be candidates on the non-RN right – Laurent Wauquiez, Bruno Retailleau for example – would see in a Bardella candidacy a big opportunity for themselves.

The other unknown is vengeance.

Marine Le Pen remains a member of the National Assembly, where she leads a bloc of 125 – the parliament’s biggest. Till now she had been benign towards the beleaguered prime minister Francois Bayrou, who struggles on despite having no majority.

Those days may be over.

Why should we do anyone any favours now, they will be saying at RN HQ. Why not bring the house down?

A Cornell University graduate student who had his US visa revoked due to protest activities against Israel has chosen to leave the US rather than be deported.

Momodou Taal, who is a joint citizen of the UK and The Gambia, had his student visa revoked due to his on-campus protest activities last year as the Israel-Gaza war raged.

Mr Taal previously sued to block his deportation, but on Monday posted on X that he had chosen to leave the country “free and with my head held high”. It comes after a judge denied his request to delay his deportation.

The Trump administration is cracking down on international students who have been active in protests against Israel on university campuses.

Mr Taal is at least the second international student to opt to leave the US after being targeted for removal by the US Department of Homeland Security. The Trump administration identifies these cases as “self-deportations”.

“Given what we have seen across the United States, I have lost faith that a favourable ruling from the courts would guarantee my personal safety and ability to express my beliefs,” Mr Taal posted on X on Monday.

“I have lost faith I could walk the streets without being abducted, Weighing up these options. I took the decision to leave on my own terms.”

Mr Taal was suspended twice by Cornell, an Ivy League school in upstate New York, due to protest activities. On the day of the Hamas attack against Israel in 2023, he posted: “Glory to the Resistance.”

“We are in solidarity with the armed resistance in Palestine from the river to the sea,” he later told a crowd of protesters, according to The Cornell Daily Sun newspaper.

At least 300 university students had their student visas revoked due to involvement in pro-Palestinian protests, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week.

Trump officials said the Immigration and Nationality Act allows the State Department to deport non-citizens who are “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests” of the US.

The arrests are a part of Trump’s pledge to combat what the administration has classified as antisemitism, which was written into an executive order in January.

Critics have decried the deportations as a violation of free speech.

Another student who chose to flee the US, Indian scholar Ranjani Srinivasan, told CNN that she wants to clear her name.

“I’m not a terrorist sympathizer,” she told CNN, adding: “I’m literally just a random student.”

She added that she hopes to re-enroll at Columbia University, which was the epicentre of student protests last year, and finish her PhD programme.

The US has said it expects “all parties on the ground” in Gaza to comply with international humanitarian law but declined to confirm whether it was carrying out its own assessment into the killing by the Israeli military of 15 people – paramedics, civil defence workers and a UN official.

Asked about the killings, state department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said: “Every single thing that happens in Gaza is happening because of Hamas.”

The UN’s humanitarian agency has said five ambulances, a fire truck and a UN vehicle were struck “one by one” on 23 March and that 15 bodies, including paramedics still in their uniforms, had been gathered and buried in a mass grave.

The Israeli military said its troops had fired on vehicles “advancing suspiciously” without headlights or emergency signals and that a Hamas operative and other militants were among those killed, but it did not offer any comment on the accounts of bodies being gathered up and buried in the sand.

International humanitarian law prohibits the targeting of civilians and calls for specific protections for medical personnel.

The US, Israel’s biggest arms supplier, is also bound by its own laws prohibiting its weapons being used by foreign militaries in breach of humanitarian law.

Jonathan Whittall, the head of the UN’s humanitarian agency in Gaza, said the mass grave had been “marked” with an emergency light from one of the ambulances hit in the strike.

“It’s an absolute horror what has happened here,” he said in a video on X, adding that “healthcare workers should never be a target”.

Israel renewed its air and ground campaign in Gaza on 18 March after negotiations over a ceasefire deal with Hamas stalled.

More than 1,000 people have since been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

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

More than 50,350 people have been killed in Gaza during the ensuing war, according to the health ministry.

In 2019 Srija became the first transgender woman to legally marry in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu after a historic court ruling. Now a new documentary, Amma’s Pride, chronicles Srija’s battle for state recognition of her marriage and the unwavering support of her mother, Valli.

“Srija is a gift,” Valli, 45, tells the BBC as she and her daughter embrace.

“I know that not all trans people have what I have,” Srija, 25, from the port city of Thoothukudi, adds.

“My education, my job, my marriage – everything was possible because of my mother’s support.”

She and her mother are sharing their story for the first time in Amma’s Pride (Mother’s Pride), which follows Srija’s unique experience.

Srija met her future husband, Arun, at a temple in 2017. After learning they shared mutual friends they soon began texting each other regularly. She was already out as transgender and had begun her transition.

“We talked a lot. She confided in me about her experiences as a trans woman,” Arun tells the BBC.

Within months, they fell in love and decided they wanted to spend their lives together.

“We wanted legal recognition because we want a normal life like every other couple,” Srija says. “We want all the protections that come from a legal recognition of marriage.”

That incudes securities, such as the transfer of money or property if one spouse dies.

In 2014, the Indian Supreme Court established certain protections for transgender people, granting them equal rights to education, employment, healthcare and marriage – although India still does not allow same-sex marriages.

It’s not known how many trans couples have married in India, or who was the first. Activists say there was at least one trans wedding legally registered before Srija and Arun’s – in 2018 a couple married in Bangalore.

“Of course there are queer couples, or transgender couples, all over India,” says the director of Amma’s Pride, Shiva Krish, but because of continuing discrimination “several are secretive about their relationship. Srija and Arun, and Valli, are unique in choosing to live their everyday life out in the open.”

Srija and Arun’s attempt to register their 2018 wedding was rejected, with the registrar arguing that the 1955 Hindu Marriage Act defined marriage as a union between a “bride” and a “groom”, which therefore excluded trans women.

But the couple, backed by LGBT activists, pushed back, taking their relationship into the public domain. The effort was worth it.

They received global attention in 2019 when the Madras High Court in Chennai upheld their right to marry, stating that transgender people should be recognised as either a “bride” or “groom” as defined by the 1955 Hindu Marriage Act.

The ruling was seen by LGBT activists as a pivotal step in the acceptance of transgender people in India, with Srija and Arun both becoming well known locally for challenging cultural norms.

But media coverage also invited negative scrutiny.

“The day after local news coverage, I was fired from my job,” says Arun, who worked as a manual labourer in the transport sector. He believes it was due to transphobia.

Online trolling followed.

“People sent abusive messages criticising me for being married to a transgender woman,” he says.

The couple briefly separated under the strain.

Despite this, Srija excelled at her education, frequently coming first in class at high school.

She went on to complete a degree in English literature from a university in Tamil Nadu, becoming one of the only people in her family to receive higher education.

It’s a source of pride for Valli, who left school aged 14.

Even before battling to have her marriage recognised by the state, Srija and her family faced hostility and mistreatment.

After Srija came out as a transgender woman at the age of 17, she and her mother and younger brother, China, were evicted from their home by their landlord.

Several family members stopped speaking to them.

But Srija’s mother and brother were steadfast in their support.

“I will always stand by my daughter,” says Valli.

“All trans people should be supported by their family.”

Valli, who became a single parent when her husband died when Srija was just six, works in a kitchen at a school.

But despite earning a modest income, she helped pay for her daughter’s gender reassignment, in part by selling some of her jewellery, and cared for her afterwards.

“She takes good care of me,” Srija says.

There are thought to be about two million transgender people in India, the world’s most populous country, although activists say the number is higher.

While the country has passed trans-inclusive legislation and recognised in law a “third gender”, stigma and discrimination remain.

Studies have found transgender people in India face high rates of abuse, mental health issues, and limited access to education, employment, and healthcare. Many are forced to beg or enter sex work.

Globally, the UN says significant numbers of transgender people face rejection from their families.

“Not a lot of trans people in India, or even the world, have the support of their families,” says filmmaker, Shiva Krish.

“Srija and Valli’s story is unique.”

Srija says she hopes the film will help challenge stereotypes about trans people and the types of stories that are often promoted in the media about the group – especially those that focus on trauma and abuse.

“This documentary shows that we can be leaders. I am a manager, a productive member of the workforce,” Srija says.

“When people see new kinds of stories on trans people, hopefully their mindsets will also change.”

After premiering at international film festivals, Amma’s Pride was shown at a special screening in Chennai, for members of the LGBT community and allies, to mark International Trans Day of Visibility on Monday 31 March.

Following the Chennai screening, a workshop was held where participants in small groups discussed family acceptance and community support for trans individuals.

“We hope our screening events will foster connections between trans individuals, their families, and local communities,” adds Chithra Jeyaram, another one of the filmmakers behind Amma’s Pride.

The Amma’s Pride production team hope that the universal themes of family support in the face of stigma means the documentary and workshops can be rolled out to rural audiences, as well as other cities in India, and neighbouring countries like Nepal and Bangladesh.

As for Srija and Arun, they now work as managers for private companies and hope to adopt a child soon. “We’re hoping for a normal future,” says Srija.

“I would like to become a grandmother soon,” Valli adds, smiling.

Russia says it is still “working with the US” after President Trump said he was “angry” and “pissed off” with Vladimir Putin.

In its first response to Trump’s criticism of the Russian president, the Kremlin tried to play down the tensions between the two leaders.

“We continue working with the US side, first of all, on building our relations,” spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said.

He said there were no plans for a call between Putin and Trump this week, but that Putin is open to one “if necessary”.

The attempt to smooth things over came after Trump told NBC News on Sunday that 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 Putin did not agree to a ceasefire.

It was a marked change of tone towards the Russian president.

US and Russian officials have been in talks for several weeks to try to reach a deal to end the war in Ukraine – during which Trump has often criticised Zelensky but not Putin.

But Trump’s anger with Putin was sparked when the Russian president on Friday mooted the idea of an interim government in Ukraine under the support of the UN which could replace President Zelensky.

“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 told NBC News.

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

In his daily conference call on Monday with journalists, Peskov claimed some of what was said in the NBC interview was “paraphrased.”

The comments from Trump were reflected in parts of the Russian media.

The pro-Kremlin Russian newspaper, Moskovsky Komsomolets, published some rare criticism of the US president, saying Trump was not fulfilling his “obligations” to stop Ukraine striking Russian energy infrastructure.

“All agreements on the level of President Trump are only worth a few pennies on market day” the newspaper concluded, while “Moscow is prepared to make a deal with the US president.”

Virginia Giuffre, one of Jeffrey Epstein’s most prominent accusers, has said she is in hospital following a serious accident.

Ms Giuffre posted on Instagram that she had suffered kidney failure after her car collided with a school bus, stating doctors had given her “four days to live” and were transferring her to a specialist hospital.

In a statement shared with the BBC, her spokesperson Dini von Mueffling said: “Virginia has been in a serious accident and is receiving medical care in the hospital. She greatly appreciates the support and well wishes people are sending.”

Ms Giuffre said this year had “been the worst”, alongside a photograph from a hospital bed showing visible bruising.

The 41-year-old described the accident in an Instagram post, writing that the crash was so severe that her car “might as well be a tin can”.

“I’m ready to go, just not until I see my babies one last time,” she added, seemingly referring to her three children.

Ms Giuffre had recently been living with her children and husband Robert in the suburb of North Perth, Australia, though recent reports suggest the couple have split after 22 years of marriage.

It remains unclear where and when the crash occurred.

Both the Western Australia police and ambulance services told the BBC they had no records of such an accident happening in recent weeks.

The police later specified that they had located records of a “minor crash” between a bus and a car on 24 March, but that no injuries had been reported as a result.

Ms Giuffre is best known for her allegations that Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell trafficked her to the Duke of York when she was 17.

Prince Andrew has denied all claims but reached an out-of-court settlement with her in 2022.

The settlement included a statement in which he expressed regret for his association with Epstein but contained no admission of liability or apology.

South Korean star Kim Soo-hyun has made a tearful public statement denying allegations made by the family of actress Kim Sae-ron, who died in an apparent suicide in February.

“I can’t admit to something I didn’t do,” the 37-year-old said on Monday at a press conference in Seoul.

At the centre of the controversy are two allegations: that Kim Soo-hyun dated Kim Sae-ron when she was 15 – a minor – and that his agency pressured her to repay a loan she owed him.

The scandal has shocked South Korea and its entertainment industry – and has generated a backlash against Kim Soo-Hyun, whose roles in multiple hit drama series and films has made him one of its best-known stars.

Kim wept as he said that although he dated the actress for a year when she was an adult, they never dated while she was underage.

Monday’s media conference came after weeks of accusations and counter-accusations between Kim Sae-ron’s family and Kim Soo-hyun’s camp in the wake of her death.

The scandal broke on 10 March, less than a month after Kim Sae-ron’s death. A YouTube channel, known for its controversial political content, claimed that the two had dated for six years, when she was 15. The channel has since released videos and photos it claims were taken during their relationship.

Last week, the attorney representing Kim Sae-ron’s family held a press conference, revealing more chat history allegedly between the two actors from 2016, when she was 16.

Kim Soo-hyun’s agency initially denied the allegations but later clarified that they dated, though only between 2019 and 2020, when she was an adult.

The actor himself had remained silent until Monday. At the press conference, he became emotional, reiterating to reporters that they only dated as two adults.

“Many people are suffering because of me,” he said, apologising to his fans and staff. “I also feel sorry that the late actress [Kim Sae-ron] isn’t able to rest in peace.

“I never dated her when she was a minor,” he continued. “Except for the fact that both of us were actors, our relationship was just like that of any other ordinary couple.”

He also explained why he denied the relationship when she uploaded a later-deleted photo of the two of them to her Instagram account in 2024 during the airing of Netflix hit show Queen of Tears, in which he played the lead role.

“I had so much to protect as its lead actor. What would have happened if I had admitted to a year-long relationship? What would happen to the actors, the staff who were working overnight and the production team who had everything staked on that project?” he said. “The more I thought of it, the more I thought that shouldn’t be what I do.”

Any admission of a romantic relationship or a partner is still seen as scandalous to fans in South Korea’s entertainment industry, where celebrities’ personal lives come under intense scrutiny.

Kim Sae-ron herself was a victim of online hate by fans after she was fined 20 million won (£11,000; $14,000) for a 2022 drink-driving incident.

Prior to that, she had been seen as one of the most promising young actresses in South Korea.

At the time, she was managed by the same agency as Kim Soo-hyun, which was co-founded by his relative. Kim Sae-ron joined GoldMedalist in January 2020 and left in December 2022.

Kim Sae-ron’s family claimed that GoldMedalist covered the compensation for her drunk-driving incident. They allege that the agency later pursued legal action for repayment and that, while the actress asked Kim Soo-hyun for more time to settle the debt, her request went unanswered.

On Monday, Kim Soo-hyun denied claims that “she made the tragic choice because of me or my agency pressuring her over a debt”.

He released a voice recording of a phone call from a year ago, allegedly between his agency and Kim Sae-ron’s representative.

In the recording, the CEO of GoldMedalist appears to explain that the document they sent her regarding the debt was merely for “procedural reasons” and that her team could take time to respond.

He also accused Kim Sae-ron’s family of manipulating chat records as evidence and stated that he had submitted his own evidence to the relevant authorities for verification. He urged her family to do the same.

Kim Soo-hyun, 37, is an A-list actor in South Korea, known for his roles in multiple hit drama series and top-grossing movies, including My Love from the Star, Netflix’s Queen of Tears, and the film Secretly, Greatly.

He has also been a favourite among advertisers in the country, though many brands have now distanced themselves from him amid the controversy. On 17 March, fashion brand Prada announced that it had mutually decided to end its collaboration with him, according to Reuters. This followed similar moves from Dinto, a Korean cosmetic brand.

A Disney+ show that stars Kim Soo-hyun has also been put on pause due to the scandal, according to local news outlet Yonhap.

His lawyer stated on Monday that they had filed a criminal complaint against Kim Sae-ron’s family and the YouTube channel operator, along with a civil lawsuit for damages worth 12 billion won.

Her family has not commented on the lawsuits or his latest remarks.

If you have been affected by any of the issues in this story you can find information and support on the BBC Actionline website here.

Indian superstar Mohanlal has apologised and said some scenes will be removed from his new film after criticism from Hindu nationalist groups.

The Malayalam-language film, L2: Empuraan, was released on Thursday and is performing well at the box office.

However, it faced a backlash from Hindu groups, including members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), over some scenes including ones seen as referring to the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat state.

“As an artist, it is my duty to ensure that none of my films are hostile to any political movement, ideology or religious group,” Mohanlal wrote on Facebook.

“The team of Empuraan and I sincerely regret the distress caused to my loved ones, and with the realisation that the responsibility for it lies with all of us who worked on the film, we have decided together to remove such subjects from the movie,” added Mohanlal, who is a household name in Kerala state, which is home to the Malayalam film industry.

The developments have sparked a debate around artistic freedom, with the opposition Congress and Left parties accusing the BJP of putting pressure on the filmmakers.

However, BJP leaders have said that the party did not launch a public campaign against the film and that people have the right to express their views on social media.

L2: Empuraan is a sequel to the 2019 Malayalam political thriller Lucifer, in which Mohanlal played the role of Stephen Nedumpally, a mysterious figure who is later revealed to be the head of an international crime syndicate.

The movie, directed by another Malayalam star Prithviraj, was a big hit and got mostly positive reviews.

So expectations were high for L2: Empuraan, which centres on the return of Mohanlal’s character as a saviour of Kerala’s politics, which has fallen into the hands of corrupt and evil people.

Even before its release, the film made headlines over its budget – huge for the relatively understated Malayalam film industry – and star-studded promotions.

It created a buzz across Indian cities and even internationally, with opening-day shows being sold out.

The film has made nearly 1.5bn rupees ($17.5mn; £13.5mn) overall in its opening weekend, according to film analytics tracker Sacnilk.

But the film received mixed reviews from critics.

The Hindustan Times newspaper called it a film grappling with “an identity crisis, an overlong run time and a confused mess of a script”. The Indian Express said “the emotional depth and dramatic weight that anchored Lucifer are largely absent in Empuraan” but praised “Mohanlal’s commanding performance” and some other aspects of the film.

L2: Empuraan begins with the backstory of a character Zayed Masood – played by director Prithviraj – who was orphaned during riots in a place in India, with some of the details being similar to the religious violence that occurred in 2002 when Modi was chief minister of Gujarat state.

The long flashback sequence shows some graphic scenes depicting Hindus committing violent crimes against Muslims during the violence.

It also shows how one of the perpetrators of the violence becomes more powerful over the years and is seeking to secure a key position in Kerala’s political landscape.

The scenes sparked an uproar.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the state president of the BJP, who had wished the film’s team well before its release, later said that he now realised there were “topics in the movie that disturbed Mohanlal fans and other viewers”.

“A movie should be watched as a movie. It can’t be seen as history. Also, any movie that tries to build a story by distorting the truth is doomed to fail,” he said, adding that he would not watch the film.

While some state BJP leaders supported this, others criticised the makers and accused them of depicting “anti-national themes” in the film.

The Organiser Weekly – a magazine published by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which is the ideological parent of the BJP – called the film a “disturbing, divisive tale disguised as cinema”.

“Empuraan isn’t just a bad film; it’s an attack on faith, on political plurality and on the very soul of balanced storytelling,” its review said.

Some social media users have also called for a boycott of the film, but there has not been a large-scale online campaign or big protests against the movie.

Over the weekend, Gokulam Gopalan, one of the producers of the film, said he had asked Prithviraj to make changes “if any scenes or dialogues in Empuraan have hurt anyone”.

This was followed by Mohanlal’s post on Sunday which confirmed some scenes would be removed. Prithviraj shared the post on Facebook but did not offer additional comment.

Some reports said the film would see as many as 17 cuts while others said a three-minute long scene would be removed and some dialogues muted. The makers have not confirmed what the changes are.

The film had been cleared by India’s Central Board of Film Certification – known as the censor board – which reviews movies for public exhibition. But makers have the option of resubmitting it for more cuts.

Amid the controversy, L2: Empuraan has also received support from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) – which governs Kerala – and the Congress party. The two parties have a strong presence in Kerala, where the nationally powerful BJP has struggled to make inroads.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the “communal hate campaign against Empuraan and its creators is deeply disturbing”.

“Undermining creative freedom through fear and threats strikes at the very core of democracy,” he added.

“Cinema is the work of a group of artists. Changing the content of a work of art by threatening, insulting and humiliating through social media is not a victory,” wrote Congress leader VD Satheesan.

Shares in the US have bounced back, despite tariff fears hitting stocks in Asia and Europe after US President Donald Trump suggested that he was planning import taxes that could hit “all countries”.

Trump’s comments came as he prepares to unveil a massive slate of import taxes on Wednesday, in what he has called America’s “Liberation Day”.

These will come on top of Trump’s recent import taxes on aluminium, steel and cars, along with increased levies on all goods from China.

The tougher stance from Trump has increased nervousness about a trade war hitting the global economy.

Trump has offered conflicting signals about the scope of the expected tariffs, which have helped drive steep declines in the US stock market over the last month.

Last week, he had raised the possibility that many countries could receive “breaks”. But over the weekend, he appeared to be leaning toward a more wide-ranging plan.

“You’d start with all countries,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Sunday. “Essentially all of the countries that we’re talking about.”

The UK has said it expects to be affected by US tariffs and is not ruling out retaliating.

The prime minister’s official spokesman has said talks on an economic deal between the two countries have been “constructive”, but are likely to last beyond Wednesday.

Other jurisdictions, such as the European Union and Canada, have already said that they are preparing a range of retaliatory trade measures.

Concerns about the impact of the measures have unsettled markets and reignited fears of a recession in the US.

In the US, the S&P 500 share index of the largest firms has fallen almost 10% since mid-February, making March the worst month for the index in years.

The Nasdaq is down more than 10%, its worst quarter since 2022.

With significant uncertainty remaining about the 2 April announcement, shares in the US opened lower but ultimately held their ground on Monday.

The Dow closed up 1%, while the S&P ended up 0.5% and the Nasdaq slipped just 0.1%.

Earlier on Monday, Japan’s Nikkei 225 benchmark share index closed more than 4% lower, while the Kospi in South Korea ended down 3%.

In the UK, the FTSE 100 index fell nearly 0.9%, while Germany’s Dax index closed down nearly 1.3% and France’s Cac 40 fell roughly 1.6%.

Gold, which is often seen as a safer investment when the economic backdrop is unstable, rose to another record high, hitting $3,128.06 an ounce.

Shanti Kelemen, chief investment officer at M&G Wealth, told the BBC there could be “quite a lot of uncertainty” for a while given that previous tariff announcements have seen a lot of changes subsequently.

Japan, which is a big player in exports, is among those countries most at risk from the changes, Ms Keleman said.

“They have a lot of automakers and also a very big presence in the semiconductor market, something that hasn’t really been targeted yet but that could change,” she noted.

Trump sees tariffs – which are taxes imports – as a bargaining chip to get better trade terms, while also raising money and protecting the American economy from unfair competition.

A White House fact sheet published last week also suggested that a 10% tariff on every import could create nearly three million US jobs.

Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro has estimated that all the planned tariffs could raise $600bn annually, about a fifth of the value of total goods imports into the US.

Many firms have said they expect the cost of the new tax to be passed onto customers in the form of higher prices.

But that could lead to lower sales and fuel inflation in the US, a problem Trump had pledged on the campaign to tackle.

Conversely, if companies decide to absorb the cost, it will hit their profits.

Will Butler-Adams is chief executive of Brompton Bicycle, which makes folding bikes and relies on the US for about 10% of its sales.

Brompton’s products are not facing additional taxes yet.

But Mr Butler-Adams said tariffs would make his bikes less competitive and force him to re-think his presence in the US.

“We won’t continue to invest in the same way that we are now,” he said. “We may even shrink; in the extreme, we might pull out.”

Mr Butler-Adams said it had been hard to figure out the impact of tariffs that have already gone into effect, which require detailed accounting of how much steel in each item comes from outside the US.

“The reality is we don’t [know] actually and the people who are on the borders importing goods into the US don’t actually entirely understand how some of these tariffs might be put in,” Mr Butler-Adams said.

Separately, Trump said a deal with TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance to sell the app would be agreed before a deadline on Saturday.

He set the 5 April deadline in January for the short video platform to find a non-Chinese buyer or face a ban in the US on national security grounds.

It had been due to take effect that month to comply with a law passed under the Biden administration.

The last time Soe Ko Ko Naing saw his great-uncle was in July, at his home by the banks of the Irrawaddy River.

Ko Naing, a supporter of Myanmar’s resistance against the military junta, was about to flee the country. Living in Min Kun, a small town in the military stronghold area of Sagaing, Ko Naing did not trust anyone enough to tell them of his plan – except his beloved Oo Oo (‘uncle’ in Burmese).

“I told him I was going to Thailand. He thought it was a good plan. He wished me good health and safety,” recalled Ko Naing, a 35-year-old labour rights activist.

Nearly a year on, Ko Naing is safe in Thailand. But his Oo Oo was killed by the powerful earthquake that struck Sagaing near Mandalay last Friday, claiming at least 2,000 lives.

“I have sleepless nights. I’m still suffering,” said Ko Naing.

“I have no remorse for leaving the country, because I had to. But I feel guilty because our people need us the most now. I feel helpless.”

Ko Naing is one of the millions of Myanmar’s diaspora anxiously watching from afar as their country struggles following its biggest earthquake in a century.

Like him, many are experiencing survivor’s guilt and a sense of helplessness. For some, these feelings are compounded by the fact that they cannot go back easily to help in rescue efforts or check on relatives, as they would face political persecution.

Thailand hosts the world’s biggest Myanmar diaspora community with about 4.3 million Myanmar nationals, though the figure is thought to be much higher if it includes undocumented migrants.

As a wealthier neighbour, it has long attracted people from Myanmar who make up a large section of its migrant workforce. The 2021 military coup and subsequent civil war have only swelled their ranks.

Some toil in the construction sector – many of the 400 workers at a Bangkok skyscraper that collapsed due to the quake were believed to be from Myanmar – while others work in Thailand’s agriculture and seafood industries.

On a drizzly Monday morning in Samut Sakhon, a fishing port near Bangkok that is home to many workers from Myanmar, men wearing the traditional Burmese longgyi and women with thanaka daubed on their cheeks thronged the alleys of a street market.

Banners advertising SIM cards with cheap rates for calling Myanmar were plastered across buildings, while shops displayed signs in both Thai and Burmese.

“We have seen videos online of buildings collapsing and people trapped under the rubble. We feel so sad about not being able to do anything,” said 30-year-old factory worker Yin Yin, who like many in the crowd is worried about the situation back home.

Shopowner Thant Zin, 28, who is from a town in Sagaing unaffected by the quake, mourned the collapse of centuries-old pagodas and temples in his area. “What a disaster! I feel so bad… We have never experienced this extent of damage before.”

Across town Ko Naing sat in his office, checking for updates on his family in Myanmar. At least 150 of his relatives live in or around Sagaing and Mandalay.

Friday’s earthquake was so immense that it could be felt in Thailand, India and China. That day, as Ko Naing lay in bed in Samut Sakhon hundreds of kilometres from the epicentre, he said he felt the room shake for about 30 seconds.

He immediately went on social media and discovered the quake had occurred close to Min Kun. Then he came across a picture of Sagaing’s Ava Bridge – a local landmark – lying in mangled ruins in the Irrawaddy River. “I was shocked and devastated, I have a lot of relatives in that area. I thought, ‘it must be fake news’. But it was real.”

With slow communications in Myanmar in the quake’s immediate aftermath, Ko Naing only heard from his relatives on Saturday. Almost everyone was safe and accounted for, he was told, except for a distant great-aunt who died in Mandalay – and his Oo Oo.

A week before, Min Kun and its surroundings had been shelled by the military targeting the People’s Defence Forces resistance. Almost all of Ko Naing’s family in the town fled to Sagaing city or to a military-controlled area in Mandalay.

Oo Oo had refused to decamp and took shelter in the village monastery instead, knowing that the military would not attack Buddhist sites.

But on Friday, the monastery collapsed completely when the earthquake struck. His body was found in the rubble on Monday.

Ko Naing remembers Oo Oo as an open-minded and outspoken 60-year-old. In an area dominated by the military, the two bonded over their shared support for the resistance, especially after the coup.

In the summer the two would spend afternoons by the river, having lunch and catching up on the news. His great-uncle had no phone and no social media, and Ko Naing would help him check updates on the civil war. “I was his personal news agency,” he joked.

Oo Oo had to retire from his job as a boatman when he suffered a stroke which left him partially paralysed. Still, every morning, he would shuffle to his family’s tea shop and fry up ee kyar kwe, which are doughsticks.

“He was my source of inspiration, especially in difficult times… he was the only one I could talk to. I got my resilience from him,” said Ko Naing.

That resilience was something Ko Naing had to tap on when he made his dangerous escape from Myanmar along with his wife and five-year-old son. He was wanted by the military, which had issued a warrant for his arrest for taking part in peaceful protests.

His family travelled to the border where they crossed into Thailand illegally. As they ran in the dark past a Thai border police station, the family tripped over a large pipe and tumbled to the ground. His son fell backwards on his head. Ko Naing feared the worst.

But to his relief, his son let out a loud cry. Ko Naing slapped his hand over the child’s mouth, picked him up, and sprinted toward a people smuggler waiting for them with a motorcycle. They first headed to the Thai town of Mae Sot before eventually travelling to Samut Sakhon, where they secured the right to stay in Thailand.

Though he is now safe and has a good job, Ko Naing said: “To be honest I’m very depressed at the moment.

“First there was the pandemic, then the coup, then the military has been killing people who oppose them. People have been displaced.

“Then the earthquake has added to the suffering. Even after the earthquake, the military keeps bombing areas.

“I keep thinking it would be good if we can be there, if we can do something… it’s depressing living here, seeing the news about my country.”

He is working with the Myanmar diaspora to collect donations and send humanitarian assistance to the quake victims back home. They are also helping the Myanmar construction workers affected by the Bangkok building collapse.

“If we always feel depressed, nobody will help our people… it’s good that we’re alive. We can still do something.

“We have to make up our mind on how to rebuild, how we can move on.”

Some 68 years ago today, millions of people tuned into a BBC Panorama report about a Swiss family harvesting spaghetti from trees.

It may sound implausible, but many viewers believed it.

Watch the grainy black-and-white footage today and you almost forget everything you know about Italian cuisine for a moment.

The actors “harvesting” spaghetti strands give committed performances, and the late Richard Dimbleby’s deadpan narration lends an air of authenticity to the report.

It was, of course, an April Fool’s Day joke.

For the avoidance of doubt, spaghetti is made from wheat and water. It does not grow on trees.

But spaghetti was not a common dish in the UK at the time, so you can see why some may have taken it seriously.

This vintage Panorama report is part of what became a tradition in the UK press.

Every year on 1 April, newspapers would publish outlandish stories with zero or very little basis in fact, all to have a bit of fun with their readers.

The Guardian ran an entire pull-out guide to the fictional Indian Ocean island of “San Serriffe” in the 1970s. Its name is a pun on the sans serif group of typefaces, and the island was depicted as being shaped like a semi-colon.

Ten years ago, April Fool’s stories in the newspapers were so prevalent that the BBC published this roundup of them.

Many focused on the looming 2015 general election, with the Sun’s election website saying then-Labour leader Ed Miliband had died his hair blond in a “desperate bid for the BoJo [Boris Johnson] factor”.

It is unclear whether the move would have swayed the election had this story been true.

The Scottish independence referendum was the focus on 1 April 2014, with the Daily Express, the Daily Mail, the Sun and the Guardian all publishing prank stories that year.

The Guardian, for example, said an independent Scotland would switch to driving on the right.

Reading through the papers today, you might find one or two April Fool’s Day stories. But they do not have the same presence they once had.

The rise of social media has ushered in a “different kind of relationship” between readers and the press, says Stuart Allan, professor of journalism and communication at Cardiff University.

“We are enmeshed in an era of ‘fake news’ and disinformation, where matters of trust are at the forefront of editors’ minds,” he tells the BBC.

The decline of April Fool’s Day news stories comes against “a backdrop of growing scepticism about news in general,” Prof Allan adds, “where playing with journalistic credibility may actually prove damaging”.

Jim Waterson, who edits news website London Centric, agrees.

“Publishing fake news to purposefully trick readers and then saying it’s all a joke doesn’t really work well when you spend the rest of the year banging on about how much trusted facts matter,” he says.

“But the biggest crime against journalism is that very few newspaper April Fool’s stories are remotely funny.”

The global political climate, with Donald Trump’s re-election to the US presidency, has also had an impact.

“If you’ve got world leaders who are only too happy to dismiss anything factual they don’t like as ‘fake news’, why would you give them the ammunition of literal fake news?” Mr Waterson asks.

Social media also makes it easy to take a news story out of context.

People used to read their news in a newspaper. They’d be aware, on 1 April, that all of the news stories were published that day. The tell-tale date was at the top of the page.

Now, readers can share online news stories on social media days, months or even years after they were first published.

Many people share news articles without reading a single word of them, according to a Columbia University study. So are they likely to read the publication date?

Then there is the rise of generative AI, which has been widely used in the spread of misinformation in recent years.

In a world where AI-generated images can appear almost real, the media’s role of separating fact from fiction has never been more important.

April Fool’s stories serve the entertainment function of journalism, but not truth or accuracy, says Dr Bina Ogbebor, a lecturer in journalism studies at Sheffield University.

In some cases, these stories could “backfire”, make some readers angry, and hamper a media organisation’s credibility, she tells the BBC.

“It’s still something that makes people laugh,” she says, adding she thinks news websites should add very clear disclaimers if they do choose to run them.

Though news publishers have taken a step back, the April Fool’s tradition is alive and well on social media. But it is brands, not broadcasters, that are leading the charge.

Each year, many of them post announcements for new products or promotions that are slightly too ridiculous to be genuine.

Tesco once announced it would be trialling trampoline-inspired bouncy aisles in its supermarkets.

But brands could find themselves in hot water for playing tricks on newspapers without letting them in on the joke.

In late March 2021, Volkswagen claimed it was changing its name to “Voltswagen” in a nod to electric vehicles.

Dozens of publications had to publish corrections when it was revealed to have been an April Fool’s prank sent to the media early.

Based on current trends, it is unlikely we will see an April Fool’s hoax on the scale of Panorama’s spaghetti report any time soon.

“The Spaghetti Harvest story of 1957 landed with such a splash because of the very limited news brand choice in those days,” says Richard Thomas, media professor at Swansea University.

Thanks to the wider range of news sources available instantly on the internet, “the joke is dead before it even takes its first breath”, he adds.

“So the days when the country’s most trusted broadcaster and news source can playfully tease its audience on such a scale that we are remembering it almost 70 years later are over.

“And – all sentiments about how news should be honest and truthful aside – in a world where happy news is often at a premium, that does seem a shame, somehow.”

In 2019 Srija became the first transgender woman to legally marry in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu after a historic court ruling. Now a new documentary, Amma’s Pride, chronicles Srija’s battle for state recognition of her marriage and the unwavering support of her mother, Valli.

“Srija is a gift,” Valli, 45, tells the BBC as she and her daughter embrace.

“I know that not all trans people have what I have,” Srija, 25, from the port city of Thoothukudi, adds.

“My education, my job, my marriage – everything was possible because of my mother’s support.”

She and her mother are sharing their story for the first time in Amma’s Pride (Mother’s Pride), which follows Srija’s unique experience.

Srija met her future husband, Arun, at a temple in 2017. After learning they shared mutual friends they soon began texting each other regularly. She was already out as transgender and had begun her transition.

“We talked a lot. She confided in me about her experiences as a trans woman,” Arun tells the BBC.

Within months, they fell in love and decided they wanted to spend their lives together.

“We wanted legal recognition because we want a normal life like every other couple,” Srija says. “We want all the protections that come from a legal recognition of marriage.”

That incudes securities, such as the transfer of money or property if one spouse dies.

In 2014, the Indian Supreme Court established certain protections for transgender people, granting them equal rights to education, employment, healthcare and marriage – although India still does not allow same-sex marriages.

It’s not known how many trans couples have married in India, or who was the first. Activists say there was at least one trans wedding legally registered before Srija and Arun’s – in 2018 a couple married in Bangalore.

“Of course there are queer couples, or transgender couples, all over India,” says the director of Amma’s Pride, Shiva Krish, but because of continuing discrimination “several are secretive about their relationship. Srija and Arun, and Valli, are unique in choosing to live their everyday life out in the open.”

Srija and Arun’s attempt to register their 2018 wedding was rejected, with the registrar arguing that the 1955 Hindu Marriage Act defined marriage as a union between a “bride” and a “groom”, which therefore excluded trans women.

But the couple, backed by LGBT activists, pushed back, taking their relationship into the public domain. The effort was worth it.

They received global attention in 2019 when the Madras High Court in Chennai upheld their right to marry, stating that transgender people should be recognised as either a “bride” or “groom” as defined by the 1955 Hindu Marriage Act.

The ruling was seen by LGBT activists as a pivotal step in the acceptance of transgender people in India, with Srija and Arun both becoming well known locally for challenging cultural norms.

But media coverage also invited negative scrutiny.

“The day after local news coverage, I was fired from my job,” says Arun, who worked as a manual labourer in the transport sector. He believes it was due to transphobia.

Online trolling followed.

“People sent abusive messages criticising me for being married to a transgender woman,” he says.

The couple briefly separated under the strain.

Despite this, Srija excelled at her education, frequently coming first in class at high school.

She went on to complete a degree in English literature from a university in Tamil Nadu, becoming one of the only people in her family to receive higher education.

It’s a source of pride for Valli, who left school aged 14.

Even before battling to have her marriage recognised by the state, Srija and her family faced hostility and mistreatment.

After Srija came out as a transgender woman at the age of 17, she and her mother and younger brother, China, were evicted from their home by their landlord.

Several family members stopped speaking to them.

But Srija’s mother and brother were steadfast in their support.

“I will always stand by my daughter,” says Valli.

“All trans people should be supported by their family.”

Valli, who became a single parent when her husband died when Srija was just six, works in a kitchen at a school.

But despite earning a modest income, she helped pay for her daughter’s gender reassignment, in part by selling some of her jewellery, and cared for her afterwards.

“She takes good care of me,” Srija says.

There are thought to be about two million transgender people in India, the world’s most populous country, although activists say the number is higher.

While the country has passed trans-inclusive legislation and recognised in law a “third gender”, stigma and discrimination remain.

Studies have found transgender people in India face high rates of abuse, mental health issues, and limited access to education, employment, and healthcare. Many are forced to beg or enter sex work.

Globally, the UN says significant numbers of transgender people face rejection from their families.

“Not a lot of trans people in India, or even the world, have the support of their families,” says filmmaker, Shiva Krish.

“Srija and Valli’s story is unique.”

Srija says she hopes the film will help challenge stereotypes about trans people and the types of stories that are often promoted in the media about the group – especially those that focus on trauma and abuse.

“This documentary shows that we can be leaders. I am a manager, a productive member of the workforce,” Srija says.

“When people see new kinds of stories on trans people, hopefully their mindsets will also change.”

After premiering at international film festivals, Amma’s Pride was shown at a special screening in Chennai, for members of the LGBT community and allies, to mark International Trans Day of Visibility on Monday 31 March.

Following the Chennai screening, a workshop was held where participants in small groups discussed family acceptance and community support for trans individuals.

“We hope our screening events will foster connections between trans individuals, their families, and local communities,” adds Chithra Jeyaram, another one of the filmmakers behind Amma’s Pride.

The Amma’s Pride production team hope that the universal themes of family support in the face of stigma means the documentary and workshops can be rolled out to rural audiences, as well as other cities in India, and neighbouring countries like Nepal and Bangladesh.

As for Srija and Arun, they now work as managers for private companies and hope to adopt a child soon. “We’re hoping for a normal future,” says Srija.

“I would like to become a grandmother soon,” Valli adds, smiling.

Standing in front of a few dozen supporters in a strip-mall parking lot in Ocala, Florida, Monday evening, Democratic congressional candidate Josh Weil made a prediction.

The public school math teacher said that in less than 24 hours, he was going to make history by flipping a solidly Republican congressional seat – helping to wrest control of the House of Representatives from the Republicans.

“Their 2025 agenda stops here,” he promised, railing against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s efforts to slash government services and personnel.

Just an hour earlier, in a telephone town hall meeting, Randy Fine, his Republican opponent in Tuesday’s special election, had a similar message – although he framed it as a warning, not a promise.

“Democrats are mad,” he said. “They’re going to do whatever it takes to grind Donald Trump’s agenda to a halt.”

Voters in the eastern half of central Florida, from Ocala to the towns north of Daytona Beach, head to the polls to fill the seat vacated by Michael Waltz, chosen by Trump to be national security advisor. Waltz recently sparked a media frenzy after inadvertently adding a prominent journalist to a high-level group chat about the US strikes in Yemen.

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That Waltz’s job may now be in jeopardy is just one reason Tuesday’s contest for one of the 435 House seats is now a national story.

The other is that Weil, despite running in a district Trump carried by more than 30 points last November, just might win. And if he does, Democrats would take a big step closer to a majority in the narrowly divided House.

Win or lose, the race also could serve as a barometer of voters’ motivation as Trump begins his second term – and offer hints at the political landscape ahead of next year’s mid-term congressional elections.

It is one of two special elections in Florida on Tuesday. The other, in Florida’s panhandle region, will determine a replacement for Matt Gaetz, the firebrand congressman Trump originally picked to be attorney general before he withdrew under a cloud of sexual misconduct and ethics allegations. A Republican is widely expected to win there.

But that is not the case here. Weil has raised about $10m in campaign donations, dwarfing the $1m brought in by Fine, a Florida state senator.

According to a recent public opinion survey, Weil narrowly trails Fine. An internal poll by a respected Republican firm reportedly showed Weil ahead by 3.

That’s enough to cause more than a little anxiety in Republican ranks.

“There’s no excuse for a Republican not to win this race,” said Randy Ross, a Florida-based conservative activist who campaigned there for Trump in 2016 and 2024. “The only excuse that can possibly be had is Republicans weren’t excited and didn’t get out to vote.”

Mr Ross added that Republican voters need to understand that Fine will support Trump’s agenda in Congress – and Weil will not.

To this end, some of the party’s heaviest hitters stepped in to help. Last Thursday, Trump joined the Republican candidate in two telephone town hall events. On Monday night, Florida Congressman Byron Donalds and conservative commentator Ben Shapiro held their own event.

“Donald Trump’s agenda is hanging by a thread,” Shapiro said. “This is a district that simply cannot fall into Democratic hands.”

Tech multi-billionaire Musk, a close Trump ally, may be campaigning in person for a hotly contested Wisconsin Supreme Court race, but his political committee directed more than $75,000 to support Fine in recent days. Other conservative groups followed suit, helping Fine level the financial playing field.

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Of particular concern for the party is that special elections take place during times of lower political engagement and usually involve only the one race in question. They often tilt toward the party with the most enthusiasm, according to Mr Ross. For Republicans, a Democratic show of strength on Tuesday would be troubling.

“You can’t go just on name recognition in a special election,” he said. “You’ve got to drive people out to vote for you.”

Republican nervousness is a result of simple math in the House of Representatives. With a 218 to 213 majority in the 435 seat chamber, the party cannot afford to lose any winnable elections – let alone ones that should be a slam dunk.

While a Weil victory alone wouldn’t be enough to flip control of the chamber, two of the currently vacant seats are in safely Democratic districts. If the results of those special elections go as expected, Democrats would be on the verge of control.

That could explain why the president announced on Friday he was withdrawing his pick of New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik to be US ambassador to the United Nations, despite her having all but formally vacated her office. A Weil victory on Tuesday would mean the Republicans could not afford to lose a New York election to replace Stefanik.

Even before Tuesday’s balloting, both Democrats and Republicans jockeyed to frame the results in the best light for their party.

Conservatives downplayed the national implications of the race and placed blame on Fine, who has been accused of running a lacklustre campaign and taking victory for granted.

“It’s a reflection of the candidate that’s running the race, ” Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said of Fine’s apparent underperformance.

Meanwhile, Democrats are declaring a victory – at least, the moral variety.

“These are races that should not, under ordinary circumstances, be on anyone’s political radar,” Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said last Monday. “The American people are not buying what the Republicans are selling.”

That sentiment was echoed by many of Weil’s supporters on Monday night in Ocala, even if the candidate himself told the BBC he would win by eight points.

“If we lose but come close, moderate Republicans might take notice,” said Buddy Oswald, an attorney and educator. If they were worried their party could lose a safe seat, he added, maybe they would feel the heat and be more willing to break with the president.

Eight years ago, in the aftermath of Trump’s stunning 2016 presidential victory, Democrats sought solace in special election races across the map. They pulled off some stunners, including a Doug Jones Senate victory in deeply conservative Alabama. In other races, such as a bid by Jon Ossoff in a suburban Atlanta district, the Democrat came up just short.

Those races presaged a high level of Democratic enthusiasm that led to a wave in the mid-terms the following year, when the party won 39 seats in taking back the House of Representatives and putting a decisive end to Trump’s first-term legislative agenda.

Republicans, with convincing victories on Tuesday, want to squelch any chance of history repeating itself.

Democrats, engaged in a sometimes acrimonious debate over strategy and political priorities, would like Florida to get them back in the win column – or at least give them hope of better days to come.

The prosecution of Karen Read, who is accused of murdering her police officer boyfriend in January 2022, has garnered massive internet attention and drawn crowds to the Massachusetts courthouse where her trial was held.

After a mistrial last July, Ms Read is once again going to court to face a new trial and jury.

The case surrounds the death of Boston police officer John O’Keefe, who was found unresponsive in the snow outside a colleague’s suburban home in January 2022 and later pronounced dead.

His girlfriend, Ms Read, was charged in his murder – though she maintains her innocence and says she is being framed by police.

She faces multiple charges and is accused of dropping Mr O’Keefe off at a fellow police officer’s home after a night of drinking, hitting him with her car and driving away from the scene.

Here is everything else you need to know about the case.

Before the case, Ms Read, 44, worked as an adjunct professor at Bentley University and an equity analyst at Fidelity Investments.

She and Mr O’Keefe were together for about two years before his 2022 death, but the latter part of the pair’s relationship was troubled, prosecutors said during her first trial.

Mr O’Keefe, who died at age 46, spent 16 years with the Boston Police Department.

Ms Read faces multiple charges, including second-degree murder, vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and leaving the scene of a collision resulting in death.

If she is found guilty of second-degree murder, she could face a maximum sentence of life in prison under Massachusetts law.

She has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Prosecutors allege the couple were drinking the evening before Mr O’Keefe’s body was found.

Ms Read allegedly dropped her boyfriend off at a house party. When leaving she made a three-point turn and struck Mr O’Keefe and then drove away, according to prosecutors.

She returned to the party a few hours later with two other women and found Mr O’Keefe in a snowbank.

His cause of death was later determined to be blunt force trauma to the head and hypothermia, NBC News reported.

Throughout their case, prosecutors alleged the couple had a rocky relationship.

They claim Ms Read intentionally struck her then-boyfriend with her car because of their relationship problems.

Mr O’Keefe’s brother, Paul O’Keefe, was among the people called to the stand who detailed the couple’s disagreements.

Ms Read did not take the stand as part of her defence.

Instead, her lawyers argued that she was framed, and that investigators had inappropriate relationships with witnesses and others involved in the case.

The defence claimed Mr O’Keefe was beaten inside the house party and later dragged outside where he was found.

Much of the case they presented focused on what the defence called a poorly done investigation into O’Keefe’s death by local law enforcement.

Some of the investigators who oversaw the case knew the police officers who attended the house party that January night, the defence claimed.

For example, the lead investigator, Massachusetts State Trooper Michael Proctor, admitted he was friends with the the Boston police office who hosted the party where Mr O’Keefe died.

Ms Read was a “convenient outsider” who was targeted to ensure investigators did not look at other suspects, the defence alleged.

Among the witnesses who took the stand as part of the defence’s case was a retired forensic pathologist, Dr Frank Sheridan.

He claimed that Mr O’Keefe’s body would have had more bruising if it were hit by a heavy vehicle, according to the Associated Press.

After a nine-week trial and five days of deliberations, a jury was unable to reach a verdict and a mistrial was declared. During that trial, 70 witnesses testified and more than 600 pieces of evidence scrutinized.

On Tuesday, jury selection will begin for her second trial. Officials said that up to 2,000 potential jurors will be screened, and around 20 ultimately selected.

Ahead of the second trial, Norfolk County Superior Court Judge Beverly Cannone banned Ms Read’s defense team from calling a law enforcement expert to criticise the government’s investigation.

Protesters have been banned from the areas around the courthouse, to reduce the risk of influencing the jurors.

Much attention will be on the witness list, which includes a state trooper who was fired after he disclosed during the first trial that he used unprofessional language to describe Ms Read, and two other policemen who were formally disciplined after the first trial.

Ms Read gave several media interviews after declining to take the stand in her first trial. She also gave permission to HBO to create the mini-series, A Body in the Snow: The Trial of Karen Read, which has been watched by millions.

“I have nothing to hide,” Ms Read told Boston 25 News in February. “My life is in the balance, and it shouldn’t be. The more information the public has, the more they understand what we already know.”

Aidan Kearny, also known as “Turtleboy”, is an intriguing character to have come out of this trial.

He now faces charges for allegedly intimidating witnesses involved with the trial.

Mr Kearny runs the website “TB Daily News” where he writes under the name “Turtleboy”.

He has asserted that Ms Read is innocent and has followed the case closely.

His writing frequently questions the investigation into Mr O’Keefe’s death and he often publicly confronts witnesses about the case.

During the case, prosecutors shared several examples of witness intimidation with the jury.

Mr Kearny was charged with witness intimidation in October 2023 and later pleaded not guilty.

“They will never shut me up, they will never, ever, ever stop me from reporting the truth about what happened to John O’Keefe,” Mr Kearney told reporters after his 2023 arraignment. “Reporting the news is not harassment. Asking questions is not harassment.”

In December, he was indicted again. This time on 16 new charges that include witness intimidation and conspiracy to intimidate witnesses.

Prosecutors alleged Mr Kearny and Ms Read were in communication and she was sharing information from the case that was not yet public.

Judge Cannone, who is overseeing the case, ruled Mr Kearny would have to leave the courtroom when certain witnesses testified because of the witness intimidation charges brought against him.

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

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

More than 2,000 people have died and more than 3,900 have been injured, say the leaders of Myanmar’s military government. Those figures are expected to rise. In Thailand, at least 19 people lost their lives.

Here is what we know so far.

The earthquake’s epicentre was located 16km (10 miles) north-west of the town of 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 200km (125 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 6.4 magnitude. Its epicentre was 18km 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.

A state of emergency has been declared in the six most impacted regions – Sagaing, Mandalay, Magway, Bago, Shan and Nay Pyi Taw.

The ruling junta said on Saturday that 1,591 houses had been damaged in the Mandalay region, and that scores of people remained 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 in Myanmar now stands at more than 2,000 but this is expected to keep rising as rescuers gain access to more collapsed buildings. Many of the fatalities so far were in Mandalay.

More than 3,900 people were injured and at least 270 are missing, the military government said. Rescue operations are ongoing.

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

Meanwhile, in Bangkok, 19 people have been confirmed dead – 12 of them at the high-rise building that collapsed, where a further 78 people remain missing.

Getting information out of Myanmar is difficult, which is part of the reason why the exact earthquake death toll is currently unknown.

Since a coup in 2021 it has been ruled by a military junta, which has a history of suppressing the scale of national disasters.

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.

The junta has said it will not grant visas for foreign reporters requested to cover the aftermath the earthquake, citing an inability to guarantee their safety.

The 2021 coup triggered huge protests, which evolved into a widespread insurgency involving pro-democracy and ethnic rebel groups – eventually sparking an all-out civil war.

Large parts of the Sagaing region, the epicentre of the earthquake, are now under the control of pro-democracy resistance groups. The junta, however, has greater control over urban areas – including the cities of Mandalay, Nay Pyi Taw and Yangon.

The National Unity Government (NUG), which represents the ousted civilian administration, announced that its armed wing – the People’s Defence Force (PDF) – was pausing “offensive military operations” for two weeks from 30 March 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 impact of any pause 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”.

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 local efforts to locate and pull out any survivors.

The Red Cross has issued an urgent appeal for $100m (£77m), while the UN is seeking $8m for its earthquake response.

“People urgently require medical care, clean drinking water, tents, food, and other basic necessities,” the International Rescue Committee (IRC) said on Monday.

The need is especially great in and around Mandalay, according to the IRC, where there is no electricity, water is running out and hospitals are overwhelmed.

Michael Dunford, country director for the UN World Food Programme, told the BBC that bringing aid from Yangon to Nay Pyi Taw and Mandalay was taking twice as long as it normally would, due to damage to roads, bridges and other infrastructure.

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.

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.

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.

The meeting between motivational speaker Brad Burton and Sam Wall lasted less than a minute. She posed for a picture with him after attending one of his workshops and later left a glowing video testimonial.

It was unremarkable, Mr Burton says. “Just one of the thousands of people I must have met over the years.”

Two years later, she started attacking him online.

In hundreds of posts, Wall described him as manipulative, a psychopath and a sociopathic abuser. Day after day, she accused him of making death threats, breaking her windows and killing her cat – all false allegations.

“She put it on social media across all platforms. She was painting a picture that, somewhere along the way, I had done all these things and I was trying to cover it up,” Mr Burton tells BBC Panorama.

“How do you prove a negative? That I had not poisoned the cat? Social media and the way it works, it’s guilty until proven innocent.”

Wall, 55, a social media consultant, pleaded guilty to charges of stalking and sending false messages at Manchester Magistrates’ Court last November.

Her sentencing was delayed for a second time last week, but the judge told her to expect a prison sentence.

Wall’s legal team said a psychiatric report shows she has a chronic delusional mental health illness.

Her conviction was in relation to two victims – Mr Burton and businesswoman Naomi Timperley – who were targeted with abusive messages over the past four years.

“It’s just been hideous, really hideous, and I don’t know why it happened,” Mrs Timperley tells us. “I’m still really anxious, sometimes I get really sad.”

BBC Panorama has spoken to other victims who say they were stalked by Wall over a period of more than 10 years.

Some had never met Wall, while others only knew her as a passing acquaintance.

At the time Wall targeted Mr Burton, he was running a network supporting hundreds of small businesses across the UK.

Many of her abusive posts were detailed – one was 20,000 words long. Some were shared on LinkedIn, where she had 30,000 followers – the very platform Mr Burton relied on to promote his work.

While the pandemic hit him hard, he says she helped to sink his business.

Wall also falsely claimed that Mr Burton had in fact been harassing her for 10 years – and that he had been arrested and jailed.

Mr Burton posted pictures of himself online to prove he was not in prison. Wall responded by claiming his psychopathic twin was taking the photos and appearing at events to cover up the fact he had been locked up.

His friend Alan Price knew Wall was lying about the 10-year claim, because he had introduced them at the workshop two years earlier.

“She’s telling everybody that Brad Burton is in jail, but I was actually out in Burnham-on-Sea in Somerset having a curry with him,” he says.

In an attempt to stop her, Mr Burton went to a solicitor who advised him to send a cease and desist letter. Wall then responded by publishing the letter online and saying he could sue her – but she had no money.

Mrs Timperley had only met Wall in passing – she followed her on Twitter and they were connected on LinkedIn. She was also targeted with hundreds of messages – accused of criminal damage, destroying Wall’s business and of joining up with others to carry out so-called gang stalking.

Wall also falsely claimed Mrs Timperley had been arrested for harassment.

“I’ve been personally attacked on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook and accused of really vile things,” she tells us.

Wall continued her online attacks even after she had been charged with stalking.

Manchester-based entrepreneur Justine Wright was targeted over a decade. She had employed Wall for a couple of months and, when Wall left, the online stalking began.

Ms Wright is a marketing consultant and Wall repeatedly targeted her clients – major companies – with false claims. Justine had never met Brad, but Wall accused her of conspiring with him to poison her cat.

People might be surprised by the number of victims and that Wall did not disguise her identity, says Rory Innes, chief executive of the Cyber Helpline, a charity that helps victims of online crime.

But he says this is common.

“It’s a horrendous case and she will be causing harm to lots of people and changing their lives. But this is happening to hundreds of thousands of people every year.”

Panorama has spoken to other victims who do not want to be identified. One says he was stalked for more than a decade, during which time Wall sent thousands of texts, plus 10,000-word emails to his friends and business contacts.

Wall would also turn up at his work pretending to be his wife, he says, and accusing him of domestic abuse.

All of the victims complained to the social media companies about Wall’s posts, but they have not been taken down.

Social media lawyer Paul Tweed tells Panorama he was not surprised the companies had failed to help.

“They decide what should be taken down, they decide when it should be taken down and how it should be taken down. And they will say, when you ask them, that they comply with the law,” he says.

LinkedIn says it can’t comment on individual users, but it does not allow bullying or harassment and it will take action against anything that violates its policies. Instagram, Facebook and X did not respond to Panorama’s request for comment.

None of the companies have taken down Wall’s abusive messages, even though Panorama told them about Wall’s conviction two months ago.

Last week, she posted another abusive message about Mr Burton.

The charity Cyber Helpline has estimated that 600,000 people report online stalking to the police every year. Another charity, the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, says fewer than 2% of stalking and harassment complaints end with a conviction.

A major review by policing bodies last year found a lack of understanding of online stalking and evidence of the police failing to take it seriously.

The advice to victims of online stalking is basic – don’t engage, keep records and report it to the police. But the people Panorama spoke to did that, and the abuse continued.

Mr Burton and and Mrs Timperley were unhappy with the response they got from Greater Manchester Police (GMP).

Outcomes for victims are really poor, Roy Innes from the Cyber Helpline says.

“So few of these cases actually end up with an investigation,” he says. “And when an investigation does happen, the technology element can mean it takes years to get to the point where the evidence is being looked at.”

A spokesperson for GMP says delays in the wider criminal justice system affected Wall’s case and the force achieved positive outcomes for more than 3,000 victims of this type of crime last year.

We approached Wall for comment, but she did not respond.

Meanwhile, Mr Burton says he forgives her. “I hope she gets the help that she needs and she finds peace in her own life,” he says.

Billionaire Elon Musk has given away $1m (£770,000) cheques to voters in Wisconsin after the state supreme court refused to intervene.

Musk announced the prize earlier this week, ahead of Wisconsin’s tightly contested Supreme Court election to be held on Tuesday.

Wisconsin Attorney General and Democrat Josh Kaul had sued to stop the giveaway, arguing that Musk was violating a state law that bans gifts in exchange for votes.

The race, which could flip control of the state’s supreme court to the Republicans, has become a flash point and the most expensive judicial election in American history.

Speaking at a rally Sunday night, Musk said “we just want judges to be judges”, before handing out two $1m (£750,000) cheques to voters who had signed a petition to stop “activist” judges.

Kaul had tried to argue the giveaway was an illegal attempt buy votes. Musk’s lawyers, in response, argued that Kaul is “restraining Mr Musk’s political speech and curtailing his First Amendment rights”.

Musk’s lawyers added that the payments were “intended to generate a grassroots movement in opposition to activist judges, not to expressly advocate for or against any candidate”.

After two lower courts sided with Musk, Kaul begged the state’s supreme court for an 11th hour reprieve. But the top court unanimously declined to hear the case.

Musk and President Donald Trump have endorsed a conservative candidate, Waukesha County Judge Brad Schimel, in hopes of flipping the liberal-leaning court.

Judge Schimel is running against Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, who has been endorsed by the state Supreme Court’s liberal justices.

Lawyers for the tech titan also argued that judges who have publicly endorsed Judge Crawford in the Supreme Court race should be barred from ruling on the matter, arguing that it is a matter of bias.

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race is being seen by political watchers as a referendum on Trump’s second term, just months after his inauguration.

It also comes ahead of consequential cases that will land before the court on abortion rights, congressional redistricting and voting rules that could affect the 2026 midterm elections.

Musk himself has framed the election as a chance to stop redistricting which could give Democrats favour in Congress.

He has donated $14m to Judge Schimel’s campaign, as the race proves to be the most expensive judicial race in the country’s history, with $81m in total spending.

Despite his support, Judge Schimel appeared to distance himself from Musk in recent days, telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Friday he had no plans to be at the rally.

“I have no idea what he’s doing. I have no idea what this rally is,” Judge Schimel told the newspaper.

This is not the first time Musk has announced a giveaway to voters. Last year, he similarly offered a cash prize of $1m a day to voters in Wisconsin and six other battleground states if they signed a petition supporting First and Second Amendment rights.

A judge in Pennsylvania later ruled that the giveaway was legal, saying prosecutors failed to prove it was an unlawful lottery.

Indian superstar Mohanlal has apologised and said some scenes will be removed from his new film after criticism from Hindu nationalist groups.

The Malayalam-language film, L2: Empuraan, was released on Thursday and is performing well at the box office.

However, it faced a backlash from Hindu groups, including members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), over some scenes including ones seen as referring to the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat state.

“As an artist, it is my duty to ensure that none of my films are hostile to any political movement, ideology or religious group,” Mohanlal wrote on Facebook.

“The team of Empuraan and I sincerely regret the distress caused to my loved ones, and with the realisation that the responsibility for it lies with all of us who worked on the film, we have decided together to remove such subjects from the movie,” added Mohanlal, who is a household name in Kerala state, which is home to the Malayalam film industry.

The developments have sparked a debate around artistic freedom, with the opposition Congress and Left parties accusing the BJP of putting pressure on the filmmakers.

However, BJP leaders have said that the party did not launch a public campaign against the film and that people have the right to express their views on social media.

L2: Empuraan is a sequel to the 2019 Malayalam political thriller Lucifer, in which Mohanlal played the role of Stephen Nedumpally, a mysterious figure who is later revealed to be the head of an international crime syndicate.

The movie, directed by another Malayalam star Prithviraj, was a big hit and got mostly positive reviews.

So expectations were high for L2: Empuraan, which centres on the return of Mohanlal’s character as a saviour of Kerala’s politics, which has fallen into the hands of corrupt and evil people.

Even before its release, the film made headlines over its budget – huge for the relatively understated Malayalam film industry – and star-studded promotions.

It created a buzz across Indian cities and even internationally, with opening-day shows being sold out.

The film has made nearly 1.5bn rupees ($17.5mn; £13.5mn) overall in its opening weekend, according to film analytics tracker Sacnilk.

But the film received mixed reviews from critics.

The Hindustan Times newspaper called it a film grappling with “an identity crisis, an overlong run time and a confused mess of a script”. The Indian Express said “the emotional depth and dramatic weight that anchored Lucifer are largely absent in Empuraan” but praised “Mohanlal’s commanding performance” and some other aspects of the film.

L2: Empuraan begins with the backstory of a character Zayed Masood – played by director Prithviraj – who was orphaned during riots in a place in India, with some of the details being similar to the religious violence that occurred in 2002 when Modi was chief minister of Gujarat state.

The long flashback sequence shows some graphic scenes depicting Hindus committing violent crimes against Muslims during the violence.

It also shows how one of the perpetrators of the violence becomes more powerful over the years and is seeking to secure a key position in Kerala’s political landscape.

The scenes sparked an uproar.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the state president of the BJP, who had wished the film’s team well before its release, later said that he now realised there were “topics in the movie that disturbed Mohanlal fans and other viewers”.

“A movie should be watched as a movie. It can’t be seen as history. Also, any movie that tries to build a story by distorting the truth is doomed to fail,” he said, adding that he would not watch the film.

While some state BJP leaders supported this, others criticised the makers and accused them of depicting “anti-national themes” in the film.

The Organiser Weekly – a magazine published by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which is the ideological parent of the BJP – called the film a “disturbing, divisive tale disguised as cinema”.

“Empuraan isn’t just a bad film; it’s an attack on faith, on political plurality and on the very soul of balanced storytelling,” its review said.

Some social media users have also called for a boycott of the film, but there has not been a large-scale online campaign or big protests against the movie.

Over the weekend, Gokulam Gopalan, one of the producers of the film, said he had asked Prithviraj to make changes “if any scenes or dialogues in Empuraan have hurt anyone”.

This was followed by Mohanlal’s post on Sunday which confirmed some scenes would be removed. Prithviraj shared the post on Facebook but did not offer additional comment.

Some reports said the film would see as many as 17 cuts while others said a three-minute long scene would be removed and some dialogues muted. The makers have not confirmed what the changes are.

The film had been cleared by India’s Central Board of Film Certification – known as the censor board – which reviews movies for public exhibition. But makers have the option of resubmitting it for more cuts.

Amid the controversy, L2: Empuraan has also received support from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) – which governs Kerala – and the Congress party. The two parties have a strong presence in Kerala, where the nationally powerful BJP has struggled to make inroads.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the “communal hate campaign against Empuraan and its creators is deeply disturbing”.

“Undermining creative freedom through fear and threats strikes at the very core of democracy,” he added.

“Cinema is the work of a group of artists. Changing the content of a work of art by threatening, insulting and humiliating through social media is not a victory,” wrote Congress leader VD Satheesan.

People smugglers have exploited “fragmented” policing, border force and intelligence agencies to smuggle thousands of illegal migrants into the UK, the prime minister has said.

Sir Keir Starmer said poor organisation had meant the UK was “a soft touch” on illegal migration, which smugglers took as an “open invitation”.

The prime minister made the case for tackling illegal migration like terrorism as he spoke at the first ever Organised Immigration Crime Summit in London – attended by more than 40 countries alongside tech giants like Meta, X and TikTok.

The Conservatives said the conference “will make no difference” and only Rwanda-style deportations would stop illegal migration.

Sir Keir is keen for the UK to be seen as leading the global response to illegal migration – a key issue for the government politically, with both the Conservatives and Reform UK accusing Labour of failing to get a grip on the issue.

Since winning the election in 2024, Sir Keir has pushed for treating illegal migration like terrorism, with increased cooperation across countries and enhanced police powers.

The government has announced a series of agreements with other countries in an effort to tackle the number of illegal migrants entering the UK.

But more than 6,000 people have crossed the Channel so far in 2025, making it a record start to a year for small boat arrivals.

Sir Keir said joint cross-border criminal investigations involving UK authorities were “beginning to bear fruit”.

Since July, the government said more than 24,000 individuals with no right to be in the UK had been deported.

Launching a two-day summit at Lancaster House, the prime minister said he was “angry” about the scale of illegal migration.

“It makes me angry, frankly, because it’s unfair on ordinary working people who pay the price – from the cost of hotels, to our public services struggling under the strain,” he said.

Illegal migration was also “a massive driver of global insecurity” which “undermines our ability to control who comes here”, Sir Keir said.

“And it’s unfair on the illegal migrants themselves, because these are vulnerable people being ruthlessly exploited by vile gangs.”

Officials from Vietnam, Albania and Iraq – countries from which many migrants have travelled to the UK – attended the summit at London’s Lancaster House, alongside French, Chinese and US representatives.

Representatives from social media companies Meta, X and TikTok also joined, alongside Kurdish leaders and Interpol to take part in discussions on how to disrupt a criminal trade worth an estimated $10bn (£7.7bn) a year.

Sir Keir told attendees: “There has never been a bigger gathering of people on this issue, building a truly international effort to defeat organised immigration crime.”

Labour campaigned on a promise to scrap the previous government’s plan to send some migrants to Rwanda.

On Monday, Sir Keir blamed the Conservatives for pursuing the scheme, while smugglers slipped through the cracks in services.

“We inherited this total fragmentation between our policing, our Border Force and our intelligence agencies,” Sir Keir said.

“A fragmentation that made it crystal clear, when I looked at it, that there were gaps in our defence, an open invitation at our borders for the people smugglers to crack on.

“To be honest, it should have been fixed years ago.”

Conservative shadow home secretary Chris Philp said Sir Keir’s immigration plans “already lie in tatters”.

He said: “We are about to see 30,000 illegal channel crossings since the election reached this week, a 31% increase.

“This year so far has been the worst on record.”

The spike in channel crossings was “a direct consequence of the government cancelling the Rwanda deterrent before it even started,” Philp said.

“Today’s conference will make no difference,” he added.

“Law enforcement alone cannot stop illegal immigration – you need a removals deterrent.”

Ahead of the summit, the Home Office announced that £33m would be spent to disrupt people-smuggling networks and boost prosecutions.

Among developments aimed at tackling illegal migration ahead of the gathering:

• £30m of funding for the Border Security Command will be used to tackle supply chains, finance and trafficking routes across Europe, the Balkans, Asia and Africa. A further £3m will help the Crown Prosecution Service increase its ability to deal with cases, the government said
• The government is expanding right-to-work checks to cover gig economy workers by making amendments to the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill
• Home Secretary Yvette Cooper signalled she wanted to crack down on the number of people who had arrived in the UK on a student or work visa and had gone on to claim asylum
• The government is reviewing how Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the right to family life, applies to migration cases, Cooper said
• Some £1m in UK funding will go towards strengthened efforts to root out people-smuggling kingpins in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, the Home Office announced
• The UK has launched an advertising campaign on Vietnamese social media and messenger app Zalo, warning people about trusting people-smuggling gangs.

On Sunday, Tory shadow minister Alex Burghart told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme that Labour should never have scrapped the Rwanda deportation plan.

Earlier, Cooper told the show that plans for new checks on unauthorised working would help cut levels of illegal migration.

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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.

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

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

More than 2,000 people have died and more than 3,900 have been injured, say the leaders of Myanmar’s military government. Those figures are expected to rise. In Thailand, at least 19 people lost their lives.

Here is what we know so far.

The earthquake’s epicentre was located 16km (10 miles) north-west of the town of 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 200km (125 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 6.4 magnitude. Its epicentre was 18km 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.

A state of emergency has been declared in the six most impacted regions – Sagaing, Mandalay, Magway, Bago, Shan and Nay Pyi Taw.

The ruling junta said on Saturday that 1,591 houses had been damaged in the Mandalay region, and that scores of people remained 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 in Myanmar now stands at more than 2,000 but this is expected to keep rising as rescuers gain access to more collapsed buildings. Many of the fatalities so far were in Mandalay.

More than 3,900 people were injured and at least 270 are missing, the military government said. Rescue operations are ongoing.

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

Meanwhile, in Bangkok, 19 people have been confirmed dead – 12 of them at the high-rise building that collapsed, where a further 78 people remain missing.

Getting information out of Myanmar is difficult, which is part of the reason why the exact earthquake death toll is currently unknown.

Since a coup in 2021 it has been ruled by a military junta, which has a history of suppressing the scale of national disasters.

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.

The junta has said it will not grant visas for foreign reporters requested to cover the aftermath the earthquake, citing an inability to guarantee their safety.

The 2021 coup triggered huge protests, which evolved into a widespread insurgency involving pro-democracy and ethnic rebel groups – eventually sparking an all-out civil war.

Large parts of the Sagaing region, the epicentre of the earthquake, are now under the control of pro-democracy resistance groups. The junta, however, has greater control over urban areas – including the cities of Mandalay, Nay Pyi Taw and Yangon.

The National Unity Government (NUG), which represents the ousted civilian administration, announced that its armed wing – the People’s Defence Force (PDF) – was pausing “offensive military operations” for two weeks from 30 March 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 impact of any pause 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”.

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 local efforts to locate and pull out any survivors.

The Red Cross has issued an urgent appeal for $100m (£77m), while the UN is seeking $8m for its earthquake response.

“People urgently require medical care, clean drinking water, tents, food, and other basic necessities,” the International Rescue Committee (IRC) said on Monday.

The need is especially great in and around Mandalay, according to the IRC, where there is no electricity, water is running out and hospitals are overwhelmed.

Michael Dunford, country director for the UN World Food Programme, told the BBC that bringing aid from Yangon to Nay Pyi Taw and Mandalay was taking twice as long as it normally would, due to damage to roads, bridges and other infrastructure.

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.

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.

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.

A missile launcher sends a cloud of brown dust into the air as it hurtles across a field towards the firing line. Moments later comes a soldier’s countdown, from five to ‘Fire!’, before a rocket roars into the sky.

The blasts and booms from such military training exercises are so constant that locals in the nearby small town of Munster barely notice anymore.

But life here is set to get even louder.

Germany’s military, the Bundeswehr, recently got the all-clear for a massive increase in investment after parliament voted to exempt defence spending from strict rules on debt.

The country’s top general has told the BBC the cash boost is urgently needed because he believes Russian aggression won’t stop at Ukraine.

“We are threatened by Russia. We are threatened by Putin. We have to do whatever is needed to deter that,” Gen Carsten Breuer says. He warns that Nato should be braced for a possible attack in as little as four years.

“It’s not about how much time I need, it’s much more about how much time Putin gives us to be prepared,” the defence chief says bluntly. “And the sooner we are prepared the better.”

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has changed thinking in Germany profoundly.

For decades people here have been raised on a rejection of military might, acutely aware of Germany’s past role as the aggressor in Europe.

“We started two world wars. Even though it’s 80 years since World War Two ended, the idea that Germans should stay out of conflict is still very much in many people’s DNA,” explains Markus Ziener of the German Marshall Fund in Berlin.

Some remain wary of anything that might be seen as militarism even now, and the armed forces have been chronically underfunded.

“There are voices cautioning: ‘Are we really on the right track? Is our threat perception right?'”

When it comes to Russia, Germany has had a specific approach.

Whilst countries like Poland and the Baltic States cautioned against getting too close to Moscow – and increased their own defence spending – Berlin under former Chancellor Angela Merkel believed in doing business.

Germany imagined it was delivering democratisation by osmosis. But Russia took the cash and invaded Ukraine anyway.

So in February 2022 a stunned Chancellor Olaf Scholz declared a national pivot in priorities, a “Zeitenwende”.

That’s when he committed a giant €100 billion ($108bn; £83bn) to boost the country’s military and keep “warmongers like Putin” in check. But General Breuer says it wasn’t enough.

“We filled up a little bit the potholes,” he recounts. “But it’s really bad.”

By contrast, he points to heavy spending in Russia on weapons and equipment, for stocks as well as the frontline in Ukraine.

He also highlights Russia’s hybrid warfare: from cyber attacks to sabotage, as well as unidentified drones over German military sites.

Add to that Vladimir Putin’s aggressive rhetoric and General Breuer sees “a really dangerous mixture.”

“Unlike the western world, Russia is not thinking in boxes. It’s not about peacetime and war, it’s a continuum: let’s start with hybrid, then escalate, then back. This is what makes me think we are facing a real threat.”

He argues Germany has to act fast.

The defence chief’s stark assessment of his forces’ current state chimes with a recent report to parliament. The Bundeswehr, it concluded, had “too little of everything”.

The report’s author, armed forces commissioner Eva Högl, revealed dire shortages ranging from ammunition to soldiers, right down to dilapidated barracks. She estimated the budget for renovation work alone at around €67 billion ($72bn; £56bn).

Lifting the debt cap, allowing the military to borrow – in theory, without limit – will give it access to a “steady line” of funding to start to address that, General Breuer says.

The historic move was made by Scholz’s expected successor, Friedrich Merz, in a rush that raised some eyebrows. He submitted the proposal to parliament just before it was disbanded following the February elections.

The new parliament, with an anti-militarist left and Russia-sympathising far right, might have been less favourably disposed.

But the “turn” that Germany started in 2022 gained fresh momentum this year.

A recent YouGov poll showed that 79% of Germans still see Vladimir Putin as “very” or “quite” dangerous to European peace and security.

Now 74% said the same for Donald Trump.

The survey followed a speech in Munich in which his Vice President JD Vance laid into Europe and its values.

“That was a clear signal that something fundamentally has changed in the United States,” says Markus Ziener.

“We don’t know where the US is heading but we know the belief that we can 100% rely on American protection when it comes to our security – that trust has now gone.”

In Berlin, Germans’ traditional caution about all things military seems to be fading fast.

Eighteen-year-old Charlotte Kreft says her own pacifist views have changed.

“For a really long time, we thought the only way to make up for the atrocities we committed in World War Two was to make sure it never happened again […] and we thought we needed to demilitarise,” Charlotte explains.

“But now we are in a situation where we have to fight for our values and democracy and freedom. We need to adapt.”

“There are lots of Germans who still feel strange about big investments in our military,” Ludwig Stein agrees. “But I think considering the things that have happened in the past few years, there’s no other real option.”

Sophie, a young mum, thinks investing in defence is now “necessary in the world we live in”.

But Germany needs troops as well as tanks, and she’s far less keen on her own son being enlisted.

The Bundeswehr only has one permanent drop-in centre, a small unit sandwiched between a pharmacy and a shoe store beside Berlin’s Friedrichstrasse station.

With camouflage-clad dummies in the window and slogans like “cool and spicy” it aims to attract men and women to serve, but only gets a handful of callers each day.

Germany has already missed a target of boosting its ranks by 20,000 soldiers, to 203,000, and lowering the average age from 34.

But Gen Breuer’s ambitions are far greater.

He told us Germany needs an extra 100,000 troops to defend itself and Nato’s eastern flank adequately – a total of 460,000, including reserves. So he insists a return to military service is “absolutely” necessary.

“You won’t get this 100,000 without one or other model of conscription,” the general said.

“We don’t have to determine now what model brings them. For me it’s only important that we get the soldiers in.”

That debate has only just begun.

General Breuer is clearly positioning himself at the front of an effort to push Germany’s “turn” further and faster.

With his easy, engaging manner, he likes to visit regional town halls and challenge audiences there with a question: “Are you ready for war?”

One day a woman accused him of scaring her. “I said, ‘It’s not me scaring you, it’s the other guy!'” he remembers his reply.

He was referring to Vladimir Putin.

The twin “wake-up” alarm – of the Russia threat and an isolationist, disengaged United States – is now ringing loudly for Germany, the general argues, and can’t be ignored.

“Now it’s understandable to each and every one of us that we have to change.”

Standing in front of a few dozen supporters in a strip-mall parking lot in Ocala, Florida, Monday evening, Democratic congressional candidate Josh Weil made a prediction.

The public school math teacher said that in less than 24 hours, he was going to make history by flipping a solidly Republican congressional seat – helping to wrest control of the House of Representatives from the Republicans.

“Their 2025 agenda stops here,” he promised, railing against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s efforts to slash government services and personnel.

Just an hour earlier, in a telephone town hall meeting, Randy Fine, his Republican opponent in Tuesday’s special election, had a similar message – although he framed it as a warning, not a promise.

“Democrats are mad,” he said. “They’re going to do whatever it takes to grind Donald Trump’s agenda to a halt.”

Voters in the eastern half of central Florida, from Ocala to the towns north of Daytona Beach, head to the polls to fill the seat vacated by Michael Waltz, chosen by Trump to be national security advisor. Waltz recently sparked a media frenzy after inadvertently adding a prominent journalist to a high-level group chat about the US strikes in Yemen.

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That Waltz’s job may now be in jeopardy is just one reason Tuesday’s contest for one of the 435 House seats is now a national story.

The other is that Weil, despite running in a district Trump carried by more than 30 points last November, just might win. And if he does, Democrats would take a big step closer to a majority in the narrowly divided House.

Win or lose, the race also could serve as a barometer of voters’ motivation as Trump begins his second term – and offer hints at the political landscape ahead of next year’s mid-term congressional elections.

It is one of two special elections in Florida on Tuesday. The other, in Florida’s panhandle region, will determine a replacement for Matt Gaetz, the firebrand congressman Trump originally picked to be attorney general before he withdrew under a cloud of sexual misconduct and ethics allegations. A Republican is widely expected to win there.

But that is not the case here. Weil has raised about $10m in campaign donations, dwarfing the $1m brought in by Fine, a Florida state senator.

According to a recent public opinion survey, Weil narrowly trails Fine. An internal poll by a respected Republican firm reportedly showed Weil ahead by 3.

That’s enough to cause more than a little anxiety in Republican ranks.

“There’s no excuse for a Republican not to win this race,” said Randy Ross, a Florida-based conservative activist who campaigned there for Trump in 2016 and 2024. “The only excuse that can possibly be had is Republicans weren’t excited and didn’t get out to vote.”

Mr Ross added that Republican voters need to understand that Fine will support Trump’s agenda in Congress – and Weil will not.

To this end, some of the party’s heaviest hitters stepped in to help. Last Thursday, Trump joined the Republican candidate in two telephone town hall events. On Monday night, Florida Congressman Byron Donalds and conservative commentator Ben Shapiro held their own event.

“Donald Trump’s agenda is hanging by a thread,” Shapiro said. “This is a district that simply cannot fall into Democratic hands.”

Tech multi-billionaire Musk, a close Trump ally, may be campaigning in person for a hotly contested Wisconsin Supreme Court race, but his political committee directed more than $75,000 to support Fine in recent days. Other conservative groups followed suit, helping Fine level the financial playing field.

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Of particular concern for the party is that special elections take place during times of lower political engagement and usually involve only the one race in question. They often tilt toward the party with the most enthusiasm, according to Mr Ross. For Republicans, a Democratic show of strength on Tuesday would be troubling.

“You can’t go just on name recognition in a special election,” he said. “You’ve got to drive people out to vote for you.”

Republican nervousness is a result of simple math in the House of Representatives. With a 218 to 213 majority in the 435 seat chamber, the party cannot afford to lose any winnable elections – let alone ones that should be a slam dunk.

While a Weil victory alone wouldn’t be enough to flip control of the chamber, two of the currently vacant seats are in safely Democratic districts. If the results of those special elections go as expected, Democrats would be on the verge of control.

That could explain why the president announced on Friday he was withdrawing his pick of New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik to be US ambassador to the United Nations, despite her having all but formally vacated her office. A Weil victory on Tuesday would mean the Republicans could not afford to lose a New York election to replace Stefanik.

Even before Tuesday’s balloting, both Democrats and Republicans jockeyed to frame the results in the best light for their party.

Conservatives downplayed the national implications of the race and placed blame on Fine, who has been accused of running a lacklustre campaign and taking victory for granted.

“It’s a reflection of the candidate that’s running the race, ” Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said of Fine’s apparent underperformance.

Meanwhile, Democrats are declaring a victory – at least, the moral variety.

“These are races that should not, under ordinary circumstances, be on anyone’s political radar,” Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said last Monday. “The American people are not buying what the Republicans are selling.”

That sentiment was echoed by many of Weil’s supporters on Monday night in Ocala, even if the candidate himself told the BBC he would win by eight points.

“If we lose but come close, moderate Republicans might take notice,” said Buddy Oswald, an attorney and educator. If they were worried their party could lose a safe seat, he added, maybe they would feel the heat and be more willing to break with the president.

Eight years ago, in the aftermath of Trump’s stunning 2016 presidential victory, Democrats sought solace in special election races across the map. They pulled off some stunners, including a Doug Jones Senate victory in deeply conservative Alabama. In other races, such as a bid by Jon Ossoff in a suburban Atlanta district, the Democrat came up just short.

Those races presaged a high level of Democratic enthusiasm that led to a wave in the mid-terms the following year, when the party won 39 seats in taking back the House of Representatives and putting a decisive end to Trump’s first-term legislative agenda.

Republicans, with convincing victories on Tuesday, want to squelch any chance of history repeating itself.

Democrats, engaged in a sometimes acrimonious debate over strategy and political priorities, would like Florida to get them back in the win column – or at least give them hope of better days to come.

Virginia Giuffre, one of Jeffrey Epstein’s most prominent accusers, has said she is in hospital following a serious accident.

Ms Giuffre posted on Instagram that she had suffered kidney failure after her car collided with a school bus, stating doctors had given her “four days to live” and were transferring her to a specialist hospital.

In a statement shared with the BBC, her spokesperson Dini von Mueffling said: “Virginia has been in a serious accident and is receiving medical care in the hospital. She greatly appreciates the support and well wishes people are sending.”

Ms Giuffre said this year had “been the worst”, alongside a photograph from a hospital bed showing visible bruising.

The 41-year-old described the accident in an Instagram post, writing that the crash was so severe that her car “might as well be a tin can”.

“I’m ready to go, just not until I see my babies one last time,” she added, seemingly referring to her three children.

Ms Giuffre had recently been living with her children and husband Robert in the suburb of North Perth, Australia, though recent reports suggest the couple have split after 22 years of marriage.

It remains unclear where and when the crash occurred.

Both the Western Australia police and ambulance services told the BBC they had no records of such an accident happening in recent weeks.

The police later specified that they had located records of a “minor crash” between a bus and a car on 24 March, but that no injuries had been reported as a result.

Ms Giuffre is best known for her allegations that Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell trafficked her to the Duke of York when she was 17.

Prince Andrew has denied all claims but reached an out-of-court settlement with her in 2022.

The settlement included a statement in which he expressed regret for his association with Epstein but contained no admission of liability or apology.

Donald Trump has said he is “not joking” about wanting to serve a third term as US president.

The US Constitution says that “no person… shall be elected more than twice”, but some Trump supporters have suggested there could be ways around that.

Trump was asked in an interview with NBC about the possibility of seeking a third term and said “there are methods which you could do it”.

“I’m not joking… a lot of people want me to do it,” he added. “But, I basically tell them we have a long way to go, you know, it’s very early in the administration.”

Trump, who would be 82 at the end of his second term, was asked whether he would want to keep serving in “the toughest job in the country”.

“Well, I like working,” he replied.

These were not his first comments on the topic. In January, he told supporters that it would be “the greatest honour of my life to serve not once, but twice or three times or four times”. However, he then said this was a joke for the “fake news media”.

On the face of it, the US Constitution seems to rule out anyone having a third term. The 22nd Amendment states:

“No person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice, and no person who has held the office of president, or acted as president, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected president shall be elected to the office of the president more than once.”

Changing the constitution would require a two-thirds approval from both the Senate and the House of Representatives, as well as approval from three-quarters of the country’s state-level governments.

Trump’s Republican Party controls both chambers of Congress but does not have the majorities needed. Additionally, the Democratic Party controls 18 of the 50 state legislatures.

Trump supporters say there is a loophole in the constitution, untested in court.

They argue that the 22nd Amendment only explicitly bans someone being “elected” to more than two presidential terms – and says nothing of “succession”.

Under this theory, Trump could be the vice-presidential running-mate to another candidate – perhaps his own vice-president, JD Vance – in the 2028 election.

If they win, the candidate could be sworn into the White House and then immediately resign – letting Trump take over by succession.

Steve Bannon, the podcaster and prominent former Trump adviser, said he believed Trump would “run and win again”, adding there were “a couple of alternatives” in determining how.

Andy Ogles, a Tennessee Republican in the House of Representatives, introduced a resolution in January calling for a constitutional amendment to allow a president to serve up to three terms – as long as they were not consecutive.

This would mean that only Trump of all former surviving presidents would be eligible – Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W Bush all served consecutive terms, whereas Trump won in 2016, lost in 2020, and won again in 2024.

However, the high bar for constitutional amendments makes Ogles’ proposal a pipe dream – although it got people talking.

Democrats have deep objections.

“This is yet another escalation in his clear effort to take over the government and dismantle our democracy,” said Daniel Goldman, a New York Representative who served as lead counsel for Trump’s first impeachment.

“If Congressional Republicans believe in the Constitution, they will go on the record opposing Trump’s ambitions for a third term.”

Some within Trump’s party also think it’s a bad idea.

The Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin, of Oklahoma, said in February he would not back an attempt to put Trump back in the White House.

“I’m not changing the constitution, first of all, unless the American people chose to do that,” Mullin told NBC.

Derek Muller, an election law professor at the University of Notre Dame, said the Constitution’s 12th Amendment says “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of president shall be eligible to that of vice-president of the United States”.

That means serving two terms in office disqualifies anyone from running as a vice-presidential candidate, in his view.

“I don’t think there’s any ‘one weird trick’ to getting around presidential term limits,” he said.

Jeremy Paul, a constitutional law professor at Boston’s Northeastern University, told CBS New there were “no credible legal arguments” for a third term.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected four times. He died three months into his fourth term, in April 1945.

The Great Depression and the Second World War coloured Roosevelt’s time in office – and are often cited for his extended presidency.

At that time, the two-term limit on US presidents had not been written into law – it was instead a custom followed since George Washington refused a third term in 1796.

Roosevelt’s extended stewardship led to the tradition being codified into law in the 22nd Amendment in 1951.

A Cornell University graduate student who had his US visa revoked due to protest activities against Israel has chosen to leave the US rather than be deported.

Momodou Taal, who is a joint citizen of the UK and The Gambia, had his student visa revoked due to his on-campus protest activities last year as the Israel-Gaza war raged.

Mr Taal previously sued to block his deportation, but on Monday posted on X that he had chosen to leave the country “free and with my head held high”. It comes after a judge denied his request to delay his deportation.

The Trump administration is cracking down on international students who have been active in protests against Israel on university campuses.

Mr Taal is at least the second international student to opt to leave the US after being targeted for removal by the US Department of Homeland Security. The Trump administration identifies these cases as “self-deportations”.

“Given what we have seen across the United States, I have lost faith that a favourable ruling from the courts would guarantee my personal safety and ability to express my beliefs,” Mr Taal posted on X on Monday.

“I have lost faith I could walk the streets without being abducted, Weighing up these options. I took the decision to leave on my own terms.”

Mr Taal was suspended twice by Cornell, an Ivy League school in upstate New York, due to protest activities. On the day of the Hamas attack against Israel in 2023, he posted: “Glory to the Resistance.”

“We are in solidarity with the armed resistance in Palestine from the river to the sea,” he later told a crowd of protesters, according to The Cornell Daily Sun newspaper.

At least 300 university students had their student visas revoked due to involvement in pro-Palestinian protests, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week.

Trump officials said the Immigration and Nationality Act allows the State Department to deport non-citizens who are “adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests” of the US.

The arrests are a part of Trump’s pledge to combat what the administration has classified as antisemitism, which was written into an executive order in January.

Critics have decried the deportations as a violation of free speech.

Another student who chose to flee the US, Indian scholar Ranjani Srinivasan, told CNN that she wants to clear her name.

“I’m not a terrorist sympathizer,” she told CNN, adding: “I’m literally just a random student.”

She added that she hopes to re-enroll at Columbia University, which was the epicentre of student protests last year, and finish her PhD programme.

About 15 children’s backpacks lie torn apart in the rubble – pink, blue and orange bags with books spilling out of them.

Spiderman toys and letters of the alphabet are scattered among broken chairs, tables and garden slides at the remains of this preschool destroyed by the huge earthquake that hit Myanmar on Friday.

It is in the town of Kyaukse, about 40km (25 miles) south of Mandalay, one of the areas hit hardest by the 7.7 magnitude quake that killed at least 2,000 people.

Kywe Nyein, 71, weeps as he explains that his family are preparing to hold the funeral of his five-year-old granddaughter, Thet Hter San.

He says her mother was having lunch when the devastating earthquake began. She ran to the school, but the building had collapsed completely.

The little girl’s body was found about three hours later. “Fortunately, we got our beloved’s body intact, in one piece,” he says.

Locals say there were about 70 children, aged between two and seven, at the school on Friday, learning happily. But now there is little left except a pile of bricks, concrete and iron rods.

The school says 12 children and a teacher died, but locals believe the number is at least 40 – that is how many were in the downstairs section that collapsed.

Residents and parents are distraught. People say the whole town came to help with the rescue work and several bodies were retrieved on Friday. They describe mothers crying and calling out the names of their children long into the night.

Now, three days later, the site is quiet. People look at me with grief etched on their faces.

Aid groups are warning of a worsening humanitarian crisis in Myanmar, with hospitals damaged and overwhelmed, though the full scale of devastation is still emerging.

Before we arrived in Kyaukse, we had been in the capital, Nay Pyi Taw.

The worst-hit area we saw there was a building that had been residential quarters for civil servants. The whole ground floor had collapsed, leaving the three upper floors still standing on top of it.

There were traces of blood in the rubble. The intense stench suggested many people had died there, but there was no sign of rescue work.

A group of policemen were loading furniture and household goods on to trucks, and appeared to be trying to salvage what was still useable.

The police officer in charge would not give us an interview, though we were allowed to film for a while.

We could see people mourning and desolate, but they did not want to speak to the media, fearing reprisals from the military government.

We were left with so many questions. How many people were under the rubble? Could any of them still be alive? Why was there no rescue work, even to retrieve the bodies of the dead?

Just 10 minutes’ drive away, we had visited the capital’s largest hospital – known here as the “1,000-bed hospital”.

The roof of the emergency room had collapsed. At the entrance, a sign saying “Emergency Department” in English lay on the ground.

There were six military medical trucks and several tents outside, where patients evacuated from the hospital were being cared for.

The tents were being sprayed with water to give those inside some relief from the intense heat.

It looked like there were about 200 injured people there, some with bloodied heads, others with broken limbs.

We saw an official angrily reprimanding staff about other colleagues who had not turned up to work during the emergency.

I realised the man was the minister for health, Dr Thet Khaing Win, and approached him for an interview but he curtly rejected my request.

On the route into the city, people sat clustered under trees on the central reservation of the highway, trying to get some relief from the hot sun.

It is the hottest time of year – it must have been close to 40C – but they were afraid to be inside buildings because of the continuing aftershocks.

We had set out on our journey to the earthquake zone at 4am on Sunday morning from Yangon, about 600 km (370 miles) south of Mandalay. The road was pitch black, with no street lights.

After more than three hours’ driving, we saw a team of about 20 rescue workers in orange uniforms, with logos on their vests showing they had come from Hong Kong. We started to find cracks in the roads as we drove north.

The route normally has several checkpoints, but we had travelled for 185km (115 miles) before we saw one. A lone police officer told us the road ahead was closed because of a broken bridge, and showed us a diversion.

We had hoped to reach Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, by Sunday night.

But the diversion, and problems with our car in the heat, made that impossible.

A day later, we have finally reached the city. It is in complete darkness, with no street lights on and homes without power or running water.

We are anxious about what we will find here when morning comes.

The US has said it expects “all parties on the ground” in Gaza to comply with international humanitarian law but declined to confirm whether it was carrying out its own assessment into the killing by the Israeli military of 15 people – paramedics, civil defence workers and a UN official.

Asked about the killings, state department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said: “Every single thing that happens in Gaza is happening because of Hamas.”

The UN’s humanitarian agency has said five ambulances, a fire truck and a UN vehicle were struck “one by one” on 23 March and that 15 bodies, including paramedics still in their uniforms, had been gathered and buried in a mass grave.

The Israeli military said its troops had fired on vehicles “advancing suspiciously” without headlights or emergency signals and that a Hamas operative and other militants were among those killed, but it did not offer any comment on the accounts of bodies being gathered up and buried in the sand.

International humanitarian law prohibits the targeting of civilians and calls for specific protections for medical personnel.

The US, Israel’s biggest arms supplier, is also bound by its own laws prohibiting its weapons being used by foreign militaries in breach of humanitarian law.

Jonathan Whittall, the head of the UN’s humanitarian agency in Gaza, said the mass grave had been “marked” with an emergency light from one of the ambulances hit in the strike.

“It’s an absolute horror what has happened here,” he said in a video on X, adding that “healthcare workers should never be a target”.

Israel renewed its air and ground campaign in Gaza on 18 March after negotiations over a ceasefire deal with Hamas stalled.

More than 1,000 people have since been killed in Gaza since then, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

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

More than 50,350 people have been killed in Gaza during the ensuing war, according to the health ministry.

South Korean star Kim Soo-hyun has made a tearful public statement denying allegations made by the family of actress Kim Sae-ron, who died in an apparent suicide in February.

“I can’t admit to something I didn’t do,” the 37-year-old said on Monday at a press conference in Seoul.

At the centre of the controversy are two allegations: that Kim Soo-hyun dated Kim Sae-ron when she was 15 – a minor – and that his agency pressured her to repay a loan she owed him.

The scandal has shocked South Korea and its entertainment industry – and has generated a backlash against Kim Soo-Hyun, whose roles in multiple hit drama series and films has made him one of its best-known stars.

Kim wept as he said that although he dated the actress for a year when she was an adult, they never dated while she was underage.

Monday’s media conference came after weeks of accusations and counter-accusations between Kim Sae-ron’s family and Kim Soo-hyun’s camp in the wake of her death.

The scandal broke on 10 March, less than a month after Kim Sae-ron’s death. A YouTube channel, known for its controversial political content, claimed that the two had dated for six years, when she was 15. The channel has since released videos and photos it claims were taken during their relationship.

Last week, the attorney representing Kim Sae-ron’s family held a press conference, revealing more chat history allegedly between the two actors from 2016, when she was 16.

Kim Soo-hyun’s agency initially denied the allegations but later clarified that they dated, though only between 2019 and 2020, when she was an adult.

The actor himself had remained silent until Monday. At the press conference, he became emotional, reiterating to reporters that they only dated as two adults.

“Many people are suffering because of me,” he said, apologising to his fans and staff. “I also feel sorry that the late actress [Kim Sae-ron] isn’t able to rest in peace.

“I never dated her when she was a minor,” he continued. “Except for the fact that both of us were actors, our relationship was just like that of any other ordinary couple.”

He also explained why he denied the relationship when she uploaded a later-deleted photo of the two of them to her Instagram account in 2024 during the airing of Netflix hit show Queen of Tears, in which he played the lead role.

“I had so much to protect as its lead actor. What would have happened if I had admitted to a year-long relationship? What would happen to the actors, the staff who were working overnight and the production team who had everything staked on that project?” he said. “The more I thought of it, the more I thought that shouldn’t be what I do.”

Any admission of a romantic relationship or a partner is still seen as scandalous to fans in South Korea’s entertainment industry, where celebrities’ personal lives come under intense scrutiny.

Kim Sae-ron herself was a victim of online hate by fans after she was fined 20 million won (£11,000; $14,000) for a 2022 drink-driving incident.

Prior to that, she had been seen as one of the most promising young actresses in South Korea.

At the time, she was managed by the same agency as Kim Soo-hyun, which was co-founded by his relative. Kim Sae-ron joined GoldMedalist in January 2020 and left in December 2022.

Kim Sae-ron’s family claimed that GoldMedalist covered the compensation for her drunk-driving incident. They allege that the agency later pursued legal action for repayment and that, while the actress asked Kim Soo-hyun for more time to settle the debt, her request went unanswered.

On Monday, Kim Soo-hyun denied claims that “she made the tragic choice because of me or my agency pressuring her over a debt”.

He released a voice recording of a phone call from a year ago, allegedly between his agency and Kim Sae-ron’s representative.

In the recording, the CEO of GoldMedalist appears to explain that the document they sent her regarding the debt was merely for “procedural reasons” and that her team could take time to respond.

He also accused Kim Sae-ron’s family of manipulating chat records as evidence and stated that he had submitted his own evidence to the relevant authorities for verification. He urged her family to do the same.

Kim Soo-hyun, 37, is an A-list actor in South Korea, known for his roles in multiple hit drama series and top-grossing movies, including My Love from the Star, Netflix’s Queen of Tears, and the film Secretly, Greatly.

He has also been a favourite among advertisers in the country, though many brands have now distanced themselves from him amid the controversy. On 17 March, fashion brand Prada announced that it had mutually decided to end its collaboration with him, according to Reuters. This followed similar moves from Dinto, a Korean cosmetic brand.

A Disney+ show that stars Kim Soo-hyun has also been put on pause due to the scandal, according to local news outlet Yonhap.

His lawyer stated on Monday that they had filed a criminal complaint against Kim Sae-ron’s family and the YouTube channel operator, along with a civil lawsuit for damages worth 12 billion won.

Her family has not commented on the lawsuits or his latest remarks.

If you have been affected by any of the issues in this story you can find information and support on the BBC Actionline website here.

“Incredible.” That was the single word uttered under her breath by Marine Le Pen as she stormed out of a Paris courtroom on Monday morning.

She left the court early – just before hearing that she was barred from running for office for five years after being found guilty of embezzlement of EU funds – almost certainly ruling her out from standing in the 2027 French presidential election.

Without even waiting for the judge to pronounce the full details of the sentence, the head of the National Rally knew that her political goose was cooked.

There would be no reprieve pending appeal. The bar on running for office was real and immediate.

A four-year prison sentence, of which two will be suspended, will be on hold pending appeal.

But her political plans are dead.

Le Pen’s incredulity can be better excused, perhaps, in the context of the moment.

A consensus had almost established itself across France’s political world that this ultimate sanction by the court could not, would not – in the end – take place.

It was not just Le Pen’s followers who said it. Her enemies agreed, from Jean-Luc Melenchon on the far left to Prime Minister François Bayrou in the centre and Justice Minister Gérard Darmanin on the right.

But they were all wrong. The judge said that the law was the law.

The law had in fact recently been toughened – by the very politicians who were now complaining about its application – to make the penalty for misuse of public funds very severe indeed. Well, said the judge in so many words, now let politicians suck up their own medicine.

Maybe Marine Le Pen was naive in not predicting this outcome. It certainly appears as if her National Rally party was singularly unprepared for it.

So as they met in an emergency session after the verdict, party leaders were in a dilemma.

Do they continue as if there is still a chance Marine Le Pen will run in 2027?

In theory there is still a (small) possibility. She has launched an appeal. The appeal could be accelerated and take place at the end of this year or early 2026. A verdict would follow in the spring.

A different decision at the appeal hearing could lessen the period of ineligibility, or remove it altogether – in which case she could still run. But the chances must be regarded as slim.

Or, should they proceed with plan B – that is to say, with naming party president Jordan Bardella as de facto the man who will run in Marine Le Pen’s place?

That might be a more realistic assessment of what lies ahead. But to turn to Bardella too quickly would be unseemly. And anyway, not everyone in the party is a fan.

By the evening the choice had been made: in a TV appearance Marine Le Pen came out fighting, saying she had no plans to retreat from the political scene.

Denouncing what she called a “political” decision by the judge and a “violation of the state of law”, she called for a swift appeal trial, so that her name could be cleared – or at least the ineligibility lifted – in time for the 2027 vote.

“There are millions of French people who believe in me. For 30 years I have been fighting against injustice. It is what I shall continue to do right to the end,” she said.

Fighting words – but in reality the future looks very unclear. And there are many unanswered questions.

What, for example, will the effect of the court decision be on the RN vote?

In the short term we can expect an outcry, and a boost to the party’s support. Why? Because what has happened fits so neatly into the RN narrative that the populist right is a victim of the “system”.

No-one likely to vote for the RN seriously holds it against Marine Le Pen for illegally financing her party using EU parliament funds. They all know that practically every French political party has resorted to similar underhand methods in the past.

By the same token, her “draconian” punishment – being banned from standing for the presidency – will be interpreted as a badge of honour: proof that she alone is standing up to the powers-that-be.

Longer term, though, the boost may not be so powerful. The truth is that Marine Le Pen is a huge asset to the RN. This battle-hardened, sentimental, cat-loving, tough-talking, long-suffering woman is held in affection by her supporters, who feel they know her personally.

Jordan Bardella is a popular figure too, but at just 29 it is hard to see him filling her shoes. If Marine Le Pen is indeed unable to run in 2027, the RN loses much of its appeal.

What is certain is that many would-be candidates on the non-RN right – Laurent Wauquiez, Bruno Retailleau for example – would see in a Bardella candidacy a big opportunity for themselves.

The other unknown is vengeance.

Marine Le Pen remains a member of the National Assembly, where she leads a bloc of 125 – the parliament’s biggest. Till now she had been benign towards the beleaguered prime minister Francois Bayrou, who struggles on despite having no majority.

Those days may be over.

Why should we do anyone any favours now, they will be saying at RN HQ. Why not bring the house down?

Indian superstar Mohanlal has apologised and said some scenes will be removed from his new film after criticism from Hindu nationalist groups.

The Malayalam-language film, L2: Empuraan, was released on Thursday and is performing well at the box office.

However, it faced a backlash from Hindu groups, including members of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), over some scenes including ones seen as referring to the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat state.

“As an artist, it is my duty to ensure that none of my films are hostile to any political movement, ideology or religious group,” Mohanlal wrote on Facebook.

“The team of Empuraan and I sincerely regret the distress caused to my loved ones, and with the realisation that the responsibility for it lies with all of us who worked on the film, we have decided together to remove such subjects from the movie,” added Mohanlal, who is a household name in Kerala state, which is home to the Malayalam film industry.

The developments have sparked a debate around artistic freedom, with the opposition Congress and Left parties accusing the BJP of putting pressure on the filmmakers.

However, BJP leaders have said that the party did not launch a public campaign against the film and that people have the right to express their views on social media.

L2: Empuraan is a sequel to the 2019 Malayalam political thriller Lucifer, in which Mohanlal played the role of Stephen Nedumpally, a mysterious figure who is later revealed to be the head of an international crime syndicate.

The movie, directed by another Malayalam star Prithviraj, was a big hit and got mostly positive reviews.

So expectations were high for L2: Empuraan, which centres on the return of Mohanlal’s character as a saviour of Kerala’s politics, which has fallen into the hands of corrupt and evil people.

Even before its release, the film made headlines over its budget – huge for the relatively understated Malayalam film industry – and star-studded promotions.

It created a buzz across Indian cities and even internationally, with opening-day shows being sold out.

The film has made nearly 1.5bn rupees ($17.5mn; £13.5mn) overall in its opening weekend, according to film analytics tracker Sacnilk.

But the film received mixed reviews from critics.

The Hindustan Times newspaper called it a film grappling with “an identity crisis, an overlong run time and a confused mess of a script”. The Indian Express said “the emotional depth and dramatic weight that anchored Lucifer are largely absent in Empuraan” but praised “Mohanlal’s commanding performance” and some other aspects of the film.

L2: Empuraan begins with the backstory of a character Zayed Masood – played by director Prithviraj – who was orphaned during riots in a place in India, with some of the details being similar to the religious violence that occurred in 2002 when Modi was chief minister of Gujarat state.

The long flashback sequence shows some graphic scenes depicting Hindus committing violent crimes against Muslims during the violence.

It also shows how one of the perpetrators of the violence becomes more powerful over the years and is seeking to secure a key position in Kerala’s political landscape.

The scenes sparked an uproar.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the state president of the BJP, who had wished the film’s team well before its release, later said that he now realised there were “topics in the movie that disturbed Mohanlal fans and other viewers”.

“A movie should be watched as a movie. It can’t be seen as history. Also, any movie that tries to build a story by distorting the truth is doomed to fail,” he said, adding that he would not watch the film.

While some state BJP leaders supported this, others criticised the makers and accused them of depicting “anti-national themes” in the film.

The Organiser Weekly – a magazine published by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which is the ideological parent of the BJP – called the film a “disturbing, divisive tale disguised as cinema”.

“Empuraan isn’t just a bad film; it’s an attack on faith, on political plurality and on the very soul of balanced storytelling,” its review said.

Some social media users have also called for a boycott of the film, but there has not been a large-scale online campaign or big protests against the movie.

Over the weekend, Gokulam Gopalan, one of the producers of the film, said he had asked Prithviraj to make changes “if any scenes or dialogues in Empuraan have hurt anyone”.

This was followed by Mohanlal’s post on Sunday which confirmed some scenes would be removed. Prithviraj shared the post on Facebook but did not offer additional comment.

Some reports said the film would see as many as 17 cuts while others said a three-minute long scene would be removed and some dialogues muted. The makers have not confirmed what the changes are.

The film had been cleared by India’s Central Board of Film Certification – known as the censor board – which reviews movies for public exhibition. But makers have the option of resubmitting it for more cuts.

Amid the controversy, L2: Empuraan has also received support from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) – which governs Kerala – and the Congress party. The two parties have a strong presence in Kerala, where the nationally powerful BJP has struggled to make inroads.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the “communal hate campaign against Empuraan and its creators is deeply disturbing”.

“Undermining creative freedom through fear and threats strikes at the very core of democracy,” he added.

“Cinema is the work of a group of artists. Changing the content of a work of art by threatening, insulting and humiliating through social media is not a victory,” wrote Congress leader VD Satheesan.