As the call to prayer rang out in Sagaing last Friday, hundreds of Muslims hurried to the five mosques in central Myanmar.

They were eager to hold their last Friday prayers for Ramadan, just days away from the festive period of Eid that would mark the end of the holy month.

Then, at 12:51 local time (06:21 GMT), a deadly earthquake struck. Three mosques collapsed, including the biggest one, Myoma, killing almost everyone inside.

Hundreds of kilometres away, the former imam of Myoma mosque, Soe Nay Oo, felt the quake in the Thai border town of Mae Sot.

In the following days, he found out that around 170 of his relatives, friends and members of his former congregation had died, mostly in the mosques. Some were leading figures in the city’s close-knit Muslim community.

“I think about all the people who lost their lives, and the victims’ children – some of them are young children,” he told the BBC. “I can’t hold back my tears when I talk about this.”

More than 2,700 people have died in the quake which happened near Sagaing and Mandalay, Myanmar’s second city. The death toll is expected to rise as rescuers continue to pull out bodies from rubble.

• What we know about the earthquake
• Mandalay was the ‘city of gold’ – now it reeks of death
• Heartbroken parents call out children’s names at earthquake-hit pre-school

While the area was known for its ancient Buddhist temples, the cities were also home to a significant Muslim population.

An estimated 500 Muslims died while praying in their mosques, according to figures given by the country’s leader, Min Aung Hlaing, on Monday.

Eyewitnesses in Sagaing have told the BBC that the road where the mosques were, Myoma Street, was the worst hit in the city. Many other houses on the street have also collapsed.

Hundreds of people have sought shelter by the side of the road, either because they are now homeless, or are too afraid to go back to their homes in case there are aftershocks. Food supplies are reported to be scarce.

In Myoma alone, more than 60 people were said to be crushed in the collapse, while scores more died in the Myodaw and Moekya mosques. More bodies were still being pulled out on Tuesday.

There are indications that the worshippers had tried to escape, according to Soe Nay Oo, who has received multiple reports from surviving members of his community.

He currently lives in the Thai city of Mae Sot with his wife and daughter, after escaping from Myanmar soon after a coup that took place in 2021.

There were bodies found outside of the main prayer hall, he said, in the area where worshippers wash themselves. Some were also found clutching other people’s hands, in what looked like attempts to pull them away from the crumbling building.

Among the many loved ones Soe Nay Oo lost was one of his wife’s cousins. Her death, he said, was “the most painful thing that I have endured” in his 13 years as an imam.

“She was the one who showed her love to us the most,” said Soe Nay Oo. “Everyone in the family loved her. The loss is unbearable for us.”

Another of his wife’s cousins, a well-respected businessman who had performed the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, also died.

“He always called me Nyi Lay [‘little brother’ in Burmese]…When I married my wife, he said we are family now and he always treated me like his own little brother,” said Soe Nay Oo.

“He was always there for us whenever we needed him. I have lost those whom I love like brothers like him.”

Some of the close friends who died include Soe Nay Oo’s former assistant imam, whom he remembered for his strong work ethic and remarkable talent in reciting the Quran.

The principal of the local public school, who was also the only female trustee of the Myoma mosque, also died. She was remembered by Soe Nay Oo as a generous soul who would often pay for mosque programmes out of her own pocket.

He said every time he hears of yet another person from the community who died, he experiences a new wave of grief. “I feel devastated… it always comes to my mind, the memories I cherish of them.

“Even though they were not close relatives, they were the ones who always welcomed me, followed my prayers, and who prayed together.”

The fact that they died during Ramadan is not lost on him. “All the departed have returned to Allah’s home, I would say. They will be remembered as martyrs accordingly,” he said.

Like other parts of Myanmar affected by the quake, the community is struggling to deal with the sheer number of bodies.

It has been complicated by ongoing fighting between the military junta and resistance groups. The Muslim cemetery in Sagaing is close to an area controlled by the rebel People’s Defence Forces (PDF), and has been closed to the public for several years. The military has continued to bomb some parts of the wider Sagaing region following the quake.

Sagaing city’s Muslim community has had to move the bodies of their dead to Mandalay, crossing the Irrawaddy River using the sole bridge connecting the two cities, according to Soe Nay Oo.

Their bodies are being left at Mandalay’s biggest mosque for burial. Some have not been buried within 24 hours of their death per Islamic tradition.

“For Muslims, it is the saddest thing, that we cannot bury our families by ourselves at the end of their journey,” he said.

The survivors have been trying to help in the rescue, even as they cope with the trauma. “Some from my community told me to pray for them. To be honest, they couldn’t even describe their loss in words when I speak to them.”

It is hard for Soe Nay Oo to be far from his former congregation. Like many other people from Myanmar who have migrated abroad, he feels survivor’s guilt.

“If I were the imam still, at the time of the quake, I would have gone with them – that I can accept peacefully. If not, at least I could be on the ground to do anything that I can.

“Now I can’t go back. It’s painful to think about it.

Soe Nay Oo began to sob. “This sad and frustrated feeling I have right now, I have never felt this way before in my life. I am the kind of man who would hardly cry.

He adds that he has not been able to sleep for days. His worry has been magnified by the fact he has yet to hear from some family members, including his own siblings who were in Mandalay.

Soe Nay Oo has paused his work for a human rights group in Thailand and is currently helping to coordinate rescue efforts in Sagaing – sharing any information he can get from his contacts in the city.

At least 1,000 Muslims in the area have been affected who still need assistance, he estimates.

“I feel relief only whenever somebody on the ground asks for help, and I can help them.”

Every time Donald Trump has mentioned his plan to levy massive tariffs on imports into the US, there has been a widespread assumption that they will be delayed, watered down or rowed back.

Today, he will reveal in the White House Rose Garden not just how serious he is about “the most beautiful word in the dictionary”, but effectively call time on decades of economic globalisation.

And it is still possible that he will do this by launching the equivalent of a salvo of ballistic missiles into the global trading system, with a universal tariff on all imports into the USA.

The option of a 20% universal tariff is the only way to get to some of the massive revenues of trillions of dollars claimed by some of his advisers.

World braces as Trump set to announce sweeping tariffs

In recent days, President Trump has been adamant that the tariffs will be “reciprocal” and the US will be “nicer” to its trade partners.

That doesn’t rule out wide-scale imposition of tariffs at 10 or 20%, if, for example, the US deems that Value Added Taxes are tariffs.

It is possible that countries could be very broadly bracketed into different levels of a basically universal tariff. As one G7 negotiator told me at the weekend, “it all comes down to President Trump”.

A system such as this, with equivalent global retaliation, would see the UK economy shrinking by 1%, enough to wipe out growth and lead to pressure for tax rises or spending cuts.

The total cost around the world could, according to an Aston University Business School study, be $1.4 trillion (£1.1tn), as trade is diverted, and prices rise.

• UK will take calm approach to US tariffs, PM says
• Three big unknowns ahead of Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs
• What are tariffs and why is Trump using them?
• Is Trump right when he says the US faces unfair trade?
• Six things that could get more expensive for Americans under Trump tariffs

In industry, there is some expectation that the European Union will target US tech companies. There could be quite the contrast should the UK choose not just to hold back on retaliation, but offer a significant tax cut to US big tech.

Trade wars are hard to win, and easy for everyone to lose.

A universal tariff of 20%, or its equivalent, would be a historic hit to the global trading system, on a par with the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariffs nearly a century ago.

There is something bigger here, however. As the Vice President JD Vance said in a speech last month, globalisation has failed in the eyes of this administration because the idea was that “rich countries would move further up the value chain, while the poor countries made the simpler things”.

As that has not panned out, especially in the case of China, the US is moving away from this world.

If the US overplays its hand in alienating its allies today, China will be waiting. The hit to US business in Europe, for example, could be offset by cheaper electronics, clothes, and toys from the East arriving in the UK and lowering prices, diverted from the US market.

What starts later today is designed not just to reshape America, and trade, but the way the world itself has been run.

Hollywood actor Val Kilmer, known for his roles in some of the biggest movies of the 1980s and 90s, including Top Gun and Batman Forever, has died aged 65.

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

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

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

• Obituary: A brilliant, underrated and ‘difficult’ film star

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kilmer also starred as Marlon Brando’s crazed sidekick in The Island of Dr Moreau in 1996 – but that film became one of Hollywood’s most notorious flops.

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

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

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

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

The Environment Agency (EA) has launched a comprehensive review into shipments of waste tyres from the UK to India.

Last week, BBC File on 4 Investigates heard that millions of these tyres – sent for recycling – were actually being “cooked” in makeshift furnaces, causing serious health problems and environmental damage.

The pressure group Fighting Dirty has threatened legal proceedings against the EA over what it called a “lack of action” over the issue of tyre exports.

The EA has asked the group to wait until its own review is complete, and it has also asked File on 4 Investigates to share the evidence from its investigation.

The UK generates about 50 million waste tyres (nearly 700,000 tonnes) every year. According to official figures, about half of these are exported to India, supposedly to be recycled.

But BBC File on 4 Investigates revealed that some 70% of tyres exported to India from the UK and the rest of the world are being sent to makeshift industrial plants, where they are “cooked” in order to extract steel, small amounts of oil as well as carbon black – a powder or pellet that can be used in various industries.

Conditions at these plants – many of which are in rural backwaters – can be toxic and harmful to public health, as well as potentially dangerous.

In January, two women and two children were killed in an explosion at a plant in the western state of Maharashtra, where European-sourced tyres were being processed.

A BBC team visited the site and saw soot, dying vegetation and polluted waterways around. Villagers complained of persistent coughs and eye problems.

Following the broadcast, the Department for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) told BBC File on 4 Investigates that officials and lawyers within the EA were “very keen” to investigate the claims made in the programme, including any potential criminal activity.

In a letter seen by the BBC, lawyers for the EA said that our investigation would be carefully considered as part of a review it has launched into its approach to waste tyre shipments.

They added that the EA has been working to engage the relevant environmental authorities in India on this issue and is taking steps to arrange a delegation to meet with officials later this year.

Fighting Dirty founder Georgia Elliott-Smith, who has been in correspondence with the EA over this issue since 2023, said it was a “major victory” for the group and that “the government must stop turning a blind eye to the illegal and immoral activity”.

Wisconsin voters have elected a Democratic-backed judge to serve on the state supreme court, according to projections, following the most expensive judicial election in US history.

Susan Crawford is on course to beat conservative rival Brad Schimel, which would keep intact the 4-3 liberal dominance of the Midwestern state’s highest court.

President Donald Trump’s billionaire adviser Elon Musk was a prominent fundraiser in the campaign, and was the subject of attack ads aired by Crawford’s supporters. More than $100m (£77m) was spent by the candidates and their allies, including $20m from Musk.

The result is expected to have far-reaching implications, potentially even affecting the balance of power in the US Congress.

With about three-quarters of ballots tallied, Crawford had won about 55% of the vote, and Schimel had around 45%, according to the BBC’s US partner CBS.

The Dane county judge was formerly a private lawyer for Planned Parenthood and she backed abortion rights during her campaign.

Tuesday’s result was a setback for Trump in a crucial presidential swing state that he won by less than a percentage point last November.

However, he took consolation from fellow Republicans managing to hold on to two congressional seats in Florida elections on Tuesday.

• Florida Republican defeats Democrat in US House special election

Earlier in the day on his Truth Social platform, Trump reiterated his support for “patriot” Schimel, a Waukesha County judge and former Republican attorney general. The president had warned Crawford would be “a DISASTER for Wisconsin”.

The judicial contest was seen as a test of Musk’s powerbroking status. The SpaceX and Tesla boss travelled to the state to give out millions of dollars to voters who pledged to support conservative causes.

In the city of Milwaukee, which leans Democratic, officials reported a shortage of ballots on Tuesday “due to unprecedented and historic voter turnout”, the city’s election commission said in a statement.

Wisconsin separately voted on Tuesday to enshrine into the state constitution a law requiring voters to show ID to cast their ballots.

Voters were already required to show ID, but adding it to the state constitution made it harder to change in the future. Crawford had opposed the voter ID constitutional amendment.

Wisconsin’s supreme court is expected to play a key role in several upcoming cases, including laws around abortion and congressional redistricting ahead of Midterm elections in 2026 and the next presidential election, in 2028.

At an NBA game in Milwaukee on Tuesday, several voters spoke to the BBC about their concerns.

Milwaukee Bucks fan Mike McClain said he was motivated by a dislike for Musk, who he referred to as “the real president”.

“I don’t know how a billionaire, almost a trillionaire, can decide what’s going on,” he said. “You can’t even relate with common people.”

Crawford also benefited from large donations by billionaire donors, including financier George Soros, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. But Musk outspent them all.

A Schimel supporter who did want to give his name said he was supporting the conservative out of loyalty to Trump.

“We got to take it back home here and reinforce everything that Donald Trump has done,” he said.

Much of the liberal campaign focused on the role played by Musk in the Department of Government Efficiency, a cost-cutting task force that has moved to fire thousands of government workers and slash the federal payroll.

During a rally on Sunday, Musk distributed two $1m cheques to voters at a rally who signed a petition of his against “activist judges”.

Others who signed it received $100 from Musk.

On Tuesday, Musk’s political action committee added that it would pay $50 to anyone who snapped a picture of a Wisconsin resident standing outside a polling site and holding a photo of Schimel.

Musk donated more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help elect Trump. He held similar $1m giveaways to boost the Republican president’s campaign last year.

Wisconsin’s supreme court is expected to play a key role in determining the shape of congressional districts if Democrats seek to challenge current district maps as they are widely expected to do.

Republicans currently hold six of the state’s eight seats in the US House of Representatives.

At his rally on Sunday, Musk alluded to the looming fight over congressional districts, saying the judicial race was ultimately about control of the US House of Representatives, where Republicans currently hold a narrow majority.

That slender margin was shored up on Tuesday in special congressional elections in Trump’s political heartland of Florida.

Republican candidates Jimmy Patronis and Randy Fine held on to those ruby-red seats in races that were seen as a barometer of the political landscape ahead of next year’s Midterm elections.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz says the military will expand its operation in Gaza and seize “large areas” of the territory.

In a statement on Wednesday, Katz said the expanded operation aimed to “destroy and clear the area of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure”. Seized areas would be “incorporated into Israeli security zones”, he said.

He said this would require a large-scale evacuation of Palestinians and urged the population to eliminate Hamas and return Israeli hostages. This, he said, was the only way to end the war.

The Israeli military is reported to have begun ground operations in Rafah overnight.

The announcement follows his warning last week that the military would soon operate with “full force” in additional parts of Gaza.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Simone Collins is sitting in her 18th century cottage in Pennsylvania, dressed in a black pilgrim pinafore with a wide collar, bouncing one of her four children on her lap. It is 8.30am and she looks a little tired – she runs several businesses, a foundation and is currently pregnant with her fifth child, though she and her husband Malcolm plan to have more.

“At least seven,” she declares, “and as many as I can physically carry – 12 would be even more brilliant.”

The US couple, aged 37 and 38, ardently believe that the world needs to have more babies or risk civilisational collapse. They have become the poster children for pronatalism, a movement that believes falling birth rates are a big problem for society. And that big families are the answer.

For the last five years, they have spread the word about their goal by opening up their home for interviews and photoshoots. They claim to have used special technology, during the IVF process, to screen their embryos for traits such as intelligence.

“The studies let us know what our genetic predilection for IQ is,” they told an undercover reporter in 2023. “We will never choose a child who is less privileged in IQ than either of us.”

Speaking today, however, Malcolm admits, “The easiest way to [spread the word about pronatalism] was to turn ourselves into a meme… If we take a reasonable approach to things and say things are nuanced, nobody engages. And then we go and say something outrageous and offensive and everyone’s into it.”

But since Donald Trump was sworn in as US President for the second time earlier this year, they have taken their evangelising to a new level. The Collinses now see certain people in the White House as potential allies – and they fully intend to capitalise on that.

Elon Musk, who is said to have fathered 14 children, has called fertility decline “the biggest danger civilisation faces, by far”. He has donated $10m (£7.75m) to the Population Wellbeing Initiative in Texas, which conducts research into fertility, parenting, and the future of population growth.

The US Vice President JD Vance has also spoken openly about his views on procreation. At an anti-abortion rally in January he declared: “I want more babies in the United States of America.”

There are early indications that the Trump administration is prioritising family too. On 18 February, Trump signed an executive order to improve access for IVF that recognised “the importance of family formation and that our nation’s public policy must make it easier for loving and longing mothers and fathers to have children”.

Pronatalists are buoyed by this and many hope it is a sign of things to come.

The facts of fertility decline are clear. The US is at a record low of 1.62 children per woman, and by the end of the century the UN projects a majority of countries will have a shrinking population. That will have a profound effect on society and our economies. Some people believe we can adapt over time to this new reality, but pronatalists are less sanguine.

But there is a political element to the movement too. Pronatalists are almost exclusively from the political right. Malcolm and Simone Collins, for example, describe themselves as former liberals who became disillusioned with progressive, “woke” politics.

They see themselves as pragmatic and profoundly anti-bureaucratic.

“We are a coalition of people who are incredibly different in our philosophies, our theological beliefs, our family structures,” says Malcolm. “But the one thing we agree on is that our core enemy is the urban monoculture; the leftist unifying culture.”

So, could this fringe group really gain the ear of some of the most powerful people in the US government? And if so, just how much soft power could they have to influence policy not only around population decline but about wider issues too?

Last weekend, a group of roughly 200 pronatalists congregated in Texas for the second Natal Conference, an annual weekend-long event that cost around $1,000 (£775) to attend.

The conference brings together two strands in pronatalism that come from very different branches of the American right: both conservative Christians and members of the so-called ‘tech right,’ an ascendant wing that came out of the libertarian, start-up culture of Silicon Valley.

Some are connected to the current US government. Michael Anton was appointed by Trump as the Director of Policy Planning at the State Department. He spoke at last year’s conference.

Other speakers at this year’s conference included Carl Benjamin, who has links to far-right activist Tommy Robinson, and Charles Cornish-Dale, an influencer who goes by the name Raw Egg Nationalist.

“It’s like an unholy alliance,” says Catherine Pakaluk, an economist, mother of eight and stepmother of six. She too spoke at the conference but is reluctant to call herself a pronatalist. “It’s a complicated movement and includes people with very different positions,” she says.

One thing they have in common, however, is that they all want their message to be heard at the highest levels of government.

Some believe they already are being heard. “[If you ask me] do we have pronatalists in the White House right now who are pushing policy,” says Malcolm, “my response to this would be, ‘I mean, duh, like Elon and JD Vance’.”

In President Trump’s executive orders to date, there has been little apart from the order on IVF that could be seen as directly pro-family. But pronatalist thinking may be starting to influence policy that is less explicitly about fertility.

In January, the US transportation secretary Sean Duffy circulated a memo instructing his department to “give preference to communities with marriage and birth rates higher than the national average” when awarding grants.

Roger Severino, Vice-President of Domestic Policy at right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation, sees the influence of JD Vance in that policy. “Vance comes at it from a long history of pro-family thinking and policymaking,” he says.

Vance has often spoken about the need to fix a “broken culture” that is tearing the US family apart, by undermining men.

In a recent interview, he said: “We actually think God made male and female for a purpose and we want you guys to thrive as young men and young women and we’re going to help with our public policy to make it possible to do that.”

This idea has been echoed in pronatalist circles.

“Vance is a vocal pronatalist,” says Rachel Cohen, policy correspondent at Vox. “Trump himself campaigned on implementing a new “baby boom” and last week he declared himself the ‘fertilisation president’.”

Malcolm says he has already made attempts to influence the White House. He claims to have engaged in “backroom channelling of influential people, making sure that pronatalism became normal to talk about within the centres of power, and that ended up dripping its way up to administration and core tech culture”.

They are in discussions on pronatalist policy with the Heritage Foundation. Then there is a rather more direct approach they claim to have taken. “We have submitted draft executive orders to the Trump administration,” says Simone.

Their proposals include suggestions for how to remove layers of regulation from childcare providers and expanding car seat choice so cars can fit more children.

The couple aren’t sure if those are going to translate into anything concrete just yet – but they believe they have a receptive audience.

Their connection to power is thanks to the so-called tech right, a reactionary movement against liberalism led by some of the most powerful people in Silicon Valley. Those in the tech right include Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel – who sponsored Vance’s Senate race and has invested in fertility technology – and venture capitalists David Sacks and Marc Andreessen.

Simone Collins was formerly the managing director of an exclusive members’ club run by Mr Thiel, and the couple say they ran two other invite-only networking groups for business elites. Their Pronatalist Foundation, founded in 2021, received just under $500,000 (£387,000) through a fund of the Skype co-founder, Estonian billionaire Jann Tallinn.

“The tech right bring a lot of energy to the discussion,” says Roger Severino, Vice-President of Domestic Policy at the Heritage Foundation. “We’ve been discussing how we could blend these various strains on the right. We’re trying to cohere the movement.”

There are, however, cracks in the alliance which add to the challenge of trying to make the movement “coherent”.

Many on the traditional religious right have misgivings about the use of IVF and disagree with embryo screening, while some also oppose gay marriage and parenthood.

“It’s just an odd alliance of people who seem to agree on this one point: that the birth rate is too low. But there are wildly different prescriptions and ideas about what might be done to fix it,” says Ms Pakaluk.

“There’s a renewed interest in pronatalism and family promotion among American conservatives,” says Timothy Carney, author of Family Unfriendly, How our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder than it Needs to Be. But he adds: “There will definitely be tensions.”

One of those most divisive issues in pronatalism are the mention of certain aspects related to genetics among some of its tech right proponents. It’s something that has prompted concern, in particular around the ethics of this, on all sides of the political spectrum.

Patrick T Brown, a fellow at the right-leaning American Ethics and Public Policy Centre working on pro-family policy, suggests that the executive order to improve access to IVF could show the influence of the tech-right on policy. But he has his concerns about that influence, particularly around embryo screening. “Turning children into consumer products is something that I really worry about,” he says. “That leads to a troublesome place.”

Some of those attending the recent conference describe themselves as “race realists”, and one has published offensive views alleging a link between intelligence and race that, according to many scientists, are plain wrong.

Geneticist Adam Rutherford describes the data used as “fraudulent and racist, drawn from hopeless sample sizes that wouldn’t constitute valid scientific evidence to anyone vaguely interested in truth.

“These assertions are recapitulations of historical ideas of scientific racism.”

The associations with extreme views in the movement is one of the reasons some people don’t like to call themselves pronatalists. Catherine Pakaluk is one of them. “I think there probably are some people who are just pure eugenicists or white supremacists,” she says.

“I find it disgusting and reprehensible and I have no interest in ever being aligned with people like that.”

The question that remains is, where does all of this leave pronatalists – and just how much power do they wield?

According to some onlookers, their impact is already being felt. “There’s definitely strong influence from pronatalists in the Trump White House,” claims Ms Cohen. “I think an outstanding question is how this will all overlap with efforts to restrict birth control and contraception, and how this will affect debates around spending like on childcare funding.”

Mr Carney is more circumspect: “Vance is very pro-family and very pronatalist, and he wants the government to promote families and to help drive up the birth rate – but JD Vance is not the president. I don’t think Donald Trump has firm conviction on this.”

He also believes there might be resistance to some pro-family policies, pointing out that at least some of the Republicans in control of Congress don’t like the idea of family support. “They think that it’s welfare to the undeserving.”

The attention gleaned by the Collinses, and by the recent conference, is undoubtable. But one expert suggests they are doing little more than stirring up controversy.

“If you go to Capitol Hill, and talk to members of Congress or governors in states across America, they don’t necessarily even recognise the problem,” argues Mr Brown.

As he puts it, “the incentives of the internet” aren’t always the incentives of a successful mass movement. “And what gets attention is provocation and being edgy and crossing the line. That gets clicks, that gets followers.

“[But] that to me is not how you end up changing the political dynamics.”

Conservative TV company Newsmax has seen its stock market valuation surge by more than 2,200% since its debut in New York on Monday.

The US firm’s shares, which were originally priced at $10 (£7.75) each, stood at $233 at the end of Tuesday’s trading session.

That means it has a market value of almost $30bn, which surpasses Fox Corp – the owner of rival Fox News – and other media giants Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount Global.

Newsmax is seen as friendly to US President Donald Trump and was promoted by him during his first term in the White House.

The share price surge has made Newsmax’s founder and chief executive Christopher Ruddy one of the richest people in the US, with a net worth of more than $9bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Analysts said retail investors drove gains, drawing comparisons to the soaring price of GameStop.

The video game retailer’s popularity among some investors during the pandemic helped coin the idea of meme stocks.

The meme-stock phenomenon was part of a wider increase in trading by retail investors – people not working for investment houses or other private firms.

Newsmax was founded in 1998 as an online platform. It launched its cable news channel in 2014.

Its ratings were boosted in 2020 when it was endorsed by Trump, who had become increasingly angry at Fox News.

Mr Ruddy, who is a friend of Trump, insisted at the time that he did not want Newmax to become “Trump TV”.

Earlier this month, Newsmax paid $40m to settle allegations that it defamed voting machine company Smartmatic by reporting false claims that it helped rig the 2020 election for Joe Biden.

It is the latest company with ties to conservatives to start selling shares on the stock market, joining Canada-based video platform Rumble Inc and President Trump’s media venture, Trump Media & Technology Group.

Twenty-three more women have come forward to the police with allegations against serial rapist Zhenhao Zou – a Chinese PhD student found guilty in London last month of drugging and raping 10 women across two continents.

Police said at the conclusion of his trial they had video evidence, filmed by Zou himself, of potentially 50 more victims – and they have been trying to trace these women. Detectives now say, however, that they believe Zou’s “offending group is far greater”.

Warning: This story contains descriptions of sexual violence

Two women who have contacted police in the past month with new allegations have also spoken to the BBC World Service. One said Zou raped her in his hometown in China, after spiking her drink which left her conscious but unable to speak or move. The other said Zou drugged her too – in London – and that she had woken up to find him filming himself sexually assaulting her.

We have also spoken to two women whose testimony helped convict Zou – who will be sentenced in June. “If I had spoken up earlier, maybe there wouldn’t have been so many victims after me,” one of them told us.

She and the other women say they struggle with the guilt of now knowing that Zou has assaulted so many women.

One of the women making new allegations, who we are calling Alice, told the BBC that Zou had assaulted her in London in 2021, but that she had only felt able to go to police after his trial last month. “I didn’t know that was something you could report,” the Chinese national told us.

She says she first met Zou while out clubbing in London with other Chinese-student friends. The group had all added one another on WeChat, a popular social messaging app.

Not long afterwards, a mutual friend invited Alice to have drinks at Zou’s upmarket student accommodation in Bloomsbury.

There were two bottles of spirits on the table, she says, both already opened and half-empty. She began to share drinks from one of the bottles with her friend – but says Zou only drank from the other one.

Alice says her friend normally tolerated alcohol well, but this time became drunk very quickly and appeared to fall asleep on the floor. The alcohol kicked in suddenly for Alice too, she says.

“Normally when you drink too much, you feel good for a while. But that night I just felt extremely dizzy and sleepy right away.”

Zou persuaded her it wouldn’t be safe to take a taxi home in the state she was in, she told us, and asked her to take a nap in his bedroom. She says she agreed, knowing her friend was also still in the apartment.

The next thing she says she remembers is waking up to Zou removing her trousers.

“I stopped him right away,” she says – explaining how she then noticed a torchlight from a mobile phone above her head, and realised, to her horror, that he was filming her.

Alice describes trying to leave his bedroom but being aggressively “yanked back from the doorway”. Zou used such strong force to try to keep her in the bedroom, she says, that she “had to cling on to the door frame with both hands”.

It was only when she threatened to scream for help, that he let go – she told us – with Zou then telling her not to make “a big deal” of things, or to go to the police.

Zou contacted Alice the next day on WeChat, she says, but he made no mention of the previous night. He asked her to dinner but she says she ignored him and they were never in touch again.

Alice confided in a few close friends, but took things no further.

“I thought that, first, you needed evidence. And second, something substantial had to have happened before you could call the police.”

Alice says the next time she saw Zou’s face was nearly four years later in the media – after he was charged by police.

It is challenging for foreign nationals to report sexual crimes in the UK, says Sarah Yeh, a trustee at Southeast and East Asian Women’s Association in London.

“It would be daunting for anyone [from] overseas to be traumatised by rape and then have to navigate the British legal system and the NHS, or even access the services provided for victims,” she told us.

They might not understand their rights or what resources are available to them – she says – as well as being concerned about repercussions, negative impacts on their studies, shame brought on themselves and their families, and potential legal challenges.

About a year after Alice says she was assaulted, she discovered that one of her male friends in London also knew Zou, but had cut all contact because he found out Zou had been spiking women’s drinks.

The friend – who the BBC is calling Jie – told us he “wasn’t surprised at all” when he heard Zou had been convicted.

“A lot of friends at the time probably knew [what Zou was doing]. I reckon some of our female friends knew too.”

Jie told us he accidentally drank from someone else’s glass at a party in 2022, and then became “unwell” and “very sleepy”. Zou then told him he had spiked the drink – says Jie – and had meant for a woman at the party to drink it.

Jie says Zou later showed him a small bag of drugs and asked if he wanted to “collaborate with him”. He says he took from this that Zou wanted his help finding girls whose drinks he could spike. Jie says he refused.

The BBC asked Jie why he had initially continued to see Zou and why he didn’t go to the police. Jie told us they both had lots of mutual friends so it was difficult not to socialise together. He says he did warn his friends about Zou, telling them not to hang out with him “because he was drugging people”.

Jie doesn’t like thinking about those memories, he says, and that is why he hasn’t gone to the police – adding that he had believed the women’s testimonies were enough to convict Zou.

Eventually, Jie says, he did cut all ties with him.

Another young woman who has been in touch with police in London and China since Zou’s trial is “Rachel”. She says she was drugged and raped by him in 2022 in his hometown of Dongguan – in Guangdong province.

Rachel told the BBC she had gone on a date with Zou, having met him online. She thought they were going to a bar, she says, but ended up at his home – a large villa which Zou had described as one of his family’s many properties.

With his back turned to her, she says Zou mixed her a green-coloured cocktail. They then started a drinking game, she says, and she experienced a “wave of dizziness”. Rachel has told UK police that Zou took her up to a bedroom, where she became unable to speak or move her body, and then raped her.

She thought about calling the police the next day, but decided against it. She feared it would be very difficult to prove non-consent. “It’s hard for me to prove the fact that I was willing to go to his place for drinks and that was not a signal that I was consenting to sex,” she told us.

She added that Dongguan is a small place and there was always a risk that people she knew – her parents, relatives and colleagues – would find out and think she was “indiscreet”.

We have seen Rachel’s statement to UK police. She wants her story to be heard now, she says, to encourage more victims to come forward – and because she would like to see Zou prosecuted in China as well as the UK.

Cdr Kevin Southworth – who leads public protection at the Metropolitan Police – told the BBC officers were still working their way through the 23 potential new cases and that some of the people were “definitely not identical” to those featured in Zou’s seized secret footage or from the charge cases for far.

“It speaks to the fact that his offending group is actually far greater than we had realised,” he says.

A second trial for the convicted rapist has not been ruled out and there is “certainly a case” to discuss with the Crown Prosecution Service, given the numbers of women coming forward, he adds.

The BBC has also spoken to the only two victims who police were able to identify ahead of Zou’s trial – both are Chinese nationals who had been studying in London. The women got to know each other on social media after one of them, who we are calling Beth, posted about her experience.

Beth was raped by Zou in 2023 and had tried to report the crime to the Metropolitan Police soon afterwards. But then she decided not to pursue things because she felt unsure of UK law and had been left feeling discouraged after her initial interaction with the police, which included a poor translation of her 999 call.

“Back then I didn’t know [Zou’s name]. I didn’t know his address, I could only give general information,” she says.

In frustration, Beth posted a warning on social media about what had happened to her. Another Chinese student, “Clara”, says she “immediately” knew this was the same man who had drugged and raped her after a night out in London’s Chinatown, two years before.

Every detail in Beth’s post pointed to the same man, says Clara: “He has a Guangdong accent, he looks honest and he wears a Rolex submariner watch.”

The women began to speak online and Beth encouraged Clara to report what had happened to her to the police.

Months later, police contacted Beth to say they were re-investigating the case. Clara had come forward.

On Zou’s seized devices, police had also found a video featuring Beth.

The Met has since expressed regret over how it initially handled her allegations.

“We want to avoid situations where victims feel like they’re maybe not being taken seriously, or heaven forbid, being disbelieved,” says Cdr Southworth. Additional training is now being rolled out to all front line officers, he says.

Clara describes a positive experience with British police. She says she didn’t want to fly to London for the trial, in case her parents found out, so the Met sent two officers to China to support her as she gave evidence by video instead.

The officers were assisted by the Chinese authorities, who have been working collaboratively with the Met and are “very supportive”, says Cdr Southworth.

“I hope that can give some encouragement to victim-survivors, wherever they are in the world, that you are safe to come forward.”

Beth – who gave her evidence in court in London – says it was only afterwards that she realised that she and Clara were the only two women to have helped convict Zou.

“I thought for a long time that I wasn’t an important part of the case against Zou,” she says.

Now she is glad she testified and is encouraging other women to come forward.

If you have information about this story that you would like to share with us please get in touch.

You can contact BBC journalist wanqing.zhang@bbc.co.uk – please include contact details if you are willing to speak to her.

Mandalay used to be known as the city of gold, dotted by glittering pagodas and Buddhist burial mounds, but the air in Myanmar’s former royal capital now reeks of dead bodies.

So many corpses have piled up since a 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck last Friday close to Mandalay, that they have had to be “cremated in stacks”, one resident says.

The death toll from the quake and a series of aftershocks has climbed past 2,700, with 4,521 injured and hundreds still missing, Myanmar’s military chief said. Those figures are expected to rise.

Residents in the country’s second most populous city say they have spent sleepless nights wandering the streets in despair as food and water supplies dwindle.

The Mandalay resident who spoke of bodies being “cremated in stacks” lost her aunt in the quake.

“But her body was only pulled out of the rubble two days later, on 30 March,” said the 23-year-old student who wanted only to be known as J.

Poor infrastructure and a patchwork of civil conflicts are severely hampering the relief effort in Myanmar, where the military has a history of suppressing the scale of national disasters. The death toll is expected to keep rising as rescuers gain access to more collapsed buildings and cut-off districts.

J, who lives in Mandalay’s Mahaaungmyay district, has felt “dizzy from being deprived of sleep”, she said.

Many residents have been living out of tents – or nothing – along the streets, fearing that what’s left of their homes will not hold up against the aftershocks.

“I have seen many people, myself included, crouching over and crying out loud on the streets,” J said.

But survivors are still being found in the city. The fire service said it had rescued 403 people in Mandalay in the past four days, and recovered 259 bodies. The true number of casualties is thought to be much higher than the official version.

In a televised speech on Tuesday, military chief Min Aung Hlaing said the death toll may exceed 3,000, but the US Geological Survey said on Friday “a death toll over 10,000 is a strong possibility” based on the location and size of the quake.

Young children have been especially traumatised in the disaster.

A local pastor told the BBC his eight-year-old son had burst into tears all of a sudden several times in the last few days, after witnessing parts of his neighbourhood buried under rubble in an instant.

“He was in the bedroom upstairs when the earthquake struck, and my wife was attending to his younger sister, so some debris had fallen onto him,” says Ruate, who only gave his first name.

“Yesterday we saw bodies being brought out of collapsed buildings in our neighbourhood,” said Ruate, who lives in the Pyigyitagon area of southern Mandalay.

“It’s very sobering. Myanmar has been hit by so many disasters, some natural, some human made. Everyone’s just gotten so tired. We are feeling hopeless and helpless.”

A monk who lives near the Sky Villa condominium, one of the worst-hit buildings reduced from 12 to six storeys by the earthquake, told the BBC that while some people had been pulled out alive, “only dead bodies have been recovered” in the past 24 hours.

“I hope this will be over soon. There are many [bodies] still inside, I think more than a hundred,” he said.

Crematoriums close to Mandalay have been overwhelmed, while authorities have been running out of body bags, among other supplies, including food and drinking water.

Around the city, the remains of crushed pagodas and golden spires line the streets. While Mandalay used to be a major centre for the production of gold leaf and a popular tourist destination, poverty in the city has soared in recent years, as with elsewhere in Myanmar (formerly called Burma).

Last week’s earthquake also affected Thailand and China, but its impact has been especially devastating in Myanmar, which has been ravaged by a bloody civil war, a crippled economy and widespread disillusionment since the military took power in a coup in 2021.

On Tuesday, Myanmar held a minute of silence to remember victims, part of a week of national mourning. The junta called for flags to fly at half mast, media broadcasts to be halted and asked people to pay their respects.

Even before the quake, more than 3.5 million people had been displaced within the country.

Thousands more, many of them young people, have fled abroad to avoid forced conscription – this means there are fewer people to help with relief work, and the subsequent rebuilding of the country.

Russia and China, which have helped prop up Myanmar’s military regime, are among countries that have sent aid and specialist support.

But relief has been slow, J said.

“[The rescue teams] have been working non-stop for four days and I think they are a little tired. They need some rest as well.

“But because the damage has been so extensive, we have limited resources here, it is simply hard for the relief workers to manage such massive destruction efficiently,” she said.

While the junta had said that all assistance is welcome, some humanitarian workers have reported challenges accessing quake-stricken areas.

Local media in Sagaing, where the earthquake’s epicentre was located, have reported restrictions imposed by military authorities that require organisations to submit lists of volunteers and items that they want to bring into the area.

Several rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have urged the junta to allow aid workers immediate access to these areas.

“Myanmar’s military junta still invokes fear, even in the wake of a horrific natural disaster that killed and injured thousands,” said Bryony Lau, Human Rights Watch’s deputy Asia director.

“The junta needs to break from its appalling past practice and ensure that humanitarian aid quickly reaches those whose lives are at risk in earthquake-affected areas,” she said.

The junta has also drawn criticism for continuing to open fire on villages even as the country reels from the disaster. Large parts of Sagaing are under control of resistance groups.

A commander in the People’s Defence Forces (PDF) – a network of pro-democracy civilian groups – told the BBC that the military was carrying out ground attacks.

Rebel commander Min Naing, who commands 300 fighters, said his forces were not fighting back, claiming to be respecting a two-week ceasefire announced by the opposition National Unity Government after the earthquake.

The Three Brotherhood Alliance – which is made up of three ethnic groups that also oppose the junta – on Tuesday also announced a month-long ceasefire in order, it said, to help facilitate relief efforts.

Meanwhile, BBC Burmese reported there had been drone attacks and aerial bombings in Kachin and Shan states.

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 2,700 people have died and more than 4,500 have been injured, say the leaders of Myanmar’s military government. Those figures are expected to rise. In Thailand, at least 21 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 2,700 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 4,500 people were injured and at least 441 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, 21 people have been confirmed dead – 14 of them at the high-rise building that collapsed, where dozens of 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 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.”

Val Kilmer, who has died at the age of 65, was often underrated as an actor.

He had extraordinary range: excelling in comedies, westerns, crime dramas, musical biopics and action-adventures films alike.

And perhaps his best performance combined his skills as a stage actor with a fine singing voice, to bring to life 1960s-counterculture icon Jim Morrison, in Oliver Stone’s film The Doors.

Critic Roger Ebert wrote: “If there is an award for the most unsung leading man of his generation, Val Kilmer should get it.

“In movies as different as Real Genius, Top Gun, Top Secret!, he has shown a range of characters so convincing that it’s likely most people, even now, don’t realise they were looking at the same actor.”

Val Edward Kilmer was born, on 31 December 1959, into a middle-class family in Los Angeles.

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

He attended Chatsworth High School, in the San Fernando Valley, where future actor Kevin Spacey was among his classmates and where he developed a love of drama.

Kilmer’s ambition was to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Rada), in London, but his application was rejected because, at 17, he was a year below the minimum entry age.

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

A gifted student, Kilmer co-wrote and made his stage debut in How It All Began, a play based on the life of a German radical, at the Public Theatre.

But he recalled a tough regime.

“I had a mean teacher once, who kind of said, ‘How dare you think you can act Shakespeare? You don’t know how to walk across the room yet,’… and in a way, that’s true,” Kilmer said.

Minor parts, including in Henry IV Part 1 and As You Like It, preceded a meatier role as Alan Downie in the 1983 production of Slab Boys, with Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon.

Kilmer made his film debut in spy spoof Top Secret!, written by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker. He played star Nick Rivers, sucked into an East German plot to reunify Germany.

The film proved Kilmer had a good voice and he later released an album under the name of his fictional character.

He also published a book of poetry, My Edens After Burns, some of which reflected on a relationship with a young Michelle Pfeiffer.

Two years later, Kilmer played Lt Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, Tom Cruise’s deadly air force rival in Top Gun.

A thrilling patriotic Cold War buddy movie, it cost just $15m (£12m) to make but took more than $350m at the box office.

Kilmer’s increased profile led to renewed press interest in his eventful private life.

He dated Daryl Hannah, Angelia Jolie and Cher. In 1988, he married Joanne Whalley, whom he had met when they appeared in the fantasy film Willow,

The couple had two children but divorced after eight years of marriage.

Despite his rising popularity in the cinema, Kilmer did not abandon the stage, playing Hamlet at the 1988 Colorado Shakespeare Festival, and then Giovanni in a New York production of ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore.

But in the 1990s, he proved he could carry a major film as a lead actor.

Director Stone had long wanted to make a biopic of The Doors, focusing on the band’s singer, who had died of a drugs overdose in Paris in 1971.

A number of actors were considered, including John Travolta and Richard Gere, before Stone chose Kilmer because of his physical resemblance to Morrison and strong singing voice.

In his trademark single-minded approach, Kilmer lost weight and learned 50 Doors songs by heart, as well as spending time in a studio perfecting Morrison’s stage style.

And in his 1996 biography of Oliver Stone, James Riordan said the surviving Doors could not tell recordings of Kilmer singing their songs from Morrison’s original.

Kilmer also played Elvis Presley in Tony Scott’s True Romance, written by Quentin Tarantino, and sickly alcoholic gambler and dentist Doc Holliday in the 1993 film Tombstone – a retelling of the story of Wyatt Earp’s gunfight at the OK Corral, which some critics called his finest performance.

In 1995, Kilmer replaced Michael Keaton in the third of a trilogy of Batman films, Batman Returns.

But he later said he had been uncomfortable with the role and declined to play it in the follow-up, Batman and Robin.

Kilmer’s reputation for being difficult on set had reportedly exploded into open warfare with the director, Joel Schumacher, normally the most temperate of men, who called his leading man’s behaviour “difficult and childish”.

John Frankenheimer, who directed Kilmer in The Island of Dr Moreau, was even blunter.

“I don’t like Val Kilmer,” he said. “I don’t like his work ethic and I don’t want to be associated with him ever again.”

The actor responded: “When certain people criticise me for being demanding, I think that’s a cover for something they didn’t do well. I think they’re trying to protect themselves.

“I believe I’m challenging, not demanding, and I make no apologies for that,” he told the Orange County Register newspaper in 2003.

Kilmer remained much in demand and reportedly received $6m for his role as Simon Templar in the 1997 film The Saint – although, critics were not overwhelmed by the film or his performance.

In the early 2000s, there was no shortage of film appearances – but Kilmer’s cinema career had hit a plateau.

In 2004, he returned to the theatre, in a musical production of The Ten Commandments, in Los Angeles.

A year later, Kilmer starred in London’s West End, in Andrew Rattenbury’s adaptation of The Postman Always Rings Twice – as Frank Chambers, the drifter played by Jack Nicholson in the 1981 film.

And in 2006, he reunited with director Scott, for sci-fi film Deja Vu, which received a mixed response.

Kilmer also voiced Kitt – the futuristic car – in a pilot for television series Nightrider.

He spent years working on a one-man show, Citizen Twain, which examined the relationship between Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy and her long-term critic writer Mark Twain.

A 90-minute film was eventually released, directed by Kilmer.

In 2014, Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer.

Chemotherapy and radiation left him with a tube in his trachea and difficulty breathing.

As a Christian Scientist, Kilmer had mixed views about seeking medical interventions and at times ascribed physical improvements to the power of prayer rather than medicine. On occasion, he denied he had cancer at all.

In 2021, Kilmer made Val, a documentary about his life.

It delved into his darkest places and experiences, including his brother Wesley’s accidental drowning as a teenager and the breakdown of his marriage.

A year later, there was time for a final starring role.

Planned for a decade, Top Gun: Maverick reunited Kilmer and Cruise, updating their former rivalry in the post-Cold War era.

Kilmer’s cancer could not be hidden. Instead, it was written into his character’s story.

“It’s time to let go,” Iceman tells Maverick in one poignant scene.

Kilmer will be remembered as a complicated man and a fine but difficult actor.

He never embraced the kind of Hollywood party lifestyle his looks and fame might have brought him.

Instead, he tended to slip away to spend time with his children, on a ranch he owned in New Mexico.

“I don’t really have too much of a notion about success or popularity, ” Kilmer once said.

“I never cultivated fame, I never cultivated a persona, except possibly the desire to be regarded as an actor.”

As the call to prayer rang out in Sagaing last Friday, hundreds of Muslims hurried to the five mosques in central Myanmar.

They were eager to hold their last Friday prayers for Ramadan, just days away from the festive period of Eid that would mark the end of the holy month.

Then, at 12:51 local time (06:21 GMT), a deadly earthquake struck. Three mosques collapsed, including the biggest one, Myoma, killing almost everyone inside.

Hundreds of kilometres away, the former imam of Myoma mosque, Soe Nay Oo, felt the quake in the Thai border town of Mae Sot.

In the following days, he found out that around 170 of his relatives, friends and members of his former congregation had died, mostly in the mosques. Some were leading figures in the city’s close-knit Muslim community.

“I think about all the people who lost their lives, and the victims’ children – some of them are young children,” he told the BBC. “I can’t hold back my tears when I talk about this.”

More than 2,700 people have died in the quake which happened near Sagaing and Mandalay, Myanmar’s second city. The death toll is expected to rise as rescuers continue to pull out bodies from rubble.

• What we know about the earthquake
• Mandalay was the ‘city of gold’ – now it reeks of death
• Heartbroken parents call out children’s names at earthquake-hit pre-school

While the area was known for its ancient Buddhist temples, the cities were also home to a significant Muslim population.

An estimated 500 Muslims died while praying in their mosques, according to figures given by the country’s leader, Min Aung Hlaing, on Monday.

Eyewitnesses in Sagaing have told the BBC that the road where the mosques were, Myoma Street, was the worst hit in the city. Many other houses on the street have also collapsed.

Hundreds of people have sought shelter by the side of the road, either because they are now homeless, or are too afraid to go back to their homes in case there are aftershocks. Food supplies are reported to be scarce.

In Myoma alone, more than 60 people were said to be crushed in the collapse, while scores more died in the Myodaw and Moekya mosques. More bodies were still being pulled out on Tuesday.

There are indications that the worshippers had tried to escape, according to Soe Nay Oo, who has received multiple reports from surviving members of his community.

He currently lives in the Thai city of Mae Sot with his wife and daughter, after escaping from Myanmar soon after a coup that took place in 2021.

There were bodies found outside of the main prayer hall, he said, in the area where worshippers wash themselves. Some were also found clutching other people’s hands, in what looked like attempts to pull them away from the crumbling building.

Among the many loved ones Soe Nay Oo lost was one of his wife’s cousins. Her death, he said, was “the most painful thing that I have endured” in his 13 years as an imam.

“She was the one who showed her love to us the most,” said Soe Nay Oo. “Everyone in the family loved her. The loss is unbearable for us.”

Another of his wife’s cousins, a well-respected businessman who had performed the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, also died.

“He always called me Nyi Lay [‘little brother’ in Burmese]…When I married my wife, he said we are family now and he always treated me like his own little brother,” said Soe Nay Oo.

“He was always there for us whenever we needed him. I have lost those whom I love like brothers like him.”

Some of the close friends who died include Soe Nay Oo’s former assistant imam, whom he remembered for his strong work ethic and remarkable talent in reciting the Quran.

The principal of the local public school, who was also the only female trustee of the Myoma mosque, also died. She was remembered by Soe Nay Oo as a generous soul who would often pay for mosque programmes out of her own pocket.

He said every time he hears of yet another person from the community who died, he experiences a new wave of grief. “I feel devastated… it always comes to my mind, the memories I cherish of them.

“Even though they were not close relatives, they were the ones who always welcomed me, followed my prayers, and who prayed together.”

The fact that they died during Ramadan is not lost on him. “All the departed have returned to Allah’s home, I would say. They will be remembered as martyrs accordingly,” he said.

Like other parts of Myanmar affected by the quake, the community is struggling to deal with the sheer number of bodies.

It has been complicated by ongoing fighting between the military junta and resistance groups. The Muslim cemetery in Sagaing is close to an area controlled by the rebel People’s Defence Forces (PDF), and has been closed to the public for several years. The military has continued to bomb some parts of the wider Sagaing region following the quake.

Sagaing city’s Muslim community has had to move the bodies of their dead to Mandalay, crossing the Irrawaddy River using the sole bridge connecting the two cities, according to Soe Nay Oo.

Their bodies are being left at Mandalay’s biggest mosque for burial. Some have not been buried within 24 hours of their death per Islamic tradition.

“For Muslims, it is the saddest thing, that we cannot bury our families by ourselves at the end of their journey,” he said.

The survivors have been trying to help in the rescue, even as they cope with the trauma. “Some from my community told me to pray for them. To be honest, they couldn’t even describe their loss in words when I speak to them.”

It is hard for Soe Nay Oo to be far from his former congregation. Like many other people from Myanmar who have migrated abroad, he feels survivor’s guilt.

“If I were the imam still, at the time of the quake, I would have gone with them – that I can accept peacefully. If not, at least I could be on the ground to do anything that I can.

“Now I can’t go back. It’s painful to think about it.

Soe Nay Oo began to sob. “This sad and frustrated feeling I have right now, I have never felt this way before in my life. I am the kind of man who would hardly cry.

He adds that he has not been able to sleep for days. His worry has been magnified by the fact he has yet to hear from some family members, including his own siblings who were in Mandalay.

Soe Nay Oo has paused his work for a human rights group in Thailand and is currently helping to coordinate rescue efforts in Sagaing – sharing any information he can get from his contacts in the city.

At least 1,000 Muslims in the area have been affected who still need assistance, he estimates.

“I feel relief only whenever somebody on the ground asks for help, and I can help them.”

A British couple who face being deported from Australia after one of them was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) have said it is not fair the life they built could be taken away “any minute”.

Jessica Mathers, 30, and boyfriend Rob O’Leary had their bid for permanent residency rejected in 2023 due to the potential cost to health services of treating her condition.

The project manager and DJ from Macclesfield, who has lived in Sydney since 2017, said the couple had been “living in a state of uncertainty” for years as they waited for an outcome of an appeal against the decision.

The Australian Department of Home Affairs has been contacted for comment.

Ms Mathers and Mr O’Leary, 31, from East London, met while backpacking in the country in 2017 and have lived there ever since.

He started a business in the carpentry and construction trade three years ago, and said the couple had “made the most of our lives here”.

But Ms Mathers’s diagnosis of the relapsing-remitting variant of MS in 2020 has led to a visa battle with authorities that could see the pair thrown out of the country.

Symptoms are typically mild for this form of MS, according to the NHS, but about half of cases can develop into a more progressive form of the disease.

She has received treatment in Australia under a reciprocal health agreement with the UK and said her condition had been “well managed” so far.

But the couple’s requests for permanent residency were rejected in 2023 due to the costs associated with her medical care.

Non-citizens entering Australia must meet certain health requirements, including not having “unduly increasing costs” for the country’s publicly-funded healthcare service Medicare.

The couple lodged an appeal with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal after the visa rejection in 2023, and have been waiting for the past two years for an outcome.

Mr O’Leary said they had offered to pay the medical costs themselves or take out private insurance, “but the law is black and white, and the refusal is based on that, it’s really hard for us”.

They have started an online petition to call for Australia’s Minister for Home Affairs to review their case and look into immigration policies that “unfairly target individuals with well-managed health conditions”.

Mr O’Leary said the couple were “not asking for special treatment” but a chance to continue “working hard to contribute to this country in meaningful ways”.

He said: “We’ve always paid tax, we’ve always worked, Jess has done heaps of charity work.”

Ms Mathers said the couple had been “stuck not knowing what to do” as they waited for the outcome of their appeal, which had made it difficult for her to find anything other than temporary work.

She said: “It’s held up our whole life, it’s really upsetting.

“We know that we could get a refusal from the tribunal and then get given 28 days to leave the country, at any minute.

“We’ve got so much opportunity in Australia, and to walk away from it would be so sad.”

Financial worries and disagreements about fundraising helped inflame the row that has engulfed the charity founded by Prince Harry, insiders close to former trustees told BBC News.

An acrimonious boardroom battle has seen Prince Harry, his co-founder Prince Seeiso of Lesotho and trustees resign from their roles at the charity and insiders claimed personality clashes and tensions around leadership of the charity added to Sentebale’s challenges.

The financial fears were despite the charity receiving an extra £1.2m from Prince Harry’s earnings from his best-selling memoir Spare.

Sentebale said it had successfully hired consultants to find new US donors – and the one-off money from Spare was “incredibly useful” but did not represent a long-term “funding pipeline”.

The claims and counter-claims over Sentebale are set to be examined by the Charity Commission, which will have to decide whether to escalate the concerns to a full statutory inquiry.

The watchdog is likely to hear financial concerns from former trustees, who resigned earlier this month after the chair Sophie Chandauka refused to step down.

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

Among the likely claims are that £500,000 of Sentebale’s money was spent on consultants in a strategy to get donations from wealthy individuals and foundations in the US, but which sources close to former trustees say had not delivered results.

Insiders say that if the US fundraising strategy had worked this crisis in running the charity might have been averted.

Ms Chandauka has widely used the title “Dr” both for the Sentebale charity and other business settings. This is a reference to an honorary award from Coventry University and is not an academic or medical qualification.

A spokeswoman for Sentebale told the BBC that the use of “Dr” was a “matter of personal choice” and there was “no legal restriction preventing honorary degree recipients from using the title”.

A Sentebale spokeswoman rejected the claim that £500,000 had been spent on US consultants – and defended its approach to seeking new funds for a charity.

The charity told the BBC that it had hired a US firm called Lebec to help build a new fundraising strategy, and that by October 2024 a team of six consultants had set up 65 key relationships with potential donors, who might help Sentebale in the future.

It said the 12-month deal with Lebec, a women-led strategy firm, had successfully delivered links to “high-net-worth individuals, family offices, corporations, foundations and partner non-profits”.

“Lebec provided the positioning strategy, the tools, and the insights to enter the US market successfully and with credibility,” said a spokeswoman for Sentebale..

The shift to larger-scale US funding would appear to be a different style of approach from Sentebale’s fundraising polo matches and celebrity events associated with Prince Harry.

Prince Harry, his co-founder Prince Seeiso of Lesotho and trustees resigned from their roles at Sentebale, as a “result of our loss in trust and confidence in the chair of the board”.

They left a charity which was set up in 2006 to help young people in southern Africa living with HIV and Aids, a project which had strong emotional ties for Prince Harry and the legacy of his mother Princess Diana.

Prince Harry and Prince Seeiso said they were resigning from the charity with “heavy hearts”.

Insiders say that relationships had been “fraught” by last autumn.

The trustees’ walkout followed Ms Chandauka’s refusal to step down as chair – and she responded with her own claims against her former colleagues.

She accused Prince Harry of trying to oust her and said she had raised her concerns with the Charity Commission, with a “whistleblower complaint about the bullying, the harassment and the misogyny”.

Ms Chandauka argued that the controversy around Prince Harry leaving the UK had meant that he had become a barrier to funding from donors.

“It was pretty obvious to me that we had lost quite a number of corporate sponsors,” she said in a Sky News interview.

Ms Chandauka also spoke about a dispute over a video at a fundraising polo match, where it had been claimed the Duchess of Sussex was manoeuvring her out of the way during a prize giving.

The body language seemed to be a sign of other tensions.

“Prince Harry asked me to issue some sort of a statement in support of the duchess and I said I wouldn’t,” said Ms Chandauka, who said she did not want the charity to be used as an extension of the publicity for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

There were other tussles over whether Prince Harry had caused disruption by wanting to bring a Netflix TV crew to a fundraising event.

But sources close to those who have left the charity do not accept that version of events.

If the Charity Commission announces it is going ahead with a “regulatory compliance case”, it will gather evidence about the claims over how Sentebale has been managed and will decide whether the investigation needs to be escalated to the next level of a statutory inquiry.

Ms Chandauka has argued that the charity can continue without its founders and needs to change its focus to reflect the current needs in southern Africa. A friend of Prince Harry’s says he feels as though “he’s had one of his fingers cut off”.

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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.

As Ukrainian cities are bombed almost nightly by Russia, the idea of holding elections here might seem fanciful.

But in the streets and offices of the capital, Kyiv, the prospect of the country going to the polls is once again being discussed.

Election rumours have come and gone in the three long years of Russia’s full-scale war.

Each time they have been dismissed by government, opposition and public alike, arguing unity of effort against the Russian invader must come first.

A presidential election due in 2024 was suspended in line with martial law, which was introduced in Ukraine following Russia’s full-scale invasion two years earlier.

But that hasn’t stopped the Kremlin from claiming President Volodymyr Zelensky is an illegitimate leader and demanding new elections as a condition of a ceasefire deal – a talking point which has been repeated by President Trump.

• BBC Verify on why elections in Ukraine were suspended

Now there has been a fresh flurry of speculation that Zelensky might just be thinking again as ceasefire talks proceed, and some sources speaking to the BBC suggest there are reasons to think elections could go ahead later this year.

The president’s potential closest rival, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, former commander in chief of Ukraine’s army, has felt the need to deny rumours about his intentions.

“My answer to this has not changed,” he told the RBC-Ukraine news agency. “While the war continues, we all need to work to save the country, not think about elections. I don’t comment on any rumours.”

That the publicity-shy Zaluzhnyi, currently Ukraine’s ambassador in London, felt the need to issue a statement was striking in itself.

The head of Ukraine’s Central Election Commission, Oleh Didenko, also chose to speak publicly about the speculation.

He told the Ukrainska Pravda news website the law would have to be changed before any elections could take place. He said current rules stated that parliamentary elections must be held 60 days after the lifting of martial law, and 90 days for presidential elections.

But more time would be needed because of the war and that would require legal changes.

The Economist newspaper claimed Zelensky held a meeting last week to discuss an election and instructed staff to prepare for a vote once the United States had forced Russia into accepting a ceasefire, potentially as early as Easter.

This report was denied by several government sources.

“There is fake information there,” one presidential source told BBC News Ukrainian. “There was no such meeting and there was no such instruction.”

The government source said the main focus was achieving peace and there was little hope of the war ending by Easter.

So in the face of so many public denials, why do some still think an election might be in the offing?

First, some sources note Zelensky’s support in the polls has picked up since he was harangued by Donald Trump and Vice-President JD Vance in the White House.

A poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in March suggested the number of Ukrainians who trusted Zelensky was up a couple of points on the previous month at 69%.

Diplomats say the president might think now was his best chance of winning a second term rather than wait until political divisions emerge after the war.

Second, by winning a second term, Zelensky would call Russia’s bluff and strengthen his hand in any long-term peace negotiations. Only last week President Vladimir Putin said the United Nations should take over Ukraine and organise a “democratic presidential election”. His assumption – perhaps mistaken – is that Zelensky would be replaced.

Third, martial law must be renewed by parliamentary vote in early May. Zelensky could use that timetable to announce martial law would be allowed to lapse with elections held later in the summer.

Fourth, the Americans are convinced elections are coming. Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s special envoy, told the Tucker Carlson podcast on March 21: “They’ve agreed to it. There will be elections in Ukraine.”

Zelensky could use this pressure from the US – echoing Russian narratives – as a pretext, telling voters he had no choice but to hold elections.

Fifth, some Ukrainian sources believe logistical obstacles to elections can be overcome.

Millions of citizens are displaced overseas, on the front line and in occupied territories. The answer to that, some say, is to allow people to vote using a smart phone app called Diia. This contains people’s core documents such as passport, identity card and drivers’ licence.

Using Diia, some argue, would allow people to vote quickly, cheaply and safely without having to travel to a polling booth overseas or in the trenches. They point out Ukrainians have used it successfully to vote in the Eurovision Song Contest. They also note President Zelensky gave every Ukrainian almost £20 as a winter allowance last December, with many registering for it using Diia.

But there remain many arguments against elections.

Using Diia would require new legislation that might struggle to get through parliament. Diia could be vulnerable to cyber-attack and technical failure. Western governments may not consider it trustworthy; Russia certainly would not.

Even if Diia were used, identifying who could vote would still take time with incomplete and out-of-date registers.

Lifting martial law during a temporary ceasefire could create unexpected consequences – including the flight of hundreds of thousands of soldiers from the front line – just as Russia prepared a counterattack. Russia could strike queues of voters at polling stations.

Any elections, however quickly held, would allow war-time unity to be replaced by political rows. An election would allow Russia to deploy digital and other propaganda to try to shape the result.

Holding an election may also be seen as accepting Russian arguments that Volodymyr Zelensky’s leadership is illegitimate because of the suspended elections last year.

Perhaps the strongest argument against elections is that Ukrainians themselves do not want them. That same March poll by the KIIS found about 78% of people opposed holding elections even after a complete settlement of the war.

US prosecutors will seek the death penalty for Luigi Mangione, the man accused of shooting dead UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement on Tuesday that she had directed federal prosecutors to seek capital punishment for the “premeditated, cold-blooded assassination”.

Mr Thompson was shot dead outside a hotel in New York on 4 December. Police arrested Mr Mangione, 26, days later in Pennsylvania after a nationwide manhunt.

He has pleaded not guilty to state charges, and has yet to enter a plea for separate federal charges. He is awaiting trial in a New York prison.

In the press release, Bondi said Mr Thompson’s murder “was an act of political violence” and that it “may have posed grave risk of death to additional persons” nearby.

Investigators say Mr Mangione was motivated to kill Mr Thompson, 50, because of anger with US health insurance companies.

A lawyer for Mr Mangione called the decision “barbaric”, accused the government of “defending the broken, immoral, and murderous healthcare industry”, and said Mr Mangione was caught in a tug-of-war between state and federal prosecutors.

“While claiming to protect against murder, the federal government moves to commit the pre-meditated, state-sponsored murder of Luigi,” said Karen Friedman Agnifilo in a statement.

Mr Mangione is facing 11 state criminal counts in New York, including first-degree murder and murder as a crime of terrorism.

• Listen: BBC Sounds presents The Mangione Trial

If convicted of all the counts, he would face a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

But federal prosecutors have also separately charged Mr Mangione for using a firearm to commit murder and interstate stalking resulting in death. These charges make him eligible for the death penalty.

Prosecutors have said the federal and state cases will move forward parallel with one another.

Mr Mangione is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) Brooklyn.

New York prosecutors have already shared some evidence in their case against him, including a positive match of his fingerprints with those discovered at the crime scene.

According to New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Mr Mangione arrived in New York City on 24 November and stayed in a Manhattan hostel using a fake ID for 10 days before carrying out the attack against Mr Thompson.

The healthcare boss was shot in the back by a masked assailant on 4 December as he was walking into a hotel where the company he led was holding an investors’ meeting.

A nationwide search led police to Mr Mangione five days later at a McDonald’s hundreds of miles away in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

Police said that when they found Mr Mangione, he was in possession of a ghost gun – a firearm assembled from untraceable parts – a fake ID, a passport and a handwritten document indicating “motivation and mindset”.

Mr Thompson’s killing ignited a fraught debate about how the US healthcare system operates.

Some Americans, who pay more for healthcare than people in any other country, expressed anger over what they see as unfair treatment by insurance firms.

US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in December that the rhetoric on social media in the wake of the killing was “extraordinarily alarming”.

“It speaks of what is really bubbling here in this country, and unfortunately we see that manifested in violence, the domestic violent extremism that exists,” he told CBS’s Face the Nation.

Mandalay used to be known as the city of gold, dotted by glittering pagodas and Buddhist burial mounds, but the air in Myanmar’s former royal capital now reeks of dead bodies.

So many corpses have piled up since a 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck last Friday close to Mandalay, that they have had to be “cremated in stacks”, one resident says.

The death toll from the quake and a series of aftershocks has climbed past 2,700, with 4,521 injured and hundreds still missing, Myanmar’s military chief said. Those figures are expected to rise.

Residents in the country’s second most populous city say they have spent sleepless nights wandering the streets in despair as food and water supplies dwindle.

The Mandalay resident who spoke of bodies being “cremated in stacks” lost her aunt in the quake.

“But her body was only pulled out of the rubble two days later, on 30 March,” said the 23-year-old student who wanted only to be known as J.

Poor infrastructure and a patchwork of civil conflicts are severely hampering the relief effort in Myanmar, where the military has a history of suppressing the scale of national disasters. The death toll is expected to keep rising as rescuers gain access to more collapsed buildings and cut-off districts.

J, who lives in Mandalay’s Mahaaungmyay district, has felt “dizzy from being deprived of sleep”, she said.

Many residents have been living out of tents – or nothing – along the streets, fearing that what’s left of their homes will not hold up against the aftershocks.

“I have seen many people, myself included, crouching over and crying out loud on the streets,” J said.

But survivors are still being found in the city. The fire service said it had rescued 403 people in Mandalay in the past four days, and recovered 259 bodies. The true number of casualties is thought to be much higher than the official version.

In a televised speech on Tuesday, military chief Min Aung Hlaing said the death toll may exceed 3,000, but the US Geological Survey said on Friday “a death toll over 10,000 is a strong possibility” based on the location and size of the quake.

Young children have been especially traumatised in the disaster.

A local pastor told the BBC his eight-year-old son had burst into tears all of a sudden several times in the last few days, after witnessing parts of his neighbourhood buried under rubble in an instant.

“He was in the bedroom upstairs when the earthquake struck, and my wife was attending to his younger sister, so some debris had fallen onto him,” says Ruate, who only gave his first name.

“Yesterday we saw bodies being brought out of collapsed buildings in our neighbourhood,” said Ruate, who lives in the Pyigyitagon area of southern Mandalay.

“It’s very sobering. Myanmar has been hit by so many disasters, some natural, some human made. Everyone’s just gotten so tired. We are feeling hopeless and helpless.”

A monk who lives near the Sky Villa condominium, one of the worst-hit buildings reduced from 12 to six storeys by the earthquake, told the BBC that while some people had been pulled out alive, “only dead bodies have been recovered” in the past 24 hours.

“I hope this will be over soon. There are many [bodies] still inside, I think more than a hundred,” he said.

Crematoriums close to Mandalay have been overwhelmed, while authorities have been running out of body bags, among other supplies, including food and drinking water.

Around the city, the remains of crushed pagodas and golden spires line the streets. While Mandalay used to be a major centre for the production of gold leaf and a popular tourist destination, poverty in the city has soared in recent years, as with elsewhere in Myanmar (formerly called Burma).

Last week’s earthquake also affected Thailand and China, but its impact has been especially devastating in Myanmar, which has been ravaged by a bloody civil war, a crippled economy and widespread disillusionment since the military took power in a coup in 2021.

On Tuesday, Myanmar held a minute of silence to remember victims, part of a week of national mourning. The junta called for flags to fly at half mast, media broadcasts to be halted and asked people to pay their respects.

Even before the quake, more than 3.5 million people had been displaced within the country.

Thousands more, many of them young people, have fled abroad to avoid forced conscription – this means there are fewer people to help with relief work, and the subsequent rebuilding of the country.

Russia and China, which have helped prop up Myanmar’s military regime, are among countries that have sent aid and specialist support.

But relief has been slow, J said.

“[The rescue teams] have been working non-stop for four days and I think they are a little tired. They need some rest as well.

“But because the damage has been so extensive, we have limited resources here, it is simply hard for the relief workers to manage such massive destruction efficiently,” she said.

While the junta had said that all assistance is welcome, some humanitarian workers have reported challenges accessing quake-stricken areas.

Local media in Sagaing, where the earthquake’s epicentre was located, have reported restrictions imposed by military authorities that require organisations to submit lists of volunteers and items that they want to bring into the area.

Several rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have urged the junta to allow aid workers immediate access to these areas.

“Myanmar’s military junta still invokes fear, even in the wake of a horrific natural disaster that killed and injured thousands,” said Bryony Lau, Human Rights Watch’s deputy Asia director.

“The junta needs to break from its appalling past practice and ensure that humanitarian aid quickly reaches those whose lives are at risk in earthquake-affected areas,” she said.

The junta has also drawn criticism for continuing to open fire on villages even as the country reels from the disaster. Large parts of Sagaing are under control of resistance groups.

A commander in the People’s Defence Forces (PDF) – a network of pro-democracy civilian groups – told the BBC that the military was carrying out ground attacks.

Rebel commander Min Naing, who commands 300 fighters, said his forces were not fighting back, claiming to be respecting a two-week ceasefire announced by the opposition National Unity Government after the earthquake.

The Three Brotherhood Alliance – which is made up of three ethnic groups that also oppose the junta – on Tuesday also announced a month-long ceasefire in order, it said, to help facilitate relief efforts.

Meanwhile, BBC Burmese reported there had been drone attacks and aerial bombings in Kachin and Shan states.

Paul Mescal and Barry Keoghan have been confirmed as part of the all-star line-up who will play members of the Beatles in four major new films about the band.

Normal People and Gladiator II actor Mescal will portray Sir Paul McCartney, while Saltburn star Keoghan will step into Ringo Starr’s shoes.

The acting supergroup will also feature Harris Dickinson, who was most recently seen opposite Nicole Kidman in Babygirl, as John Lennon.

And Joseph Quinn will go from Marvel’s Fantastic Four to the Fab Four, playing George Harrison in the big-screen quadrilogy, which will be directed by Sir Sam Mendes.

The Oscar-winning director was joined by the four actors for the announcement at the CinemaCon convention in Las Vegas on Monday.

Each film will focus on a different member of the legendary group.

“Each one is told from the particular perspective of just one of the guys,” Sir Sam told the event. “They intersect in different ways – sometimes overlapping, sometimes not.

“They’re four very different human beings. Perhaps this is a chance to understand them a little more deeply. But together, all four films will tell the story of the greatest band in history.”

The films will be released “in proximity” to each other in April 2028.

The director explained: “I just felt the story of the band was too huge to fit into a single movie, and that turning it into a TV mini-series just somehow didn’t feel right.”

Paul Mescal, 29, shot to fame in the BBC’s Normal People in 2020. He went on to star in acclaimed films Aftersun, for which he was Oscar-nominated, and All of Us Strangers, and he played the lead in the Gladiator sequel. As well as portraying Sir Paul McCartney, the Irish star is about to be seen as another British creative genius, William Shakespeare, in the film adaptation of award-winning novel Hamnet.

Harris Dickinson has become a star thanks to Maleficent, The King’s Man, Triangle of Sadness and Where the Crawdads Sing, before playing Kidman’s love interest in Babygirl. The 28-year-old Brit also received a Bafta TV Award nomination for A Murder at the End of the World, and is among the bookmakers’ favourites to be the next James Bond.

Barry Keoghan bears perhaps the closest resemblance to his Beatle – drummer Ringo. The Irish actor is the oldest of the acting quartet at 32, and is one of the hottest stars in Hollywood, having been nominated for an Oscar for The Banshees of Inisherin before leading the cast of cult hit Saltburn.

Joseph Quinn played Eddie Munson in the fourth season of Netflix’s Stranger Things, was in A Quiet Place: Day One, and appeared alongside Mescal in Gladiator II. Before appearing as guitarist Harrison, the 31-year-old Londoner will be seen as Johnny Storm/Human Torch in The Fantastic Four: First Steps and two Avengers films.

Although several previous movies like Backbeat, Nowhere Boy and I Wanna Hold Your Hand have depicted The Beatles, this is the first time that all four band members and their estates have granted full life story and music rights for a scripted film.

Sir Sam called the films the “first bingeable theatrical experience”, adding: “Frankly, we need big cinematic events to get people out of the house.”

On stage, Dickinson, Mescal, Keoghan and Quinn recited from the band’s song Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band: “It’s wonderful to be here, it’s certainly a thrill, you’re such a lovely audience, we’d like to take you home with us.”

They then gave a Beatles-style synchronised bow.

Formed in 1960, the original band transformed youth culture and changed the course of musical history.

Restlessly imaginative and experimental, they had an uncanny ability to communicate sophisticated musical ideas to a mass audience, on albums including Revolver, Sgt Pepper’s and The White Album.

Despite splitting in 1970, the quartet remain the biggest-selling band of all time.

Only two members survive. John Lennon was murdered in 1980, while Harrison died of cancer in 2001.

In 2023, the surviving members released what was described as the Beatles’ “final” song, Now And Then.

Based on one of Lennon’s old demo tapes, and featuring an archive recording of Harrison’s guitar work, it went to number one and was nominated for awards at the Brits and the Grammys.

This is by no means the first film project to explore the lives of The Beatles – Iain Softley’s Backbeat, released in 1994, dramatised their early career in Hamburg’s clubs, where they cut their musical teeth.

Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Nowhere Boy in 2009 starred her future husband Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Lennon and Thomas Brodie-Sangster as McCartney. It delved into Lennon’s early years and family relationships, and documented him meeting McCartney and Harrison and the band’s origins.

Martin Scorsese made a factual film in 2011 called George Harrison: Living in the Material World, which included contributions from the surviving band members plus archive material.

In 2021, Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson restored more than 50 hours of outtakes from 1970 Beatles documentary Let It Be for Get Back, a three-part film. The epic Disney+ movie, which was nearly seven hours long, shed new light on the relationship between McCartney and Lennon before the band split in 1970.

US Senator Cory Booker has broken the record for the longest speech ever delivered in the Senate.

The New Jersey Democrat’s marathon address, a symbolic protest against President Donald Trump, in which he warned of a “grave and urgent” moment in American history, ended after for 25 hours and four minutes.

Although it was not a filibuster – a speech designed to obstruct passage of a bill – it held up legislative business in the Republican-controlled Senate. The rules for such speeches require a speaker to remain standing and forgo bathroom breaks.

The previous record was held by Republican Senator Strom Thurmond, who spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act in 1957.

Booker said he would speak for as long as he was physically able as he began his address at around 19:00 local time on Monday evening. He concluded at 20:06 on Tuesday.

The 55-year-old, who is the fourth-ranking Democrat in the chamber, filled some of the time reading letters from constituents, who said they had been harmed by President Trump’s policies.

The former presidential candidate also ran out the clock by discussing sports, reciting poetry and taking questions from colleagues.

Booker, who is African-American, spoke of his roots as the descendant of both slaves and slave-owners.

“I’m here because as powerful as he was, the people are more powerful,” he said, referring to segregationist Thurmond’s record-setting address 68 years ago.

As he reached the milestone, Booker said he was going to “deal with some of the biological urgencies I’m feeling”.

He was able to give his jaw much-needed respite during the speech by taking questions from colleagues, including Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer of New York, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.

The Democratic Party, currently out of power in the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, rallied behind Booker’s symbolic act of protest.

Booker’s speech is also the longest in the Senate since a 21-hour filibuster in 2013 by Texas Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican, against Obamacare.

Cruz told CBS, the BBC’s US partner, that a filibuster is a challenging physical feat.

For his own protest, he wore comfortable shoes and tried to drink as little water as possible – an approach he described as “nothing in, nothing out”.

Conservative TV company Newsmax has seen its stock market valuation surge by more than 2,200% since its debut in New York on Monday.

The US firm’s shares, which were originally priced at $10 (£7.75) each, stood at $233 at the end of Tuesday’s trading session.

That means it has a market value of almost $30bn, which surpasses Fox Corp – the owner of rival Fox News – and other media giants Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount Global.

Newsmax is seen as friendly to US President Donald Trump and was promoted by him during his first term in the White House.

The share price surge has made Newsmax’s founder and chief executive Christopher Ruddy one of the richest people in the US, with a net worth of more than $9bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Analysts said retail investors drove gains, drawing comparisons to the soaring price of GameStop.

The video game retailer’s popularity among some investors during the pandemic helped coin the idea of meme stocks.

The meme-stock phenomenon was part of a wider increase in trading by retail investors – people not working for investment houses or other private firms.

Newsmax was founded in 1998 as an online platform. It launched its cable news channel in 2014.

Its ratings were boosted in 2020 when it was endorsed by Trump, who had become increasingly angry at Fox News.

Mr Ruddy, who is a friend of Trump, insisted at the time that he did not want Newmax to become “Trump TV”.

Earlier this month, Newsmax paid $40m to settle allegations that it defamed voting machine company Smartmatic by reporting false claims that it helped rig the 2020 election for Joe Biden.

It is the latest company with ties to conservatives to start selling shares on the stock market, joining Canada-based video platform Rumble Inc and President Trump’s media venture, Trump Media & Technology Group.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has denounced an investigation into possible links between his aides and Qatar as a “witch hunt”, after he gave testimony to police.

An adviser and a former spokesman were arrested on Monday over alleged payments from the Gulf Arab state as part of the probe, which has been dubbed “Qatar-gate”. They have denied any wrongdoing.

Netanyahu, who has not been named as a suspect, accused the police of holding the two men as “hostages”, adding: “There is no case.”

A Qatari official also dismissed the probe as a “smear campaign” against Qatar, which has played a key role as a mediator between Israel and Hamas during the war in Gaza.

It comes as Netanyahu faces escalating protests in Israel over his policies, including the resumption of Israel’s offensive against Hamas before securing the release of all the remaining hostages, the dismissal of the director of the Shin Bet internal security agency, and the advancement of a controversial plan to overhaul the judiciary.

On Monday, Israel’s police force announced that two suspects had been detained as part of an investigation into ties between the prime minister’s office and Qatar. It provided no further details, citing a court-imposed gag order on the case.

Israeli media reports subsequently identified them as Yonatan Urich, a very close adviser to Netanyahu, and Eli Feldstein, a former spokesman in the prime minister’s office, and said they were suspected of contact with a foreign agent, money laundering, bribery, fraud, and breach of trust.

Netanyahu later cut short an appearance at his separate trial on corruption charges, which he denies, to provide recorded testimony to police investigating the case at his office in Jerusalem.

After being questioned, Netanyahu posted a video online in which he condemned both the arrests and the wider investigation.

“I understood that it was a political investigation but I didn’t realise how political it was,” he said. “They are holding Jonatan Urich and Eli Feldstein as hostages, making their lives miserable over nothing.”

“There is no case, there is absolutely nothing, just a political witch hunt, nothing else.”

The prime minister’s Likud party also issued a statement accusing the attorney general’s office and the Shin Bet chief of “fabricating” the case and attempting to “terrorise Yonatan Urich in order to extract from him false testimony against the prime minister through blackmail”.

On Tuesday, a judge at Rishon LeZion Magistrates’ Court extended Urich and Feldstein’s detention by three days, saying there were “reasonable suspicions” that required a thorough investigation. The police had requested a nine-day extension.

Judge Menahem Mizrahi said in a decision that investigators suspected that the two men had acted to “promote Qatar in a positive light” and “spread negative messages about Egypt” and its role as another mediator in the Gaza ceasefire talks.

For this purpose, the judge said, a “business and economic connection” was created between a US lobbying firm working for Qatar “through the mediation of [Urich] in return for monetary payments which were passed to [Feldstein]” through an Israeli businessman.

Last week, Israeli media published a recording in which the businessman was heard saying that he had transferred funds to Feldstein on behalf of a US lobbyist working for Qatar.

At the time, Feldstein’s lawyers said the payments were “for strategic and communications services Feldstein provided to the prime minister’s office, not for Qatar”. They also said Feldstein was not aware of any connection between the businessman and other parties, including Qatar. Ulrich’s lawyers said he denied involvement.

A police representative told Judge Mizrahi on Tuesday that Urich was also suspected of passing journalists messages from a source linked to Qatar, which were presented as if they came from senior Israeli political or security officials.

Ulrich’s legal team, which includes Netanyahu’s defence lawyer Amit Hadad, said they would submit a request to lift the gag order on the case to expose “the injustice done to him”. The judge went on to approve the request, saying the gag order had been repeatedly violated.

A Qatari official told the Financial Times: “This is not the first time we have been the subject of a smear campaign by those who do not want to see an end to this conflict [the Gaza war] or the remaining hostages returned to their families.”

Qatar has long championed the Palestinian cause and host political leaders of Hamas, which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the UK, the US and other countries.

Between 2018 and the start of the current war, which was triggered by Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, the Gulf state provided hundreds of millions of dollars of aid for Gaza.

Israeli governments allowed the money to be transferred to pay the wages of civil servants in Gaza’s Hamas-run government, support the poorest families, and fund fuel deliveries for the territory’s sole power plant. However, critics asserted that it was helping Hamas to stay in power and fund its military activities.

Since the war, Qatar has helped, along with the US and Egypt, to broker two ceasefire and hostage release deals between Israel and Hamas.

The most recent lasted between 19 January and 18 March, when Israel renewed its air and ground campaign, blaming Hamas for rejecting a new US proposal for an extension and the release of its 59 remaining hostages. Hamas accused Israel of violating the original deal.

Netanyahu claimed that the “sole purpose” of the Qatar-gate investigation was to prevent the dismissal of the director of the Shin Bet domestic security agency, which has been participating in the probe, and to “topple a right-wing prime minister”.

The government fired Ronen Bar on 21 March, saying it had lost trust in him over the failure to prevent Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, which triggered the war in Gaza.

However, the supreme court suspended the dismissal pending a hearing on 8 April in response to petitions from opposition political parties and a non-governmental organisation, which said the move was made for inappropriate reasons and constituted a severe conflict of interest.

Bar will remain in post until the supreme court rules on the petitions, although the court permitted the prime minister to interview potential replacements in the meantime.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu’s office announced that he had reversed a decision made the previous day to appoint former navy commander Vice Adm Eli Sharvit as the next Shin Bet chief.

“The prime minister thanked Vice Adm Sharvit for his willingness to be called to duty but informed him that, after further consideration, he intends to examine other candidates,” a statement said.

That decision came after Likud officials criticised Sharvit’s participation in the 2023 mass protests against the judicial overhaul.

US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham also described Sharvit’s appointment as “problematic” in response to a recent article criticising President Donald Trump’s policies on climate change.

Hollywood actor Val Kilmer, known for his roles in some of the biggest movies of the 1980s and 90s, including Top Gun and Batman Forever, has died aged 65.

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

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

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

• Obituary: A brilliant, underrated and ‘difficult’ film star

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kilmer also starred as Marlon Brando’s crazed sidekick in The Island of Dr Moreau in 1996 – but that film became one of Hollywood’s most notorious flops.

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

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

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

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

Wisconsin voters have elected a Democratic-backed judge to serve on the state supreme court, according to projections, following the most expensive judicial election in US history.

Susan Crawford is on course to beat conservative rival Brad Schimel, which would keep intact the 4-3 liberal dominance of the Midwestern state’s highest court.

President Donald Trump’s billionaire adviser Elon Musk was a prominent fundraiser in the campaign, and was the subject of attack ads aired by Crawford’s supporters. More than $100m (£77m) was spent by the candidates and their allies, including $20m from Musk.

The result is expected to have far-reaching implications, potentially even affecting the balance of power in the US Congress.

With about three-quarters of ballots tallied, Crawford had won about 55% of the vote, and Schimel had around 45%, according to the BBC’s US partner CBS.

The Dane county judge was formerly a private lawyer for Planned Parenthood and she backed abortion rights during her campaign.

Tuesday’s result was a setback for Trump in a crucial presidential swing state that he won by less than a percentage point last November.

However, he took consolation from fellow Republicans managing to hold on to two congressional seats in Florida elections on Tuesday.

• Florida Republican defeats Democrat in US House special election

Earlier in the day on his Truth Social platform, Trump reiterated his support for “patriot” Schimel, a Waukesha County judge and former Republican attorney general. The president had warned Crawford would be “a DISASTER for Wisconsin”.

The judicial contest was seen as a test of Musk’s powerbroking status. The SpaceX and Tesla boss travelled to the state to give out millions of dollars to voters who pledged to support conservative causes.

In the city of Milwaukee, which leans Democratic, officials reported a shortage of ballots on Tuesday “due to unprecedented and historic voter turnout”, the city’s election commission said in a statement.

Wisconsin separately voted on Tuesday to enshrine into the state constitution a law requiring voters to show ID to cast their ballots.

Voters were already required to show ID, but adding it to the state constitution made it harder to change in the future. Crawford had opposed the voter ID constitutional amendment.

Wisconsin’s supreme court is expected to play a key role in several upcoming cases, including laws around abortion and congressional redistricting ahead of Midterm elections in 2026 and the next presidential election, in 2028.

At an NBA game in Milwaukee on Tuesday, several voters spoke to the BBC about their concerns.

Milwaukee Bucks fan Mike McClain said he was motivated by a dislike for Musk, who he referred to as “the real president”.

“I don’t know how a billionaire, almost a trillionaire, can decide what’s going on,” he said. “You can’t even relate with common people.”

Crawford also benefited from large donations by billionaire donors, including financier George Soros, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. But Musk outspent them all.

A Schimel supporter who did want to give his name said he was supporting the conservative out of loyalty to Trump.

“We got to take it back home here and reinforce everything that Donald Trump has done,” he said.

Much of the liberal campaign focused on the role played by Musk in the Department of Government Efficiency, a cost-cutting task force that has moved to fire thousands of government workers and slash the federal payroll.

During a rally on Sunday, Musk distributed two $1m cheques to voters at a rally who signed a petition of his against “activist judges”.

Others who signed it received $100 from Musk.

On Tuesday, Musk’s political action committee added that it would pay $50 to anyone who snapped a picture of a Wisconsin resident standing outside a polling site and holding a photo of Schimel.

Musk donated more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help elect Trump. He held similar $1m giveaways to boost the Republican president’s campaign last year.

Wisconsin’s supreme court is expected to play a key role in determining the shape of congressional districts if Democrats seek to challenge current district maps as they are widely expected to do.

Republicans currently hold six of the state’s eight seats in the US House of Representatives.

At his rally on Sunday, Musk alluded to the looming fight over congressional districts, saying the judicial race was ultimately about control of the US House of Representatives, where Republicans currently hold a narrow majority.

That slender margin was shored up on Tuesday in special congressional elections in Trump’s political heartland of Florida.

Republican candidates Jimmy Patronis and Randy Fine held on to those ruby-red seats in races that were seen as a barometer of the political landscape ahead of next year’s Midterm elections.

Every time Donald Trump has mentioned his plan to levy massive tariffs on imports into the US, there has been a widespread assumption that they will be delayed, watered down or rowed back.

Today, he will reveal in the White House Rose Garden not just how serious he is about “the most beautiful word in the dictionary”, but effectively call time on decades of economic globalisation.

And it is still possible that he will do this by launching the equivalent of a salvo of ballistic missiles into the global trading system, with a universal tariff on all imports into the USA.

The option of a 20% universal tariff is the only way to get to some of the massive revenues of trillions of dollars claimed by some of his advisers.

World braces as Trump set to announce sweeping tariffs

In recent days, President Trump has been adamant that the tariffs will be “reciprocal” and the US will be “nicer” to its trade partners.

That doesn’t rule out wide-scale imposition of tariffs at 10 or 20%, if, for example, the US deems that Value Added Taxes are tariffs.

It is possible that countries could be very broadly bracketed into different levels of a basically universal tariff. As one G7 negotiator told me at the weekend, “it all comes down to President Trump”.

A system such as this, with equivalent global retaliation, would see the UK economy shrinking by 1%, enough to wipe out growth and lead to pressure for tax rises or spending cuts.

The total cost around the world could, according to an Aston University Business School study, be $1.4 trillion (£1.1tn), as trade is diverted, and prices rise.

• UK will take calm approach to US tariffs, PM says
• Three big unknowns ahead of Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs
• What are tariffs and why is Trump using them?
• Is Trump right when he says the US faces unfair trade?
• Six things that could get more expensive for Americans under Trump tariffs

In industry, there is some expectation that the European Union will target US tech companies. There could be quite the contrast should the UK choose not just to hold back on retaliation, but offer a significant tax cut to US big tech.

Trade wars are hard to win, and easy for everyone to lose.

A universal tariff of 20%, or its equivalent, would be a historic hit to the global trading system, on a par with the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariffs nearly a century ago.

There is something bigger here, however. As the Vice President JD Vance said in a speech last month, globalisation has failed in the eyes of this administration because the idea was that “rich countries would move further up the value chain, while the poor countries made the simpler things”.

As that has not panned out, especially in the case of China, the US is moving away from this world.

If the US overplays its hand in alienating its allies today, China will be waiting. The hit to US business in Europe, for example, could be offset by cheaper electronics, clothes, and toys from the East arriving in the UK and lowering prices, diverted from the US market.

What starts later today is designed not just to reshape America, and trade, but the way the world itself has been run.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz says the military will expand its operation in Gaza and seize “large areas” of the territory.

In a statement on Wednesday, Katz said the expanded operation aimed to “destroy and clear the area of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure”. Seized areas would be “incorporated into Israeli security zones”, he said.

He said this would require a large-scale evacuation of Palestinians and urged the population to eliminate Hamas and return Israeli hostages. This, he said, was the only way to end the war.

The Israeli military is reported to have begun ground operations in Rafah overnight.

The announcement follows his warning last week that the military would soon operate with “full force” in additional parts of Gaza.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Donald Trump says tariffs are coming. That message from the US president has been consistent.

But what tariffs and when? Import taxes have come so thick and fast since he took office that it can be hard to keep track.

Trump has already raised duties on Chinese imports, as well as steel, aluminium and some goods from Canada and Mexico. Higher levies on cars are due to go into effect this week.

We’re now waiting for Trump to unveil the details of his plan for a wider set of tariffs, which his team has spent the last few weeks developing.

The White House is calling it “Liberation Day”. So what might we learn on Wednesday?

The White House has not said how high the tariffs could go, although various possible rates have been floated by analysts.

On the campaign trail last year, Trump backed a 10% across-the-board tariff on all imports coming into the US, sometimes suggesting that could be 20% – even 60% on imports from China.

Once in office, he introduced the idea of “reciprocal” tariffs, suggesting the rates could vary country by country.

“Very simply, it’s if they charge us, we charge them,” he said in February, shortly before he ordered officials to develop such a plan.

The White House almost immediately complicated the picture, noting that their recommendations would reflect not just tariffs but also other policies they believe are unfair to US businesses, like Value Added Tax (VAT).

It has a led to a scramble, as businesses and political leaders try to get a sense of how big a new tax their products might be facing; and how whatever is announced on Wednesday will interact with other duties, such as those on steel and aluminium, already put into effect by Trump.

Officials in Europe, for example, are preparing for a double-digit tariff on their exports. Trump earlier this year said he planned to hit goods from the bloc with a 25% import tax.

The Trump administration has not confirmed which countries will be hit, although it has trailed Wednesday’s announcement as a sweeping one.

On Sunday, the president said the new tariffs could apply to “all countries”, suggesting a possible return to the across-the-board tariff he backed in the campaign.

It dashed hopes in some countries, such as the UK, that thought they might float under the radar, though many are still hoping eventually to work out some sort of deal.

But it is still unclear to what extent the tariffs will be universally applied or more targeted.

Last month, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said efforts were focused on the “Dirty 15” – the 15% of countries that account for the bulk of trade with the US and impose tariffs or other rules that put US firms at a disadvantage.

The Office of the US Trade Representative, as it prepared to craft recommendations, identified the countries in which it was “particularly interested”.

They were Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, the UK and Vietnam.

Trump himself has reserved some of his harshest criticism for historic allies and major trade partners, such as Canada and the EU.

“Friend has been, oftentimes, much worse than foe,” he declared last week.

Tariffs are taxes on imports. So the big question is, who will pay?

Technically, there is a simple answer: the US firms bringing in the goods are the companies that will face the bill, especially if the White House starts levying the tariffs “immediately”, as spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt suggested on Tuesday.

But the larger the tariffs are, the more firms will be looking for ways to offset those costs, either by changing suppliers, pushing business partners to share the burden – or by raising prices for Americans.

Many firms have said they are already preparing for that step. But it is a risky game because if companies raise prices too much, buyers will simply stay away.

The dynamics have raised the risks of an economic recession both in the US – and far outside its borders, where many firms rely on US sales.

Trump says companies looking to avoid tariffs can simply do their business in the US, but that’s not an immediate, or easy fix, given the high costs of hiring and setting up factories.

Introduce currency swings and retaliation by other countries into the mix, and the repercussions of Trump’s bid to reset global trade balances are likely to prove hard to predict long after Wednesday’s announcement.

Val Kilmer, who has died at the age of 65, was often underrated as an actor.

He had extraordinary range: excelling in comedies, westerns, crime dramas, musical biopics and action-adventures films alike.

And perhaps his best performance combined his skills as a stage actor with a fine singing voice, to bring to life 1960s-counterculture icon Jim Morrison, in Oliver Stone’s film The Doors.

Critic Roger Ebert wrote: “If there is an award for the most unsung leading man of his generation, Val Kilmer should get it.

“In movies as different as Real Genius, Top Gun, Top Secret!, he has shown a range of characters so convincing that it’s likely most people, even now, don’t realise they were looking at the same actor.”

Val Edward Kilmer was born, on 31 December 1959, into a middle-class family in Los Angeles.

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

He attended Chatsworth High School, in the San Fernando Valley, where future actor Kevin Spacey was among his classmates and where he developed a love of drama.

Kilmer’s ambition was to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Rada), in London, but his application was rejected because, at 17, he was a year below the minimum entry age.

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

A gifted student, Kilmer co-wrote and made his stage debut in How It All Began, a play based on the life of a German radical, at the Public Theatre.

But he recalled a tough regime.

“I had a mean teacher once, who kind of said, ‘How dare you think you can act Shakespeare? You don’t know how to walk across the room yet,’… and in a way, that’s true,” Kilmer said.

Minor parts, including in Henry IV Part 1 and As You Like It, preceded a meatier role as Alan Downie in the 1983 production of Slab Boys, with Sean Penn and Kevin Bacon.

Kilmer made his film debut in spy spoof Top Secret!, written by David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker. He played star Nick Rivers, sucked into an East German plot to reunify Germany.

The film proved Kilmer had a good voice and he later released an album under the name of his fictional character.

He also published a book of poetry, My Edens After Burns, some of which reflected on a relationship with a young Michelle Pfeiffer.

Two years later, Kilmer played Lt Tom “Iceman” Kazansky, Tom Cruise’s deadly air force rival in Top Gun.

A thrilling patriotic Cold War buddy movie, it cost just $15m (£12m) to make but took more than $350m at the box office.

Kilmer’s increased profile led to renewed press interest in his eventful private life.

He dated Daryl Hannah, Angelia Jolie and Cher. In 1988, he married Joanne Whalley, whom he had met when they appeared in the fantasy film Willow,

The couple had two children but divorced after eight years of marriage.

Despite his rising popularity in the cinema, Kilmer did not abandon the stage, playing Hamlet at the 1988 Colorado Shakespeare Festival, and then Giovanni in a New York production of ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore.

But in the 1990s, he proved he could carry a major film as a lead actor.

Director Stone had long wanted to make a biopic of The Doors, focusing on the band’s singer, who had died of a drugs overdose in Paris in 1971.

A number of actors were considered, including John Travolta and Richard Gere, before Stone chose Kilmer because of his physical resemblance to Morrison and strong singing voice.

In his trademark single-minded approach, Kilmer lost weight and learned 50 Doors songs by heart, as well as spending time in a studio perfecting Morrison’s stage style.

And in his 1996 biography of Oliver Stone, James Riordan said the surviving Doors could not tell recordings of Kilmer singing their songs from Morrison’s original.

Kilmer also played Elvis Presley in Tony Scott’s True Romance, written by Quentin Tarantino, and sickly alcoholic gambler and dentist Doc Holliday in the 1993 film Tombstone – a retelling of the story of Wyatt Earp’s gunfight at the OK Corral, which some critics called his finest performance.

In 1995, Kilmer replaced Michael Keaton in the third of a trilogy of Batman films, Batman Returns.

But he later said he had been uncomfortable with the role and declined to play it in the follow-up, Batman and Robin.

Kilmer’s reputation for being difficult on set had reportedly exploded into open warfare with the director, Joel Schumacher, normally the most temperate of men, who called his leading man’s behaviour “difficult and childish”.

John Frankenheimer, who directed Kilmer in The Island of Dr Moreau, was even blunter.

“I don’t like Val Kilmer,” he said. “I don’t like his work ethic and I don’t want to be associated with him ever again.”

The actor responded: “When certain people criticise me for being demanding, I think that’s a cover for something they didn’t do well. I think they’re trying to protect themselves.

“I believe I’m challenging, not demanding, and I make no apologies for that,” he told the Orange County Register newspaper in 2003.

Kilmer remained much in demand and reportedly received $6m for his role as Simon Templar in the 1997 film The Saint – although, critics were not overwhelmed by the film or his performance.

In the early 2000s, there was no shortage of film appearances – but Kilmer’s cinema career had hit a plateau.

In 2004, he returned to the theatre, in a musical production of The Ten Commandments, in Los Angeles.

A year later, Kilmer starred in London’s West End, in Andrew Rattenbury’s adaptation of The Postman Always Rings Twice – as Frank Chambers, the drifter played by Jack Nicholson in the 1981 film.

And in 2006, he reunited with director Scott, for sci-fi film Deja Vu, which received a mixed response.

Kilmer also voiced Kitt – the futuristic car – in a pilot for television series Nightrider.

He spent years working on a one-man show, Citizen Twain, which examined the relationship between Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy and her long-term critic writer Mark Twain.

A 90-minute film was eventually released, directed by Kilmer.

In 2014, Kilmer was diagnosed with throat cancer.

Chemotherapy and radiation left him with a tube in his trachea and difficulty breathing.

As a Christian Scientist, Kilmer had mixed views about seeking medical interventions and at times ascribed physical improvements to the power of prayer rather than medicine. On occasion, he denied he had cancer at all.

In 2021, Kilmer made Val, a documentary about his life.

It delved into his darkest places and experiences, including his brother Wesley’s accidental drowning as a teenager and the breakdown of his marriage.

A year later, there was time for a final starring role.

Planned for a decade, Top Gun: Maverick reunited Kilmer and Cruise, updating their former rivalry in the post-Cold War era.

Kilmer’s cancer could not be hidden. Instead, it was written into his character’s story.

“It’s time to let go,” Iceman tells Maverick in one poignant scene.

Kilmer will be remembered as a complicated man and a fine but difficult actor.

He never embraced the kind of Hollywood party lifestyle his looks and fame might have brought him.

Instead, he tended to slip away to spend time with his children, on a ranch he owned in New Mexico.

“I don’t really have too much of a notion about success or popularity, ” Kilmer once said.

“I never cultivated fame, I never cultivated a persona, except possibly the desire to be regarded as an actor.”

As the call to prayer rang out in Sagaing last Friday, hundreds of Muslims hurried to the five mosques in central Myanmar.

They were eager to hold their last Friday prayers for Ramadan, just days away from the festive period of Eid that would mark the end of the holy month.

Then, at 12:51 local time (06:21 GMT), a deadly earthquake struck. Three mosques collapsed, including the biggest one, Myoma, killing almost everyone inside.

Hundreds of kilometres away, the former imam of Myoma mosque, Soe Nay Oo, felt the quake in the Thai border town of Mae Sot.

In the following days, he found out that around 170 of his relatives, friends and members of his former congregation had died, mostly in the mosques. Some were leading figures in the city’s close-knit Muslim community.

“I think about all the people who lost their lives, and the victims’ children – some of them are young children,” he told the BBC. “I can’t hold back my tears when I talk about this.”

More than 2,700 people have died in the quake which happened near Sagaing and Mandalay, Myanmar’s second city. The death toll is expected to rise as rescuers continue to pull out bodies from rubble.

• What we know about the earthquake
• Mandalay was the ‘city of gold’ – now it reeks of death
• Heartbroken parents call out children’s names at earthquake-hit pre-school

While the area was known for its ancient Buddhist temples, the cities were also home to a significant Muslim population.

An estimated 500 Muslims died while praying in their mosques, according to figures given by the country’s leader, Min Aung Hlaing, on Monday.

Eyewitnesses in Sagaing have told the BBC that the road where the mosques were, Myoma Street, was the worst hit in the city. Many other houses on the street have also collapsed.

Hundreds of people have sought shelter by the side of the road, either because they are now homeless, or are too afraid to go back to their homes in case there are aftershocks. Food supplies are reported to be scarce.

In Myoma alone, more than 60 people were said to be crushed in the collapse, while scores more died in the Myodaw and Moekya mosques. More bodies were still being pulled out on Tuesday.

There are indications that the worshippers had tried to escape, according to Soe Nay Oo, who has received multiple reports from surviving members of his community.

He currently lives in the Thai city of Mae Sot with his wife and daughter, after escaping from Myanmar soon after a coup that took place in 2021.

There were bodies found outside of the main prayer hall, he said, in the area where worshippers wash themselves. Some were also found clutching other people’s hands, in what looked like attempts to pull them away from the crumbling building.

Among the many loved ones Soe Nay Oo lost was one of his wife’s cousins. Her death, he said, was “the most painful thing that I have endured” in his 13 years as an imam.

“She was the one who showed her love to us the most,” said Soe Nay Oo. “Everyone in the family loved her. The loss is unbearable for us.”

Another of his wife’s cousins, a well-respected businessman who had performed the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, also died.

“He always called me Nyi Lay [‘little brother’ in Burmese]…When I married my wife, he said we are family now and he always treated me like his own little brother,” said Soe Nay Oo.

“He was always there for us whenever we needed him. I have lost those whom I love like brothers like him.”

Some of the close friends who died include Soe Nay Oo’s former assistant imam, whom he remembered for his strong work ethic and remarkable talent in reciting the Quran.

The principal of the local public school, who was also the only female trustee of the Myoma mosque, also died. She was remembered by Soe Nay Oo as a generous soul who would often pay for mosque programmes out of her own pocket.

He said every time he hears of yet another person from the community who died, he experiences a new wave of grief. “I feel devastated… it always comes to my mind, the memories I cherish of them.

“Even though they were not close relatives, they were the ones who always welcomed me, followed my prayers, and who prayed together.”

The fact that they died during Ramadan is not lost on him. “All the departed have returned to Allah’s home, I would say. They will be remembered as martyrs accordingly,” he said.

Like other parts of Myanmar affected by the quake, the community is struggling to deal with the sheer number of bodies.

It has been complicated by ongoing fighting between the military junta and resistance groups. The Muslim cemetery in Sagaing is close to an area controlled by the rebel People’s Defence Forces (PDF), and has been closed to the public for several years. The military has continued to bomb some parts of the wider Sagaing region following the quake.

Sagaing city’s Muslim community has had to move the bodies of their dead to Mandalay, crossing the Irrawaddy River using the sole bridge connecting the two cities, according to Soe Nay Oo.

Their bodies are being left at Mandalay’s biggest mosque for burial. Some have not been buried within 24 hours of their death per Islamic tradition.

“For Muslims, it is the saddest thing, that we cannot bury our families by ourselves at the end of their journey,” he said.

The survivors have been trying to help in the rescue, even as they cope with the trauma. “Some from my community told me to pray for them. To be honest, they couldn’t even describe their loss in words when I speak to them.”

It is hard for Soe Nay Oo to be far from his former congregation. Like many other people from Myanmar who have migrated abroad, he feels survivor’s guilt.

“If I were the imam still, at the time of the quake, I would have gone with them – that I can accept peacefully. If not, at least I could be on the ground to do anything that I can.

“Now I can’t go back. It’s painful to think about it.

Soe Nay Oo began to sob. “This sad and frustrated feeling I have right now, I have never felt this way before in my life. I am the kind of man who would hardly cry.

He adds that he has not been able to sleep for days. His worry has been magnified by the fact he has yet to hear from some family members, including his own siblings who were in Mandalay.

Soe Nay Oo has paused his work for a human rights group in Thailand and is currently helping to coordinate rescue efforts in Sagaing – sharing any information he can get from his contacts in the city.

At least 1,000 Muslims in the area have been affected who still need assistance, he estimates.

“I feel relief only whenever somebody on the ground asks for help, and I can help them.”

US Senator Cory Booker has broken the record for the longest speech ever delivered in the Senate.

The New Jersey Democrat’s marathon address, a symbolic protest against President Donald Trump, in which he warned of a “grave and urgent” moment in American history, ended after for 25 hours and four minutes.

Although it was not a filibuster – a speech designed to obstruct passage of a bill – it held up legislative business in the Republican-controlled Senate. The rules for such speeches require a speaker to remain standing and forgo bathroom breaks.

The previous record was held by Republican Senator Strom Thurmond, who spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act in 1957.

Booker said he would speak for as long as he was physically able as he began his address at around 19:00 local time on Monday evening. He concluded at 20:06 on Tuesday.

The 55-year-old, who is the fourth-ranking Democrat in the chamber, filled some of the time reading letters from constituents, who said they had been harmed by President Trump’s policies.

The former presidential candidate also ran out the clock by discussing sports, reciting poetry and taking questions from colleagues.

Booker, who is African-American, spoke of his roots as the descendant of both slaves and slave-owners.

“I’m here because as powerful as he was, the people are more powerful,” he said, referring to segregationist Thurmond’s record-setting address 68 years ago.

As he reached the milestone, Booker said he was going to “deal with some of the biological urgencies I’m feeling”.

He was able to give his jaw much-needed respite during the speech by taking questions from colleagues, including Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer of New York, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.

The Democratic Party, currently out of power in the White House, Senate and House of Representatives, rallied behind Booker’s symbolic act of protest.

Booker’s speech is also the longest in the Senate since a 21-hour filibuster in 2013 by Texas Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican, against Obamacare.

Cruz told CBS, the BBC’s US partner, that a filibuster is a challenging physical feat.

For his own protest, he wore comfortable shoes and tried to drink as little water as possible – an approach he described as “nothing in, nothing out”.

President Vladimir Putin has called up 160,000 men aged 18-30, Russia’s highest number of conscripts since 2011, as the country moves to expand the size of its military.

The spring call-up for a year’s military service came several months after Putin said Russia should increase the overall size of its military to almost 2.39 million and its number of active servicemen to 1.5 million.

That is a rise of 180,000 over the coming three years.

Vice Adm Vladimir Tsimlyansky said the new conscripts would not be sent to fight in Ukraine for what Russia calls its “special military operation”.

However, there have been reports of conscripts being killed in fighting in Russia’s border regions and they were sent to fight in Ukraine in the early months of the full-scale war.

The current draft, which takes place between April and July, comes despite US attempts to forge a ceasefire in the war.

There was no let-up in the violence on Tuesday, with Ukraine saying that a Russian attack on a power facility in the southern city of Kherson had left 45,000 people without electricity.

Although Russia has turned down a full US-brokered ceasefire with Ukraine, it says it did agree to stop attacking Ukraine’s energy facilities. In an apparent attempt to deny Moscow had broken the terms of that deal, Russian officials said they had told Putin that Ukrainian drones had carried out attacks with little sign of a break.

Russia calls up conscripts in the spring and autumn but the latest draft of 160,000 young men is 10,000 higher than the same period in 2024.

Since the start of last year, the pool of young men available for the draft has been increased by raising the maximum age from 27 to 30.

As well as call-up notices delivered by post, Russia’s young men will be receiving notifications on the state services website Gosuslugi.

In Moscow there were reports that call-ups had already been sent out on 1 April via the mos.ru city website.

Increasing numbers of Russians are trying to avoid the army by taking on “alternative civilian service”. But human rights lawyer Timofey Vaskin warned on independent Russian media that every new call-up since the start of the war had become a lottery: “Authorities are coming up with new forms of refilling the army.”

Quite apart from its twice-yearly draft, Russia has also called up large numbers of men as contract soldiers and recruited thousands of soldiers from North Korea.

Moscow has had to respond to extensive losses in Ukraine, with more than 100,000 verified by the BBC and Mediazona as soldiers killed in Ukraine.

The true number could be more than double.

• Invisible losses fighting for Russia in Ukraine
• Why did Putin’s Russia invade Ukraine?

Putin has scaled up the size of the military three times since he ordered troops to capture Ukraine in February 2022.

Russia’s defence ministry linked the December 2023 increase in the size of the military to “growing threats” from both the war in Ukraine and the “ongoing expansion of Nato”.

Nato has expanded to include Finland and Sweden, as a direct result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Finland has Nato’s longest border with Russia, at 1,343km (834 miles) and Prime Minister Petteri Orpo said on Tuesday that his country would join other states neighbouring Russia in pulling out of the Ottawa convention banning anti-personnel mines.

Poland and the Baltic states made similar decisions two weeks ago because of the military threat from Russia.

Orpo said the decision to resume using anti-personnel mines was based on military advice, and that the people of Finland had nothing to worry about.

The government in Helsinki also said defence spending would be increased to 3% of economic output (GDP), up from 2.4% last year.

Republican State Senator Randy Fine has defeated Democrat Josh Weil in a closely watched special Florida congressional election to fill the seat held by National Security Advisor Michael Waltz.

The result dashes Democratic hopes of pulling what would have been a stunning upset in a district that Donald Trump carried by 30 points in last November’s presidential election.

The narrow margin of Fine’s victory on Tuesday, however, is likely to leave Republicans uneasy about their prospects in next year’s national mid-term congressional elections. Waltz won the seat by more than 30 points in November, according to the BBC’s news partner CBS, while Fine’s margin was around 14 points ahead of Weil with nearly all votes counted.

Democrat Weil, a strong Gaza supporter who clashed with Fine’s anti-Palestinian stance, made waves by raising more than $12m in campaign donations, compared to the approximately $1m brought in by his opponent. That disparity, along with polls that showed a contest within the margin of error, had put this congressional race in the national spotlight.

• US House narrowly passes Trump-backed spending bill
• Trump withdraws Elise Stefanik’s nomination to be UN ambassador

It also prompted a last-minute influx of national Republican support that included telephone town halls by Trump and other prominent conservatives. Those efforts appear to have paid off, as Republican turnout climbed in the final days of early voting and in-person ballots cast by Republicans exceeded party expectations on election day.

At a polling location in the Valdosta Public Library in Daytona Beach, a steady stream of voters clad in American flag hats and Trump paraphernalia served as a vivid illustration of a last-minute surge of conservative support for Fine.

“People are getting the message that they need to turn out to vote,” said Mary Fikert, a Fine campaign volunteer stationed at a small tent in the library’s expansive parking lot. “It was embarrassing that it was so close.”

The Republican prevailed in the other Florida special election, to fill the seat vacated by firebrand conservative Congressman Matt Gaetz. That contest never drew the kind of national fundraising dollars, or attention, that the Fine-Weil matchup garnered.

Republicans still hold only a narrow majority in the House of Representatives after Tuesday’s results, but it appears to be a sustainable margin through next year’s election, improving what would have been gloomy prospects of advancing Trump’s legislative agenda if Fine had been defeated.

Democrats may be buoyed by the relative success achieved by Weil, a public school teacher who has never held elective office. His message focused on what he characterised as the dire consequences of the White House’s efforts to slash government programmes and personnel. That resonated in the conservative region, which is populated by military veterans and retirees, although it was not enough to carry him to victory.

Even before results were announced, Democrats predicted that their progress here in Florida would be a harbinger of larger success in next year’s congressional mid-term elections. That remains to be seen.

Republicans, on the other hand, will be relieved that electoral disaster was averted, even if some candidates in more closely contested races next year face a less hospitable political climate than they enjoyed in 2024.