In an English seaside village, researchers discuss options for relocating a graveyard threatened with slipping into the sea, or moving back a car park perilously close to a cliff edge.

The team from the Coastwise project have been granted over £15 million ($20 million) in government funding to adapt the coastline in North Norfolk, eastern England, to accelerating erosion worsened by climate change.

There is one caveat: it cannot spend that money on traditional coastal defences like sea walls or rock-filled cages known as gabions.

Instead, the team is assessing the best ways to lose at-risk homes to the sea and helping better inform cliffside property purchases.

Some measures it has considered include selective buyouts, government insurance schemes, replacing houses with mobile homes and early warning systems for when people may have to vacate their residences.

“It is quite groundbreaking… different countries are trying different things, but there’s nothing quite similar,” Robert Goodliffe from Coastwise told AFP.

“It will take a shift in how we think about this,” he added.

For decades, the default approach in Britain and elsewhere was to “hold the line” against erosion using human-made defences.

But, with some defences reaching the end of their design life and sea levels rising, the government and coastal experts warn the tide cannot be held back everywhere.

The UK’s Environment Agency has determined some communities on the soft, sandy eastern English coast — among the fastest-eroding in Europe — will need to conduct a “managed retreat” and move back from the shoreline.

The government is funding pilots like Coastwise, tasked with preparing parts of the coastline that may not be defended in the future.

“When it comes to building a defence there’s a process and a system, and a way of applying for funding,” explained Sophie Day, a coastal adaptation specialist working on the project.

“But when it comes to losing places, there isn’t”.

Creeping anxiety

The team hopes measures it assesses in Norfolk, like the logistics and legal complications of exhuming bodies and moving a graveyard, can be applied to other parts of the country.

But some locals feel the government’s managed retreat policy is failing communities at imminent risk.

Shelley Cowlin’s home of five decades was demolished in January after winter storms lashed the coast of a resort in Suffolk, eastern England.

“On the cliff top, here, lovely, big white house… which gave me a fantastic view,” Cowlin, 89, told AFP in Thorpeness, where 10 clifftop properties have been demolished since October.

In January, a wall at the edge of her property was destroyed in a storm, the gabions “floated away” and “the gate was just swinging and all very sad”.

“They won’t give you any money,” she said, criticising the government for the lack of compensation.

As she spoke, a bulldozer was breaking down another residence in the holiday village, which the government has recommended should move back from the coast rather than invest in more defences.

Shelley’s son, Simon Carrick Cowlin, described creeping anxiety as neighbouring houses were pulled down.

“When’s it my turn? … A horrible space to be living in,” said Simon.

“Any defences that have been put in historically or that will continue to be put in will (only) slow down the erosion, it cannot stop it,” said local councillor Katie Graham.

“We do need more money, we do need more support from government. This is a very urgent situation,” she added.

‘Far-sighted’

Thorpeness residents say storms have grown fiercer, as scientists warn climate change will make such extreme weather more intense and frequent.

“In the UK we seem to (be) like: I’ll just let the sea take what it wants,” said Craig Block, the boatman at Thorpeness’ lake.

Local Nicholas Millor said it was a “traumatic time” for the small village with some 130 residents and dozens of holiday homes.

The community had to prepare “for a much more liminal, uncertain kind of future”, he said.

“What Thorpeness is going through now is a microcosm, is an example actually of what many, many communities will go through.”

But experts insist costly traditional defences will not solve erosion, and that adaptation projects like Coastwise are needed to help communities move away from the coastline.

According to climate adaptation researcher Robert Nicholls, the government’s policy is “deliberately experimental” and “translating these ideas elsewhere is a good idea”.

“They’re trying to learn what can and can’t be done. They’re trying to innovate,” said the University of East Anglia professor.

“To me, it seems very rational that you follow the approach that Britain’s doing… I think it’s quite wise and far-sighted.

China passed a law on a “shared” national identity among the country’s 55 ethnic minority ‌groups on Thursday, a move critics say will further erode the identity of people who are not majority Han Chinese and risk making anyone challenging that “unity” a separatist punishable by law.

Called “Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress”, the ethnic minority law aims to forge national unity and advance the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at its core, a draft copy of the law showed.

It was passed at the closing session of the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, by 2,756 votes, with three opposing votes and three ⁠abstentions, according to a Reuters witness.

The law will come into force on July 1 this year, state media reported.

Officially, China has 56 officially recognised ethnic groups, dominated by the Han Chinese, who account for more than 91% of the country’s 1.4 billion people.

China’s ethnic minority populations — including Tibetans, Mongols, Hui, Manchus, and Uyghurs — are concentrated in regions that together cover roughly half of the country’s land area, much of it rich in natural resources.

The law aims to promote integration across ethnic groups through education, housing, migration, community life, culture, tourism, and development policy, the law said.

It mandates that Mandarin is the basic language of instruction in schools, and for government and official business.

In public settings, where Mandarin and minority languages are used together, Mandarin must be given “prominence in placement, order, and similar respects,” the draft said.

“The state respects and protects the learning and use ‌of minority ⁠languages and scripts,” it added.

Religious groups, religious schools, and religious venues must adhere “to the direction of the Sinicization of religion in China,” according to the draft.

The law also seeks to ban any interference with marriage choices based on ethnicity, custom, or religion, to enable more intermarriage between ethnic groups.

‘Integrate with the minority’

Allen Carlson, an associate professor of government at Cornell University and an expert on Chinese foreign policy, said the law underlined a move towards assimilation.

“The law makes it clearer ⁠than ever that in President Xi Jinping’s PRC non-Han peoples must do more to integrate themselves with the Han majority, and above all else be loyal to Beijing,” he said, referring to China by the initials for its official name.

Ethnic affairs are incorporated into China’s social governance system, with clauses that include anti-separatism, border ⁠security, risk prevention, and social stability.

An editorial in state newspaper China Daily said that ⁠the law had followed a rigorous legislative process, been through multiple readings and consultations with lawmakers and representatives from ethnic minority communities.

“The law stresses the protection of cultural traditions and lifestyles of all ethnic groups… it is misleading to claim that ethnic minorities in China must choose between economic development and cultural preservation,” it said.

LONDON: An Iranian girls school that took a direct hit on the first day of the war had a years-long online presence, including dozens of photos of the children and their activities, before it was struck along with at least six other buildings in an adjacent military compound, a Reuters investigation found.

The school’s online activity calls into question how the American military vets and reviews strike locations. Reuters first reported that investigators at the Defence Department believe US forces were likely responsible for the bombing, and new indications emerged that the US may have relied upon outdated targeting data.

Separated from the base by a wall painted with bright murals, the Shajareh Tayyebeh School was the northernmost building hit on February 28. The building was destroyed during the barrage, and 150 students were killed, according to Iran’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Ali Bahreini. Reuters has not independently confirmed the death toll, which the Iranian Red Crescent said reached a total of 175.

The coloured walls visible from satellite imagery as early as 2018 can be seen in a version of the school’s website archived in 2025, whose photos showed girls dressed in identical pink and white in class and at play.

The school was also tagged in a local business listing, Reuters found, and multiple satellite images from the months leading up to the strike provide other indications it was a school, including playground markings.

The cluster of buildings appeared to have been struck by a series of munitions, including at least one American Tomahawk cruise missile, according to an analysis of satellite imagery data, photos and video of the strikes and their aftermath.

Video of the moment of impact by the Tomahawk on the buildings nearby showed a plume of smoke rising in the background. Satellite images from after the attack showed signs of at least seven distinct explosions along a roughly 325-metre axis, including the destroyed school, a rooftop punctured by a gaping hole, and a flattened building.

US President Donald Trump said Monday that Iran might have Tomahawks, although he did not explain how, and no US officials have offered evidence of that claim.

The Pentagon said the strike is under investigation but declined to comment on the school’s online presence, the satellite imagery or on the decision to target the Minab compound.

Two sources, both speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that outdated targeting data may have been to blame, which was first reported by the New York Times.

Mark Cancian, a retired US Marine officer and defence expert with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies think tank, said the US Central Command would have had a longstanding list of potential targets in case of conflict with Iran. “The lesson learned here would be to review the target lists periodically and more closely,” he said.

The school and at least six buildings in the adjacent Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) compound were the only places struck within five kilometres between February 28 and March 2, Reuters found. This suggests they were specifically targeted, rather than struck as part of a broad bombing campaign on the southern city.

Located near the Strait of Hormuz and surrounded by farm fields, Minab is home to one of the IRGC’s largest missile bases, according to state media.

The Reuters analysis included changes detected between those dates by satellites, which, even over a large area, can measure shifts from upheavals such as destroyed buildings, fire, flooding or landslides.

In the days after the strike, another place in Minab showed major disturbance in the analysis: the town cemetery. There, on March 2, the dead children were buried, creating row after row of 20 tidy rectangular holes in the earth.

The school

The Shajareh Tayyebeh School in Minab was one of 59 schools within the Persian Gulf Martyrs’ Cultural Educational Institute. The school’s website includes photos of students gathered in the yard, which matched verified videos outside the building after the strike.

Some of the schools in that network, including the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school and its equivalent boys’ school in Minab, listed their addresses as being in or adjacent to IRGC-controlled locations, according to the archived website.

The address for the Minab girls’ school is specifically listed as “Resalat Blvd, Alley No 9, behind Asef Brigade.” The girls’ school is also included in a local business listing website that shows a photo of the alley with a sign clearly marked “Girls School”.

The boys’ school seems to share the address and be located on the side of the building that did not collapse. A comparison of post-strike images with archived photos of boys studying appears to show debris scattered on desks where students had once studied.

According to the London-based news website IranWire, the Asef Brigade is a missile unit based in Minab, under the command of the IRGC navy.

Satellite imagery from mid-2015 shows the building was walled off from the rest of the base and appears to have operated as a school since at least 2018, when the painted murals are first visible on its outer walls.

Feb 28 attack

In the early days of the war, the United States released photos and videos showcasing its use of Tomahawks in Iran, including on the war’s first day, February 28, when the school was struck.

In three photos and a video from that day that were taken by the US Navy, a Tomahawk missile launches from the deck of the USS Spruance, a guided-missile destroyer. The missiles are US-made and can be launched from surface ships or submarines.

On Sunday, the semi-official Mehr news agency published a video showing the moment one of the buildings within the IRGC compound was hit. According to local media, the attack happened around 10:45am local time.

Before impact, smoke from what appears to be a previous attack on the compound is already visible in the video. Reuters verified the visual as taken on February 28 from videos of the aftermath and satellite imagery of intact buildings taken on the morning of the strike.

Reuters shared the video of the attack with five munitions experts. Four of the experts said the missile was likely a Tomahawk; one thought it was a glide bomb.

Joost Oliemans, a Netherlands-based conflict analyst who specialises in military equipment, concluded the compound was hit by a US Tomahawk, saying that while a few countries had similar missiles, neither Israel nor Iran were among them. 

Joseph Dempsey, a military analyst with London’s International Institute for Strategic Studies, also identified it as a type of Tomahawk, although he did not rule out the possibility of a previously unknown missile.

In a March 4 press conference at the Pentagon, the US military shared a map of locations it had struck in Iran. The map did not list Minab by name, but one of the strikes was marked with a red diamond where the city is located.

On Monday, the state-controlled Tehran Times newspaper published photos of what it said were the “remnants of an American missile that struck an elementary school in Minab.” At the request of Reuters, Hany Farid, a digital forensics and computer science professor for the University of California at Berkeley, analysed the images and found no evidence of manipulation or AI generation.

Two of those missile parts, laid out on a desk and photographed in front of the remains of the school, match recovered parts of other Tomahawk missiles shared by Houthis in 2025 and documented by the Open Source Munitions Portal NGO.

But at the school there was activity as recently as December 2025. Satellite imagery showed what appeared to be people gathered in the schoolyard on a cloudless day.