A remarkable archaeological breakthrough has been announced in Peru, where research teams have unearthed a nearly undisturbed ancient burial site linked to the pre-Incan Chimu civilization, one of the most influential pre-Columbian cultures to emerge along South America’s Pacific coast. The discovery, which was captured on video for documentation and public sharing, offers an unprecedented window into the funerary traditions, social structures, and cultural practices of a society that dominated much of northern Peru for centuries before the rise of the Inca Empire. Unlike many ancient tombs in the region, which have been targeted by looters or damaged by centuries of natural erosion, this site was found in an exceptional state of preservation. Archaeologists note that the intact condition of the burial chamber means that artifacts, human remains, and contextual materials that reveal critical details about Chimu life are still in their original positions. This preservation avoids the common problem of looting that has destroyed countless archaeological sites across Peru, allowing researchers to conduct a full, systematic excavation that is expected to yield new insights into Chimu political organization, religious beliefs, and daily life. Initial assessments suggest the tomb may belong to a high-ranking member of Chimu society, given the care taken in its construction and sealing. The excavation team has already begun careful documentation of the site, with plans to remove artifacts and remains for further laboratory analysis in the coming months before putting key findings on public display to expand public understanding of Peru’s rich pre-Columbian heritage. The Chimu civilization, centered on its capital city of Chan Chan near modern-day Trujillo, flourished from around 900 CE until the Inca conquest in the 15th century, and this new find is already being hailed as one of the most significant Chimu archaeological discoveries of the past decade.
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Nepal’s flood disaster and the impact of climate change loom large in the icy shadow of Mont Blanc
For hundreds of years, the mountain communities straddling the French-Italian border at the foot of Western Europe’s tallest peak have lived in the shadow of Mont Blanc — the “White Mountain” — whose seemingly permanent snowfields and glaciers defined both its name and its iconic landscape. Today, that centuries-old landscape is unraveling at a pace that has alarmed scientists, local leaders and long-time residents alike, as accelerating climate warming drives catastrophic change across the Alpine range.
Europe’s sweltering record-breaking heat waves this summer pushed temperatures to unprecedented highs at high altitude, thawing permafrost that has acted as natural cement holding the Alps’ rocky slopes together for millennia. As cold, centuries-old terrain warmed and softened, unstable cliffs fractured, sending massive cascades of rock tumbling down from the heights. Even one of the most notoriously hazardous gullies regularly traversed by climbers aiming for Mont Blanc’s 4,805-meter summit became temporarily impassable, its routes rendered too dangerous to attempt.
“We weep for our mountain, the way it’s changing. It hits us in the gut,” said Stéphane Bozon, deputy mayor of Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, the French alpine town that sits at the mountain’s base. Since mid-July, Bozon explained, the frequency of rockfalls has climbed steadily. Glacial retreat, rapid snowmelt, widening crevasses and sudden rock collapses have closed off multiple once-accessible areas, making travel across many high-altitude routes far more dangerous than just a generation ago.
Temperature data from France’s national weather service Meteo France underscores the scale of the warming. On Aiguille du Midi, a 3,842-meter peak in the Mont Blanc massif, the average July temperature has jumped from 1.6°C (33.8°F) in 1994 to 3.3°C (37.4°F) this year — the warmest July ever recorded at the site. “The mountain really dried out, with temperatures unlike any I had ever experienced,” Bozon added.
The crisis unfolding on Mont Blanc mirrors a growing global pattern of climate-fueled glacial and mountain disasters, highlighted by the devastating August floods that killed dozens of people across Nepal and southern Tibet. That catastrophe was triggered when a combination of glacial ice and bedrock collapsed, sending a surge of debris and water roaring through Himalayan river valleys. Most scientists agree that rising temperatures driven by the burning of fossil fuels created the unstable conditions that led to the disaster, and as global average temperatures continue to climb, the likelihood of similar events will only increase.
Across the Alps, glaciers long celebrated for their icy grandeur are now viewed with growing apprehension, as shrinking ice and thawing terrain erode their stability. For Bozon, who oversees public safety for Chamonix, the urgent priority is preparing for worst-case scenarios, in which large chunks of glacial ice or unstable mountain rock could break away and crash into populated lowland areas. “We have to move quite quickly because this summer has shaken us and year after year we’re being shaken by the glaciers’ retreat,” he said.
On the Italian side of the border, researchers are documenting similarly dramatic damage from this year’s record heat. Since 1991, Alpine glaciers in Italy’s Lombardy region have lost more than 40% of their total surface area, according to the region’s official glacier monitoring service. Vanda Bonardo, head of the Italian branch of the International Commission for the Protection of the Alps, noted that once-reliable high-altitude snowfall has increasingly been replaced by rain, further eroding terrain stability. “So we’ve also seen the effects on the stability of the terrain,” she added.
Ludovic Ravanel, a climate researcher at Savoie Mont Blanc University who specializes in how rising temperatures impact mountain ice, snow and permafrost, explained that permafrost’s role in holding steep rock faces together cannot be overstated. This year’s repeated back-to-back heat waves pushed that ancient ice to a breaking point. “That doesn’t mean that all the rock faces will collapse in the coming years or decades but quite a number of them are on the verge of becoming unstable and remain stable today only because of the presence of that ice. As the ice changes, we have seen a huge, huge number of rock falls and rock collapses this year,” he said.
Ravanel defines a major collapse as a rock fall involving more than 100 cubic meters of rock — enough to fill a large standard shipping container. He projects that the total number of major collapses across the Mont Blanc massif this year will likely reach roughly 400, a figure that is 10 times higher than the average recorded two decades ago. The last time the region came close to this level of activity was 2022, which was already labeled a “catastrophic year” with nearly 300 major collapses. “This has really been one of the defining features of the summer of 2024,” he said.
For mountain guides who have built their lives around leading climbs on Mont Blanc, the rapid shift has been both professionally challenging and deeply disheartening. Stuart MacDonald, a Chamonix-based guide, says he is stunned by how quickly and extensively the massif’s hanging glaciers have retreated in just the last decade. When he leads groups up the slopes, he often points out visible markers of the melt: “where the glacier was last year and this is where it was 10 years ago. And that usually has quite an effect.”
This summer, elevated melt and constant rockfall risk made MacDonald’s job “pretty challenging,” and he was forced to cancel a planned summit ascent just last week. “You hear it before you see it and then you’ll turn round and you’ll just see an enormous cascade of rocks coming down a slope and it can be quite terrifying,” he said. “What’s most scary is that sometimes these rocks are falling on routes that we used to be climbing at this time of year. It can be depressing sometimes when you look at something that you maybe climbed in July or August in the past and you see that it’s absolutely impossible to do it now.”
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Watch: Downed trees and flooding as Hurricane Lowell batters western Hawaii
Over the course of Monday and Tuesday, powerful Hurricane Lowell made its damaging approach to western Hawaii, leaving a trail of disrupted infrastructure and environmental chaos in its wake. The powerful storm system unleashed two full days of severe weather across multiple parts of the Hawaiian island, combining destructive, high-velocity winds with torrential downpours that overwhelmed local drainage systems.
Emergency management officials have issued repeated urgent warnings in the wake of the storm’s impact, highlighting two major ongoing risks that continue to threaten local communities. First, persistent saturated ground has raised the acute possibility of sudden flash flooding across low-lying and river-adjacent areas, where rising water can quickly cut off access and destroy property. Second, the heavy rainfall has loosened soil on hillsides and steep terrain, triggering widespread fears of dangerous mudslides that can swallow roads and damage residential areas.
Local footage captured in the aftermath of the storm’s peak shows large trees uprooted by strong winds, blocking major thoroughfares and crushing small outbuildings in residential neighborhoods. Drainage systems have been overwhelmed in many coastal and low-lying communities, leaving streets submerged under several feet of muddy flood water. As of the latest update, emergency response teams are working around the clock to clear blocked routes, evacuate at-risk residents, and assess the full scope of damage caused by the storm.
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US slaps import ban on Canadian alcohol and other goods
The long-simmering trade dispute between the United States and Canada has entered a dangerous new phase, with Washington moving to implement a full ban on a range of key Canadian imports after Ottawa’s retaliatory tariffs on American goods officially came into force.
In a set of executive orders signed Tuesday, former US President Donald Trump claimed that Canada has de facto discriminated against American commercial activity, and formalized the import ban set to launch on September 29. The restricted products cover a wide swath of Canadian trade, including alcohol, dairy products and passenger and commercial motor vehicles.
Just hours before Trump’s announcement, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a televised video address acknowledging the harsh reality of his country’s strategic shift to reduce economic dependence on its largest trading partner. “This pivot will come at a cost,” Carney told the Canadian public, as the country prepared to roll out its retaliatory measures.
The latest escalation follows the collapse of trade negotiations between the two neighbors in late August. While officials from both sides have repeatedly stated that they remain open to reaching a new negotiated agreement, no new diplomatic talks have been scheduled to de-escalate the crisis.
The conflict first intensified last month, when the White House imposed a steep 50% tariff on roughly $20 billion worth of Canadian exports after multiple rounds of talks failed to bridge core differences. In a tit-for-tat response, Canada announced matching dollar-for-dollar retaliatory tariffs on iconic American exports including steel, apparel and furniture, which officially went into effect just after midnight on Tuesday.
What makes this bilateral clash even more unusual is that tensions have spilled far beyond the realm of trade policy. In August, Trump drew widespread international backlash when he issued an order to rename Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes shared between the US and Canada, to “Lake America” — a decision that sparked public uproar among both Canadian citizens and many American commentators.
This is an ongoing developing breaking news story, with additional details expected to be released in the coming hours and days. Readers can access real-time updates via the BBC News mobile application, or follow BBC Breaking News’ official account on X for instant alerts on new developments.
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‘We share the goal of stability’: Rubio remarks restrained as western allies sanction Israel
On Tuesday, in a striking break from long-standing Western alignment on Israeli-Palestinian policy, the United Kingdom, France, and Canada announced a coordinated package of unprecedented punitive measures targeting Israel, drawing an immediate split with the United States over how to address escalating tensions in the occupied Palestinian territories.
During a press briefing while traveling in Colombia, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio struck a restrained tone, confirming that Washington would not align with the new actions taken by its allies. “We were made aware that they were going to make this decision,” Rubio told reporters. “We heard their argument as to why, but look, we share the goal of stability. We don’t want to see some uptick in violence or an uptick in conflict or tensions in the West Bank at a very tenuous time. In the region, there’s always tenuous times.”
A Bloomberg report published Tuesday cited unnamed UK diplomatic sources who privately told their US counterparts ahead of the announcement that the new sanctions are largely symbolic and unlikely to deliver tangible economic or political impact on Israel. As part of the coordinated declaration, the three Western nations formally recognized claims of ethnic cleansing being carried out against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, but notably excluded Gaza from this designation. As of this reporting, Gaza has seen more than 73,000 Palestinian fatalities since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on southern Israel, and the besieged enclave is widely described as a decimated wasteland, with Israeli air strikes continuing despite a nearly year-old ceasefire agreement.
Building on a 2024 advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice, the UK, France, and Canada also formally declared Israel’s long-standing occupation of Palestinian territory illegal, but again, the joint statement did not address Israel’s 19-year blockade of the Gaza Strip. The concrete measures announced include comprehensive economic sanctions on Israeli settlements in the West Bank and an immediate ban on new arms licenses that would support the Israeli occupation. Independent critics have already noted that these restrictions are easily circumvented through supply chain rerouting and product relabeling, echoing the earlier private assessment from UK diplomats.
In their joint statement, the three nations framed the actions as a necessary step to preserve the internationally backed two-state solution, a framework that has been increasingly sidelined in recent years. “One year ago, we recognised the State of Palestine. The time has come to take further action to uphold our commitment to protect the two-state solution, our interests and to stand up for our values, before it is too late,” the statement read. This move comes despite a complete lack of public support for a two-state solution within Israeli political circles, extending even to the main opposition bloc that is widely expected to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in upcoming October national elections. The US has also effectively abandoned its decades-long official support for a two-state solution under current President Donald Trump.
The joint statement reaffirmed that the three allies remain firmly committed to Israel’s security. “In taking this coordinated action, we reiterate our desire for a close and productive partnership with Israel, our enduring support for the Israeli people and our unwavering commitment to Israel’s security,” they added. Even so, the announcement drew fierce condemnation from pro-Israel American politicians even before it was made public. Earlier this week, as rumors of the impending declaration began to circulate, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee wrote on the social platform X that the British government had “lost it” and was driven by “Jew hate”. Florida Republican Congressman Randy Fine, a well-known anti-Muslim voice in Congress, similarly warned on X that Florida is one of the UK’s largest trading partners, and that what he called the allies’ “vanity project in support of Muslim terror could cost them billions of dollars” in bilateral trade.
Reactions to the sanctions have been deeply divided among advocacy groups and policy analysts. Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the global Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement advocating for Palestinian rights, described the new measures as “largely performative and ineffective”. He added that the UK’s focus on allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza does not end its complicity in the ongoing conflict, noting that Israel has fully integrated the occupied territories’ economy into its own, making any differentiation between Israeli and settlement goods functionally impossible for enforcing import bans.
In Washington DC, J Street, a pro-Israel advocacy group that has long supported a two-state solution, praised UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband’s public video announcement of the new measures. “Note to American leaders and those seeking future roles: this is what leadership on this issue looks like today,” J Street CEO Jeremy Ben-Ami wrote in response. However, Robert Satloff, head of the staunchly pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy, called the announcement a “sad day” on X, and slammed Miliband for simultaneously denouncing antisemitism while advancing what he called “anti-Israel policies”. Satloff argued that singling Israel out for this type of targeted treatment inherently aligns with the antisemitism that Miliband publicly condemned. This matches a long-standing pattern from the Israeli government, which routinely labels any criticism of its policies as antisemitism, regardless of whether the criticism stems from United Nations resolutions, foreign government policy, or even cultural expression.
In Canada, the advocacy group Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East welcomed Ottawa’s participation in the sanctions, calling it a “victory for the Palestine solidarity movement and everyone who wants Canadian trade policy to uphold human rights and international law”. Yara Shoufani, the organization’s president, noted that for years Canada has enabled illegal trade with Israeli settlement businesses, even extending economic benefits through the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement. “This announcement marks the first time that Israel will face material, economic consequences for its blatant violations of international law,” Shoufani said. Conversely, Noah Shack, CEO of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs in Canada, strongly condemned the Canadian government’s decision, arguing that Ottawa abandoned an independent foreign policy aligned with its own strategic interests to follow the UK’s lead, a move he claimed was driven by domestic political calculations to appease extreme elements of Canadian society. Shack added that the sanctions would do nothing to advance political reform or demilitarization in Palestinian territories.
In response to the allied announcement, the Israeli government has already launched retaliatory diplomatic measures: it has announced the closure of the British consulate in Jerusalem, imposed a travel ban on a dozen sitting British lawmakers, and expelled the British Support Team that trains security forces for the Palestinian Authority (PA). A progressive US think tank, A New Policy, founded by two former Biden administration officials who resigned in protest over Washington’s unconditional support for Israel, noted that this Israeli retaliation will ultimately harm US security objectives in the region, since the British Support Team operated under the umbrella of the US Security Coordinator (USSC) mission. That mission works closely with the Israeli military to maintain the level of stability that Israel demands in the occupied West Bank, and the British team provided critical on-the-ground intelligence for the USSC.
To offset any potential backlash for targeting Israel, the UK government also included a package of expanded sanctions on Iran as part of Tuesday’s announcement, adding new trade restrictions on Iranian shipping and aviation. This move aligned with simultaneous action from the US Treasury Department, which announced sanctions on 36 individuals and entities accused of supporting Iran’s aviation sector through covert front companies, foreign intermediaries, and deceptive shipping routes that Iran uses to obtain US-origin aircraft and sensitive technology.
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Families’ interest in their kids’ education is falling around the globe as scores drop, test shows
The 2023 round of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the world’s most comprehensive standardized evaluation of 15-year-olds’ academic proficiency, has delivered a stark warning to education systems across high-income economies: average scores in core subjects of math, reading, and science have hit their lowest point in the program’s 20+ year history.
Organized by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the 2023 assessment drew more than 760,000 participants across dozens of nations, with results published this week confirming widespread declines. Even in the United States, which placed within the global top 15 for science, reading, and the new computational problem-solving category, scores for reading and math have fallen to their lowest level since PISA launched in the early 2000s — a trend that was only masked slightly by broader declines across other developed nations. Researchers also note the U.S. results should be interpreted with caution, as the country failed to meet the study’s required sample size standards for participating schools and students.
What is driving this global slump in academic performance? OECD officials point to two interconnected factors: declining parental engagement in children’s learning, and unregulated overuse of digital and artificial intelligence tools in and out of the classroom.
An accompanying student survey paired with PISA assessments found that nearly every high-income country recorded a drop in family investment in education between 2018 (the last full PISA round) and 2023, with the sharpest disengagement observed among boys. This disengagement is measured by how frequently parents discuss schoolwork with their children or actively participate in their learning progress. Andreas Schleicher, director of the OECD’s education and skills division, notes that many parents have shifted their perspective from active co-participants in education to passive clients of school systems.
The performance gap tied to parental engagement is substantial. Even after adjusting for socioeconomic differences between students, teenagers who reported that a family member asks about their daily school experience at least once a week scored 35 points higher on the PISA science assessment than peers with less engaged families. That gap is equivalent to more than a year and a half of additional learning.
Digital distraction is the second major contributor to falling scores. More than one in four students across high-income countries reported that classmates are distracted by personal digital devices in most or every science class. Data confirms that nations with strict school policies governing cellphone use see significantly lower distraction rates. When it comes to leisure use of digital devices, the link between heavy use and lower test scores is clear, Schleicher says, though the picture is more mixed for educational digital use: students who used edtech for 2 to 3 hours per day during school saw small score gains, but performance drops sharply once use exceeds that threshold.
For artificial intelligence tools, the pattern mirrors that of general digital technology. Half of all students in developed economies now use AI chatbots for learning at least once a week, but the assessment found that higher AI use correlates with lower overall test scores, with students who never use chatbots outperforming their peers who use these tools regularly. That said, some nations have found a balanced, effective approach to integrating AI into learning: in China, Japan, Singapore, and Estonia, AI is used to support — not replace — teacher-led instruction. Schleicher highlighted one example from a Chinese elementary school, where students practice traditional ink calligraphy, and teachers use AI to scan and analyze student work to deliver personalized feedback on handwriting improvement — blending traditional teaching methods with AI-powered support, rather than letting technology lead classroom activity.
Top performing spots in the 2023 PISA rankings were once again dominated by East Asian economies. Mainland China (with four provinces, Hong Kong, and Macao participating), Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea took the highest overall marks, with Estonia, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand also ranking among the top performers. Fewer than 10% of students in top-ranked East Asian nations reported classroom digital distraction, a fraction of the rate seen in North America and Western Europe. In the four participating Chinese provinces, nearly 100% of students scored at or above the baseline proficiency level for math and reading, compared to just 65% for math and 74% for reading in the U.S.
Education experts warn that the growing gap in academic performance between the U.S. and top-performing East Asian systems carries major long-term geopolitical implications. “To win a technological race, you need the people with the science and the technology and the reading capabilities,” said Tracey Burns, chief of global strategy and research at the National Center for Education and the Economy, an organization that studies high-performing education systems worldwide.
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Meta continues to run ads promoting child sexual abuse material in India – report
A bombshell new investigation from a U.S.-based non-profit accountability group has uncovered that hundreds of paid advertisements featuring artificial intelligence-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM) operated on Meta’s two flagship platforms, Facebook and Instagram, over a 10-month monitoring period – with dozens of the problematic ads slipping through content moderation even after an official government order in India targeting such harmful content.
The Washington-headquartered Tech Transparency Project (TTP), a research arm of the non-profit Campaign for Accountability that works to hold big tech firms accountable for harmful content, published its findings on Tuesday, documenting 332 confirmed CSAM-laden ads across both platforms. The overwhelming majority of these ads – 274 out of 332 – were detected in August of this year, spread across six regions including the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, Australia and India. Roughly one-quarter of all the problematic ads, 84 total, ran in India alone. Shockingly, 78 of those Indian ads were published after the Indian government issued a formal order two months prior demanding Meta remove all CSAM-related content and ads from Instagram, a directive that came on the heels of an earlier investigative report from BBC Eye that first exposed CSAM paid ads active on the platform for Indian users.
The report details a deeply disturbing pattern behind how these ads operate: nearly all start with a legitimate photograph of a real child, which is then manipulated using AI deepfake technology to generate graphic sexual content as the ad plays. In one high-profile case documented by TTP, images of a minor member of a European royal family were stolen and altered to create CSAM for an ad. TTP also shared one example of an Indian ad that featured an AI-animated preteen girl performing a graphic sex act, paired with a voiceover claiming the service offered unrestricted access to real AI-generated content of this nature. According to TTP’s research, this single ad was posted across more than 50 different user accounts in India over a two-week period in August.
Beyond the initial discovery, TTP confirmed that more than a dozen additional CSAM ads remained live on Meta’s platforms even after the research group formally alerted Meta to their presence. This includes 11 ads that ran in India as recently as September 1 and 2, weeks after TTP shared its preliminary findings with the company. When TTP tested Meta’s own in-platform ad reporting system for 55 of the 84 Indian CSAM ads it identified, the results were alarming: 43 of the reported ads were reviewed by Meta’s automated moderation and deemed to not violate the company’s advertising standards. Only 11 were confirmed removed, with one ad still awaiting a response from Meta at the time of the report. Once TTP reached out directly to Meta’s communications team with its full findings, all flagged ads were ultimately removed.
TTP’s investigation also uncovered that a large share of the problematic ads were placed through Meta’s official third-party ad reseller partners based in China. These resellers are responsible for moving billions of dollars in Chinese advertising onto Meta’s platforms annually, and none responded to TTP’s requests for comment on their role in approving and distributing the CSAM ads. Nearly all 332 ads documented by TTP directed users to AI-powered image and video generation apps, most developed by Chinese creators. The ads use CSAM to implicitly market that these tools can be used to create or access illegal child sexual exploitation content, a use case that Meta explicitly bans in its platform policies. Meta’s policies already prohibit the promotion of so-called “nudify” apps that create non-consensual fake nude or explicit content, but the CSAM ads still evaded detection.
In response to queries from the BBC about the TTP report, Meta issued a statement reaffirming that it does not tolerate any form of child exploitation, whether involving real or AI-generated content. Meta representatives argued that criminal actors constantly shift their tactics to evade content detection systems, which is why the company continuously updates and strengthens its detection and enforcement workflows. The company also noted that it has built layered automated defenses designed to block violating ads before they go live, and ongoing monitoring catches content that may slip through initial screening. Meta claimed that most of the flagged ads had already been removed before TTP’s report, that the vast majority received fewer than 200 impressions each, and that total ad spend across all 332 CSAM ads amounted to less than $5,000. Meta also reiterated that it complies with all legal requirements to report confirmed child exploitation content to the U.S.-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), the global central clearinghouse for CSAM reporting.
However, child protection advocates in India argue that Meta’s current reporting and enforcement framework falls far short of what is required under Indian law. Just Rights for Children, a national network of more than 250 Indian child protection organizations, has already filed a public interest petition with India’s Supreme Court citing the earlier BBC investigation, asking the court to issue formal mandates requiring social media platforms to proactively identify CSAM and report all violators directly to Indian law enforcement agencies. Bhuwan Ribhu, founder of Just Rights for Children, accused major social media firms of openly flouting Indian child protection laws by failing to report CSAM content to domestic law enforcement as required.
Top Indian law enforcement officials echo these concerns, noting that the cross-platform nature of CSAM distribution creates unique enforcement challenges. Shikha Goel, director of the Cyber Security Bureau in the Indian state of Telangana, explained that bad actors can easily shift operations between different platforms to avoid detection, making it far harder to apprehend those responsible for distributing CSAM. Goel added that many in law enforcement hope the Indian government will issue new, clearer directives to social media intermediaries during upcoming negotiations to address this gap.
The latest findings come after an earlier BBC investigation that also uncovered CSAM paid ads on Instagram directing users to the messaging platform Telegram, where CSAM could be purchased for as little as 99 Indian rupees (approximately $1.05). Telegram has previously stated that it uses a combination of automated moderation and human reviewers to combat CSAM, and claims it has virtually eliminated all public distribution of CSAM on its platform.
The TTP investigation adds new scrutiny to Meta’s automated ad moderation system, which requires all ads to pass automated screening before they are published to users. Meta has previously acknowledged that no content moderation system is perfect, and that determined criminal actors consistently work to exploit gaps in platform defenses, including ad approval workflows.
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Hegseth is shaking up the Pentagon as the US wages war – but at what cost?
The United States military currently finds itself entangled in two overlapping, high-stakes conflicts that are raising urgent questions about its operational readiness, global positioning, and long-term institutional stability during Donald Trump’s second presidential term. One front unfolds abroad: a years-long stalemate with Iran over control of the critical Strait of Hormuz, which has forced a massive global redistribution of U.S. military assets that is now rippling through alliance networks from Europe to the Indo-Pacific. The second front is a domestic institutional upheaval, led by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose aggressive shake-up of Pentagon leadership has triggered bitter partisan and internal recriminations, capped last week by the resignation of the U.S. Army’s top civilian leader, Secretary Dan Driscoll.
Driscoll, a relatively low-profile figure outside defense policy circles, oversaw a critical modernization push for the U.S. Army before stepping down last Monday. For months, he had clashed repeatedly with Hegseth over the scope and pace of proposed reforms, particularly his push to integrate cheap, mass-produced drones into standard infantry formations, a shift he argued was essential to adapting 21st-century battlefields after lessons drawn from the war in Ukraine. Driscoll warned that the U.S. military’s bloated bureaucracy and glacial, costly procurement processes left it ill-prepared to counter evolving modern threats, according to senior administration sources. Though Hegseth initially backed the broader modernization agenda, he ultimately pushed back against rapid expansion, and Driscoll accused him of blocking the plan by removing senior generals tasked with leading its implementation. Driscoll’s departure is just the latest in a string of high-profile exits of top civilian and uniformed leaders aligned with the modernization effort.
The growing chaos has prompted sharp criticism from across the political and national security spectrum. Republican Senator Thom Tillis, a consistent critic of Trump, has publicly called for Hegseth’s ouster, saying he has never witnessed more incompetent management of U.S. service members. Former first-term Trump National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster called Driscoll’s departure troubling for the U.S. Army, noting Driscoll had been pushing a critical modernization agenda to bring the service up to speed against near-peer competitors. Retired Navy Captain Jon Duffy, a former White House defense policy official during the Obama administration, argued that Driscoll’s exit has “hollowed out” senior military leadership at a critical moment, creating crippling uncertainty that disrupts progress on modernization and ripples down through the ranks to impact frontline readiness.
Hegseth, a former Army National Guardsman and conservative Fox News pundit who campaigned on transforming the Pentagon’s cultural identity, has framed his overhaul as a necessary correction to decades of what he calls ideological overreach and institutional stagnation. He has repeatedly vowed to eliminate what he labels “woke” diversity initiatives, loosen restrictive rules of engagement he claims limit warfighter lethality, and purge the Pentagon of what he calls out-of-touch, complacent senior leaders. To date, he has removed or sidelined the top uniformed leaders of the Army, Navy, and Air Force, along with more than two dozen senior generals, admirals, and civilian defense officials—many of them among the military’s most decorated officers—often without public explanation.
Critics have drawn unflinching comparisons to large-scale political purges of foreign military establishments. Michael Schiffer, a former senior Pentagon official for East Asia during the Obama administration and now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, argued that the mass leadership shake-up amounts to a U.S. military purge that has created serious command gaps and readiness deficiencies that mirror those seen after China’s political purges of its People’s Liberation Army. “The way [Hegseth] is shaking them up… is bringing on board an awful lot of risk without any apparent way to address or ameliorate it,” Schiffer told the BBC.
But Hegseth retains staunch support from the White House and top Trump administration officials. Vice President JD Vance defended the Pentagon overhaul last week, saying he strongly agreed with the need for cultural change after four decades of what he called lost wars and military misadventures. “What Pete came in wanting to do was revive the warrior spirit in the United States of America,” Vance said. The White House confirmed that Trump retains full confidence in Hegseth, pointing to what it calls a record of success in recent military operations against Iran. Trump has repeatedly stood by Hegseth through prior controversies, including the Signalgate scandal, calling him “one of my best” picks in a recent interview with NBC News. Ezra Cohen, a former Under Secretary of Defense during Trump’s first term, described Hegseth’s reforms as a breath of fresh air, bringing new ideas and a more proactive approach to defense strategy.
Beyond the domestic upheaval, the ongoing stalemate with Iran in the Gulf is stretching U.S. military capabilities thin and straining long-standing alliances across the globe. After Trump ordered major strikes on Iran last February, the U.S. has drawn down critical weapons stockpiles and troop deployments from both Europe and the Pacific to reinforce the Gulf, replenishing munitions and moving large ground and naval assets to the region. The shift has already created significant strategic blowback in Europe, according to Liana Fix, a Germany-based expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Fix explained that the Trump administration failed to consult NATO and European allies ahead of the Iran strikes, and the subsequent resource drawdown has accelerated a pre-planned shift of U.S. forces out of the continent, a move aligned with Trump’s longstanding criticism that European allies fail to carry their own defense weight. The perceived disunity and weakening of U.S. commitment to European security has created an opening for Russian President Vladimir Putin to escalate hybrid attacks, including armed drone strikes and sabotage operations across NATO countries like Germany, Fix said. “What [Putin] is seeing is not a united stance from the United States and the Europeans to further increase pressure on Russia… he sees that they are weakening, that there are windows and openings of vulnerabilities in Europe,” she noted. Recent unusual diplomatic moves reflect the growing tension: CIA Director John Ratcliffe made a rare high-profile visit to Moscow last month to warn the Kremlin against testing NATO’s resolve, while a top Hegseth aide was in Europe pushing allied governments to increase their own defense spending. The U.S. has already cut 5,000 troops from its 40,000-strong deployment in Germany, and scrapped a Biden-era plan to station a battalion armed with long-range Tomahawk missiles in the country.
While the drawdown in Europe aligns with the Trump administration’s long-stated goal of refocusing U.S. strategy on great power competition with China in the Pacific, the Iran conflict has actually stretched U.S. capabilities in the Indo-Pacific too. Key naval assets, including the USS Abraham Lincoln and the Japan-based USS George Washington carrier strike groups, were diverted from the Pacific to the Gulf to support operations against Iran, leaving the region understaffed at a critical moment of rising tensions with Beijing. The prolonged deployment has already taken a visible toll: recent photos of the USS Abraham Lincoln docking in Thailand with a rusted hull after nine months straight at sea were seized on by Iranian state media to portray the U.S. as overextended and exhausted. Hegseth has forcefully denied claims of poor conditions aboard the vessel, but the image has become a symbol of the strain of the prolonged conflict.
Most notably, the Iran conflict has gutted critical U.S. munitions stockpiles, according to analysis from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank. The U.S. has fired roughly one-third of its entire national stockpile of 3,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles, and nearly 1,500 Patriot air defense interceptors—roughly two-thirds of the country’s total stockpile of 2,300—have been expended to counter Iranian drones and missiles. The White House has pushed back against these concerns, with Principal Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly insisting that U.S. military power is stronger than ever, and that the military retains enough stockpiles to meet all of the president’s strategic goals. Pro-administration analysts, including former Trump defense official Ezra Cohen, now at the conservative Hudson Institute, argue that the strikes have severely degraded Iran’s conventional military capabilities and weakened its proxy networks across the Middle East, leaving the U.S. with greater flexibility to target Iranian nuclear facilities if needed.
Still, the ongoing conflict shows no sign of ending: 82nd Airborne Division troops deployed to the Middle East more than six months ago are now expected to remain in the region through 2027 with no clear exit strategy. For Trump and Hegseth, the dual challenge of overhauling the Pentagon’s culture and leadership while waging a costly, protracted conflict in the Gulf has created an unprecedented test of U.S. military stability, one that could shape the legacy of Trump’s second term and the future of U.S. global power for decades to come.
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‘Constantly on my mind’ – 9/11 agony goes on for bereaved, 25 years on
Twenty-five years ago, the deadliest act of modern criminal violence on U.S. soil unfolded across New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, leaving nearly 3,000 people dead and generations of families irrevocably broken. Today, as the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks approaches, the long-awaited trial of the plot’s alleged mastermind has still not begun – and grieving relatives are running out of time to see justice served.
Tom Resta is one of those family members waiting for closure. On September 11, 2001, his brother John, a commodities trader, and John’s seven months pregnant wife Sylvia were at work on the 92nd floor of the World Trade Center’s North Tower. In the days before the attacks, the young couple had been hard at work painting their unborn child’s nursery with beloved characters from the children’s show *Blue’s Clues*, fulfilling a long-held dream of starting their own family after years of doting on their friends’ and relatives’ kids. Today, all that remains of that dream are memories that still bring Resta to tears a quarter-century later.
“After all this time, it still chokes me up,” Resta told the BBC in an emotional interview. “9/11 is almost constantly on my mind.”
Like many victims’ relatives, Resta has made repeated trips to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to observe the glacial pre-trial proceedings for alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, widely known as KSM, and his four co-defendants. He describes the ongoing process as nothing short of “laborious and tedious.” Established in the wake of the 9/11 attacks as part of the U.S. global “war on terror,” Guantanamo’s military prison has held KSM for 20 years – and in all that time, he has never faced a final trial or been convicted of any crime.
Access to the high-security Guantanamo courtroom is strictly limited: victims’ relatives must enter a lottery system just to win a spot to observe proceedings, where thick reinforced glass permanently separates observers and press from the defendants. The pre-trial process has dragged on so long that five different military judges have overseen the case to date.
Last month, ahead of the 25th anniversary, a small flicker of progress emerged: military officials set a firm trial date for KSM of June 2028. Yet even this milestone has done little to ease the fears of grieving families, who have grown accustomed to decades of delays. Resta, for one, is already preparing for further postponements, and says many of his elderly family members doubt they will live long enough to see a verdict.
“My father will be 98 in November, and I don’t think he’s expecting to see it,” Resta explained. “I have a lot of older family members – aunts, uncles – that all want to see justice done. But especially my parents, I don’t think they expect to live long enough to see this trial conclude. My biggest worry is that the defendants themselves won’t even be alive by the time we get to court.”
Resta’s anxiety is widely shared among other 9/11 victims’ next of kin. Stephan Gerhardt, who lost his younger brother Ralph in the attacks, has made six separate trips to Guantanamo to follow the case. For Gerhardt, securing convictions for the plotters is non-negotiable, but he longs for the day he can stop devoting his energy to the legal process and focus entirely on preserving his brother’s memory.
“I want to concentrate on the memories,” Gerhardt said. “I still have Ralph’s car. I’m trying to restore it and get it back in pristine shape… We recently visited my parents and found some of his old things they’d held onto. It’s just old stuff, but it belonged to my little brother, and that makes it mean everything.” Like Resta, Gerhardt’s greatest fear is that KSM and his co-defendants will die of old age before they can be convicted, a outcome he calls an unforgivable injustice.
KSM has been charged with conspiracy and murder in connection with the attacks, with all 2,976 victims named on the official charge sheet. Prosecutors allege he developed the plan to train hijacker pilots to crash commercial jetliners into major U.S. targets, then presented the plot to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden for approval. KSM has previously admitted he planned the “9/11 operation from A to Z.”
Yet just days after the 2028 trial date was set, the presiding military judge threw out KSM’s key confessions to FBI agents obtained after he was transferred to Guantanamo from secret CIA “black site” prisons, where he was held for years in clandestine detention. In his ruling, the judge labeled KSM’s treatment at the hands of the CIA as “extraordinary physical and mental abuse,” finding the confessions were not given voluntarily and cannot be used as evidence against him at trial.
Legal experts across the globe agree that the history of torture inflicted on KSM and his co-defendants is the single greatest cause of the decades-long delays in the case. “Every single legal issue in this proceeding has circled back to the torture,” explained Kasey McCall-Smith, an international law professor at the University of Edinburgh. She noted the defendants were subjected to “years of abuse,” including waterboarding and prolonged stress position detainment.
John Ryan, author of *America’s Trial: Torture and the 9/11 Case on Guantanamo Bay*, says last month’s ruling strips prosecutors of what they themselves described as their strongest evidence against KSM, though the full impact on the case remains unclear. Prosecutors do hold other potential evidence, including intercepted communications and covert recordings, but Ryan cautions that defense teams are already expected to file motions to suppress much of this additional evidence as well.
The history of U.S. interrogation policy in this case dates back to the George W. Bush administration, which publicly acknowledged using what it called “enhanced interrogation techniques” against terror suspects, claiming the methods saved lives and never amounted to torture. President Barack Obama banned these techniques on his second day in office, but the legal damage of the earlier practices had already been done.
For victims’ families, that damage has meant decades of delayed justice, a right they say the torture has effectively blocked. “If we would’ve not tortured them, the legal process would’ve been much, much simpler,” Gerhardt said. “They probably would’ve been sentenced a long time ago. I can’t control what the government did, and we’ve got to live with the consequences.”
In early 2025, Resta and Gerhardt both traveled to Guantanamo for a planned guilty plea hearing, under a controversial deal struck between defense attorneys and federal prosecutors that would have avoided a death penalty trial entirely. The hearing was halted at the eleventh hour after the U.S. government argued that cutting the deal would cause “irreparable” harm by “depriving the government and the American people of a public trial as to the respondents’ guilt and the possibility of capital punishment.” Legal battles over the validity of the proposed plea deal are still ongoing.
Victims’ families remain deeply divided over the proposed agreement. Some see it as the only path to secure final convictions after decades of delay, while others condemn it as overly lenient and lacking in transparency. Resta supports the deal, saying his only priority is securing convictions, not capital punishment. “My philosophy is these guys are not the kind of people that should be out walking the streets, but as far as I’m concerned, they can just stay right where they are,” he said. “I just want them convicted.”
Brett Eagleson, who was just 15 years old when his father Bruce was killed in the attacks, rejects the plea deal and demands a full public trial. “It’s not so much that I’m taking an opinion on life or death for these prisoners, but I believe in the judicial system and I believe that the process works,” he said. “I believe that a full trial, with full disclosure of evidence and a public airing of the facts, is the only way to get the full truth out.”
Eagleson has chosen not to attend any pre-trial proceedings at Guantanamo, calling the entire situation “a mess.” He says he feels a profound sense of betrayal by the U.S. government, and extreme frustration over how the case has been handled from start to finish. “They’ve botched every single part of this trial,” he said. After 25 years, while 9/11 remains a daily presence in his life, he notes that for most of the American public, it is slowly fading into history. “I think people just assume that we got Bin Laden, we’re out of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan’s over, and they just assume that chapter has ended,” he said.
When the trial eventually does begin at the Guantanamo military court, experts estimate it will last approximately one year. Professor McCall-Smith explains that the entire point of the decades-long pre-trial process has been to resolve disputes over what evidence can and cannot be admitted in court. “If that is agreed in advance, the trial can proceed much more quickly,” she said.
As families prepare to mark another anniversary of the attack that took their loved ones, many just long for the day the trial is over, and they can stop traveling to Guantanamo and refocus on their lives and their memories. “It’s a place I don’t want to come back to,” Gerhardt said. “I want to live my life, enjoy my passions and my memories of Ralph.”
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Israel bans 11 British MPs and announces closure of UK consulate in East Jerusalem
A major diplomatic rift has erupted between the United Kingdom and Israel after London formally recognized the illegality of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory and imposed sweeping sanctions on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, prompting immediate counter-sanctions from Jerusalem.
On Tuesday, UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband announced the landmark policy shift in parliament, confirming that the British government now aligns with the 2024 International Court of Justice advisory opinion, which ruled Israel’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian land unlawful. Miliband added that London officially recognizes ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank carried out by extremist Israeli settlers, noting that the Israeli government has repeatedly failed to intervene, and in many cases, facilitated forced displacement of local populations.
Alongside the formal recognition, the UK introduced comprehensive sanctions targeting Israeli settlements and a full ban on all arms licenses and exports that could materially support Israel’s illegal occupation. The announcement quickly drew international backing: 11 other nations including Canada, France, Spain, and Sweden joined the UK in a joint statement committing to introduce national trade restrictions on settlement goods or explore such measures under their domestic legal frameworks. Both France and Canada have already confirmed they will implement bans on settlement goods on Wednesday, a step widely viewed as a key diplomatic win for the UK’s new policy.
Within hours of Miliband’s announcement, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar unveiled a package of retaliatory measures targeting the UK. In a televised address Tuesday afternoon, Saar stated Israel would shut down the UK consulate in occupied East Jerusalem, expel all British representatives from the US-led International Gaza Support Center (IGSC) — a body established to monitor the fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas — and end all British training programs for Palestinian security forces.
Saar also announced a travel ban barring 11 British Members of Parliament from entering Israeli territory. The list of banned politicians includes former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, independent MP Zarah Sultana, six current Labour MPs (Naz Shah, Diane Abbott, John McDonnell, Richard Burgon), and all three serving Green Party MPs (Carla Denyer, Adrian Ramsay, Ellie Chowns) alongside two additional Green Party figures Sian Berry and Hannah Spencer. A separate ban was also issued for Fahad Ansari, a British lawyer who led legal efforts to reverse Hamas’ designation as a terrorist organization in UK courts.
Saar dismissed the UK’s boycott of settlement goods as “despicable”, doubling down on Israel’s long-standing claim of full sovereignty over all of Jerusalem. “A united Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, will always remain the capital of Israel and is under its full sovereignty,” he said. “We will also take additional retaliatory measures based on our discretion. The message to any government that seeks to harm us is clear: Those who act against Israel, Israel will act against them, and they will lose their influence and relevance in the region.”
This is not the first time Israel has removed Western nations from the IGSC over settlement trade bans. Israel recently expelled Dutch representatives from the body after the Netherlands implemented its own restriction on settlement goods, and expelled Spanish delegates earlier this year over what it called Madrid’s “obsessive anti-Israel bias”.
Responding to the entry ban, a spokesperson for the UK Green Party rejected Israeli pressure and reaffirmed the party’s support for Palestinian rights. “We will not be bullied into silence by the Israeli government. We are proud of our MPs for standing up for Palestinian rights and demanding an end to British complicity in genocide and illegal occupation,” the spokesperson said. “These threats only strengthen our resolve. The British government must stand firm and follow these overdue restrictions with a full arms embargo and wide-ranging sanctions.”
The latest diplomatic escalation marks a historic turning point in Western policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as a growing bloc of industrialized nations moves beyond rhetorical criticism of Israeli settlements to implement concrete economic and diplomatic measures to oppose the illegal occupation.