分类： society

A sprawling international criminal syndicate that trafficked hundreds of kilograms of human placenta harvested from Pakistani hospitals for high-end black market anti-aging injections has been uncovered in a multi-agency law enforcement raid, marking the first documented case of an organized transnational network trading in this illicit human tissue in the country.

Pakistan’s Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has launched a full-scale investigation into the ring, which authorities say moved roughly 200 kilograms of processed human placenta out of the country each month. The organ is obtained illegally from maternity wards across Pakistan, processed locally, then smuggled abroad to be manufactured into cosmetic anti-aging treatments, FIA representatives told BBC Urdu.

The operation unraveled last week during a targeted raid on an unlicensed processing facility in a converted residential property in Islamabad. Law enforcement officers seized 500 kilograms of suspected dried human placenta at the site and took five suspects into custody. Photographs released by the FIA show large trays of cured placenta stacked on rolling carts inside the clandestine facility, which was repurposed exclusively for storing and processing the illicit organ.

In a separate interdiction just days later, on Wednesday, FIA teams stopped a 100-kilogram shipment of human placenta bound for Vietnam at Islamabad International Airport, halting another major smuggling attempt before the contraband could leave the country.

According to Hina Kanwal, an official with Pakistan’s Human Organ Transplant Authority, the syndicate acquired each placenta from public and private hospitals in Islamabad and neighboring Rawalpindi for roughly 800 Pakistani rupees, equivalent to just $2.90. Once processed and turned into final anti-aging injections, each individual dose sells for as much as 700,000 rupees ($2,530) on the international black market, FIA data shows.

Investigators have confirmed that the criminal network’s reach extends far beyond the Islamabad capital region, with documented operations in other major Pakistani urban centers including Lahore, Peshawar and Rawalpindi. The FIA is also currently probing potential complicity from immigration officials, private waste management contractors, and hospital administrative staff who may have facilitated the illegal harvesting and transport of the tissue.

Under Pakistani law, commercial harvesting and trafficking of human organs carries severe criminal penalties: convicted offenders face up to 10 years of prison time and fines as high as 1 million rupees. While the FIA has conducted repeated crackdowns on illegal human organ trafficking networks in the country, this case marks the first time authorities have dismantled a large, organized international ring dedicated specifically to human placenta smuggling.

Investigators added that the five arrested suspects initially attempted to conceal their activity by claiming the seized tissue was sheep placenta, a legally traded product used in some cosmetics. They confessed the material was of human origin only after extended interrogation.

Medical professionals in Pakistan emphasize that strict protocols govern the disposal of placentas, which are classified as highly infectious medical waste after childbirth. Across most of the world, including Pakistan, placentas are routinely discarded as clinical waste following delivery, and only government-certified waste management firms are permitted to handle and dispose of this material, with hospitals required to maintain detailed, auditable records of every disposal. Sadaf Tariq, a leading Pakistani gynecologist, noted that unregulated handling of this biological waste poses major public health risks due to its potential to carry infectious pathogens.

The placenta is a temporary organ that develops in the uterus during pregnancy, responsible for delivering nutrients and oxygen to a developing fetus and removing waste products throughout gestation. It is expelled from the mother’s body immediately after childbirth once it has fulfilled its biological function. Despite this, a growing unregulated wellness and cosmetic industry has promoted unproven claims that placenta, which naturally contains high concentrations of protein, iron and fat, offers nutritional and anti-aging benefits for human adults when consumed or injected. Proponents have marketed placenta-derived products ranging from oral supplements to anti-wrinkle injections that claim to boost tissue regeneration, but peer-reviewed scientific evidence supporting these claims remains inconsistent, and regulations governing placenta-based products vary wildly between countries.

A devastating highway accident has claimed the lives of at least 32 people in south-western Pakistan, after an overloaded passenger bus careened off a mountain road and fell into a deep ravine on Friday morning. Sixteen additional passengers were injured in the crash, which unfolded in the Dana Sar mountain range straddling the border of Pakistan’s Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces at approximately 8:00 a.m. local time, as the vehicle traveled north from Quetta to Peshawar.

Local health authorities at Zhob Hospital confirmed that 48 people, including the bus driver, were packed onto the vehicle at the time of the collision. Initial reporting points to two key contributing factors to the disaster: a potential steering system malfunction that caused the driver to lose control of the bus, and severe overcrowding. Shahid Rind, spokesperson for Balochistan’s chief minister, noted that the bus had taken on extra passengers from a second bus that had suffered a breakdown earlier in the journey, pushing the passenger count well beyond the vehicle’s intended capacity.

Emergency response teams including dozens of first responders and ambulances were dispatched immediately to the remote crash site, but difficult, rugged mountain terrain slowed rescue and recovery operations significantly. Images captured at the scene show the passenger bus heavily mangled after the fall. All injured survivors have been transported to Tehsil Headquarters Hospital in Zhob, located roughly 68 kilometers from the crash site, and the bodies of deceased victims have also been moved to the facility, where they will be transferred to the victims’ home communities via ambulance.

Top Pakistani political leaders have publicly expressed grief over the high loss of life. Both President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif issued statements of condolence following the crash. Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti wrote on the social platform X that he was “deeply saddened” by the news of the accident. He extended his condolences to grieving family members of the deceased, offered prayers for a fast recovery for injured passengers, and ordered a formal inquiry into the root causes of the crash, confirming that emergency medical support was already being delivered to all hurt survivors. Official investigations into the crash remain ongoing to confirm the exact sequence of events that led to the disaster.

A shocking case of alleged child mistreatment has rocked India’s southern tech hub Bengaluru, after a crèche worker at an on-campus daycare facility for employees of global consulting firm Capgemini was taken into police custody, with multiple other staff members under investigation. The incident came to public attention when disturbing videos showing abusive behavior toward vulnerable toddlers circulated online, triggering widespread public outrage and official probes across multiple levels of government.

According to law enforcement and child protection officials, the case was first flagged by an anonymous whistleblower, who contacted Bengaluru’s child protection unit with allegations of ongoing abuse at the crèche located inside Capgemini’s Brookfield campus, and shared the graphic footage as evidence. Child protection officer Thilakesh Kumar launched an immediate investigation following the tip-off, and found that the alleged assaults took place inside an on-site toilet, an area completely unmonitored by CCTV surveillance.

The footage, which has been verified by investigating authorities, purportedly shows multiple female crèche workers physically and emotionally abusing young children, who are the offspring of Capgemini employees. The abuse documented includes locking crying toddlers in enclosed spaces such as toilets and washing machines, and spraying children with water from bidets to intimidate them. After Kumar filed an official complaint, local police registered a criminal case against all five crèche employees, charging the group under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and the country’s Juvenile Justice Act.

Bengaluru Police Commissioner Seemant Kumar Singh confirmed to BBC Hindi that the first suspect taken into custody is a caregiver named Vijayalakshmi, who has since been remanded to judicial custody. An unnamed senior police official also told the outlet that two additional crèche workers had been brought in for questioning on the Thursday following the complaint, with investigators indicating that more arrests are expected in the coming days.

In the wake of the allegations, Capgemini moved quickly to suspend operations at the facility, issuing an official statement emphasizing that the health, safety, and welfare of its employees and their families remain the company’s top priority. “We are cooperating fully with the relevant authorities and assisting them in their efforts to establish the facts,” the company said, adding that the temporary closure of the on-campus crèche is being implemented as a precautionary measure.

The incident has thrown a harsh spotlight on a critical gap in India’s childcare regulation system. Over the past decade, a growing number of major Indian corporates have launched on-campus daycare facilities as a workplace perk to attract and retain skilled employees, especially working parents, in competitive sectors such as information technology. Unlike primary and secondary schools, which operate under clear, standardized national and state regulatory frameworks, daycare centers across India are governed by a patchwork of inconsistent state-level ordinances, municipal bylaws, and local licensing requirements. Safety and operational standards vary wildly across different states, and consistent enforcement of existing rules remains notoriously lax industry-wide.

State and national authorities have moved quickly to respond to the public outcry over the case. Karnataka Home Minister Priyank Kharge confirmed that the state government is conducting a full review of the incident, and pledged that strict action will be taken against any individual or entity found to have violated child protection rules. Separately, India’s National Commission for Protection of Child Rights has launched its own independent probe into the abuse allegations, with commission officials scheduled to conduct an on-site inspection of the closed daycare facility the day after police made their first arrest.

A devastating early-morning road accident in southwestern Pakistan has left at least 40 people dead and 8 others injured after an overcrowded, speeding passenger bus careened off a major highway and fell into a deep rocky ravine, marking one of the deadliest traffic incidents the country has seen in recent years, regional government officials confirmed Friday.

The crash unfolded in Dana Sar, a sparsely populated remote region that sits near the shared border of Pakistan’s Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces. According to Shahid Rind, spokesperson for the Balochistan provincial government, the bus lost control before plummeting into the ravine. Rind added that the overcrowding stemmed from the driver picking up additional passengers from a separate bus that had suffered a mechanical breakdown earlier in the trip, meaning the vehicle carried far more people than its authorized capacity. As of Friday, rescuers were still working to complete formal identification of all deceased victims.

One injured survivor, speaking to local Pakistani media from his hospital bed, shared a harrowing account of the moments leading up to the crash. He explained that multiple existing passengers had protested the driver’s decision to pick up extra passengers from the disabled bus, which was also traveling to the city of Peshawar. The protest escalated into a heated argument, during which one angry passenger allegedly grabbed the driver by the neck. Just moments after the altercation, the driver lost control of the vehicle, leading directly to the fatal plunge. Local law enforcement noted that this survivor’s account has not yet been independently verified, and a full official investigation into the cause of the crash is still ongoing.

Regional disaster and emergency management official Hazrat Wali Kakar confirmed that rescue teams from both provinces have completed the initial retrieval of victims and casualties, moving all injured survivors and deceased victims to nearby medical facilities. Rescue officials clarified the final passenger count: the bus was carrying 48 people total at the time of the crash. The eight injured people received stabilizing first aid at the accident site before being transferred to the district headquarters hospital in Zhob, while the 40 victims’ remains were moved to a local district mortuary for identification.

Shah Fahad, director general of emergency rescue services for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, said his agency has partnered closely with Balochistan’s emergency response teams to coordinate the entire rescue and recovery operation. To ease the burden on grieving families, Fahad added that any victim confirmed to be a resident of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa will have their remains transported via official ambulance back to their home district for burial.

Top Pakistani political leaders have publicly expressed their grief over the tragedy. President Asif Ali Zardari issued an official statement offering his deepest condolences to the families of those killed, extended wishes for a full and speedy recovery for the injured, and ordered relevant government agencies to guarantee that surviving patients receive the highest quality of available medical care. Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti also released a message mourning the loss of life and echoed Zardari’s order to prioritize care for the injured.

Fatal road accidents are an all-too-common occurrence across Pakistan, a trend transportation safety analysts attribute to a combination of poorly maintained infrastructure, weak enforcement of existing traffic regulations, and widespread high-risk driving practices — particularly in rugged, mountainous regions like the area where Friday’s crash occurred. Just two months prior, in May 2024, a separate crash in northwest Pakistan killed 17 people and injured 5 more when a minibus collided with a parked bus on a major motorway.

This report includes additional reporting from Associated Press correspondents Riaz Khan and Rasool Dawar, who contributed on the ground from Peshawar.

In a sun-dappled backyard workshop in Chalakudy, a small town in India’s Kerala state, mechanical engineer Prasanth Prakashan crafts life-size robotic elephants that mirror the core traits of their living, breathing counterparts. The animatronic creations, built from fiberglass, iron and molded rubber, can flap their ears, swish their tails and spray water from their trunks. While they cannot yet walk, Prakashan says that capability is already in development, and the machines already serve a radical new purpose: replacing captive live elephants in Hindu temple rituals and festivals across southern India.

Elephants hold profound sacred meaning across multiple faiths across South Asia. In Hinduism, they are revered as physical manifestations of the divine. Buddhism honors them as symbols of patience, wisdom and enlightenment. In Kerala, the heart of India’s temple elephant culture, processions featuring decorated live elephants are major cultural and tourist draws. The annual Pooram parade at Thrissur Vadakkunnathan temple showcases roughly 100 elaborately caparisoned elephants, while the iconic Guruvayur Sree Krishna Temple maintains a herd of nearly 50 captive elephants, hosts annual elephant races, and has turned iconic temple elephants into national celebrities. One legendary elephant, Guruvayur Keshavan who died in 1976, is memorialized with a life-size statue and has been the subject of a feature film and television series, while another popular modern elephant, Thechikkottukavu Ramachandran, boasts more than 150,000 Facebook followers. This cultural reverence extends beyond Hinduism: Christian and Muslim festivals in Kerala also regularly include elephant parades.

But behind this cultural prestige lies a grim reality of animal welfare abuse and public safety risk. Captive temple elephants in Kerala are almost exclusively adult males, which enter musth — a periodic hormonal state marked by a 60-fold surge in testosterone that triggers extreme aggression. For decades, captive elephants have been routinely abused: chained for hours, beaten into submission, separated from their wild herds, and forced to endure blistering heat, deafening fireworks and crushing crowds during multi-day festivals. In 2024 alone, nine people were killed in elephant rampages at Kerala temple events, a statistic that underscores the dangers of the status quo.

To address this crisis, animal welfare organizations including PETA India have launched an initiative to replace live captive elephants with custom-built animatronic versions. The organization, which has already donated roughly 40 robotic elephants to small and medium-sized temples at a cost of $6,000 per unit, first connected with Prakashan in 2023 after a video of his robotic elephant creations for a Dubai festival went viral. Working alongside a small team of artists and technicians, Prakashan has refined his design: starting with a rigid fiberglass frame, artisans mold flexible rubber skin that replicates every wrinkle and visible vein of a real elephant, with electric motors powering the animatronic movements of the head, eyes, ears, tail and trunk. The full build process takes just 15 days per elephant. Prakashan acknowledges a robotic creation can never fully replicate a live elephant, noting, “You can’t create an original elephant just as you cannot duplicate a human. But we try to capture the majestic animal’s essence as much as we can.”

For smaller Kerala temples, the robotic innovation has been a welcome change. At the Irinjadapilly Sree Krishna Temple, which received the first Prakashan-built robotic elephant in 2023, head priest Rajkumar Namboothiri says the animatronic version allows children to interact freely with the ceremonial elephant — something that would never be safe with a captive live animal. He also notes that ancient ritual texts do not require live elephants for ceremonies, arguing the tradition of using live elephants emerged only a few centuries ago when elephants were part of royal processions. For temple administrators, robotic elephants eliminate the risk of fatal attacks and the steep cost of caring for and insuring a live elephant. “With a robotic elephant, we don’t have that fear. That’s a big relief,” said K.I. Purushottaman, president of the Cheekamundi Sri Mahavishnu Temple in Thrissur. Even many devotees support a nuanced approach: while large, famous temples can maintain the tradition of live elephants, smaller community temples can adopt robotic alternatives that are more feasible and ethical.

Not everyone supports the shift, however. Traditionalists and elephant owners, many of whom earn significant income renting out live elephants for festivals, argue that live elephants are an irreplaceable part of sacred tradition. “If you don’t believe elephants are sacred, what’s the point of a robotic elephant in a temple?” asked K. Mahesh, an elephant owner who has rented his animal out for 25 years, calling his elephant a beloved member of his family. Some temple administrators have publicly rejected robotic elephants for rituals, and artists involved in building the animatronics report being shunned at temple festivals.

Wildlife experts say the resistance to robotic elephants is less about spiritual tradition and more about profit from religious tourism. “Sadly, there’s a lot of money to be made with elephants. It’s not about spirituality or even tradition. It’s religious tourism,” said P.S. Easa, a Kerala-based wildlife biologist who helped draft the state’s captive elephant protection regulations. While regulations have cut India’s captive elephant population nearly in half since 2010, enforcement remains weak, and around 400 captive elephants still remain in Kerala. Easa is skeptical that robotic elephants will achieve widespread acceptance in his lifetime, noting that centuries-old tradition changes slowly — but he holds out hope that as the technology improves, particularly when robotic elephants gain the ability to walk in processions, attitudes may shift. For creators like Nambiat, the robotic elephant project is not an attack on tradition, but an effort to preserve elephants for future generations: “If we don’t stop treating elephants like commodities, future generations won’t have them.”

A thousand-kilogram, 5-year-old male elephant seal named Neil has made his biannual return to the southern Tasmanian coast where he was born, and this year his visit has thrown small beachside communities into disarray — while turning him into an unexpected global social media sensation. After spending months fattening up on open ocean feeding grounds, Neil hauled himself ashore in June for his annual resting and molting period, bringing his massive bulk (equivalent to the weight of a compact car) straight into populated urban areas, where his antics have left a trail of damaged infrastructure and captivated millions of online followers.

Neil’s list of local “offenses” reads like a small-town crime report: he has bent metal traffic bollards, crushed a public safety seal warning sign, flattened a fence when he tried to climb over it, and frequently sprawls across paved roads and public sidewalks, bringing local movement and commerce to a complete standstill. During this, his 12th recorded return to Tasmanian shores, he has added new misdeeds to his reputation: picking scuffles with parked cars and smashing through temporary barriers erected to keep him away from busy roadways. With no other juvenile male elephant seals in the region to practice with, Neil’s roughhousing is just natural instinct, according to marine biologists. Sophia Volzke, an elephant seal researcher at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, explained that young male elephant seals build strength and fighting technique for future adult dominance battles, where males compete for breeding opportunities by rearing up and crashing their chests against one another. With no partners his size around, parked cars and roadside infrastructure have become Neil’s training stands-in.

His mischievous, unapologetic behavior has earned him a cult following online, with more than 1.4 million followers on TikTok alone — a number more than double the entire human population of Tasmania. Many online fans have even embraced Neil as a tongue-in-cheek anti-authoritarian hero, celebrating his refusal to stick to designated wild spaces and ignore human rules. What makes Neil’s presence in Tasmania unusual is that he is the only mature male elephant seal that regularly hauls ashore on the state’s coasts. While breeding populations of elephant seals reside on Sub-Antarctic islands hundreds of kilometers south of Tasmania, Neil’s mother traveled from one of these groups to give birth to him on Tasmania’s shore. Female elephant seals have been spotted on Tasmanian beaches before, but they rarely grow larger than Neil was at age two, so they never cause the same level of disruption that comes with his current size.

Volzke noted that Neil’s return may also be a sign of a larger ecological shift: after human activity wiped out local elephant seal populations decades ago, the species may slowly be recolonizing its former habitat. “We do need to find a way to coexist,” she said.

But for local officials, Neil’s viral fame is a dangerous double-edged sword. They have issued urgent public warnings that the thousands of fans flocking to catch a glimpse of the massive seal are putting both human lives and Neil’s future at risk. At a press conference Thursday, Kris Carlyon, a wildlife official with Tasmania’s Department of Natural Resources and Environment, pleaded with followers to give Neil space and avoid sharing his exact current location with online audiences. Carlyon pointed to multiple already documented reckless incidents, where visitors have carried small infants within meters of Neil just to snap a viral photo for Instagram.

Carlyon warned that a single serious negative encounter between a reckless visitor and Neil could force wildlife officials to move Neil from his traditional habitat — or worse, referencing the 2023 case of Freya, a wild walrus that drew massive tourist crowds in Norway before officials euthanized her over growing public safety risks. “There is a risk here of essentially loving Neil to death,” Carlyon said. If Neil survives to reach sexual maturity around age 10, he could grow to 16 feet long and triple his current 1,000-kilogram weight, making future interactions even more high-stakes. Volzke added that roughly 90% of juvenile male elephant seals do not survive to breeding age, so Neil’s survival is already uncertain.

Local reactions to Neil’s visit are deeply mixed. Some residents, like Dale Creamer, who has not been personally inconvenienced by the seal’s occupation of public space, embrace his fame. “He’s one of our biggest exports at the moment,” Creamer said. “It’s Neil’s world and we’re just living in it.” As of Thursday, Neil has settled into a stretch of sidewalk near a bend in the coast, claiming a small puddle surrounded by toppled bollards as his personal resting spot, remaining unmoved even after rangers tried to usher him elsewhere. Fans have already fallen for his latest casual stunt: he has been spotted playfully nudging and canoodling with an orange traffic cone, a new bit of behavior that has already sent the internet into a fresh wave of delight. For now, the town waits, adjusts, and hopes that the giant seal’s celebrity does not end in tragedy.

A groundbreaking undercover investigation by BBC Eye has exposed a disturbing criminal operation: paid advertisements promoting child sexual abuse material (CSAM) are actively circulating on Instagram, one of the world’s most popular social media platforms, across India.

The investigation began after BBC researchers observed that Instagram’s algorithm was pushing sexually suggestive content to users even when no explicit search for such material had been conducted. To probe this issue further, the BBC created an anonymous alias account based in India, which followed 10 accounts featuring Indian women posting about daily life topics like food and weather, while using revealing clothing and sexual innuendo in their content. In less than seven days, the account started being served explicit ads, first for adult pornography and nude content, and soon after for CSAM that linked directly to paid channels on the messaging platform Telegram.

Over the course of the investigation, roughly 30 unique CSAM advertisements appeared on the account’s feed, alongside an additional 20 ads for unregulated adult pornography. Both distribution of CSAM and adult pornography are classified as serious criminal offenses under Indian law, and Meta — Instagram’s parent company — has explicit public policies prohibiting ads that contain nudity, sexual exploitation, or content that endangers children. The ads included graphic, exploitative content: one depicted two pre-teen children estimated to be around 12 years old engaged in a sexual act, while another showed a 52-year-old man with a 12-year-old girl with text inviting viewers to click through to a Telegram channel to watch more content. When the BBC reported an ad featuring a crying young girl labelled as a sexual assault victim to Instagram’s moderation team, the platform replied 24 hours later that the ad did not violate its community guidelines and refused to remove it.

All pre-publication ad reviews on Instagram are conducted via Meta’s moderation system, which the company says vets every ad before it goes live. The system relies primarily on automated technology to scan content, with uncertain cases escalated to human reviewers. In a March 2026 announcement, Meta said it would reduce its reliance on third-party human moderators and shift further toward AI-powered moderation, claiming that expert teams would oversee and refine the new systems.

After the BBC shared its full findings with Meta, the company said it had disabled multiple violating ads, suspended the accounts behind them, and blocked offending URLs in line with its policies. Meta also pushed back against criticism, saying in an official statement: “Child exploitation is a horrific crime and Meta works aggressively to fight it on our apps.” The company denied claims that it prioritizes revenue over user safety, noting that it automatically disabled more than four million accounts in 2025 for suspicious behavior linked to child exploitation. Meta added that it complies with all legal requirements to report suspected CSAM to the U.S.-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), the global central clearinghouse for CSAM reports. When reached for comment by the BBC, Meta acknowledged that “no system is perfect” and that automated reviews may miss some policy violations.

The CSAM ads direct users to Telegram channels where the exploitative content can be purchased for as little as 99 Indian rupees, equal to roughly $1. When the BBC reported two of these CSAM-selling channels to Telegram, one was removed for violating the platform’s terms of service, while the other remained active and continued posting new content for sale. Telegram has faced longstanding criticism for insufficient action against criminal content sharing, and it is not a member of either NCMEC or the Internet Watch Foundation, two leading global organizations that partner with platforms to detect and remove CSAM. In a response to the BBC, Telegram said it uses a combination of automated and human moderation to remove CSAM, and claimed it has “virtually eliminated the public spread of CSAM from its platform.” The company also noted that it removed more than 274,000 CSAM-linked groups and channels in 2026.

The investigation has sparked sharp condemnation from legal and law enforcement experts in India. Retired Indian Supreme Court Justice Madan Lokur told the BBC he believes Instagram is “making money by participating in a criminal activity.” Lokur called the issue severe enough that India’s Supreme Court should initiate suo moto cognisance — an automatic legal proceeding without a formal complaint being filed — to force government action against the platform. He added that while Indian law shields platforms from liability for user-uploaded content in many cases, “the platform cannot, cannot shirk its responsibility.”

Former Meta executive Brian Boland, who served as a vice president at Facebook (Meta’s predecessor brand) between 2009 and 2020 and helped build the company’s advertising business, told the BBC he was “horrified and unsurprised” by the investigation’s findings. Boland, who left Meta in 2020 because he believed the company did not prioritize user safety, explained that Instagram’s algorithm is intentionally designed to maximize user engagement and time on platform by serving increasingly extreme and titillating content. “It’s not like an algorithm that says ‘let’s make people paedophiles’, but because they’re not responsibly guiding and controlling it – and it’s just pursuing the goals of revenue and clicks – it will create these outcomes if people aren’t being truly, aggressively protective over these systems,” Boland said. He added that early in his tenure, he was authorized to remove a large share of revenue-generating scam ads to protect users, but over time the company began prioritizing revenue gains over user safety. Boland deleted his own Instagram account in 2025, and urged mass user action to force Meta to change its policies.

Boland testified against Meta earlier this year in a trial in New Mexico, where the company was found liable for misleading the public about the safety of its platforms for children. The court ordered Meta to pay $375 million in damages, a ruling the company has said it will appeal.

Advertising makes up nearly 98% of Meta’s total annual revenue, which hit $200 billion in the 2025 financial year, and analysts estimate advertising accounts for over 90% of Instagram’s standalone revenue.

Indian law enforcement and child welfare organizations have long flagged Meta platforms as the most common source of CSAM reports in the country. Shikha Goel, director of the Cyber Security Bureau in the southern Indian state of Telangana, noted that Meta platforms generate more CSAM reports to the NCMEC tipline than any other provider operating in India. In 2025, India received 1.9 million CSAM reports via the NCMEC system, second only to the United States’ 2 million reports. Goel added that higher reporting volumes may reflect better detection systems, not simply more content. The Mumbai-based Rati Foundation, an NGO that runs a helpline for children affected by online harm, confirmed that the vast majority of CSAM reports it receives come from Meta platforms. Rati co-founder Siddharth Pillai told the BBC that criminals exploit the seamless connection between Instagram and Telegram to evade moderation: after one piece of content is removed, offenders simply reupload it to a new channel. Experts note that most CSAM in India is produced by organized criminal groups like human trafficking networks, though community and family members are sometimes responsible for exploitation. Many offenders go unreported, and Indian law enforcement is still building the technical expertise needed to tackle the transnational crime. Bhuwan Ribhu, founder of child welfare network Just Rights for Children, said cross-border international cooperation and intelligence sharing are critical to dismantling these criminal networks, saying “the entire chain of demand and supply needs to be tracked” to root out the crime. The BBC has formally shared all evidence of the ads and Telegram channels with Indian law enforcement authorities.

In a move that has ignited widespread criticism across UK higher education, the University of Birmingham has become the first major British university to roll back ethical restrictions on weapons industry investments, amid growing global scrutiny of commercial ties to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, Middle East Eye can exclusively reveal.

The West Midlands-based institution has abandoned its 2022 responsible investment framework, which included formal exclusion criteria for arms firms and other high-polluting or harmful industries. Under the old policy, any company deriving more than 10% of its revenue from weapons system development, as well as all manufacturers of entire weapon systems, cluster munitions and anti-personnel landmines, were barred from the university’s investment portfolio. Tobacco, oil and mining companies were also excluded, with the university committing to minimize indirect investments in firms that failed to meet its ESG standards.

That policy has now been replaced with a softer set of so-called “investment principles”, adopted in June and obtained by Middle East Eye, that removes all formal exclusion lists. The new framework only requires that “financially material” environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors be integrated into investment selection, monitoring and stewardship processes. As part of the policy update, the university has also tapped global banking giant JP Morgan to serve as its outsourced chief investment officer (OCIO), handling day-to-day investment decision-making.

The new rules only mandate compliance with existing UK legal restrictions: bans on anti-personnel mines and cluster munitions, and UK obligations prohibiting trade in chemical and biological weapons, alongside general adherence to international sanctions regimes. Beyond that legal baseline, the policy states that for any investment with material exposure to high-risk activities, the OCIO simply needs to provide a rationale for the holding, outline existing risk controls, and explain its approach to managing ESG risks. No automatic exclusion applies to arms firms, tobacco, or fossil fuel companies that were previously barred.

University administrators have pushed back against criticism, arguing the policy update does not represent a weakening of responsible investment standards. In a statement, a university spokesperson said no changes have been made to the institution’s actual investment portfolio following the rule change, and that the university still sets all core objectives and constraints for its holdings, with the OCIO only managing routine day-to-day decisions within those boundaries.

The spokesperson added that the revised framework strengthens oversight and transparency, shifting from a rigid fixed exclusion list to clear, principle-based expectations that cover legal compliance, ESG integration, stewardship, voting, climate action, human rights and governance. They noted the university has been a signatory to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investment (UNPRI) since 2019, and the update merely aligns policy with the practical operation of its current delegated, pooled-fund investment model.

That explanation has done little to appease student leaders, who have condemned the rollback as a betrayal of institutional commitments to human rights. Antonia Listrat, president of the university’s official Guild of Students, called the decision a devastating signal to the campus community. “This sends a devastating message to students and staff who believe our university should uphold human rights and invest in education, not the arms trade,” Listrat said. “Students voted for their university to strengthen its ethical standards, not make it easier to profit from companies connected to armed conflict.”

The rollback is not the first time the University of Birmingham has faced backlash over its ties to the arms trade linked to Israel’s campaign in Gaza. Even under the previous stricter investment rules, the institution maintained a formal partnership with Rolls-Royce, a manufacturing giant that produces primarily civilian goods but also supplies military equipment to the Israeli army. In 2019, Birmingham also joined four other UK universities to launch a strategic partnership with BAE Systems, the UK’s largest arms manufacturer, which produces components for F-35 fighter jets that the Israeli military has deployed extensively in its Gaza operations.

Across the UK higher education sector, the University of Birmingham’s move runs counter to a growing trend of institutions tightening arms investment restrictions in response to mass student protests calling for divestment from firms linked to Israeli human rights violations in Gaza. Most recently, Queen’s University Belfast announced it would divest all holdings tied to Israel in June 2025, joining a growing list of institutions adopting stricter ethical rules.

Instead of loosening restrictions, Birmingham has taken a hardline approach to pro-divestment and pro-Gaza student activism on campus: the university launched legal action against student protesters occupying campus ground to demand divestment in July 2024. That hardline stance mirrors actions taken by the London School of Economics, which evicted its own pro-Gaza encampment of protesters the same year.

Investigations by Middle East Eye in recent months have exposed extensive hidden investments in arms and firms linked to Israeli human rights violations across other top UK institutions. In October 2024, MEE revealed that the University of Oxford held indirect investments in at least 49 companies flagged by the United Nations and leading human rights organizations for their role in illegal Israeli activities in occupied Palestinian territories. A February 2025 investigation further found that the University of Cambridge’s endowment fund had more than £140 million ($189 million) invested in a fund that held shares in firms linked to Israeli human rights abuses, including tech firm Palantir Technologies, construction giant Caterpillar and aerospace manufacturer GE Aerospace.

The policy shift at Birmingham also comes amid conflicting actions by the UK national government, which imposed a partial arms embargo on Israel in September 2024, but simultaneously approved $169 million in new military exports to the country, including more than 8,600 separate munitions categorized as “bombs, grenades, torpedoes, mines, missiles and other similar munitions.”

Since the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people in southern Israel, Israeli military operations in Gaza and the West Bank have killed more than 73,000 Palestinians and wounded an additional 170,000, according to latest health authorities in the region, triggering a widespread humanitarian crisis and global calls for a ceasefire and an end to arms sales to Israel.