分类： society

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.

For millions of women and girls across Pakistan, access to basic menstrual hygiene has long been a privilege, not a right. Growing up in Punjab’s Attock district, 26-year-old Bushra Mahnoor knows this reality all too well. In a household with six menstruating people, commercial sanitary pads were treated as a precious, rationed commodity. Supplies ran out constantly, and steep costs – driven by government taxes that labeled the products non-essential luxury goods – forced the family to stretch every purchase as far as it could go.

“We felt like we were competing with each other for the supplies,” Mahnoor recalled, adding that constant anxiety about leaks haunted her school days, where she would sneak and hide spare bits of supplies whenever she could. Like generations of women in Pakistan, she grew up surrounded by harmful misinformation: that bathing during menstruation causes illness and weight gain, that periods are a mark of impurity. Teachers refused to discuss the topic in class, leaving families too shamed to address it at home.

This deeply unfair experience is not an isolated case. Latest 2025 World Bank data underscores the scale of the crisis: women make up 49.3% of Pakistan’s total population, yet only 12% can access and afford commercial menstrual products. Just 27% of Pakistani women understand menstruation is a normal, natural biological process. Campaigners trace this public health crisis to decades of government neglect and a pervasive cultural culture of silence and stigma that has pushed menstrual health out of public discourse.

That silence began to crack earlier this month, when Pakistan’s Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb announced the elimination of the 18% sales tax on menstrual products and contraceptives as part of the 2026–27 national budget. The long-contested levy, widely known as the “period tax,” has been a core target for gender equality advocates across the country for years.

UNICEF Pakistan has already hailed the policy change as a meaningful milestone, framing it as a critical step toward tackling widespread period poverty by officially recognizing menstrual products as essential health and hygiene items rather than unnecessary luxury goods. The reform comes after a year-long legal battle led by two young activists: 25-year-old women’s rights advocate and human rights lawyer Mahnoor Omer, and 29-year-old tax lawyer Ahsan Jahangir Khan.

Under Pakistan’s 1990 Sales Tax Act, menstrual products were classified as standard consumer goods, with imported products facing an extra 25% customs duty. Combined, these taxes inflated product prices by as much as 40%, putting basic sanitary care out of reach for the majority of low-income girls and women. The injustice was made starker by the fact that items like flavored yogurt and cottage cheese were granted essential goods status, while menstrual products were excluded.

Omer, who began working with non-profits serving low-income communities at a young age, had seen firsthand the human cost of this policy. She documented countless cases where women relied on rinsed, reused scraps of old cloth for days at a time, leading to recurrent urinary tract infections, skin rashes, and other preventable health complications. It was this experience that pushed her to act after she learned of a successful campaign by two Nepali law students who had overturned their country’s 13% VAT on sanitary pads in 2024, prompting the government to cut product prices by nearly 20%.

While working at the Supreme Court of Pakistan early last year, Omer connected with Khan, and the pair began drafting a legal challenge to Pakistan’s period tax. In January 2025, they filed a constitutional petition arguing that the discriminatory tax violated the principles of gender equality and human dignity enshrined in Pakistan’s constitution. A parallel online advocacy campaign quickly gathered tens of thousands of signatures from supporters across the country.

Though the Federal Board of Revenue initially defended the tax, claiming it was legally sound and non-discriminatory, the government reversed its position by early July, confirming the sales tax would be fully eliminated. Omer called the moment historic, noting that “In a province large enough to fit 20 European countries, menstruation has never been discussed this openly in the Punjab Assembly.” She added that women’s issues remain chronically underrepresented in Pakistani politics: most male lawmakers have no lived experience of menstrual injustice, while many privileged women in office are far removed from the struggles of low-income communities that bear the brunt of the crisis. Currently, women hold just 66 of 371 total seats in the Punjab provincial assembly, and deep-seated stigma has long blocked open debate of menstrual health policy.

The legal campaign received critical grassroots support from Mahwari Justice, an organization founded by Bushra Mahnoor in 2022 amid Pakistan’s worst modern flooding, which displaced 33 million people and submerged a third of the country. During the crisis, Mahnoor witnessed acute shortages of sanitary supplies in displacement camps, where women were already facing extreme vulnerabilities. She traveled across affected regions distributing hygiene kits with reusable pads, washing supplies and drying cloths, treating infections that developed after women were forced to use unhygienic cloth substitutes.

Even with the sales tax eliminated, campaigners emphasize that the fight for full menstrual justice is far from over. Imported menstrual products still carry a 25% customs duty that keeps retail prices artificially high. Advocates are now pushing for full reclassification of menstrual products as zero-rated essential goods, which would eliminate all remaining consumption-related taxes and make affordable products accessible to millions more.

A growing number of countries have already implemented this progressive policy: the United Kingdom, Ireland, Kenya, South Africa and Canada all impose no taxes on menstrual products, while 18 U.S. states still maintain sales taxes on the products as of March 2026. Despite the remaining barriers, activists in Pakistan say they are growing increasingly confident of securing full tax exemption.

“Our fight didn’t end with the government saying they will abolish the sales tax; it continues until the court declares this product tax-free,” Khan explained. Beyond tax reform, Omer is already planning her next campaign: pushing for education reform that would mandate comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education in all Pakistani schools. “You can flood the market with the healthiest food, but if children don’t understand why they should eat healthily, no one will buy it,” she said, framing education as a core long-term solution to end stigma.

In recognition of their groundbreaking work, Omer was named to Time Magazine’s Women of the Year list, while Mahnoor received the 2026 Commonwealth Youth Award, becoming only the fourth Pakistani to earn the honor. Both activists say that while recognition is welcome, it does not resolve the underlying crisis. Still, they point to Aurangzeb’s speech on the floor of the National Assembly – where he publicly described menstrual products as essential to women’s health – as a transformative shift. For decades, the word “menstruation” was rarely uttered in official Pakistani parliamentary spaces, so having the issue acknowledged on the official record is a victory in itself.

“I think menstruation products were never included on the list of essential goods because menstruation is a term refused to be uttered on the Punjab assembly floor. But it has now, and that’s a significant step forward,” Omer said.

A devastating traffic incident has shaken the Buddhist community in northeast Thailand, leaving eight monks dead and more than a dozen injured after an 11-year-old boy lost control of a stolen pickup truck and struck a walking pilgrimage procession, local law enforcement officials confirmed.

The tragedy unfolded on a public roadway in Mukdahan province, where a group of 35 Buddhist monks and five lay devotees were traveling on foot as part of a religious pilgrimage. Without warning, the unlicensed child driver plowed into the procession, causing catastrophic harm, regional police spokesperson Major General Pairoj Thaiphutsa told reporters.

Widespread footage of the crash site circulating on social media captures the grim aftermath: saffron-colored monk robes and personal items strewn across the roadside next to the heavily damaged pickup truck. Emergency response teams arrived quickly to triage casualties, with five of the monks pronounced dead at the scene. Three more injured monks succumbed to their wounds after being transferred to local medical facilities, according to official police updates.

Preliminary investigations confirm the boy had taken the vehicle from his parents without permission before losing control of the truck and colliding with the procession. Law enforcement authorities have launched a full probe into the incident to determine the exact root causes of the crash, and the seized truck has been sent for forensic analysis to rule out mechanical failure or other contributing factors.

“Our team has summoned the child’s parents for questioning to clarify who bears legal responsibility for the child’s supervision, which will allow us to move forward with the appropriate legal process,” Major General Pairoj explained in a press briefing.

As of the latest updates, several of the more than 10 injured monks remain in critical condition. Mukdahan Hospital has issued an urgent public appeal for community blood donations to meet the massive transfusion needs of surviving victims, as local medical facilities work around the clock to stabilize those hurt in the crash.

BEIJING – Just one week after a small civilian aircraft collided with Beijing’s tallest structure, Chinese local officials have released conclusive findings from their investigation, confirming the crash was a deliberate act of suicide by the 66-year-old pilot. In an official public statement shared via social media by the Chaoyang District People’s Government, investigators confirmed the incident stemmed entirely from personal issues tied to the pilot, identified only by his surname Liu.

The crash, which occurred at roughly 6 p.m. last Friday during rush hour in downtown Beijing’s central business district as office workers were heading home for the day, left Liu dead at the scene and injured 13 additional people on the ground. Officials updated the public on the status of those injured Thursday, noting none of the wounds sustained were life-threatening, and one injured person has already been released from the hospital after receiving treatment.

The aircraft hit the 108-story CITIC Tower, a landmark skyscraper widely known locally as the China Zun, named for its distinctive design that replicates the shape of an ancient Chinese ceremonial wine vessel. The impact left a large visible hole in the building’s glass exterior, triggering immediate public concern over aviation security protocols in the Chinese capital, particularly in dense, heavily populated urban areas.

Per the official investigation breakdown, Liu was flying a two-seat trainer aircraft. He first completed a brief flight with an instructor before departing for a solo flight from a general aviation airport located on the outer edge of Beijing’s suburban area. Mid-flight, he intentionally deviated from the pre-approved, planned flight route, and all communication with air traffic control was lost shortly after.

Investigators also shared key background details on Liu: he was unemployed, had gone through a divorce, and lived alone prior to the incident. He had long struggled with insomnia and clinical anxiety, and multiple entries in his personal diary explicitly referenced his plan to end his own life, the Chaoyang district government statement confirmed.