TOP NEWS

Officials said the suspension related to broadcasts about an ongoing blockade that has caused major fuel shortages.

Mali’s media regulator has suspended French broadcasters LCI and TF1 over allegedly broadcasting false information on a fuel blockade imposed by an al-Qaeda linked armed group.

TF1 is a French commercial television station that broadcasts in several countries, and LCI, La Chaine Info, is a French free-to-air news channel that is also part of the TF1 group.

Mali’s High Authority for Communication (HAC) said in a letter to image distributors in Mali, dated November 13 and made public on Friday, that it had suspended TF1 and LCI, claiming the two private TV channels had made “unverified claims and falsehoods” in a broadcast on November 9.

“LCI and TF1 television services have been removed from your packages until further notice,” the document read.

The letter said the authority disputed three passages in broadcasts by the two channels, specifically that “the junta has banned the sale of fuel,” “[the regions of] Kayes and Nioro are completely under blockade,” and “the terrorists are now close to bringing down the capital [Bamako].”

The channels have not been accessible in Mali since Thursday evening, a journalist for the AFP news agency reported.

Since September, the Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM) group, linked to al-Qaeda and primarily operating in Mali, has imposed a blockade on fuel entering the landlocked country, by sealing off major highways used by tankers to transport fuel from neighbouring Senegal and the Ivory Coast.

In recent weeks, fuel shortages caused by the blockade have created long lines at gas stations and further deteriorated the security situation in the country.

Several Western embassies, notably those of the United States and France, have asked their citizens to leave Mali.

Mali, alongside its neighbours Niger and Burkina Faso, is governed by military leaders who took power by force in recent years, pledging to provide more security to citizens.

But the security situation in the Sahel has worsened since the militaries took power, analysts say, with a record number of attacks and civilians killed both by armed groups and government forces.

All three countries have withdrawn from regional and international organisations in recent months, while forming their own bloc known as the Alliance of Sahel States.

The three West African countries have also wound back defence cooperation with Western powers, most notably their former colonial ruler, France, in favour of closer ties with Russia, including Niger nationalising a uranium mine previously operated by French nuclear firm Orano.

Within the three countries, the military governments are fighting armed groups that control swaths of territory and have staged attacks on army posts.

Human Rights Watch and other advocacy groups have accused the fighters, the military and partner forces of Burkina Faso and Mali of possible atrocities.

Nov. 14 (UPI) — Girls who are high school seniors for the first time are less likely to marry than boys of the same age, according to the Pew Research Center.

The Pew Research Center partnered with the University of Michigan to poll high school seniors in 2023 and on Friday announced that two-thirds said they likely will get married.

Boys, though, were more likely to get married than girls, with 74% of boys saying so versus 61% of girls.

The change represents the first time that more boys than girls looked favorably upon marriage in the future, according to Pew.

In 1993, 81% of girls polled said they wanted to marry in the future, versus 76% of boys affirming so.

A majority of high school seniors polled said they likely will marry and raise children at some time, but the percentages of those saying so declined significantly over three decades.

That percentage is down from 80% in 1993, but the percentages of those who have no idea or do not intend to ever marry have risen.

Among respondents, 24% said they don’t know if they will get married, which is up from 16% 30 years earlier.

Another 9% said they won’t get married, which nearly doubled from 5% three decades ago.

Among those who say they likely will get married, most said they either are very likely, 48%, or fairly likely, 25%, to want to have children when married.

That’s a total of 73% versus 82% in 1993, when 64% said they very likely would want to have children and 18% said they were fairly likely to do so when married.

Of those intending to marry, more than half, 51%, said they very likely would stay married to the same person, and another 30% said they are fairly likely to do so, for a total of 80%.

Those numbers are down from 64% and 18%, respectively, and a cumulative total of 82% in 1993.

United States President Donald Trump has said he is withdrawing his support for Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, calling the lawmaker a “lunatic” and accusing her of going “far left”.

In a post on his Truth Social platform late on Friday, Trump said, “I am withdrawing my support and endorsement of ‘Congresswoman’ Marjorie Taylor Greene, of the great state of Georgia.”

The US leader, labelling Greene “wacky”, said all the lawmaker did was “COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN”, despite his “record achievements” in office.

Greene, a member of the House of Representatives, has long been a reliable ally and fierce defender of Trump, even sporting a Make America Great Again (MAGA) baseball hat at President Joe Biden’s 2024 State of the Union address.

But in recent months, she has taken positions at odds with the White House and her fellow Republicans, including criticising them during the just-ended federal government shutdown, saying the Trump administration needed a plan to help people set to lose health insurance subsidies as part of planned cuts.

More notably, Greene has also become a vocal campaigner for transparency and the full release of files related to late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein – a recurrent scandal that continues to engulf President Trump.

Greene responded to Trump’s announcement on Friday with screenshots of a text message she sent the president about the Epstein case, claiming it “sent him over the edge”.

“It’s astonishing really how hard he’s fighting to stop the Epstein files from coming out that he actually goes to this level,” she wrote on X.

“Most Americans wish he would fight this hard to help the forgotten men and women of America who are fed up with foreign wars and foreign causes, are going broke trying to feed their families, and are losing hope of ever achieving the American dream,” she said.

Greene also claimed Trump is going after her “hard to make an example to scare all the other Republicans before next week’s vote to release the Epstein files”.

President Trump just attacked me and lied about me. I haven’t called him at all, but I did send these text messages today. Apparently this is what sent him over the edge.

The Epstein files.

And of course he’s coming after me hard to make an example to scare all the other… pic.twitter.com/EcUzaohZZs

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) November 15, 2025

On Wednesday, House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson said the body will hold a vote next week on whether to force the Department of Justice to disclose all files related to Epstein – who died by suicide in prison in 2019.

It came as a result of the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act – a discharge petition allowing a majority of lawmakers to bypass the House leadership and force a vote on the issue – which was signed by Greene and three other House Republicans.

If backed, the measure would force the release of flight logs and travel records, individuals named or referenced in connection with the Epstein investigation, and materials related to Epstein’s former girlfriend and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.

How well did Trump know Epstein and Maxwell?

Trump has faced growing scrutiny over his alleged ties to the disgraced financier, most recently on Wednesday, when Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released new emails appearing to further link the pair.

In one email, Epstein told Maxwell that Trump had “spent hours” at his house with one abuse victim. The White House claimed the communications “prove nothing”.

Trump has repeatedly urged his supporters to move on from the scandal, labelling suggestions that there is an Epstein client list with his name on it a “hoax” pushed by his Democratic opponents.

In an interview on Friday, Greene labelled Trump’s resistance to releasing the files a “huge miscalculation”, adding that she does not believe he has anything to hide.

Trump made no mention of the Epstein issue in his post disowning Greene, claiming the schism between the pair began when he discouraged her from running for senator or governor due to low polling numbers.

“She has told many people that she is upset that I don’t return her phone calls any more, but with 219 Congressmen/women, 53 US Senators, 24 Cabinet Members, almost 200 Countries, and an otherwise normal life to lead, I can’t take a ranting Lunatic ‘s call every day,” Trump said.

Trump continued that Republicans in Georgia are “fed up with her and her antics” and should they find an alternative to run at the next midterms, that candidate will have his “complete and unyielding support”.

Nov. 14 (UPI) — Four U.S. citizens and a Ukrainian pleaded guilty to participating in North Korean internet technology worker and virtual currency theft schemes.

The Department of Justice announced the guilty pleas on Friday for the illegal schemes that generated funding for North Korea’s armaments program and other uses at various times, from 2019 to 2024.

“Facilitators in the United States and Ukraine assisted North Korean actors with obtaining remote IT employment with U.S. companies,” the DOJ said.

“The facilitators provided their own, false or stolen identities and hosted U.S. victim company-provided laptops at residences across the United States to create the false appearance that the IT workers were working domestically.”

The DOJ said the employment schemes affected at least 136 U.S. companies and used the identities of more than 18 U.S. citizens or legal residents to generate more than $2.2 million for the North Korean government.

The three U.S. defendants who pleaded guilty are Audricus Phagnasay, 24; Jason Salazar, 30; and Alexander Paul Travis, 34, all of whom entered their guilty pleas in the U.S. District Court for Southern Georgia.

The three pleaded guilty to providing U.S. identities to those who are located outside of the United States to enable them to obtain remote work with U.S. firms in exchange for between $3,450 and $51,397 in compensation.

Salazar and Travis at times completed drug testing on behalf of the overseas individuals.

The three defendants also kept laptops at their homes to make it look like the foreign individuals were located in the United States.

The IT worker scheme generated about $1.28 million in pay for the overseas workers.

Erick Ntekereze Prince, 30, also pleaded guilty to a conspiracy to commit wire fraud charge in the U.S. District Court for Southern Florida on Nov. 6.

Federal prosecutors said Prince used his company Taggcar Inc. to contract and supply overseas IT workers to U.S. firms by misrepresenting them as U.S.-based workers.

He also hosted laptops at several Florida residences and installed remote-access software to make it look like the overseas workers were working from locations in Florida.

Prince was paid more than $89,000 for his participation in the scheme, according to the DOJ.

Ukrainian Oleksander Didenky also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft in the U.S.District Court for the District of Columbia.

He agreed to forfeit $1.4 million for helping North Korean and other IT workers to get jobs at 40 U.S. companies.

A North Korean military hacking group identified as Advanced Persistent Threat 38 also carried out virtual currency heists totaling millions of dollars in value in 2023 while targeting four overseas platforms, according to the DOJ.

“While APT38 actors continued to launder their ill-gotten gains for these heists, the U.S. government froze and seized more than $15million worth of virtual currency that it now seeks to forfeit for eventual return to their rightful owners,” the DOJ said.

The criminal activities arise from the North Korean government’s efforts to evade U.S. sanctions and generate millions of dollars to help fund its weapons programs, including nuclear arms development, said Roman Rozhavsky, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Division.

“These guilty pleas send a clear message: No matter who or where you are, if you support North Korea’s efforts to victimize U.S. businesses and citizens, the FBI will find you and bring you to justice,” Rozhavsky said.

“We will ask all our private sector partners to improve their security process for vetting remote workers and to remain vigilant regarding this emerging threat,” he added.

The British street artist has created several versions of the iconic painting across London, as well as in Palestine.

A man has been sentenced to 13 months in prison by a British court for stealing a print of street artist Banksy’s iconic Girl with Balloon from a London gallery in September last year.

Larry Fraser, 49, was jailed on Friday by a judge in southwest London after he pleaded guilty to the smash-and-grab burglary of the elusive artist’s painting, valued at 270,000 pounds ($355,200).

Despite trying to conceal his identity with a mask, Fraser was caught on camera, and police tracked him down two days after the theft. The artwork was recovered shortly afterwards, according to London’s Metropolitan Police.

“This is a brazen and serious non-domestic burglary,” said Judge Anne Brown, passing the sentence at Kingston Crown Court.

The Girl with Balloon first appeared on the streets of London’s Shoreditch neighbourhood in 2002, with Banksy creating versions of the painting on London’s South Bank in 2004 and in the occupied West Bank in 2005.

One version of the painting shredded itself into pieces the moment after it was sold for more than one million British pounds ($1.3m) by London auction house Sotheby’s in 2018.

Detective Chief Inspector Scott Mather said: “Banksy’s ‘Girl with Balloon’ is known across the world – and we reacted immediately to not just bring Fraser to justice but also reunite the artwork with the gallery.”

Banksy’s paintings in Palestine

The secretive British street artist has returned to Palestine on multiple occasions to create artworks, including a version of the girl with the red balloon.

In 2005, he sprayed nine stencilled images at different locations along the illegal, eight-metre-high (26-foot) separation wall that Israel has constructed in the occupied West Bank.

They included a ladder reaching over the wall, a young girl being carried over it by balloons and a window on the grey concrete showing beautiful mountains in the background.

In 2007, he painted a number of artworks in Bethlehem, including a young girl frisking an Israeli soldier pinned up against a wall.

In February 2015, he allegedly sneaked into the Gaza Strip through a smuggling tunnel and painted three works on the walls of Gaza homes destroyed in Israeli air strikes during the previous year’s conflict.

In 2017, he opened the Walled Off Hotel in Bethlehem, just four metres from Israel’s separation wall.

Earlier this year, authorities attempted to scrub a Banksy painting on a London court wall that depicted a judge hitting a protester and was believed to refer to the country’s crackdown on the Palestine Action protest group.

Banksy rose to fame for sharply ironic outdoor graffiti with political themes. Once a small-time graffiti artist from the English city of Bristol, his artwork has become hugely popular worldwide and valuable.

Nov. 14 (UPI) — Federal authorities on Friday lowered the mandatory flight reductions at 40 of the nation’s busiest airports to 3% as of Saturday morning.

The Transportation Department and Federal Aviation Administration announced the change on Friday and after lowering the mandatory flight reductions to 6% at the same airports because the federal shutdown has ended and more airports are sufficiently staffed.

“The decision reflects improvements in air traffic controller staffing levels and a continued decline in staffing-trigger events across the National Airspace System,” the DOT and FAA said Friday in a news release.

The 3% staffing reduction will remain in effect while the FAA monitors the national air traffic system through the weekend and determines whether normal operations can resume as early as Monday.

The FAA reported only three staffing triggers on Friday, which is down from a record high of 81 on Nov. 8.

A staffing trigger refers to airports that have fewer air. traffic controllers available to safely conduct normal operations.

The staffing triggers compel the FAA to reduce flights at respective airports or impose other restrictions to help ensure safety.

Many air traffic controllers called in sick or quit and accepted other jobs as the record 43-day federal government shutdown prevented them from being paid.

The new 3% flight reductions at the 40 airports take effect. at 6 a.m. local time.

The reduction in mandatory flight cuts at the nation’s busiest airports raises the potential for no flight reductions when the Thanksgiving holiday approaches on Nov. 27.

Thanksgiving traditionally is the busiest travel holiday, but mandated flight reductions due to the government shutdown raised the potential for chaotic holiday travel.

Sydney, Australia – Ju-rye Hwang grew up assuming her parents in South Korea were dead and that she was alone in the world after being adopted to North America at about six years of age.

That was until a phone call from a journalist in Seoul turned her world upside down.

“He told me that I was not an orphan,” Hwang said.

“And it was most certain that I was illegally adopted for profit,” she said.

The journalist went on to tell Hwang about the notorious Brothers Home institution in South Korea, a place where thousands had endured horrific abuse, including forced labour, sexual violence, and brutal beatings.

Hwang discovered that she had spent time at the institution as a child, before being offered for overseas adoption.

The journalist also explained how his investigative team had uncovered a file from the home’s archives containing a list of international adoptions, and among the clearly printed names was that of her adoptive mother.

Hearing “the truth”, Hwang said, “made me break down and lose my breath”.

“I felt physically ill,” she told Al Jazeera.

“I believed that my parents were not alive.”

‘Beggars don’t exist here’

Hwang is now a successful career woman in her mid-40s. But her origins link back to South Korea during the 1970s and 80s, when government authorities in the rapidly industrialising nation cracked down brutally on those considered socially undesirable.

Kidnapping was rampant among the children of the poor, the homeless and marginalised who lived on the streets of Seoul and other cities.

Children as well as adults were abducted without warning, bundled into police cars and trucks and hauled away under a state policy aimed at beautifying South Korean cities by removing those designated as “vagrants”.

By clearing the streets of the poor, South Korea’s government sought to project an image of prosperity and modernity to the outside world, particularly in the lead-up to the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul.

The then-president and military leader, Chun Doo-hwan, famously boasted of South Korea’s economic success when he told reporters: “Do you see any beggars in our country? We have no beggars. Beggars don’t exist here.”

The president’s push to “cleanse” the streets of the poor and homeless combined toxically with a police performance system based on the accumulation of points that propelled a surge in abductions.

At the time, police earned points based on the category of suspects they apprehended. A petty offender was worth just two performance points. But turning in a so-called “beggar” or “vagrant” to institutions such as the Brothers Home could earn an officer five points – a perverse incentive that prompted widespread abuse.

“The police abducted innocent people off the streets – shoe shiners, gum sellers, people waiting at bus stops, even kids just playing outside,” Moon Jeong-su, a former member of South Korea’s National Assembly, told Al Jazeera.

Brothers Home of horrors

Located in the southern port city of Busan, Brothers Home was founded in 1975 by Park In-geun, a former military officer and boxer.

It was one of many government-subsidised “welfare” institutions across South Korea, established at that time to house the homeless and train them in vocational skills before releasing them back into society as so-called “productive citizens”.

In practice, such facilities became sites of mass detention and horrific abuse.

“State funding was based on the number of people they incarcerated,” said former Busan city council member Park Min-seong.

“The more people they brought in, the more subsidies they received,” he said.

At one stage, up to 95 percent of the Brothers Home’s inmates were delivered directly by police, and as few as 10 percent of those confined were actually “vagrants”, according to a 1987 prosecutor’s report.

In a recent Netflix documentary dealing with the events at Brothers Home, Park Cheong-gwang, the youngest son of the facility’s owner, Park In-geun, admitted that his father had bribed police officers to ensure they sent abducted people to his facility.

Records reviewed by South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established to investigate historical abuse at Brothers Home and similar centres, revealed that an estimated 38,000 people were detained at the home between 1976 and its closure in 1987.

Brothers Home reached peak capacity in 1984, with more than 4,300 inmates held at one time. During its 11 years of operation, 657 deaths were also officially recorded, though investigators believe the toll was likely much higher.

The home was known among inmates as Park’s “kingdom”. It was a place where the founder wielded absolute control over every aspect of their lives. The compound had high concrete walls and guards stationed at the towering front gate. No one was permitted to leave without express permission.

Inside, children were forced to work long hours in on-site factories producing goods such as fishing rods, shoes and clothing, while adults were sent out for gruelling manual labour at construction sites.

Their labour was not supposed to be free.

A 2021 investigation by Al Jazeera’s 101 East investigative documentary series revealed that Park and members of his board of directors at Brothers Home had embezzled what would amount to tens of millions of dollars in today’s value, and which should have been paid to inmates for their work.

Those operating Brothers Home also profited from the country’s lucrative international adoption trade, with domestic and foreign adoption agencies frequently visiting the facility.

Former inmate Lee Chae-shik, who was held for six years at the home, told 101 East that young children, just like Hwang, would simply disappear overnight.

“Newborns, three-year-olds, kids who couldn’t yet walk … One day, all of those kids were gone,” Lee said.

‘The child said absolutely nothing’

Hwang’s intake form at the Brothers Home states that she was found in Busan’s Jurye-dong neighbourhood and “admitted to Brothers Home at the request of the Jurye 2-dong Police Substation on November 23, 1982”.

A black-and-white photo of a very young Hwang is affixed to the top corner of the document, which was seen by Al Jazeera.

Her head is shaved. The form is stamped with her identification number: 821112646, with a line in the comments section: “Upon arrival, the child said absolutely nothing.”

The document notes Hwang’s “good physique”, “normal face shape and colour”, and she is marked on the form as “healthy – capable of labour work”.

At the bottom of the page are Hwang’s tiny fingerprints. She was about four years old at the time.

“That girl is probably scared and in shock,” said Hwang, looking at her own intake document and the picture of her childhood self. Her voice quivering as she spoke, she referred to the “innocent” child who already “has a mugshot”.

“I 100 percent believe that I was kidnapped,” she said. “I know I was never supposed to be at Brothers [Home] as a four-year-old.”

A deeply unsettling discovery was also made in her adoption records: Her name, Ju-rye, was given to her by the home’s director, Park, who named her after the Jurye-dong neighbourhood where police say she was found – the same neighbourhood where the Brothers Home was located.

“I felt violated. I felt sick in the stomach,” she said, recalling the origins of her name.

Growing up, Hwang said she had fragmented memories of South Korea.

Of the few she could recollect, one was of a towering iron gate. The other was of children splashing in a shallow underground pool. For years, she dismissed those memories as probably imagined. Then, in 2022, six years after the call with the journalist, she finally mustered enough courage to investigate her past with the help of a fellow adoptee from South Korea, who had sent her links to a website detailing what the Brothers Home once looked like.

“I was just toggling through the different menus of that website when two vivid images clicked for me,” Hwang said, snapping her fingers.

“The large iron gate – that was the entrance. The underground pool was inside the facility,” she said, matching her unexplained dreams with the images featured on the website.

“It was overwhelming to know that I was not imagining my memories of Korea,” she said.

Hwang would discover that she was kept at the Brothers Home for nine months before being sent to a nearby orphanage, where she was deemed a “good candidate” for international adoption.

In the consultation notes for eventual adoption, the circumstances of Hwang’s so-called abandonment and her admission to Brothers Home, as well as details of her health, were all provided by Park. She was recorded as being in good health, weighing 15.3kg (33.7lb), measuring 101cm (3.3ft) in height, and having a full set of 20 healthy teeth.

Adoption records also described her as an outgoing and well-behaved young girl. Hwang was noted for her intelligence: she could write her own name “perfectly”, was able to count in numbers, recognised different colours, and was also capable of reciting verses from the Bible from memory.

“It seems odd that I had those skills and was well nourished, and yet the police claimed I was a street kid. It just doesn’t add up,” said Hwang, who is convinced she was well looked after before she was taken to the Brothers Home.

In 2021, Hwang submitted her DNA to an international genetics registry and was immediately matched with a fully-related younger brother who had also been adopted to Belgium. She describes her first video call with her long-lost brother as “surreal”.

“For an adopted person who has never had any blood relatives their entire life, coming face-to-face with a direct sibling was jaw-dropping,” Hwang recalled.

“There was no denying we were related,” she said.

“He looked so much like me – the shape of his face, the features, even our long, slender hands.”

Hwang soon learned that she had another younger brother, and both had been adopted to Belgium in early 1986.

Their adoption files, also seen by Al Jazeera, state the brothers were “abandoned” in Anyang, a city about 300km (186 miles) from Busan, in August 1982, about three months before Hwang was taken to Brothers Home.

The timing of her brothers’ adoptions made her wonder whether her parents may have temporarily left her with relatives in Busan, a common practice in Korean families, possibly while they searched for their missing sons, who may also have been taken off the streets in similar circumstances.

Among the few vivid memories that Hwang still retains from her very early childhood, before the Brothers Home, is of a woman she believes may have been her biological mother.

“The only image that stayed with me,” she said, her eyes filling with tears, “is of a woman with medium-length permed hair. I only remember her from the back – I have no memory of her from the front.”

Hwang still holds on to hope that one day she will be reunited with her mother and will discover her true identity.

“I would love to know my real name – the name my parents gave me,” she said.

Truth and Reconciliation

In 2022, South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission declared that serious human rights violations had occurred at Brothers Home. This included enforced disappearances, arbitrary confinement, forced labour without pay, sexual violence, physical abuse, and even deaths.

In the report, the commission stated the “rules of rounding up vagrants to be unconstitutional/illegal”, that “the process of inmates being confined to be illegal”, and “suspicious acts” were discovered “in medical practices and the process of dealing with dead inmates”.

Most children at the home were also found to have been excluded from compulsory education.

The commission concluded that such acts had violated the “right to the pursuit of happiness, freedom of relocation, right to liberty, the right to be free from forced or compulsory labour, and the right to education, as guaranteed by the Constitution”.

The government, the commission said, was aware of such violations but “tried to systematically downscale and conceal the case”.

The commission also confirmed for the first time earlier this year that Brothers Home had collaborated with other childcare centres to facilitate illegal overseas adoptions.

Although many records were reportedly destroyed by the home’s former management, investigators verified that at least 31 children had been illegally sent abroad for adoption. The inquiry eventually identified 17 biological mothers linked to children sent for adoption overseas.

In one case, the commission uncovered evidence of a heavily pregnant woman who had been forcibly taken to Brothers Home. She gave birth inside the facility, and her baby was handed over to an adoption agency just a month later and then sent overseas three months after that.

Investigators found a letter of consent to adoption signed by the mother. But the adoption agency had taken custody of the baby the very day the form was signed, leaving no opportunity for the mother to reconsider or withdraw consent.

The commission noted the high likelihood of the mother being coerced into consenting to the overseas adoption of her child while held inside the Brothers Home, from which she could neither leave nor care adequately for her newborn under the home’s oppressive conditions.

Brothers Home’s former director, Park, died in June 2016 in South Korea. He was never held accountable for the unlawful confinement that occurred at his facility, nor did he ever apologise for his role in it.

The commission’s 2022 report strongly recommended that the South Korean government issue a formal state apology for its role in the abuses committed at the home. To date, neither the Busan city government nor the South Korean national police have apologised for involvement in the abuses or the subsequent cover-up, and, despite mounting pressure, no president of the country has issued a formal apology.

In mid-September, however, the government withdrew its appeals against admitting liability for human rights violations that occurred at the facility, following a Supreme Court ruling in March. The move is expected to expedite compensation for a number of the victims who had filed lawsuits against the state over the abuse they suffered.

Justice Minister Jung Sung-ho described the decision to drop the appeals as a “testament to the state’s recognition of the human rights violations [that occurred] due to the state violence in the authoritarian era”.

This week, the Supreme Court further ruled that the state must also compensate victims who were forcibly confined at Brothers Home before 1975, when a government directive officially authorised a nationwide crackdown on “vagrants”.

The court found that the state had “consistently carried out crackdowns and confinement measures against vagrants from the 1950s onwards and expanded these practices” under the directive.

Hwang submitted her case to the commission for investigation in January 2025, and she received an official response confirming that, as a child, she was subjected to “gross human rights violations resulting from the unlawful and grossly unjust exercise of official authority”.

‘Child-exporting nation’

In the decades after the 1950-53 Korean War, more than 170,000 children were sent to Western countries for adoption, as what started as a humanitarian effort to rescue war orphans gradually evolved into a lucrative business for private adoption agencies.

Just last month, President Lee Jae Myung issued a historic apology over South Korea’s former foreign adoption programme, acknowledging the “pain” and “suffering” endured by adoptees and their birth and adoptive families.

Lee spoke of a “shameful chapter” in South Korea’s recent past and its former reputation as a “child-exporting nation”.

The president’s apology came several months after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released another report concluding that widespread human rights violations had occurred within South Korea’s international adoption system.

The commission found that the government had actively promoted intercountry adoptions and granted private agencies near total control over the process, giving them “immense power over the lives of the children”.

Adoption agencies were entrusted with guardianship and consent rights of orphans, allowing them to pursue their financial interests unchecked. They also set their own adoption fees and were known to pressure adoptive parents to pay additional “donations”.

The investigation also revealed that agencies routinely falsified records, obscuring or erasing the identities and family connections of children to make them appear more “adoptable”. This included altering birthdates, names, photographs, and even the circumstances of abandonment to fit the legal definition of an “orphan”.

Under laws in place at the time of Hwang’s adoption, South Korean children could not be sent overseas until a public process had been conducted to determine whether a child had any surviving relatives.

Adoption agencies, including institutions such as the Brothers Home, were legally required to publish public notices in newspapers and on court bulletin boards, stating where and when a child had been found. This process was intended to help reunite missing children with their parents or guardians, and to prevent overseas adoption while those searches were still under way.

However, the commission found that in cases involving the Brothers Home, such notices were published only after formal adoption proceedings had begun. This indicated that the search for an orphan’s relatives was considered a procedural formality rather than a genuine safeguard to protect children who still had family.

The notices were also published by a district office in Seoul rather than in Busan, where the children had originally been reported as found.

The commission concluded that the government had failed “to uphold its responsibility to protect the fundamental human rights of its citizens” and had enabled the “mass exportation of children” to satisfy international demand.

‘Right your wrongs’

Hwang now lives in Sydney, Australia, and her new home is coincidentally the same city where some of the extended family of the late Brothers Home director, Park, now live.

An investigation by 101 East revealed that the director’s brothers-in-law, Lim Young-soon and Joo Chong-chan, who were directors at the Brothers Home, migrated to Sydney in the late 1980s.

Park’s daughter, Park Jee-hee, and her husband, Alex Min, also moved to Australia and were operating a golf driving range and sports complex in Sydney’s outer suburbs, 101 East discovered.

Noting the coincidence of living in the same city as relatives of the late Brothers Home director, Hwang said she believed “things happen for a reason”.

“I’m not sure why, but maybe there’s a reason I’m here,” Hwang told Al Jazeera, adding that if she ever had the opportunity to speak with the Park family, her message would be simple: “Right your wrongs.”

Park’s son, Park Cheong-gwang, admitted in the Netflix documentary series about Brothers Home – titled “The Echoes of Survivors” – that abuses had taken place at the centre.

But he insisted that the South Korean government was largely responsible and that his father had told him that work at the home was carried out under direct orders from the country’s then-President Chun, who died in 2021.

Park Cheong-gwang also used his appearance in the Netflix show to issue the first formal apology of any member of his family.

He apologised to “the victims and their families who suffered during that time at the Brothers Home, and for all the pain they’ve endured since”.

Other relatives living in Australia have dismissed the reported abuses at the home.

Hwang said their lack of remorse “was sickening”.

“They’re running away from their history,” she said.

“It’s not only the adoption, but it’s the fact that everything in my life was erased,” she added.

“My identity, my immediate family, my extended family, everything was erased. No one has the right to do that.”

Nov. 14 (UPI) — President Donald Trump lowered but did not eliminate reciprocal tariffs and beef, fruits, coffee and other foods in an effort to lower food prices for consumers.

The president announced the reduced tariffs a day after securing trade agreements with Argentina, Ecuador, El Salvador and Guatemala, although a 15% tariff remains in effect for Ecuador, according to The Hill.

“Today’s order follows the significant progress the president has made in securing more reciprocal terms for our bilateral trade relationships,” the White House announced Friday in a news release.

“President Trump’s deals have had and will continue to have broad impacts on domestic production and the economy as a whole, including enhanced market access for our agriculture exporters.”

The other nations will continue to have a 10% tariff in effect, but they could be lowered or eliminated for certain products.

Certain agricultural products won’t be subject to reciprocal tariffs, including tropical fruits and fruit juices, beef, cocoa and spices, bananas, oranges, tomatoes and fertilizers, according to the White House.

Consumers are paying more for coffee, beef and other foods since Trump initiated his reciprocal tariffs policy in April to offset tariffs being charged on U.S.-produced goods in respective nations, CNN reported.

The Consumer Price Index shows people are paying about 20% more for coffee than they did a year ago due to the president’s 50% tariff on coffee imported from Brazil, which is the nation’s largest supplier of the beloved caffeinated beverage.

Tomatoes also are costing more and will continue to have a17% tariff when imported from Mexico after a trade agreement between that nation and the United States expired in July.

Bananas and other food products that are not produced in the United States also are subject to tariff reductions.

Nov. 14 (UPI) — Rainstorms that are forecast to bring up to 8 inches of rain to Southern California through Saturday have triggered flood watches in fire-ravaged locales in Los Angeles, San Diego and nearby areas.

Two bouts of rainstorms are predicted to bring between 1 inch and 3 inches of rain on Friday to areas that are still affected by wildfires in January, NBC News reported.

More than 23 million people live in the risk zones as rain began falling on Friday afternoon and already created muddy conditions in areas due to the lack of ground cover because of the January wildfires that decimated many areas in and around Los Angeles and San Diego County.

Officials at Los Angeles International Airport reported about an inch of rainfall in an hour on Friday, and Highway 101 had up to 6 inches of mud accumulation that caused at least one vehicle to get stuck.

A second storm system that includes high winds and between 2 inches and 8 inches of rainfall is expected to impact the area through Saturday as the storms intensify.

Ventura County officials issued an evacuation warning for Thursday to Sunday in the area affected by the Mountain Fire in January.

Also under evacuation warnings are those in Camino Cielo, Matilija Canyon and North Fork.

The heaviest rainfall is expected late Friday night and into Saturday, which has triggered a flood watch from 4 a.m. PST to 10 p.m. on Saturday, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Mud flows and debris fields could impact burn areas from January’s wildfires in and near Eaton, Hurst, Kenneth, Palisades and Sunset.

The rainfall could cause extensive damage and possibly become life-threatening, but it also is expected to end Southern California’s annual fire season.

Palestinians call for better tents and other supplies as Israel maintains restrictions on aid to war-ravaged Gaza Strip.

Displaced Palestinians are reeling after heavy rains flooded their tents in makeshift displacement camps in Gaza City, as the United Nations warns that Israeli restrictions on aid have left hundreds of thousands of families without adequate shelter.

Abdulrahman Asaliyah, a displaced Palestinian man, told Al Jazeera on Friday that residents’ mattresses, clothes and other belongings were soaked in the flooding.

“We are calling for help, for new tents that can at least protect people from the winter cold,” he said, explaining that nearly two dozen people had been working for hours to get the water to drain from the area.

“This winter rain is a blessing from God, but there are families who no longer wish for it to fall, fearing for the lives of their children and their own survival,” Asaliyah said.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Friday’s flooding primarily affected Palestinians in the north of the Strip, where hundreds of thousands of people have returned following last month’s ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.

Flooding was also reported in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah, said the rescue agency, which urged the international community to do more to “address the suffering” of Palestinians whose homes were destroyed in Israel’s two-year war on the enclave.

“We urge the swift delivery of homes, caravans, and tents to these displaced families to help alleviate their suffering, especially as we are at the beginning of winter,” it said in a statement.

While the October 10 ceasefire has allowed more aid to get into the Gaza Strip, the UN and other humanitarian groups say Palestinians still lack adequate food, medicine and other critical supplies, including shelter.

Aid groups working to provide shelter assistance in the occupied Palestinian territory said in early November that about 260,000 Palestinian families, totalling almost 1.5 million people, were vulnerable as the cold winter months approached.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said this week that it has enough shelter supplies to help as many as 1.3 million Palestinians.

But UNRWA said Israel continues to block its efforts to bring aid into Gaza despite the ceasefire deal, which stipulated that humanitarian assistance must be delivered to Palestinians in need.

“We have a very short chance to protect families from the winter rains and cold,” Angelita Caredda, Middle East and North Africa director at the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), said in a statement on November 5.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah on Friday, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary said Palestinians across Gaza have been voicing fears that this winter would be particularly difficult due to the lack of safe shelter.

“It only rained for a couple of minutes – 30 minutes or so … [and] they were completely flooded,” she said. “Their tents are very fragile and worn-out; they have been using them for the past two years.”

She added that most Palestinians do not have any other options but to remain in tent camps or overcrowded shelters, despite the difficulties.

“We’re already seeing Palestinian children walking barefoot. They do not have winter clothes. They do not have blankets. And at the same time, the aid that is coming in … is being restricted,” Khoudary said.

Back in Gaza City, another displaced Palestinian man affected by the heavy rains, Abu Ghassan, said he and his family “no longer have a normal life”.

“I’m lifting the mattresses so the children don’t get soaked,” he told Al Jazeera. “But the little ones were already drenched here. We don’t even have proper tents.”

Nov. 14 (UPI) — Police have arrested a suspect in the shooting of John Beam, the Laney College athletic director who was featured in the Netflix series Last Chance U, according to authorities.

No further details of the arrest have been made public. Beam was taken to Highland Hospital in critical condition, CNN reported. A hospital spokesperson wouldn’t give further information.

The shooting happened at noon Thursday at the Laney College Field House, in the Peralta Community College District, which Laney College is a part of, the college said in a statement.

The Oakland, Calif., school went into lockdown. It remained closed for the remainder of the day.

Acting Oakland Police Chief James Beere told reporters during a press conference that officers arrived at the scene to find a victim suffering from a gunshot wound who was immediately taken to a local hospital.

The school district identified the victim as a “senior member of our athletic staff.” It was later revealed that Beam — who was featured in season 5 of the hit Netflix show about struggling college football athletes — had been shot.

“Coach Beam is a giant in Oakland — a mentor, an educator and a lifeline for thousands of young people,” Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee said in a statement. “For over 40 years, he has shaped leaders on and off the field, and our community is shaken alongside his family.”

The suspect was earlier described as a male of an unknown race, wearing dark clothing and a dark hoodie. Beere said the suspect had been seen fleeing the scene.

“I know that there was some concern that this may have been an active shooter. We responded as if it was an active shooter,” he said. “I can tell you right now it was not an active shooter.”

Witnesses were being interviewed and surveillance footage was being reviewed, he said.

Beam is the athletics director but retired from coaching last year, CNN said.

“The Peralta community is devastated by his shooting and deeply concerned for his well-being,” said Chancellor Tammeil Gilkerson in a message to employees. “We are stunned and heartbroken that such violence has touched our campus and one of the most respected and beloved members of our Laney, Peralta, and Oakland community.”

The makeshift homes of displaced Palestinians in Gaza have been flooded by heavy rainfall, as millions prepare for winter in the enclave without adequate shelter or relief.

Nov. 14 (UPI) — The European Union wants Google to dismantle its European-based advertising-technology business, which it has deemed a monopoly, but the tech firm said Friday it has another plan.

Google officials announced they submitted a compliance plan following the European Commission’s ad-tech decision, which Google will appeal.

“Our proposal fully addresses the EC’s decision without a disruptive breakup that would harm thousands of European publishers and advertisers who use Google tools to grow their business,” Google said in a blog post.

Google’s proposal “includes immediate product changes to end the specific practices the Commission challenges,” it said.

“For example, we are giving publishers the option to set different minimum prices for different bidders when using Google Ad Manager,” Google officials said.

They also propose addressing accusations of conflicts of interest by giving publishers and advertisers more choices and greater flexibility by “increasing the interoperability of our tools.”

Google officials said they intend to cooperate with the EC while it considers the proposal and “are committed to finding an effective solution that provides certainty and consistency for our customers across Europe, the United States and globally.”

The EC in September fined Google $3.5 billion in a search engine antitrust case and wants Google to break up its European business.

Google’s proposal seeks to avoid a breakup, but it does not provide any mechanisms for measuring the impact of proposed changes, according to Politico.

The EC has received Google’s proposal, which drew criticism from online publishers in Europe.

“Behavioral adjustments have been tested repeatedly over many years and have failed to rebalance this market,” Angela Mills Wade, European Publishers Council executive director, told Politico.

She said Google’s proposal, ultimately, won’t eliminate its ad-tech monopoly, which accounts for most of parent company Alphabet’s annual revenues, which topped $350 billion in 2024.

“Without structural change, Google will continue to own and control the tools and data flows that determine the terms of trade for the entire digital advertising ecosystem,” Wade added.

Nov. 14 (UPI) — The White House announced new “trade framework agreements” with Argentina, Ecuador, El Salvador and Guatemala, all governed by administrations aligned with president Donald Trump, with the goal of reducing certain tariffs, eliminating non-tariff barriers and expanding access for U.S. products in those markets.

According to a statement issued by Washington on Thursday, the agreements establish reciprocal commitments.

The Latin American countries will eliminate or ease requirements and licenses that restrict the entry of U.S. goods — including agricultural products, medical devices, machinery and automobiles — while the U.S. government will reduce or waive tariffs on some key exports from those countries, as long as the products are not produced in sufficient quantities domestically.

“These agreements will help American farmers, ranchers, fishermen, small businesses and manufacturers increase U.S. exports and expand trade opportunities with these partners,” the White House said.

The commitments agreed to range from the acceptance of U.S. standards for vehicles, auto parts, medical devices and pharmaceuticals in El Salvador’s case to preferential access in Argentina for machinery, technology products, chemicals and agricultural goods, along with reforms to its intellectual property regime.

Guatemala agreed to ensure a favorable framework for digital trade, including free data transfers and a pledge not to impose taxes on U.S. digital services, while also strengthening its labor rules to prohibit goods linked to forced labor.

Ecuador assumed stricter environmental obligations, such as improving forest governance and combating illegal logging, as well as fully complying with international rules on fisheries subsidies.

On the trade front, it will eliminate or reduce tariffs on key products — fruits, nuts, legumes, wheat, wine and spirits — and dismantle its variable agricultural tariff system, opening significant access for U.S. exports.

The governments of all four countries welcomed the initiative as an opportunity to boost their exports, attract foreign investment and strengthen their competitiveness.

Argentine Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno said on X that the agreement “creates the conditions to increase U.S. investment in Argentina” and includes tariff reductions for key industries.

In a statement, the government of Javier Milei said that as part of this understanding, the two countries agreed to significantly expand access for Argentine beef in the U.S. market and to work together to eliminate non-tariff barriers to bilateral agrifood trade.

It added that the United States will eliminate tariffs on products it does not produce, while Argentina will grant tariff preferences to facilitate the entry of capital goods and intermediate inputs.

Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo and Economy Minister Gabriela García said on social media that more than 70% of the products the country exports to the United States will now enter tariff-free. They added that most remaining products will face a 10% tariff, Prensa Libre reported.

In Ecuador’s case, as Agriculture, Fisheries and Livestock Minister Danilo Palacios had previously indicated, among the products that will no longer pay the 15% tariff imposed by the United States in August are bananas and cacao, two of the main goods in Ecuador’s export basket, the newspaper Primicias reported.

While Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele reposted the White House’s official statement on X with the caption “Friends” alongside both countries’ flags, the Salvadoran Association of Industrialists said the agreement is a “unique opportunity” for exports and for attracting investment.

The Trump administration’s announcement remains at the framework stage, and the agreements are expected to be formalized in the coming weeks.

However, they do not amount to full free trade agreements, but are designed as specific market-access and regulatory commitments, including a guarantee not to impose digital taxes on U.S. companies.

The Transportation Department announced its plan in September after referring to the requirement as ‘unnecessary regulatory burdens’.

The United States Department of Transportation is officially withdrawing from a directive that requires airlines to pay passengers if their flights are delayed.

The White House announced its official withdrawal on Friday after first disclosing its plan back in September.

The plan was first outlined during the administration of former US President Joe Biden, a Democrat.

In December 2024, the federal agency under former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg sought public comment on the plan, which would have required airlines to pay $200 to $300 for domestic delays totalling more than three hours and as high as $775 for even longer, unspecified delays.

Trump’s Transportation Department said the rules would be “unnecessary regulatory burdens” amid its explanation of why it will scrap the plan.

Last month, a group of 18 Democratic senators urged the Trump administration not to drop the compensation plan.

“This is a common-sense proposal: when an airline’s mistake imposes unanticipated costs on families, the airline should try to remedy the situation by providing accommodations to consumers and helping cover their costs,” said the letter signed by Democratic Senators Richard Blumenthal, Maria Cantwell, Ed Markey and others.

Airlines in the US must refund passengers for cancelled flights, but are not required to compensate customers for delays.

The European Union, Canada, Brazil and the United Kingdom all have airline delay compensation rules. No large US airline currently guarantees cash compensation for significant flight disruption.

The Transportation Department said on Friday that abandoning the compensation plan would “allow airlines to compete on the services and compensation that they provide to passengers rather than imposing new minimum requirements for these services and compensation through regulation, which would impose significant costs on airlines.”

New rules

The Transportation Department also announced in September that it was considering rescinding Biden regulations requiring airlines and ticket agents to disclose service fees alongside airfares.

It also plans to reduce regulatory burdens on airlines and ticket agents by writing new rules detailing the definition of a flight cancellation that entitles consumers to ticket refunds, as well as revisiting rules on ticket pricing and advertising.

The department did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Al Jazeera also reached out to Buttigieg, who was behind the policy that is now being scrapped, but did not receive a response.

On Wall Street, most airline stocks remain below the market open but were trending upwards in midday trading. American Airlines is down 1.2 percent from the opening bell, United Airlines is down 1 percent, and Delta is down 1.3 percent. JetBlue is tumbling 3.6 percent for the day. Southwest is down by 0.2 percent.

The airline industry is still dealing with delays and cancellations brought on by the US government shutdown, which ended on Wednesday. There are still 1,000 delays on flights to, from and within the United States and 615 cancellations, according to FlightAware, a platform that tracks flight cancellations globally.

Nov. 14 (UPI) — Tech giant Anthropic confirmed Chinese actors managed to seize control of its AI model Claude to execute a large cyberattack with little human interaction.

On Thursday, Anthropic officials said in a blog post in mid-September it detected “suspicious activity” that a later investigation determined was a “highly sophisticated espionage campaign.”

It added Anthropic had “high” confidence it was a China-backed cyber group.

The Chinese state-sponsored syndicate, which Anthropic called “GTG-1002,” reportedly hijacked its artificial intelligence tool Claude in order to handle between 80% to 90% of a cyberattack on about 30 global targets.

According to Anthropic, it targeted a slew of government agencies, financial institutions, chemical-manufacturing plants and big tech firms.

In a “small number” of cases, the company added, the cyber infiltration was successful.

AI-related hacking has been seen in recent years to a limited degree. But Amazon-backed Anthropic says it believed this recent episode is the first documented “large-scale” case primarily run by AI capability.

Anthropic claimed safeguards in place were designed to prevent abuse of its product.

But it said hijackers, claiming to be acting as defense testing for a legitimate cybersecurity firm, jailbroke Claude by breaking down prompts into smaller requests to avoid detection.

Anthropic said it opted to share the information in order to help the cybersecurity industry improve its defense mechanisms against similar attacks in the future by AI hackers.

“The sheer amount of work performed by the AI would have taken vast amounts of time for a human team,” according to California-based Anthropic.

The tech company said it’s likely the attack only required sporadic human interaction at “perhaps” four to six “critical decision points” per hacking campaign.

“The AI made thousands of requests per second — an attack speed that would have been, for human hackers, simply impossible to match,” the blog post continued.

“Automated cyber-attacks can scale much faster than human-led operations and are able to overwhelm traditional defenses,” Jake Moore, global cybersecurity advisor for internet security firm ESET, told Business Insider.

Last year in February, Microsoft and OpenAI publicly revealed that its artificial intelligence tools were being deployed by foreign government hackers in China, Russia, Iran and North Korea to improve cyber warfare.

Moore indicated Thursday that not only is an example of Anthropic’s attack what many have feared, but the “wider impact is now how these attacks allow very low-skilled actors to launch complex intrusions at relatively low costs.”

“AI is used in defense as well as offensively, so security equally now depends on automation and speed rather than just human expertise across organizations,” he stated.

Nov. 14 (UPI) — The BBC issued a retraction and a formal apology to U.S. President Donald Trump for edits to a speech he gave ahead of the Jan. 6 riots on Capitol Hill that made it appear as if he was inciting his supporters to violence.

The British public service broadcaster apologized Thursday night via the corrections page on its website, with the apology the lead story across all of its news platforms on television, radio and online during the evening and first thing Friday morning.

BBC Chairman Samir Shah also penned a personal written apology to the White House, however, the BBC indicated it would not be paying compensation, as demanded by Trump.

The retraction said an edition of Panorama titled Trump: A Second Chance, broadcast on Oct. 28, 2024, used excerpts lifted from different parts of Trump’s speech in a way that inadvertently made it appear they were contiguous.

The BBC’s version had Trump saying, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell,” when his actual words were, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.”

The BBC said it accepted that this “gave the mistaken impression that President Trump had made a direct call for violent action.”

“The BBC would like to apologize to President Trump for that error of judgment.”

However, the notice made no mention of compensation, one of President Trump’s key demands in his letter threatening the BBC with a $1 billion lawsuit alleging the program had defamed him and giving it until 5 p.m. EST on Friday to respond.

A BBC spokesman said the corporation strongly disagreed “there is a basis for a defamation claim.”

There was no immediate response from either the White House or Trump’s legal counsel.

The Panorama program was not an isolated incident, according to The Telegraph, which said the BBC’s Newsnight program did something very similar with the same speech in a broadcast in 2022.

A spokesman for Trump’s legal team said that from the latest revelation it was “now clear that the BBC engaged in a pattern of defamation against President Trump” and accused it of attempting to try to influence the outcome of the 2024 election.

The debacle has sparked a furious debate about editorial impartiality at the BBC, which is funded by a $229 annual license that every household with a TV must pay, prompting calls for an overhaul of internal processes and procedures.

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy acknowledged the BBC’s editorial rules were “in some cases not robust enough and in other cases not consistently applied,” and appeared to suggest the replacement for director-general Tim Davie, who quit Sunday, must be from a journalism background.

Davie spent the first half of his career as a senior marketing executive at PepsiCo before joining the BBC’s marketing division.

The opposition Conservative’s Shadow Culture Secretary, Nigel Huddleston, said he was waiting to see if Trump accepted the BBC’s response to be the “fulsome apology” he was entitled to receive.

“I do not want the British license fee payer or the rest of the BBC to pay the price for poor editorial decisions made by BBC journalists, he said in a post on X.

“However, we would all be in a better position if the BBC had never made these errors in the first place. The BBC needs a fundamental review of processes and procedures to ensure that such failures in impartiality never happen again.”

United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer has sought to distance himself from an unofficial briefing to the media by unnamed “allies” that he intends to fight off a leadership contest which, they say, could come just 18 months into his premiership.

On Tuesday evening, unnamed sources were cited in The Guardian newspaper saying Health Secretary Wes Streeting has gathered significant backing to supplant Starmer.

But on Wednesday morning, Streeting denied this, telling journalists that he was “not challenging the prime minister”.

“I’m not doing any of the things some silly briefer said overnight,” he stated.

Asked if those responsible for the briefing should be sacked, Streeting said, “Yes. But he’s [Starmer] got to find them first, and I wouldn’t expect him to waste loads of time on this.”

“There are people around the prime minister who do not follow his model and style of leadership,” he said.

In response to the ensuing media storm, Starmer, whose premiership since last year has been marred by poor polling, told reporters in north Wales on Thursday that briefings against ministers are “completely unacceptable”.

“I have been talking to my team today. I have been assured that no briefing against ministers was done from Number 10, but I have made it clear that I find it absolutely unacceptable,” he said.

The current internal party strife has shone a light on the prime minister’s standing as leader of the Labour Party.

In its most recent poll on Tuesday, pollster YouGov said of 4,989 people polled, only 27 percent thought he should continue as Labour Party leader.

Here’s what we know about the rumours of a leadership plot:

What are the rumours about a leadership challenge?

On Tuesday evening, unnamed senior Starmer aides told The Guardian newspaper that any attempt to remove the prime minister would be “reckless” and “dangerous”. According to the aides, deposing Starmer so early in his term as prime minister would undermine financial markets and reverberate on the stock market, the party and its international relationships.

“The party would not recover for a generation,” one of the unnamed sources told The Guardian.

Number 10 sources also told The Guardian they are concerned about rumours that Streeting could be planning a “coup” and is just one of several Labour ministers who are “on manoeuvres” to take the leadership if the opportunity arises. However, none of them were likely to move against the prime minister right now.

They said the most likely moment for a leadership challenge would be after the autumn budget – the government’s tax-and-spending review, due in parliament on November 26 – if higher taxes are announced, or after May elections next year if the Labour party performs poorly.

“Keir will not stand aside at this point, for Wes or anybody else,” one source told The Guardian.

On Friday, the UK’s Financial Times cited an unnamed minister who claimed that support for the health secretary was growing following the news of the unsanctioned “briefing”.

Streeting was not the only name mentioned as a potential leadership contender. Both Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Energy Secretary and a former leader of the Labour Party, Ed Miliband were named as possible contenders, the sources said.

Who briefed the press?

The British press is speculating that the unofficial briefing may have been organised by Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, as a tactic designed to put off any ministers thinking about challenging him.

McSweeney, who has been widely credited with helping Starmer to win the July 2024 election, is now facing calls to resign from unnamed members of parliament, according to reports.

However, Starmer appeared not to support such a move on Thursday when he reiterated that he “of course” has complete confidence in his chief of staff.

What do opposition parties say?

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch was quick to respond, accusing Starmer of losing control of his party during Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Question Time.

Badenoch called Starmer a “weak prime minister at war with his own cabinet”.

“Two weeks before the budget, isn’t it the case that this prime minister has lost control of government, he’s lost control of his party and lost the trust of the British people,” she said.

Earlier in the debate, Badenoch referred to an interview Streeting gave to the BBC in which he accused Downing Street of having a “toxic culture”, and asked Starmer if his minister was correct.

“Any attack on any member of my cabinet is completely unacceptable,” Starmer said in response.

Meanwhile, the far-right Reform UK party’s head of policy, Zia Yusuf, wrote on X on Thursday that the “terrifying thing about the coup against Starmer is that Labour members will choose his replacement”.

“Their favourite Labour minister is Ed Miliband. Some of the most unhinged people in the country will choose the next Prime Minister,” he added.

Reform’s popularity has risen hugely in the UK since last year’s election.

How does the autumn budget fit into this, and how is Labour polling?

The briefing came just two weeks before Starmer and his chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves, announce the autumn budget on November 26.

The budget, which outlines the government’s tax-and-spending plans for the next year, has been the subject of intense speculation in recent weeks, as it was widely expected to break one of Labour’s main election pledges: not to increase income taxes.

However, the Financial Times reported on Friday morning that Reeves is now ruling out any rise in income tax amid concerns that it could seriously anger voters and backbench legislators.

Why else is Starmer losing popularity in the UK?

Since winning the election in 2024, the prime minister has received backlash from across the political spectrum, including from Labour voters, over several issues.

According to a YouGov poll in September, if an election were to be called now, the far-right Reform UK would win, leaving the Labour Party as the second-largest party and the former governing party, the Conservatives, in third place.

Here are some of the main areas of domestic policy which are causing the popularity of Starmer’s Labour Party to wane.

Migration

The opposition Reform UK party has risen in popularity largely on the back of its calls for stricter migrant control. The key issue is the rapid rise in the numbers of people arriving in small boats across the English Channel from France, particularly in the past year.

In September, Starmer struck a “one-in-one-out” migrant exchange deal with France in an effort to deter people from attempting the Channel crossing. Under the deal, France will accept the return of asylum seekers who crossed to the UK but cannot prove a family connection to the UK.

For each migrant France takes back, the UK will grant asylum to one person who has arrived from France through official channels and who can prove they have family connections in the UK.

But only a handful of migrants have been deported under the scheme so far. Furthermore, on Monday, the Home Office reported that a second migrant had re-entered the UK after being deported to France.

Rise of the far-right

Starmer has faced criticism for his lukewarm response to the rising number of far-right protests across the country.

In September, at least 11,000 people joined a “Unite the Kingdom” march, displaying the St George flag in London.

While Starmer denounced violence against police officers during the protests and argued that the US was “built on diversity”, the antifascist group, Hope Not Hate, and several MPs have urged the government to take stronger action against the rise of far-right groups.

Critics also say Starmer has not done enough to appeal to people who support Reform, or to address their concerns about migration.

Accidental prison releases

In a major blunder, HMP Wandsworth prison in London wrongly released two offenders in early November, including an Algerian sex offender.

Both men were eventually returned to prison but, in the case of the Algerian offender, only after the man handed himself in. Conservative Party shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick said the mistake revealed “the incompetence of this government”.

Economy

Starmer has been grappling with a low-growth economy since the start of his term in government.

According to new figures from the Office for National Statistics on Thursday, between July and September, the UK’s gross domestic product (GDP) increased by just 0.1 percent in comparison with growth of 0.3 percent between April and July.

Meanwhile, inflation remained stuck at 3.8 percent in September 2025 – unchanged from July and August. This is the highest it has been since the start of 2024.

Nov. 14 (UPI) — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the Trump administration is giving certain Transportation Security Agency workers a $10,000 bonus for going “above and beyond” during the 43-day government shutdown.

She made the announcement Thursday during a news conference in Houston.

“I’m pleased to announce that under President [Donald] Trump, we are giving a $10,000 bonus to TSA officers across our nation who went above and beyond during the Democrats’ shutdown,” Noem said. “They guaranteed that America wouldn’t shut down — no matter how badly the Democrats wanted average Americans to feel the pain.

“Their unsung patriotism deserves recognition. President Trump and I are so grateful for these patriots.”

Noem praised TSA workers who showed up to work throughout the shutdown despite not receiving pay. A news release from the department highlighted two TSA agents who had perfect attendance during the shutdown — Reiko Walker and Ashley Richardson, who both worked at George Bush Intercontinental Airport.

News outlet Semafor reported that back pay for Department of Homeland Security employees was expected to begin processing Wednesday.

Noem didn’t specify what metrics the Department of Homeland Security was using to determine who gets the bonus.

“We’re going to look at every individual that did exceptional service during this period of time when there were so many hardships,” she said during the news conference.

The Department of Homeland Security said it’s paying for the bonuses from leftover funds from fiscal year 2025.

Johnny J. Jones, secretary-treasurer of the American Federation of Government Employees’ TSA Council 100, described the bonuses as “great for some.”

“It’s better to give everybody a little something, because they all suffered and they all endured hard times during the last 43 days,” he said, according to The Hill.

The government shutdown caused thousands of flight cancellations and delays at U.S. airports amid a shortage in air traffic controllers. This shortage prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to cut flights by up to 6% at 40 major airports.

On Monday, Trump showed frustration with air traffic controllers who declined to show up to work without pay. He threatened to dock the pay of those who called out during the shutdown.

“For those Air Traffic Controllers who were GREAT PATRIOTS, and didn’t take ANY TIME OFF for the ‘Democrat Shutdown Hoax,’ I will be recommending a BONUS of $10,000 per person for distinguished service to our Country,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social.

The National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), is heading for a sweep in the legislative assembly elections in the eastern state of Bihar.

The election in India’s third-most populous state, with 74 million registered voters across 243 assembly constituencies, has been viewed as a key test of Modi’s popularity, especially among Gen Z: Bihar is India’s youngest state.

Vote counting concluded on Friday after two phases of voting on November 6 and November 11.

Here is more about the election results and what they mean.

What was the result of the Bihar election?

As of 5:30pm (1200 GMT) on Friday, the NDA had won two seats and was leading in 204 out of 243, while the opposition Mahagathabandhan, or the Grand Alliance, with the Indian National Congress and the regional Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) as the main parties, was leading in just 33 seats, according to the Election Commission of India (ECI).

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which is currently not part of either alliance, was leading in one seat. The All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), another party that does not belong in either major alliance, had won or was leading in the remaining five seats.

BJP and allies

• Within the NDA, the BJP had won or was leading in 93 seats with a 20.5 percent overall vote share. 
• The regional Janata Dal (United) or JD(U), a key NDA constituent, had won or was leading  in 83 seats, with 19 percent votes overall.
• Another local NDA ally, the Lok Janshakti Party (Ram Vilas) or LJPRV, had won or was ahead in 19 seats.
• The Rashtriya Lok Morcha (RSHTLKM) was leading in four seats.
• The Hindustani Awam Morcha (Secular), or HAMS, had won or was leading in five seats.

Opposition alliance

• The Congress, India’s main opposition party, had won or was leading in five seats with 8.7 percent of the overall vote.
• The Grand Alliance’s biggest party, RJD, had or was leading in 26 seats with 22.8 percent of the vote.
• The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (Liberation), or CPI(ML)(L), was leading in one seat.
• The Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M), was ahead in one seat.

How are Tejashwi Yadav and Maithili Thakur doing?

As votes were being counted, two of the most watched constituencies were Raghopur and Alinagar.

Raghopur has long been an RJD stronghold. But for some time during counting, Tejashwi Yadav, the son of RJD leader Lalu Prasad Yadav and the party’s de facto chief now, was trailing behind BJP candidate Satish Kumar in the Yadav family bastion. This had switched to a 13,000 vote lead for Yadav by 1200 GMT, with most votes counted. If Yadav were to still lose, it will be a historic defeat for what was, many years, the first family of Bihar. He previously won the seat in 2015 and 2020. His father has also won from Raghopur twice in the past, while his mother, Rabri Devi, has won it three times.

Popular folk singer, Maithili Thakur, representing the BJP, was leading in the Alinagar seat, with the RJD’s Binod Mishra trailing by 8,588 votes — another close contest.

What is driving the results?

Female voters

Political analysts attribute the gains for the key governing party in this election to the appeals Modi’s party has made to female voters.

In September, the BJP transferred about $880m to 7.5 million women – with 10,000 rupees ($112.70) paid directly into their bank accounts – under a seed investment programme called the Chief Minister’s Women Employment Scheme. Modi’s office said: “The assistance can be utilised in areas of the choice of the beneficiary, including agriculture, animal husbandry, handicrafts, tailoring, weaving, and other small-scale enterprises.”

Women make up nearly half of all eligible voters in Bihar, where women’s political participation is on the rise. Female representation in the state has historically been low. But in 2006, Bihar reserved 50 percent of seats on local bodies for women, which has boosted their political representation.

Female voter turnout in the state has often surpassed that of men since 2010. The turnout among women this time was 71.6 percent, compared with 62.8 percent for men.

Voter ID checks

The opposition has also accused the ECI of deliberately revising the official voter list to benefit the BJP via a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls over the past few months. Registered voters were required to present documents proving they were Indian nationals and legal residents of the constituency in which they voted.

As Al Jazeera reported in July, however, many of the poorest people in Bihar do not hold any of the several documents that the ECI listed as proof of identity.

The opposition argues, therefore, that this new requirement could disenfranchise poor and vulnerable groups, including disadvantaged castes and Muslims, who typically vote for the RJD-Congress alliance.

In September, the ECI removed 4.7 million names from Bihar’s rolls, leaving 74.2 million voters. In Seemanchal, a Muslim-majority area, voter removals exceeded the state average.

What is the significance of these results?

Bihar is India’s third most populous state, home to 130 million people. It sends the fifth-highest number of legislators to parliament.

The latest vote has been viewed as a key popularity test for Modi, who was sworn in for his third premiership after he won the national elections in June 2024.

But the BJP failed to secure a majority in the national election on its own, forcing it to rely on regional allies such as the JD(U) to form the government.

Since the national election, the BJP has won most major state elections, and the streak seems to be continuing in Bihar.