Warnings

Bereaved families are calling for a public inquiry into what they say are “repeated failures” by the UK government to protect vulnerable people from a website promoting suicide.

A report by the Molly Rose Foundation says departments were warned 65 times about the online forum, which BBC News is not naming, and others like it but did not act.

The suicide prevention charity says at least 133 people have died in the UK as a result of a toxic chemical promoted by the site and similar forums.

The government has not said whether it will consider an inquiry but said sites must prevent users from accessing illegal suicide and self-harm content or face “robust enforcement, including substantial fines”.

Families and survivors have written to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer asking him for an inquiry to look into why warnings from coroners and campaigners have been ignored.

David Parfett, whose son Tom took his own life in 2021, told the BBC successive governments had offered sympathy but no accountability.

“The people who host the suicide platforms to spread their cult-like messages that suicide is normal – and earn money from selling death – continue to be several steps ahead of government ministers and law enforcement bodies,” he said.

“I can think of no better memorial for my son than knowing people like him are protected from harm while they recover their mental health.”

David and six other families are being represented by the law firm Leigh Day who have also written a letter to the prime minister highlighting their concerns about the main suicide forum.

The letter says victims were groomed online, and tended to be in their early 20s, with the youngest known victim being 13.

It argues a public inquiry is needed because coroners’ courts cannot institute the changes needed to protect vulnerable people.

According to the report, coroners raised concerns and sent repeated warnings to the Home Office, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, and Department of Health and Social Care on dozens of occasions since 2019, when the forum that has been criticised by the families first emerged.

The report highlighted four main findings:

• The Home Office’s refusal to tighten regulation of the substance, which remains easily obtainable online, while UK Border Force “struggles to respond to imports” from overseas sellers

• The media regulator Ofcom’s decision to rely on “voluntary measures” from the main forum’s operators rather than taking steps to restrict UK access

• Repeated failures by government departments to act on coroners’ warnings

• Operational shortcomings, including inconsistent police welfare checks and delays in making antidotes available to emergency services

A government spokesperson said that the substance in question “is closely monitored and is reportable under the Poisons Act” meaning retailers should tell the authorities if they suspect it is being bought to cause harm.

But campaigners say the government’s response has been fragmented and slow, with officials “passing the parcel” rather than taking co-ordinated action.

Adele Zeynep Walton, whose sister Aimee died in 2022, said families like hers had been “ignored and dismissed”.

“She was creative, a very talented artist, gifted musician,” she told BBC News.

“Aimee was hardworking and achieved great GCSE results, however she was shy and quiet and struggled to make friends.

“Every time I learn of a new life lost to the website that killed my sister three years ago, I’m infuriated that another family has had to go through this preventable tragedy.”

The demand for an inquiry follows concerns raised by the BBC in 2023, when an investigation revealed sites offering instructions and encouragement for suicide and evading regulations.

Andy Burrows, chief executive of the Molly Rose Foundation, said the state’s failure to act had “cost countless lives”.

He also accused Ofcom of being “inexplicably slow” to restrict UK access to the main website the Foundation has raised concerns about.

Under the Online Safety Act, which became law in October 2023, Ofcom got the power in March 2025 to take action against sites hosting illegal content, which includes assisting suicide. If sites fail to show they have systems in place to remove illegal material, Ofcom can block them or impose fines of up to £18m.

UK users are currently unable to access the forum, which is based in the US. A message on the forum’s homepage says it was not blocked to people in the UK as a result of government action but instead because of a “proactive” decision to “protect the platform and its users”.

“We operate under the protection of the First Amendment. However, UK authorities have signalled intentions to enforce their domestic laws on foreign platforms, potentially leading to criminal liability or service disruption,” the message reads.

In a statement, Ofcom said: “In response to our enforcement action, the online suicide forum put in place a geo-block to restrict access by people with UK IP addresses.

“Services that choose to block access by people in the UK must not encourage or promote ways to avoid these restrictions.”

It added the forum remained on its watchlist and a previously-launched investigation into it remained open while it checked the block was being maintained.

• If you, or someone you know, has been affected by mental health issues BBC Action Line has put together a list of organisations which can help.

No one goes to Cannes expecting to be frightened by a film about a long-dead British writer. Unless, of course, that writer is George Orwell.

When Raoul Peck’s documentary “Orwell: 2+2=5” premiered at the festival in May, the crowd reacted with the startled tension of a horror screening — gasps, murmurs, a few cries — before finally breaking into thunderous applause.

What they saw on screen felt both familiar and terrifyingly current. Peck builds the film entirely from Orwell’s words, delivered in a low, steady burn by actor Damian Lewis (“Billions”), repositioning the dying author of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” in his final tubercular days on the Scottish Isle of Jura, into today’s world. His vision of power, propaganda and language as a weapon meets a barrage of torn-from-the-news imagery: refugees adrift on boats, authoritarian leaders twisting the truth, AI hallucinations blurring what’s left of reality. The film, to be released nationwide on Friday by Neon, plays less like a documentary than a séance in which Orwell’s ghost watches his own warnings play out: urgent, relentless, immersive as a nightmare.

Peck says the Cannes reception didn’t surprise him.

“I knew it would touch a nerve,” Peck, 72, says over Zoom from New York. His calm, French-accented voice — he’s based in Paris but travels frequently — carries the quiet fatigue of someone who’s spent decades watching history repeat itself. “It’s not just a problem of the U.S. — it’s everywhere. We have all sorts of bullies and there’s no reliable sheriff in town. Even the most powerful institutions are on shaky ground. I knew the film would either break people or energize them. If you’re a normal citizen, a normal human being, you must ask yourself questions when you come out of it.”

There are no talking heads in Peck’s film, no experts spelling out the relevance of an author who died in 1950. Instead, he draws from the writer’s letters and diaries, as well as the longer-form works like the barnyard political allegory “Animal Farm” and the dystopian novel “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” He also weaves in fragments from past screen adaptations of Orwell’s titles, including the 1954 animated “Animal Farm” and Michael Radford’s stark, desaturated adaptation of “Nineteen Eighty-Four” starring John Hurt, cross-cutting them with current images of drone wars, surveillance and algorithmic control.

A scene from the documentary “Orwell: 2+2=5.”

(Velvet Film)

“Raoul has been unbelievably thorough,” says narrator Lewis via Zoom from his home in London, where he regularly rides his bike past one of Orwell’s former residences. “The film is dense in the best way, thick with ideas and images. You come out of it feeling like you’ve been through something important.”

Lewis, who delivers Orwell’s words with a steely intensity that builds toward alarm, says his warnings have only grown more urgent.

“I read recently that about 37% of countries in the world are now categorized as not free,” he adds. “That’s getting dangerously close to half the planet. What Raoul’s film captures — and what Orwell saw so clearly — is how authoritarian ideas don’t arrive overnight. They creep up on us, little by little, as words like ‘democracy’ get redefined to mean whatever those in power want them to mean.”

Peck’s filmmaking has long blurred the line between art and activism. Born in Haiti, he fled with his family from François Duvalier’s dictatorship in 1961 and grew up in what was then the Republic of the Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), where his father worked for the United Nations. After studying engineering and economics in Berlin, he returned home to serve as Haiti’s minister of culture in the 1990s. His breakthrough, the Oscar-nominated 2016 film “I Am Not Your Negro,” channeled James Baldwin’s words to examine race and power in America and the country’s uneasy reckoning with its past. He continued that exploration in HBO’s “Exterminate All the Brutes” (2021), tracing the myths of empire and white supremacy that shape the modern world.

“If I can’t mix politics and art, I probably wouldn’t make a project,” Peck says. “That’s what Orwell himself said — ‘Animal Farm’ was the first time he was really trying to link politics with art. And that’s what I’ve been trying to do all my life as a filmmaker.”

Few writers have been more quoted — or misquoted — than Orwell. Decades after coining ideas such as Newspeak (state-controlled language) and doublethink (the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs at once), he’s been claimed by every side: Fear-mongering politicians cite him, pundits weaponize him, partisans wield “Orwellian” as shorthand for whatever offends them most. Even President Trump recently praised Orwell in the same breath as Shakespeare and Dickens at a state banquet at Windsor Castle.

Asked what Orwell would make of that, Peck gives a small, mirthless laugh.

“He would probably faintly smile,” he says. “Because that’s exactly what he wrote about — how thought corrupts language and language corrupts thought. We’re living doublespeak now in an exponential way, the bully using the words of justice and peace while bombing people at the same moment. It’s so absurd. That’s why I feel so close to him. Coming from Haiti, I learned very early that what politicians were saying never matched my reality.”

George Orwell, author of “1984” and “Animal Farm,” whose warnings about power and language echo through the timely documentary “Orwell: 2+2=5.”

(Associated Press)

Peck came to the project warily. “Honestly, I wasn’t sure I wanted to touch Orwell,” he admits. “Where I come from, Orwell had been turned into a kind of Cold War mascot.” Raised under Mobutu Sese Seko’s U.S.-backed regime in what became Zaire and later educated in America and Europe, he was keenly aware of how Orwell’s legacy had been co-opted, from the CIA’s funding of the 1954 animated “Animal Farm” to the deployment of his books as Cold War propaganda.

“That was not something that interested me,” Peck says. “I grew up deconstructing everything I was getting from the West, including Hollywood movies.”

Then came a call from his friend, Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker and producer Alex Gibney (“Taxi to the Dark Side”), who was involved with a project that had secured the rights to Orwell’s complete body of work and wanted Peck to direct it.

“How could I say no?” he recalls. “For a filmmaker like me, who loves to dig deep into someone’s mind and work, it was an incredible gift.”

What Peck found wasn’t a prophet or a symbol but a man full of contradictions: a writer wrestling with class, illness and empire, trying to fuse politics and art before his own time ran out. That realization deepened when he came across a photograph of Orwell as a baby in the arms of his Burmese nanny, a white child of the British Empire cradled by the colonized woman charged with his care. Born into what he called the “lower-upper-middle class,” Orwell gradually recognized his own complicity in the system he opposed and came to despise his role as a kind of middle manager in the machinery of oppression.

“His own biography — born in India, sent to Burma as a young soldier, doing what he did there and being ashamed of it — drew him closer to my own experience,” Peck says. “We were from the same world. We saw the same things.”

To embody Orwell, Peck turned to Lewis, also known for “Band of Brothers” and “Homeland.”

“I knew I was telling a story, not making a traditional documentary,” Peck says. “So I needed a great British actor, someone with real stage experience. I knew Damian could bring the presence I wanted — to be Orwell, not imitate him. That was the main direction I gave him: to work from the interior.”

“If we don’t bring rules around AI very rapidly, we won’t be able to put the paste back in the tube,” says filmmaker Raoul Peck. “AI is an instrument and should stay an instrument. That means we’re using it. It’s not using us.”

(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)

Lewis, who had previously voiced Orwell for the international Talking Statues project — an app that lets passersby scan a QR code to hear historical figures “speak” — approached the feature-length performance with similar restraint.

“His language, the rhythm of his prose, dictates the rhythm of delivery,” he says. “Raoul was very clear that it should sound intimate and conversational, not overly formal. That’s what we tried to aim for — something direct, specific, detailed and personal.”

Much of “Orwell: 2+2=5” unfolds like a fever dream, Orwell’s words colliding with scenes from the present, including bombed-out streets in Gaza and Ukraine. “There were too many conflicts to include,” Peck says. “So I had to find the connections — what repeats, how bodies are treated, how power behaves.”

In one of the film’s most charged moments, Peck turns Orwell’s warning about political language into a montage of modern euphemisms: “peacekeeping operations,” “collateral damage,” “illegals” — and then, pointedly, “antisemitism 2024.” He knows the inclusion is provocative but says that’s the point: to show how words can be twisted or emptied of meaning, including in debates over Israel’s war in Gaza.

“Every word is precise,” Peck says. “I don’t say the Jews, I don’t say Israel, I say the Israeli administration. But even then, there’s a reflex — you can’t touch this.”

At Cannes, that moment drew applause. One of Peck’s closest friends — a Jewish writer who, he notes, agrees with him on nearly everything politically — told him later that while she was deeply moved by the film, she’d felt a jolt of fear as the audience clapped.

“We talked about it,” Peck says. “In France today, you can’t touch that term. And for me, that’s the beginning of the end — when you can’t speak your mind.”

He recalls being in New York after 9/11, unable to voice unease about the flag-waving and rush to war. “I cried like everybody else,” he says. “But when, after five days, you’re asked to wave a flag, that’s using your humanity for war. The point is the same — to shut down conversation.”

Peck carries Orwell’s warning into the digital present. The writer’s words play against AI-generated images and voices, echoes of the future he once imagined.

“He wrote about it without knowing it would be called AI,” Peck says. “He said someday you’d be able to write whole books and newspapers with artificial intelligence — exactly what’s happening now.”

For Peck, the technology is the next front in the battle over truth and power. In his film, every AI-generated sound, image and piece of music is clearly labeled with onscreen text.

“There should be transparency about that,” he says. “If we don’t bring rules around AI very rapidly, we won’t be able to put the paste back in the tube. Profit is the only guideline right now — nobody’s controlling its impact, not on energy, not on children, not on schools. AI is an instrument and should stay an instrument. That means we’re using it. It’s not using us.”

Even as “Orwell: 2+2=5” reaches theaters, Peck is already working on two new documentaries, including one about the 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse.

“It’s an incredible geopolitical mess,” he says. “Every day I discover more. I need to go back to fiction for a while — documentaries are exhausting. But I can’t complain. I wish everyone could be as passionate about their work as I am.”

For all its darkness, Peck insists on leaving a sliver of light. He points to Orwell’s line in “Nineteen Eighty-Four”: “If there is hope, it lies in the proles.”

“The civil society is always the one who saved the day — the civilians, the students, the churches, the alliances,” he says. “Like the civil rights movement. Blacks, Jews, whites, churches, everybody sat down around the table and decided to have a strategy. And unfortunately, that’s the only thing we have. It’s long and it’s hard, but that door is still open. It’s us, individually and collectively, who have to make that choice.”

What keeps him going, he says, isn’t optimism so much as duty.

“If I lived completely engulfed in my own bubble, I’d probably be desperate,” he says. “What keeps me grounded is that I still have friends in Congo. I still work with Haiti every day. I talk with journalists who risk their lives in Gaza. So I can’t afford to look at those people and say, ‘I’m tired.’ They’re still doing the work.”

He pauses, his voice tightening. “People laugh at the latest stupidity from the president, as if it’s funny,” he says. “But that’s a dictatorship coming. He’s attacking every institution — newspapers, academia, justice, business. It’s the same playbook. They change the laws first, because most people would rather obey the law than say ‘No, two plus two equals four.’ That’s what authoritarian leaders count on.”

He sits quietly for a moment. “People are waiting for miracles,” he says finally. “But there are no miracles.”

THOUSANDS were left without power after Hurricane Erin battered the Caribbean and hurtled towards the US – with the storm still expected to strengthen.

The hurricane, which is now category 3, brought heavy rainfall and vicious winds to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands on Sunday, cutting power for some 100,000 locals.

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Luma Energy, Puerto Rico’s private power grid operator, revealed that most of its customers on the island had working electricity by Sunday afternoon.

The operator said on X: “As of 5:00 p.m., 92.5% of customers have electrical service.

“The majority of affected customers are concentrated in the regions of Arecibo, Caguas, and San Juan, as the rain bands have been moving out of Puerto Rico.”

They added: “Our crews are working with precision to ensure safety and continuity of service.”

The storm caused “multiple interruptions across the island”, the company said earlier.

Hurricane Erin also saw two divers swept amid powerful waves near St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands.

They had to be rescued by local crews on Sunday, authorities announced.

Shocking footage showed taken by St. Croix Rescue Chief Jason Henry showed the divers being dramatically hauled over onto a boat.

On the island of Sint Maarten, footage showed palm trees swaying in violent winds.

Its local government said cleanup crews were clearing debris since Sunday morning.

A large amount of Sargassum seaweed also reached the shore – which could contain harmful toxins poisonous to people and marine life.

Erin has been labelled category 3 after multiple fluctuations in the last several days.

On Saturday it was considered to be a catastrophic category 5 hurricane.

Outer bands are continuing to sweep over Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, pummelling coasts with heavy rain and strong winds.

Rainfall was recorded between two and four inches.

Up to six inches is likely to fall in some areas.

Fears are mounting that this could lead to flash flooding or mudslides.

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As of 5pm local time on Sunday, Erin was 275 miles north-northwest of San Juan, Puerto Rico.

It had maximum sustained winds of 125mph, and is reportedly currently moving west.

Puerto Rico Governor Jenniffer González-Colón warned residents to stay home if possible.

There are no reports of flooding on the island so far – but the worst weather is expected to impact the region within the next six hours, officials said.

Terrifying footage on X also showed heavy rain falling in Cidra in central Puerto Rico on Sunday.

The hurricane is expected to strengthen in the next two days before taking a north-ward turn on Monday and Tuesday.

The storm is then forecast to gradually weaken through the middle and latter half of next week as it passes between the US and Bermuda.

Tropical storm warnings have been issued in Turks and Caicos and the southeast Bahamas, according to authorities.

In Sierra Bayamón, Puerto Rico, a suspension insulator broke and a conductor fell to the ground because of the stormy weather.

Luma Energy also advised the public to avoid walking or driving through flooded areas, especially near downed power lines.

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Japan reports one death during coastal evacuation but cancels warning across the country by Thursday afternoon.

Japan’s weather office has lifted a tsunami advisory imposed a day earlier, becoming one of the last countries to rescind the emergency order after one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded hit Russia’s Far East.

The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) issued a statement lifting the advisory on Thursday, as fears of a deadly disaster subsided across the Pacific, including the United States’s West Coast and several Latin American countries, allowing millions to return to their homes.

Storm surges of up to 4 metres (12 feet) were predicted for some parts of the Pacific, after the magnitude 8.8 quake struck off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula on Wednesday. Ultimately, the tsunamis produced by the earthquake were weaker than had been feared.

“There is currently no coastal area for which tsunami warnings or advisories are in force,” the Japanese agency announced on Thursday afternoon (07:45 GMT).

Almost two million people had been ordered to higher ground in Japan before the warnings were downgraded to an advisory for large stretches of its Pacific coast, with waves up to 0.7 metres still being observed earlier on Thursday.

The highest recorded waves of about 1.3 metres were observed in Kuji, Iwate Prefecture, on Wednesday afternoon, according to Japan’s public broadcaster NHK.

The only reported death from the tsunamis was a woman killed when her car fell off a cliff in Japan as she tried to escape on Wednesday, Japanese media reported.

Separately, 11 people were taken to hospital after developing symptoms of heatstroke while taking shelter in hot weather, with temperatures rising to about 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) in some places.

In Chile, the country’s disaster response agency Senapred has downgraded its warning from “alert” to “state of precaution” in at least four areas early on Thursday.

The country had conducted what the interior ministry said was “perhaps the most massive evacuation ever carried out in our country” with 1.4 million people ordered to high ground after the earthquake on Wednesday.

Earlier, Chilean authorities reported no damage or victims and registered waves of just 60 centimetres (two feet) on the country’s north coast.

In the Galapagos Islands, where waves of up to three metres were expected, there was relief as the Ecuadorian Navy’s oceanographic institute said the danger had passed.

Residents reported the sea level falling and then rising suddenly, a phenomenon which is commonly seen with the arrival of a tsunami.

But a surge of just over a metre was reported, causing no damage.

In the US, the country’s National Weather Service originally issued tsunami “warnings” for Hawaii, Alaska’s Aleutian Islands and parts of California, as well as lower-level tsunami advisories for parts of Washington and Oregon. A less serious tsunami watch was in place for the entire US West Coast.

However, the threat level for Alaska and the Hawaiian Islands was later downgraded from a warning to an advisory, meaning that people who had evacuated can now return to their homes.

The worst damage was seen in Russia, where a tsunami crashed through the port of Severo-Kurilsk and submerged the local fishing plant, officials said.

Russian state television footage showed buildings and debris swept into the sea.

The surge of water reached as far as the town’s World War II monument about 400 metres from the shoreline, said Mayor Alexander Ovsyannikov.

Russian scientists reported that the Klyuchevskoy volcano erupted shortly after the earthquake.

Wednesday’s quake was the strongest in the Kamchatka region since 1952, the regional seismic monitoring service said, warning of aftershocks of up to a magnitude of 7.5.

The US Geological Survey said the quake was one of the 10 strongest tremors recorded since 1900.

Authorities warn of intensifying conditions and heightened disaster risks in the coming days.

A landslide triggered by unusually heavy rain has killed four people and left eight others missing in northern China’s Hebei province, state media report, as authorities issue flood warnings in capital Beijing and at least 11 provinces.

The landslide in a village near Chengde city was “due to heavy rainfall”, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Monday.

Authorities relocated more than 4,400 people as relentless rain continued to pound the suburban area of Miyun in Beijing, causing flash floods and landslides, affecting many villages, CCTV said.

Images circulated on China’s WeChat app showed areas of Miyun where cars and trucks were floating on a flooded road, and residential buildings were submerged. Electricity cuts also affected more than 10,000 people in the area, CCTV said.

Northern China has seen record precipitation in recent years, exposing densely populated cities, including Beijing, to flood risks. Some scientists link the increased rainfall in China’s usually arid north to global warming.

The Central Meteorological Observatory said heavy rainfall would continue to drench northern China over the next three days. The Water Resources Ministry has issued targeted flood warnings in 11 provinces and regions.

Beijing issued its highest-level flood alert on Monday, the official Xinhua news agency said. The national emergency management department said it dispatched a team to inspect the “severe” flooding in Hebei, which encircles Beijing.

In Shanxi province, videos from state media showed roads filled with water and submerged vegetation, including crops and trees. The province, home to China’s historic city of Xian, also issued flash flood disaster risk warnings on Monday.

The storms are part of the broader pattern of extreme weather across China due to the East Asian monsoon, which has caused disruptions in the world’s second-largest economy.

China’s National Development and Reform Commission said on Monday it was urgently arranging 50 million yuan ($7m) to support Hebei, Xinhua reported. The funds would be used to repair damaged roads and bridges, water conservancy embankments, schools and hospitals in the disaster area.

Natural disasters are common across China, particularly in the summer when some regions experience heavy rain while others bake in searing heatwaves.

Flash floods in eastern China’s Shandong province killed two people and left 10 missing this month. A landslide on a highway in Sichuan province this month also killed five people after it swept several cars down a mountainside.

Residents of Maiduguri, capital of Borno State, North East Nigeria, who live near the Alau Dam and its downstream channel, are in a state of confusion, grappling with conflicting government directives on the dam’s water release. The mixed messages are sparking widespread concern over potential flood risks.

The conflicting messages from these two key government bodies have left residents uncertain about the immediate danger and the appropriate course of action. While the Chad Basin Development Authority (CBDA) suggests a controlled release of the dam that shouldn’t cause panic, the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) is demanding immediate evacuation, indicating a potentially serious flood threat.

“We really don’t know which warning or advisory to follow now,” said Yunus Isa, a resident whose house was submerged in the devastating September flood last year. “I hope we will not be left in the darkness about reality until it is too late.”

The September flood resulted from the breakdown of the Alau Dam after years of neglect and warnings that the flood would happen. It swept through several local government areas of Borno State and affected about one million residents, according to the emergency management agency. HumAngle investigations found money trails that were allocated to the repair of the dam over the years, yet the repairs never happened.

This Wednesday, the CBDA announced the opening of the Alau Dam’s spillway gates to release water downstream. In a special announcement, they tried to calm fears, stating, “The general public should note that the spillway gates of the Alau Dam have been opened for water in the reservoir to spill downstream steadily… people, especially those living within the River Ngadda and Gwange area, should not panic by seeing the water passing through its normal way.” 

CBDA’s Executive Director for Engineering, Engr. Mohammed Shettima, who signed the statement, added that the authority would keep monitoring the dam’s activities until water levels recede.

However, SEMA has issued an urgent public notice concerning the dam’s water release with a stern directive: “Evacuate Immediately: All communities and individuals living or working near the Gadabul River and its tributaries must relocate to higher ground without delay.” SEMA further cautioned against approaching riverbanks, citing “strong currents and sudden surges” as “life-threatening hazards,” and advised residents to secure property and stay informed through local media.

When contacted for clarity, Borno State Permanent Secretary for Information and Internal Security, Aminu Chamalwa, stated that his ministry has reviewed both press statements and will address the matter on Friday to prevent any miscommunication.

The current confusion over the Alau Dam’s water release comes nearly a year after its catastrophic collapse and months after the Federal Government inaugurated a significant reconstruction project. The Federal Ministry of Water Resources and Sanitation held a groundbreaking ceremony in March this year for a crucial ₦80 billion project to reconstruct, dredge, and upgrade the vital infrastructure. However, despite that formal flag-off, nearly 120 days later, no significant work has reportedly been done on the dam.