A bridge collapse at a mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has killed at least 80 workers. Witnesses said security forces at the mine triggered a stampede when they fired gunshots that caused panic. The military has made no comment. The incident caused outrage over unsafe mining in the DRC.
Former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has been convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by a special tribunal in Dhaka. Hasina, who is in exile in India, was tried in absentia on several charges related to her government’s deadly crackdown on student protests in 2024.
Prosecuting Hasina was a key promise made by the interim government, which is led by the Nobel laureate, Muhammad Yunus.
Here is more about Monday’s verdict, and what happens next:
The special International Crimes Tribunal 1 (ICT) in Dhaka has found Hasina guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced her to death.
The independent ICT was originally set up by Hasina herself in 2010 to investigate crimes against humanity committed during the 1971 war, which resulted in Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan. However, it has been criticised in the past by human rights organisations and her opponents who have accused her of using it for politically motivated purposes while she was in power.
In particular, Hasina has been sentenced to death after being found guilty of the charge of ordering the deployment of drones, helicopters and lethal weapons against protesters, and “by virtue of her order” the killings of protesters in Chankarpul of Dhaka and in Ashulia of Savar. Twelve protesters were killed in these two areas.
“Accused prime minister Sheikh Hasina committed crimes against humanity by her incitement order and also failure to take preventive and punitive measures under charge 1,” the verdict stated.
“Accused Sheikh Hasina committed one count of crimes against humanity by her order to use drones, helicopters and lethal weapons under charge number 2,” the court said.
Additionally, the tribunal also issued a separate sentence of imprisonment until death on three other counts: incitement against protesters, issuing an order to kill them and failure to prevent the atrocities and take punitive action against the perpetrators.
Former Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan, who was on trial alongside Hasina, has also been sentenced to death. Former police chief Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun, who also faced charges, has been sentenced to five years in prison.
Al-Mamun was shown leniency due to his cooperation with the trial proceedings. He provided “material evidence to the tribunal to arrive at the correct decision”, the court said.
While Hasina and Khan, who is also thought to be in India but whose whereabouts are unclear, were tried in absentia, Al-Mamun was present at the tribunal.
The court added: “The government is directed to pay considerable amount of compensation to the protesters concerned in this case, who have been killed in the July movement 2024 and also to take measures, to pay adequate compensation to the wounded protesters, in consideration of the gravity of their injury and loss.” It is unclear who would be expected to pay this compensation, however.
The verdict can be appealed to the Supreme Court.
It is unclear whether Hasina and Khan will be returned to Bangladesh to face justice.
Bangladesh and India signed an extradition treaty in 2013. However, the treaty says: “Extradition may be refused if the offence of which it is requested is an offence of a political character.”
India has close ties to Hasina and has not formally responded to Dhaka’s previous demands for extradition.
“Under no circumstances is India going to extradite her,” Sreeradha Datta, a professor specialising in South Asian Studies at India’s Jindal Global University, told Al Jazeera. “We saw in the last year and a half that relationships between India and Bangladesh are not at their best and have been fragile at many occasions.”
However, Ishrat Hossain, an international relations expert and associate at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, told Al Jazeera the verdict would help Bangladesh’s case in recovering Hasina and Khan.
“Politically and legally, the verdict strengthens Bangladesh’s hand in pressing India to extradite Sheikh Hasina, who fled there after the collapse of her government,” he said. “It also signals that the interim authorities intend to pursue accountability beyond symbolic gestures. Socially, this is an important early step toward acknowledging the suffering of survivors and the families of those killed under Hasina’s watch, even if full justice remains a distant prospect.
“Holding the perpetrators of the police-led brutality during Bangladesh’s 2024 uprising, where nearly 1,400 people were killed, has been a central priority of the interim administration.”
Hasina called the verdict “politically motivated”, the AFP news agency reported.
“The verdicts announced against me have been made by a rigged tribunal established and presided over by an unelected government with no democratic mandate. They are biased and politically motivated,” she said from India.
“I am not afraid to face my accusers in a proper tribunal where evidence can be weighed and tested fairly.”
Hasina, 78, is the daughter of Bangladesh’s founding father, former President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. After a 1971 war, Bangladesh declared independence and split from Pakistan.
In 1975, Rahman was assassinated in a military coup, ushering in a period of military and quasi-military rule.
Hasina led a pro-democracy uprising that ousted military ruler Hussain Muhammad Ershad in 1990. Hasina came to power in 1996 as leader of the now-banned Awami League party. The Awami League, founded in 1949, is a centre-left party with roots in Bengali nationalism and secularism. The party receives strong backing from those who supported the 1971 war.
Her first term as prime minister ended in 2001 after her party lost the general election to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by Khaleda Zia. Hasina became prime minister again in 2009 and remained in the position for 15 years until August 2024 when student protests forced her out of power and she fled to India. Bangladesh does not have a set constitutional term limit for premiers.
Since Hasina was deposed, Bangladesh has been led by an interim government under Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus. Elections for a new parliament are expected to take place in early 2026.
In May, the interim government revoked the Awami League’s registration and prohibited its political activities, citing national security concerns and ongoing war crimes investigations against senior members.
On July 1, 2024, Bangladeshis led mostly by students and other young people took to the streets to protest against a High Court decision to reinstate a policy reserving one-third of civil service positions for descendants of those who fought in the 1971 war.
By July 19, the protests had escalated, a telecommunications blackout was imposed and the army was deployed to crack down on protesters. Student protesters were also attacked by Awami League’s student wing, the Bangladesh Chhatra League. Thousands of students fought with armed police in Dhaka, and about 1,400 people were killed, according to estimates by the United Nations.
The tribunal heard ample evidence that Hasina’s forces were ordered to fire on unarmed protesters.
During its own investigations since then, Al Jazeera also discovered secret phone call recordings in which Hasina “issued an open order” to “use lethal weapons” on students protesting against her government’s policies last year and shoot “wherever they find them”.
The ICT has three members and was headed by a retired district court judge, Justice Golam Murtaza Mazumdar.
In December, the Awami League criticised Mazumdar’s appointment as chairman of the tribunal in an X post, saying: “Golam Murtaza Mazumdar retired in 2019 and has not served as a judge for five years. Despite this, he has been elevated to the status of an appellate division judge as the Tribunal’s chairman.”
The other two members of the tribunal were Mohitul Haque Enam Chowdhury and Shofiul Alam Mahmood.
Even though the tribunal was established by Hasina herself, members of her party have called it a “kangaroo court”, a derogatory term for a court or tribunal that ignores recognised standards of law and justice, often delivering predetermined or biased outcomes.
In October 2024, the ICT issued an arrest warrant for Hasina and 45 others, including former ministers.
“The court has … ordered the arrest of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina and to produce her in court on November 18,” Mohammad Tajul Islam, the ICT’s chief prosecutor, told reporters in October 2024.
“Sheikh Hasina was at the helm of those who committed massacres, killings and crimes against humanity in July to August,” he added.
A state lawyer was appointed to defend Hasina and the two others on trial.
In October 2024, Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a letter urging the interim government to amend the International Crimes (Tribunal) Act to ensure a fair and impartial judicial process.
An HRW statement alleged that the tribunal has “previously been fraught with violations of fair trial standards. This included failure of evidence gathering, lack of independence of judges including collusion with prosecutors, witness tampering, denying proper rights to defense, forcibly disappearing relatives of the accused, and the use of the death penalty.”
HRW urged the interim government to suspend and work to abolish the death penalty in line with international human rights standards, amend laws to safeguard due process rights of the accused and establish a well-resourced witness and victim protection unit capable of safeguarding individuals and their families before, during and after testimony.
Arrest warrants for Hasina and Khan were again issued in June after the pair failed to appear before the tribunal in November 2024. They were formally charged on July 10. Al-Mamun pleaded guilty on the same day and agreed to become a state witness, agreeing to testify for the prosecution.
Testimony was heard from August 3 to October 8. Final arguments concluded between October 12 and October 23.
The tribunal examined a trove of evidence against Hasina: 14 volumes of documents spanning about 10,000 pages, including official reports, medical and postmortem records, ballistic data, flight logs and media footage; 93 documentary exhibits and 32 physical exhibits, such as ammunition, clothing, recordings and field reports; and testimony from more than 80 witnesses, including survivors, doctors, organisers and investigators with 54 testifying in court.
Security was tightened in Dhaka before Monday’s verdict, especially around the ICT and the surrounding Supreme Court area. Police and paramilitary forces – including the Rapid Action Battalion, Border Guard Bangladesh and army units – were deployed.
A “shoot-at-sight” order was issued for anyone engaged in arson, attacks involving explosives or violence before the verdict in Dhaka and other parts of Bangladesh.
“This decision marks a significant inflection point in Bangladeshi politics, one that could trigger heightened volatility in the run-up to the February 2026 national election,” Hossain told Al Jazeera.
Hossain said that while the Awami League is now banned from participating in elections, the party retains a large, deeply embedded activist base that is likely to mobilise, potentially through disruptive and violent protests.
“Such confrontations risk re-creating the same patterns of repression and lethal force used by the law enforcers that the interim government now seeks to adjudicate.”
Crucially, however, about 15 million Bangladeshis living abroad, many of whom came out to protest in solidarity with the students in 2024 – often risking imprisonment in the countries they live in – have now been given the means to vote by post for the first time. Many analysts think their votes could sway elections because they now account for about 10 percent of the nation’s electorate.
Hossain said instability is likely in the short term but it is unclear what will happen in the long term.
Dozens of Indian Muslims are reported to have been killed as a bus carrying them between pilgrimage sites in Saudi Arabia crashed.
The bus, which was reportedly carrying 46 people, collided with a diesel tanker on a highway as it travelled from the holy city of Mecca to Medina overnight on Monday.
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Indian media reports have not confirmed the death toll, but one official reported that up to 45 people – many from the southern Indian state of Telangana, had perished.
Diplomats and politicians expressed their condolences over the “tragic” incident.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote on social media that he was “deeply saddened”, that his “thoughts are with the families who have lost their loved ones”, and that he was praying “for the swift recovery of all those injured”.
The Indian consulate in Jeddah said a control room has been set up to provide helplines.
Deeply saddened by the accident in Medinah involving Indian nationals. My thoughts are with the families who have lost their loved ones. I pray for the swift recovery of all those injured. Our Embassy in Riyadh and Consulate in Jeddah are providing all possible assistance. Our…
Vishwanath Channappa Sajjanar, police chief of Hyderabad, capital of Telangana, told a news conference: “There were 46 people in the bus and one passenger survived with injuries.”
Most of the victims were from two families, he added. The injured passenger was named as Mohammed Shoaib.
The police are in contact with the travel agency through which the pilgrims had travelled to Saudi Arabia, Sajjanar continued.
Transporting worshippers around Saudi Arabia’s holy sites has sometimes proven dangerous, particularly during the Hajj, when roads can be chaotic with buses creating interminable traffic jams.
Millions also visit Saudi Arabia for the Umrah pilgrimage, which happens at any time outside the Hajj period.
In March 2023, a bus carrying pilgrims to Mecca burst into flames after a collision on a bridge, killing 20 people and injuring more than two dozen.
In October 2019, 35 were killed and four injured when a bus collided with another heavy vehicle near Medina.
Pilgrimages are an essential component of Saudi Arabia’s burgeoning tourism sector that officials hope will help diversify the kingdom’s economy away from fossil fuels.
The Gulf kingdom is also home to more than two million Indian nationals who have long played a pivotal role in its labour market, helping construct many of the country’s mega-projects while sending billions of dollars in remittances back home each year.
Saudi Arabia and India have fostered a close relationship for decades.
In the latest episode of the soap opera that passes for politics in the United States, President Donald Trump has dramatically split with Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a former ally and a notorious wearer of the MAGA hat.
Writing on his Truth Social platform on Friday, Trump denounced his fellow Republican as “wacky” and “Far Left”, claiming that he did not have time to deal with her alleged barrage of phone calls: “I can’t take a ranting Lunatic’s call every day.”
As The New York Times noted, Trump had previously “stood by” Greene when she was criticised “for voicing conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11 attacks, school shootings and wildfires started by space lasers”.
Anyway, nothing “Lunatic” about any of that.
Greene denies having called the president, saying instead that she had texted him to suggest that he cease endeavouring to thwart the full release of the so-called Epstein files pertaining to the late paedophile and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, which may implicate Trump.
The US House of Representatives is set to vote this week on the matter – and Greene is not the only Republican to have broken ranks. Several other House Republicans have also defied Trump on the Epstein front, including Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Lauren Boebert of Colorado.
In a typical about-face, Trump has now spontaneously reversed his position on the Epstein files, posting on Truth Social late on Sunday: “House Republicans should vote to release the Epstein files, because we have nothing to hide.”
And yet the Epstein files are hardly the only issue that raises the question of whether MAGA might not be headed for some sort of self-combustion.
As Trump recently reminded Americans, “Don’t forget, MAGA was my idea. MAGA was nobody else’s idea.”
And so it’s only logical that folks would associate the distinct failure to “make America great again” with the idea man himself.
Outright propaganda can only go so far – and people tend to notice when they don’t have enough money to put food on the table in spite of upbeat presidential pronouncements regarding the state of the economy.
Even Trump has apparently realised, to some extent, that he stands to further alienate his base by insisting on nonsensical tariffs and other punitive financial measures. As a nonsolution, the government will now lower tariffs on coffee and bananas while the president muses over potential $2,000 tariff rebate cheques and 50-year mortgages.
A November 14 White House news release blamed the Democrats for the country’s “economic mess” but assured citizens that “grocery prices and housing prices are trending in the right direction” with prices “for everyday staples” such as ice cream seeing “declines”.
The news release ended on the inspiring note: “We’re making progress – and the best is yet to come.”
In addition to the cost-of-living crisis, another source of rising discontent among Republicans is US support for Israel. In July, Greene became the first Republican lawmaker to call the genocide in the Gaza Strip by name, condemning the “starvation” of Palestinians.
To be sure, US aid to Israel is not just a Republican thing; Trump’s Democratic predecessor Joe Biden was more than happy to fling tens of billions of dollars at the genocidal state as it went about starving and otherwise annihilating civilians in Gaza.
The Trump administration, however, has added a slight twist to business as usual by not only backing Israel to the hilt but also simultaneously threatening to starve poor Americans at home by withholding essential food assistance.
But, hey, at least the price of ice cream is “declining”.
Last week, two days before his official breakup with Greene, Trump took to Truth Social to warn that “only a very bad, or stupid Republican would fall into” the Democratic “trap” of the “Jeffrey Epstein Hoax”, allegedly concocted purely to detract attention from the Democrats’ wide-ranging transgressions.
But it seems that an ever-greater number of MAGA adherents may be at risk of descending into badness and stupidity as Trump reveals himself to be maybe not the most qualified person to “drain the swamp in Washington, DC” – one of the president’s perennial promises to do away with corruption and other traditional political vices.
Indeed, Trump’s apoplectic fits over the possible release of details regarding Epstein – ie, someone who was very much entrenched in said “swamp” – do not bode well in terms of drainage prospects.
Then again, the fact that Americans re-elected a nepotistic billionaire and convicted criminal to head the country suggests that the swamp probably isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
On a micro level, the intra-MAGA soap opera may provide some fleeting gratification for spectators. But it’s not like the drama sets the stage for any substantive improvement to the political panorama.
And while opposing Trump is, objectively speaking, a noble aim, we don’t really need any more people who think space lasers cause wildfires and compare pandemic safety measures to the Holocaust. Nor, for that matter, do we need any more genocide-enabling Democrats, who at the end of the day are just as committed as Republicans to maintaining a corrupt plutocracy.
Blind and unquestioning support for the president may be eroding among his MAGA base. But rest assured that the swamp is here to stay.
The Sudan army is holding on to its last stronghold in West Kordofan as the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) pushes to take control of the province east of Darfur.
The army said on Sunday it had repelled an attack against its headquarters in the town of Babnusa, which has been under repeated attacks from the RSF.
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The paramilitary force has been pushing eastwards in recent weeks, having solidified control in Darfur. The RSF campaign continues to incur reports of mass atrocities and a desperate humanitarian situation.
On Saturday, RSF fighters released several videos from inside Babnusa. Several were shown claiming they were advancing along multiple axes and would soon “liberate” the area.
A comparison of satellite images taken between September 9 and November 13 by Al Jazeera revealed that the RSF offensive in Babnusa had seriously damaged a number of army facilities, with thick smoke rising from within the headquarters.
The images also showed signs of drone targeting and extensive damage to several facilities surrounding the headquarters, with repeated shelling destroying much of the infrastructure and restricting the army’s movements within the area.
However, more recent footage circulating online, which has been verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking agency, showed soldiers with the 22nd Division of the Sudanese army in Babnusa celebrating the capture of armoured vehicles left behind by retreating RSF fighters.
Intense battles are expected to continue across the Kordofan region in central Sudan over the coming weeks, with the RSF and government forces ignoring a ceasefire proposal presented by the United States and regional stakeholders.
In North Kordofan, the RSF is pushing to take the strategic city of el-Obeid, home to a major army airbase and a buffer for the capital, Khartoum.
The government forces, which have been fighting the RSF since the civil war broke out in April 2023, announced on Saturday that their soldiers had recaptured Kazqil and Um Dam Haj Ahmed in North Kordofan.
The RSF also has its sights on Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan.
The outcome of the current fighting in Kordofan will largely shape the course of future military operations, according to Colonel Hatem Karim al-Falahi, a military expert who spoke to Al Jazeera.
He said the army’s ability to protect strategic cities such as Babnusa will have a significant effect on Sudan’s military and regional balance in the weeks ahead, so the army has been trying to strengthen defensive lines and conduct airdrops and other forms of air assistance.
While the fighting continues, the humanitarian situation remains catastrophic in RSF-dominated parts of the country to the west.
In the aftermath of last month’s fall of el-Fasher, the last stronghold of government forces in Darfur, after 18 months of siege, reports of hunger, displacement and atrocities committed against civilians have become increasingly urgent.
Sudan Doctors Network said in a statement on Sunday that it had confirmed 32 cases of rape among girls coming from el-Fasher just over the past week.
The victims arrived in the nearby town of Tawila and recounted being raped either in el-Fasher or on the way out by RSF fighters.
Speaking to Al Jazeera from Tawila, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Tom Fletcher described “unimaginable suffering”.
Iranian-born author and professor Trita Parsi joins Centre Stage to unpack the tumultuous history between the US and Iran, Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its role as a strategic player in an increasingly divided world. He also breaks down Tehran’s relationships with groups like Hezbollah and Hamas and how those alliances have shaped its regional position.