Category World News

Britain’s public broadcaster, the BBC, has apologised to Donald Trump for editing a speech to make it look like he had advocated violence, seeking to ward off the United States president’s threat of legal action.

But in a statement on Thursday, the broadcaster rejected the basis for a defamation claim.

The BBC said its chair, Samir Shah, sent a personal letter to the White House, making clear to Trump that he and the corporation were “sorry” for how his speech was edited in a documentary for Panorama, a current affairs show.

It added that the broadcaster has no plans to rebroadcast the documentary on any of its platforms.

“While the BBC sincerely regrets the manner in which the video clip was edited, we strongly disagree there is a basis for a defamation claim,” the BBC said.

A third-party production company made the documentary film, called Trump: A Second Chance?, which spliced together three quotes from two sections of a speech Trump delivered on January 6, 2021.

But the two sections of the speech were delivered almost an hour apart. Critics argued that the documentary edited the separate lines into what appeared to be one quote, in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell”.

Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.

Following Trump’s speech, thousands of his supporters would march on the US Capitol and storm the building, in an apparent attempt to disrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost.

The documentary Trump: A Second Chance? was broadcast days before the 2024 presidential election, which Trump won.

Trump’s lawyers had told the BBC to withdraw the Panorama programme, apologise to the president and appropriately compensate him for the harm caused, or face a lawsuit seeking damages of at least $1bn.

They accused the documentary of containing “false, defamatory, disparaging, misleading or inflammatory statements” about Trump.

The Telegraph newspaper recently published leaked accusations of “systemic bias” at the BBC, which has further fuelled the controversy.

Director-General Tim Davie, along with news chief Deborah Turness, quit on Sunday, saying the scandal was damaging the BBC.

In a statement, Turness wrote that, “as the CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs, the buck stops with me”.

Davie, meanwhile, used his departure to emphasise that the BBC “continues to be admired as a gold standard” in journalism.

“Overall the BBC is delivering well, but there have been some mistakes made and as director general I have to take ultimate responsibility,” he wrote in his farewell.

The accusations at the BBC have put the broadcaster at risk of having to use money paid by its viewers to compensate the US president for an error of its own making.

That, critics say, could hand more ammunition to the BBC’s detractors, at a time when growing numbers are cancelling their annual licence fee payment.

Legal experts have said that Trump would face challenges taking his case against the BBC to court in the United Kingdom or the US. They said that the BBC could show that Trump wasn’t harmed because he was ultimately elected president in 2024.

Deadlines to bring the case in English courts, where defamation damages rarely exceed 100,000 pounds ($132,000), expired more than a year ago. Because the documentary was not shown in the US, it would be hard to show that US citizens thought less of him because of a programme they could not watch.

While many legal experts have dismissed the president’s claims against the media as having little merit, he has won some lucrative settlements against US media companies, and he could try to leverage the BBC mistake for a payout, potentially to a charity of his choice.

An Israeli settler arson attack on a mosque in the occupied West Bank has drawn international condemnation, as a wave of intensified violence against Palestinians continues unabated across the area.

Israeli settlers set fire to the Hajja Hamida Mosque in the Palestinian village of Deir Istiya, near Salfit in the north of the West Bank, around dawn on Thursday, local residents told Al Jazeera.

Photographs taken at the scene showed racist, anti-Palestinian slogans sprayed on the walls of the mosque, which was damaged in the blaze. Copies of the Quran – the Islamic holy book – were also burned.

The Palestinian Ministry of Religious Endowments and Affairs condemned what it said was a “heinous crime” that highlights “the barbarity” with which Israel treats Muslim and Christian holy sites in the occupied Palestinian territory.

Separately, two Palestinian children were killed on Thursday when Israeli forces opened fire during a raid in the town of Beit Ummar, near Hebron in the southern West Bank, the Wafa news agency reported.

The violence comes amid a record-setting number of Israeli settler and military attacks on Palestinians across the West Bank so far this year, with many of the assaults taking place in the context of the 2025 olive harvest.

At least 167 settler attacks related to the olive harvest were reported since October 1, the United Nations’ humanitarian agency (OCHA) said in its latest update this week. More than 150 Palestinians have been injured in those assaults, while more than 5,700 trees have also been damaged.

Experts say Israeli attacks in the West Bank have increased in the shadow of Israel’s war on Gaza, which has killed more than 69,000 Palestinians in the coastal enclave since October 2023.

They also come as members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government are pushing to formally annex the area. Rights groups say Israel already maintains a system of de facto annexation and apartheid in the West Bank.

The UN human rights office warned in July that the settler violence was being carried out “with the acquiescence, support, and in some cases participation, of Israeli security forces”.

Settler and military attacks, it said, “are part of a broader and coordinated strategy of the State of Israel to expand and consolidate annexation of the occupied West Bank, while reinforcing its system of discrimination, oppression and control over Palestinians there”.

‘Completely unacceptable’

Thursday’s attack on the mosque in Deir Istiya prompted an outpouring of international condemnation.

A spokesman for UN chief Antonio Guterres said the international body was “deeply disturbed” by the assault. “Such attacks on places of worship are completely unacceptable,” Stephane Dujarric told reporters during a briefing at the UN headquarters in New York.

“We have and will continue to condemn attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians and their property in the West Bank,” Dujarric said.

“Israel, as the occupying power, has a responsibility to protect the civilian population and ensure that those responsible for these attacks, including this attack on a mosque and the spray-painting of horrendous language on the mosque, be brought to account.”

Jordan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also “strongly condemned” the rise in Israeli settler attacks, according to a statement shared by the Palestinian news agency Wafa.

A Jordan Foreign Ministry spokesman described the violence as “an extension of the Israeli government’s extremist policies and inflammatory rhetoric that fuel violence and extremism against the Palestinian people”.

Germany, which has faced criticism for defending Israel amid the Gaza war, also called for a halt to settler violence, saying the “incidents must be thoroughly investigated and those responsible held accountable”.

The Swiss Foreign Ministry likewise said recent Israeli arson attacks in the West Bank “are unacceptable”. “This violence and the continued expansion of illegal settlements must stop,” it said in a statement.

Palestinians have urged world leaders to go beyond words, however, and take concrete action against Israel amid the wave of violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including by ending weapons transfers to the Israeli military.

In a separate incident last week, Israeli settlers set fire to a Palestinian home in the village of Khirbet Abu Falah, near Ramallah, while a family was inside, the UN’s humanitarian office reported.

Israeli settler violence targeting Palestinians in the occupied West Bank is at its highest level on record, according to the UN. Settlers are destroying mosques, dairy facilities, and attacking olive farmers in hundreds of attacks that are terrifying families and disrupting everyday life.

Officials have recovered the remains of all 20 people who were killed when a Turkish C-130 cargo plane crashed near the Georgia-Azerbaijan border Tuesday.