Category World News

US President Donald Trump has threatened to sue the BBC for $1bn over an edited clip that has plunged the broadcaster into a public relations crisis and prompted the resignations of two top executives.

In a letter sent to the BBC, Trump’s legal team has demanded the retraction of “false, defamatory, disparaging, misleading, and inflammatory statements” contained in a Panorama documentary aired a week before the 2024 US presidential election.

The letter, written by Trump lawyer Alejandro Brito, gives the BBC until Friday to provide a “full and fair” retraction of the documentary and “appropriately compensate President Trump for the harm caused”, or face legal action in the US state of Florida.

“The BBC is on notice. PLEASE GOVERN YOURSELF ACCORDINGLY,” says the letter, which was widely circulated on social media.

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

The documentary, titled Trump: A Second Chance?, has been mired in controversy since the leak of an internal memo that criticised producers for editing Trump’s remarks to make it appear that he had directly encouraged the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol.

In the documentary, Trump is shown saying, “We fight like hell”, directly after telling supporters, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol”.

Trump had actually followed his comments about going to the Capitol with a remark about cheering on “our brave senators and congressmen and women”, and made his “fight like hell” comment nearly an hour later.

The memo, written by Michael Prescott, a former adviser to the BBC’s standards committee, also accused the broadcaster of suppressing critical coverage of transgender issues and displaying anti-Israel bias within the BBC Arabic service.

The BBC’s director-general, Tim Davie, and its head of news, Deborah Turness, stepped down on Sunday amid the fallout of the controversy.

Trump welcomed the resignations in a post on Truth Social, accusing the BBC executives of being “corrupt” and “very dishonest people”.

BBC chair Samir Shah on Monday acknowledged that the clip was misleading and apologised for the “error of judgement”, but rejected claims that the broadcaster is institutionally biased.

Shah also said that the memo did not present “a full picture of the discussions, decisions and actions that were taken” by the standards board in response to concerns raised internally before the leak.

Trump’s legal threat is the latest in a flurry of actions he has taken to punish critical media.

The United States is moving closer to ending its record-breaking government shutdown after the Senate took a critical step forward to end its five-week impasse.

The Senate on Monday night approved a spending package by a vote of 60 to 40 to fund the US government through January 30, and reinstate pay for hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

The spending bill next moves to the House of Representatives for approval and then on to President Donald Trump for a sign-off before the shutdown can finally end.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has said he would like to pass it as soon as Wednesday and send it on to Trump to sign into law.

The vote in the Senate follows negotiations this weekend that saw seven Democrats and one Independent agree to vote in favour of the updated spending package to end the shutdown, which enters its 42nd day on Tuesday.

Also included in the deal are three-year funding appropriations for the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration, military construction projects, veterans affairs and congressional operations.

The bill does not, however, resolve one of the most central issues in the shutdown – extending healthcare subsidies. Senate Republicans have agreed to vote on the issue as a separate measure in December.

US legislators have been under growing pressure to end the government shutdown, which enters its forty-second day on Tuesday, as their constituents feel the impact of funding lapses for programmes like food stamps.

Hundreds of thousands of federal employees have been furloughed or required to work without pay since the shutdown began on October 1, while Trump has separately threatened to use the shutdown as a pretext to slash the federal workforce.

Voters have also felt the impact of the shutdown at airports across the US after the Federal Aviation Administration last week announced a 10 percent cut in air traffic due to absences from air traffic controllers.

British journalist and pro-Palestine commentator Sami Hamdi is set to return home more than two weeks after he was imprisoned by US immigration authorities, his wife and legal representatives said on Monday.

Hamdi, 35, was stopped at San Francisco international airport in California on October 26, and detained by agents from the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency mid-way through a speaking tour discussing Israel’s war on Gaza.

Hassan M Ahmad, a lawyer from the California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CA), and the Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA) said in a statement on Monday that the journalist and commentator was punished for his criticism of Israel during his US speaking tour and not for any alleged wrongdoing.

“It is this simple: Sami never should have spent a single night in an ICE cell,” Hussam Ayloush, the CEO of CAIR’s California chapter, said in a statement.

“His only real ‘offense’ was speaking clearly about Israel’s genocidal war crimes against Palestinians.”

“The immigration charging document filed in his case alleged only a visa overstay—after the government revoked his visa without cause and without prior notice—and never identified any criminal conduct or security grounds,” Hamdi’s legal representatives said in the joint statement.

Hamdi’s wife, Soumaya Hamdi, welcomed the news in a series of posts on social media, saying, “Sami is coming home, alhamdullilah. Elated doesn’t begin to describe the feeling.”

She also expressed her “heartfelt gratitude” to the “countless wonderful people” who offered assistance during her husband’s detention.

A number of institutions raised concerns about Hamdi’s treatment, including his former university, the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, and freedom of expression organisation PEN America.

By contrast, some people openly advocated for Hamdi to be detained, including far-right activist and Donald Trump ally Laura Loomer, who celebrated Hamdi’s detention and repeatedly claimed he was going to be deported, without citing her sources.

Loomer, a self-described “proud Islamophobe”, also accused Hamdi of supporting Islamic terrorism, without providing any evidence.

Responding to allegations about his son, Hamdi’s father, Mohamed El-Hachmi Hamdi, said in a post on X that he “has no affiliation” with any political or religious group.

“His stance on Palestine is not aligned with any faction there, but rather, with the people’s right to security, peace, freedom and dignity. He is, quite simply, one of the young dreamers of this generation, yearning for a world with more compassion, justice, and solidarity,” he added.

The administration of US President Donald Trump has targeted a number of pro-Palestinian advocates, even as it has also worked to mediate a precarious truce agreement between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Those targeted include Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian former student of Columbia University. who continues to face challenges to his US immigration status after being freed from detention in June.

Here is how things stand on Tuesday, November 11:

Fighting

• Fighting continues in and around the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk in the eastern Donetsk region, with Kyiv and Moscow providing conflicting accounts of the situation in the nearby town of Myrnohrad.
• The Ukrainian military claimed its forces were holding their positions in the city, saying that “the defence of Pokrovsko-Myrnohrad agglomeration continues”. But army spokesperson Andriy Kovalev acknowledged the provision of logistics to the town was complicated.
• The statement came after the Russian Ministry of Defence said its forces were pressing an advance on Myrnohrad and were making gains in two of the town’s districts.
• The Ukrainian Air Force also denied Russian claims of encircling Pokrovsk, saying that food and ammunition supplies to Ukrainian soldiers there are “being replenished in a timely manner”. The “most intense fighting” in Pokrovsk is “currently taking place in the industrial zone”, it said.
• Russian attacks on Ukraine’s Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions, meanwhile, killed at least one person in Kostiantynivka and wounded two others in Vasylkivska on Monday, according to the Ukrainska Pravda.
• An explosion from an unidentified ammunition in a hospital ward in Ukraine’s Zaporizhia region injured a man on Monday, police there reported, without providing further details.
• The Russian Defence Ministry also claimed advances in the Zaporizhia region, saying its forces had pushed Ukrainian troops out of the villages of Solodke and Nove. The ministry said Russian forces also seized the village of Hnativka in the Donetsk region.
• In Russia, a man who was seriously wounded in a Ukrainian drone attack in the village of Belyanka in the Belgorod region has died in hospital, medics said.
• Ukrainian forces claimed an attack on a pumping station at the Hvardiiske oil depot in the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula.
• Russian forces announced destroying four Ukrainian drone boats near its Black Sea port of Tuapse. The port had suspended fuel exports after a November 2 Ukrainian attack on its infrastructure.

Politics

• Ukraine’s anticorruption agency said it was investigating the country’s energy sector on Monday, alleging a $100m kickback scheme involving the state nuclear power company, Energoatom.
• Energoatom, which operates three nuclear plants that supply Ukraine with more than half of its electricity, said it was fully cooperating with the probe as investigators from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) searched its offices.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for accountability in the case, saying: “Everyone who has been involved in corruption schemes must receive a clear legal response. There must be criminal verdicts.”
• Ukrainian Minister of Energy Svitlana Hrynchuk told a news conference that electricity is beginning to be restored to some parts of Ukraine amid massive power outages that have left millions of people in the dark. “We are working to minimise the outage schedules. But the situation continues to be difficult. Practically every week, we experience a massive combined attack,” Hrynchuk said, according to Ukraine’s Ukrinform news agency.
• Ukraine’s financial situation in 2026 is expected to be more challenging than this year due to uncertainty over how to cover a budget gap, Deputy Minister of Finance Oleksandr Kava said on Monday. Kava told a conference that the unfunded gap for 2026 and 2027 was about $60bn, and that Kyiv was still in talks with partners on how to raise the required funds.
• In Russia, police in St Petersburg detained Diana Loginova, a teenage street musician already jailed twice for short stints after performing anti-Kremlin songs, as she left prison, state media and her supporters said on Monday.

Diplomacy

• United States President Donald Trump said on Monday that the US was getting close to reaching “a fair trade deal” with India, which has been facing US tariffs over its continued purchase of Russian oil.
• Trump’s comments came as the Reuters news agency reported that a large delegation of Indian exporters is set to arrive in Moscow on Tuesday for a four-day visit, citing a senior trade body official.
• The Kremlin also said on Monday that it was “actively preparing” for Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit India before the end of the year, and hoped it would be a substantive trip.
• Russia’s Lukoil declared force majeure at its Iraqi oil field, Reuters reported, as the company’s international operations buckled under the strain of US sanctions.
• The report came as Bulgaria prepared to seize control of Lukoil’s Burgas refinery after adopting legal changes that allow it to take over the refinery and sell it to a new owner to shield the plant from US sanctions. Prime Minister Rosen Zhelyazkov said on Monday that Bulgarian authorities were conducting inspections and implementing security measures at the site.
• Germany will increase financial aid to Ukraine to 11.5 billion euros ($13.41bn) in the 2026 budget, up from 8.5 billion euros previously planned, Reuters reported on Monday, citing budget documents.