17/12/2025

WEDNESDAY | DEC 17, 2025

9

Trump sues BBC for defamation

WASHINGTON: Strikes on three alleged drug-trafficking vessels in the eastern Pacific Ocean killed eight people on Monday. Since early September, the US military under Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth has targeted alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, destroying 26 vessels and killing at least 95 people. The US Southern Command announced the latest three strikes on X, saying the eight men killed had been involved in drug trafficking, without providing evidence. The post included video footage of three boats floating in water before they are each hit by strikes. “Intelligence confirmed that the vessels were transiting along known narco-trafficking routes in the Eastern Pacific and were engaged in narco trafficking,” it said. The strikes killed three men in the first vessel, two in the second and another three in the third, the US Southern Command said. US authorities have not provided specific evidence that the boats it has targeted were ferrying drugs. – AFP US kills eight in eastern Pacific narco strikes In July, it refused an Israeli request to withdraw the arrest warrants, as well as an appeal of that decision in October. Established in 2002, the ICC prosecutes individuals accused of the worst atrocities, such as war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. – AFP THE HAGUE: The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Monday rejected a challenge from Israel, which had argued that the court’s investigation into crimes committed in the Gaza Strip was invalid. The tribunal, in its ruling, also upheld ICC arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant in November 2024, to face accusations of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The ICC began an investigation in the Palestinian territory in 2021, and with the ruling against the challenge it will now be able to resume it. Israel had claimed that a separate investigation would have to be launched following the Hamas attacks in Israel on Oct 7, which it said altered the situation and required the ICC to provide a second formal notice of investigation. Monday’s 44-page ruling upholds the decision to investigate alleged war crimes committed by Israel in the Palestinian territory. Israel’s Foreign Affairs spokesperson Oren Marmorstein said in an X post that Israel “rejects” the decision, and accusing the ICC of “politicisation”. The court is examining another Israeli challenge to its jurisdiction, as well as a request to disqualify prosecutor Karim Khan over sexual abuse allegations – claims he vigorously denies. ICC rejects attempt to block war crimes probe

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump sued the BBC on Monday for defamation over edited clips of a speech that made it appear he directed supporters to storm the US Capitol, opening an international front in his fight against media coverage he deems untrue or unfair. Trump accused Britain’s publicly owned broadcaster of defaming him by splicing together parts of a Jan 6, 2021 speech, including one section where he told supporters to march on the Capitol and another where he said “fight like hell”. It omitted a section in which he called for peaceful protest. Trump’s lawsuit alleges the BBC defamed him and violated a Florida law that bars deceptive and unfair trade practices. He is seeking US$5 billion (RM20.4 billion) in damages for each of the lawsuit’s two counts. The BBC has apologised to Trump, admitted an error of judgment and acknowledged that the edit gave the mistaken impression that he had made a direct call for violent action. But it has said there is no legal basis to sue. Trump, in his lawsuit filed Monday in Miami federal court, said the BBC despite its apology “has made no showing of actual remorse for its wrongdoing nor meaningful institutional changes to prevent future journalistic abuses”.

because defamation claims in Britain must be brought within a year of publication, a window that has closed for the Panorama episode. To overcome the US Constitution’s legal protections for free speech and the press, Trump will need to prove not only that the edit was false and defamatory but also that the BBC knowingly misled viewers or acted recklessly. The broadcaster could argue that the documentary was substantially true and its editing decisions did not create a false impression, legal experts said. It could also claim the programme did not damage Trump’s reputation. Other media have settled with Trump, including CBS and ABC when Trump sued them following his comeback win in the November 2024 election. – Reuters

o Broadcaster denies legal basis for lawsuit

The BBC is funded through a mandatory licence fee on all TV viewers, which UK lawyers say could make any payout to Trump politically fraught. A spokesman for Trump’s legal team said in a statement the BBC “has a long pattern of deceiving its audience in coverage of President Trump, all in service of its own leftist political agenda”. A BBC spokesperson said earlier on Monday that it had “no further contact from President Trump’s lawyers at this point. Our position remains the same”. The broadcaster did not respond to a request for comment after the lawsuit was filed. The BBC has said it has no plans to rebroadcast the documentary on any of its platforms.

The dispute over the clip, featured on the BBC’s Panorama documentary show shortly before the 2024 presidential election, sparked a public relations crisis for the broadcaster, leading to the resignations of its two most senior officials. Trump’s lawyers say the BBC caused him overwhelming reputational and financial harm. The documentary drew scrutiny after the leak of a BBC memo by an external standards adviser that raised concerns about how it was edited, part of a wider investigation of political bias at the publicly funded broadcaster. The documentary was not broadcast in the United States. Trump may have sued in the US

A worker cuts large blocks of Jerusalem stone inside a quarry in Sair. – AFPPIC

Famed Jerusalem stone still sells

SAIR: Despite the catastrophic state of the Palestinian economy, Faraj al Atrash, operator of a quarry in the occupied West Bank, proudly points to an armada of machines busy eating away at sheer walls of dusty white rock that stretch into the distance. “This here is considered the main source of revenue for the entire region,” Atrash said at the site near the town of Beit Fajjar, close to the city of Hebron. The quarry is a source of Jerusalem stone, the famed pale rock used throughout the Holy Land and beyond for millennia and which gives much of the region its distinctive architectural look. But Atrash, in his 50s, said “our

worse than ever, Atrash said, adding that fixed costs such as water and electricity had soared. Quarries account for 4.5% of Palestinian GDP and employ nearly 20,000 workers, according to the Hebron Chamber of Commerce. Around 65% of exports are destined for the Israeli market, where some municipalities mandate the use of Jerusalem stone. “The people who buy the stones from us to resell them to construction sites are mostly Israelis,”said Abu Walid Riyad Gaith, a 65-year-old quarry operator. He lamented what he said was a lack of solidarity from Arab countries, which he said do not buy enough of the rock. – AFP

across the territory, paralysing commercial transport. Beyond restrictions on freedom of movement, a halt in permits for West Bank Palestinians seeking work inside Israel has also had a severe impact. “There are problems with exports and market access because we used to export most of the stone to Israel, and after Oct 7, we ran into difficulties,” said Ibrahim Jaradat, whose family has owned a quarry for more than 40 years near Sair, also near Hebron. The Palestinian Authority, which exercises partial civilian control over some of the West Bank, is on the brink of bankruptcy. Public services are functioning

livelihood is always under threat”. “Lately, I feel like the occupation (Israel) has begun to fight us on the economic front,” he said. Atrash fears the confiscation of the quarry’s industrial equipment, the expansion of Israeli settlements and the Palestinian financial crisis. The war in Gaza dealt a severe blow to a Palestinian economy that was already in poor shape. The Palestinian territories are “going through the most severe economic crisis ever recorded”, according to a report by the UN Conference on Trade and Development. Israel, which has occupied the West Bank since 1967, has recently set up hundreds of new checkpoints