'A predator in your home': Mothers say chatbots encouraged their sons to kill themselves
Laura KuenssbergPresenter, Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg
Megan Garcia had no idea her teenage son Sewell, a "bright and beautiful boy", had started spending hours and hours obsessively talking to an online character on the Character.ai app in late spring 2023.
"It's like having a predator or a stranger in your home," Ms Garcia tells me in her first UK interview. "And it is much more dangerous because a lot of the times children hide it - so parents don't know."
Within ten months, Sewell, 14, was dead. He had taken his own life.
Israel’s underground jail, where Palestinians are held without charge and never see daylight
Sat 8 Nov 2025 12.24 GMT
Exclusive: Detainees at Rakefet include nurse deprived of natural light since January, and teenager held for nine months
Israel is holding dozens of Palestinians from Gaza isolated in an underground jail where they never see daylight, are deprived of adequate food and barred from receiving news of their families or the outside world.
The detainees have included at least two civilians held for months without charge or trial: a nurse detained in his scrubs, and a young food seller, according to lawyers from the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) who represent both men.
Cautious hopes for Brazil as host of COP30 climate talks
Holly Young | Beatrice Christofaro
The world's eyes will be on the Amazon in coming weeks as Brazil hosts the UN climate summit. With the country's mixed environmental record, can Brazil's government help push through vital climate action?
Brazil knows how to put on a show. From the World Cup and the Olympics to a recent free Lady Gaga concert that drew millions of people to Copacabana Beach, few nations stage global spectacles quite like it.
Next up is climate diplomacy's most important annual event, the UN climate summit, known as COP.
Why is Australia banning children under 16 from social media – and can they enforce it?
Australia this week added popular forum Reddit and homegrown streaming platform Kick to its list of social media platforms that will be off-limits to children under 16 starting December 10. So just how will this unprecedented social media ban actually work?
This summer, the Australian government is going to extraordinary lengths to make sure the country’s incredibly online teens touch grass.
Starting December 10, social media companies will face fines of up to roughly €28 million for failing to prevent people under 16 from having accounts on their platforms. For now, the ban will apply to Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube.
Nigerians demand own solutions to violence as Trump threatens US invasion
Amid US claims of ‘Christian genocide’, locals and experts say crisis is multilayered, dismissing calls for foreign military intervention.
When Lawrence Zhongo and his wife got married in 2023, relatives and friends from across their region in central Nigeria attended the ceremony. But in the years since, he has been left distraught time and again with each new report of a deadly attack that has claimed the lives of those who celebrated with the couple.
“I can’t count the number of relatives and friends I have lost. My wife lost eight relatives in the Zike attack in April,” Zhongo, a yam and maize farmer in Miango village in Plateau State, told Al Jazeera. “These are people that came for my wedding.”
Inside Ukraine’s start-up weapons industry rising from the ashes
As Europe and the US ponder over what arms to send to help the war against Russia, Ukraine is forging ahead with homegrown missiles and drones made from carbon printers and lawnmower engines. World affairs editor Sam Kiley reports from Kyiv
Naive, self-sabotaging and riddled with Moscow’s agents, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons and an arms industry that produced a third of the Soviet Union’s supply, trusted the West and the Kremlin to protect it, and was left fighting for its life.
Now, 30 years on, the start-up nation redefining how war is fought has been forced into a bodge-and-make-do world of arms production, fusing old technology with IT know-how to break the bonds its allies tied to make Kyiv fight one-handed.
The latest innovation is a cruise missile with a range of 3,000km, a maximum speed of 900kmph and a payload of over a tonne, which has been used in strikes deep into Russian territory.
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