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BBC News, I'm John Shea.
President Trump has fired the head of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics hours after the agency reported weaker-than-expected jobs growth. Mr. Trump said Erica McIntire, a Biden appointee, had manipulated data to make him look bad. The president didn't provide any evidence. Share prices fell sharply on the U.S. markets on Friday. Michelle Fleury in New York has more details. There was already a pretty tough day, in part because of that weak jobs report, but also you had the new tariff rates that were unveiled by the president. And so it led to the sell-off continuing. I think it'll take some time as investors try to digest what has happened. But the immediate reaction was one of shock and surprise, in part because statistical data, investors rely on it to make business decisions. So if it starts to get politicized, what will that do in the long run, both for their decision-making process and for the sort of quality of the data?" President Trump says he's ordered two nuclear submarines to be positioned in appropriate regions in response to comments by the former Russian leader, Dmitry Medvedev. In a recent tweet, Mr. Medvedev said President Trump's threats of tough sanctions on Russia over Ukraine were "a threat and a step towards war." Arunade Mukherjee is in Washington. President Trump importantly didn't say where he was moving these submarines to and whether they were nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed. It's an important distinction because repositioning these doesn't really matter because they can still hit targets from thousands of miles away. Now, he said this was in response to what he called "foolish and inflammatory statements" made by Dmitry Medvedev, with whom he had recently been involved in that, you know, in a series of personal attacks on social media. But this has been viewed as a major escalation in rhetoric between Moscow and the U.S., something that we've not seen so far. Britain's defense ministry has announced that its most senior official is being replaced after a major data leak compromised the details of thousands of Afghans and more than 100 British spies and soldiers. David Williams was in post when the breach happened in 2022. It was only revealed last month. Serbia's President Aleksandar Vučić has called an emergency session of his National Security Council to discuss a political crisis in neighboring Bosnia. It follows a Bosnian court's confirmation of a six-year ban from public office for the Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik. Guy De Launey reports. The appeal court's confirmation of Milorad Dodik's sentence has triggered strong reactions beyond Bosnia's borders. Serbia's President Aleksandar Vučić said his country was facing its greatest crisis in almost 20 years. He claimed foreign powers were attempting to influence his response. Mr. Dodik was convicted of failing to implement the decisions of Bosnia's ultimate authority, the International High Representative. He faces a one-year prison sentence as well as the ban from public office. World News from the BBC. Colombia's former President Álvaro Uribe has been sentenced to 12 years of house arrest after he was found guilty of witness tampering. Mr. Uribe said he would appeal against the ruling. The long-running case saw him accused of colluding with right-wing paramilitaries during his time in office. He's best known for waging an aggressive offensive against FARC rebels. He remains an influential figure in Colombia. A jury in Florida has ordered Tesla to pay more than $200 million after finding the company's autopilot technology was partly to blame for a fatal crash. Nybel Benavides Leon was killed and her boyfriend seriously injured when a Tesla vehicle slammed into their parked car six years ago. Scientists in Chile have discovered that a new telescope took photographs of a rare interstellar comet by chance two weeks before anyone knew of its existence. Staff at the Vera Rubin Observatory say the telescope was still in testing mode when it captured about 100 images of the space rock called 3I/Atlas. It's believed to be the oldest comet ever identified at around 7 billion years old. Georgina Rannard has more details. 3I/Atlas is only the third interstellar object discovered and the latest images suggest it is the biggest, measuring about three miles wide. The new pictures have allowed the scientists to see that, even though it is still millions of miles from the heat of our sun, it's already evaporating, leaving a tale of dust or gas. Researchers think the comet came from a very remote and cold part of its own solar system. As it moves closer to the sun this year, scientists hope to learn more about this interstellar visitor. A spillage of sausages has briefly closed a road in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Nearly half a ton of hot dogs were strewn across the highway when a truck scraped along a concrete barrier. The clear-up took hours. The local fire chief says he now appreciates how slippery hot dogs are. BBC News. |