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Hello, I'm Eileen McHugh with the BBC News.
The U.S. Justice Department has released transcripts of interviews conducted last month with Ghislaine Maxwell, the jailed associate of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In them, Maxwell, who's serving 20 years for sex trafficking, said she was not aware of any client list kept by Epstein. His friendships with wealthy individuals, including President Trump, have fueled conspiracy theories. Here's David Willis. Having vowed on the campaign trail to release details of the FBI's investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, the sudden decision by his Justice Department not to do so infuriated many of Donald Trump's supporters. In an apparent attempt to quell the political fallout, a senior Justice Department official, the Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, set up an interview with Maxwell. And in a transcript of the interview, Maxwell goes out of her way to praise Mr. Trump, saying that, although he was friendly with Jeffrey Epstein, the president never did anything inappropriate. The Pentagon has said soldiers patrolling Washington, D.C. will soon be armed, a week after stating that they would not carry weapons. About 2,000 National Guard troops have been sent to the U.S. capital in what President Trump has portrayed as a crackdown on crime. Aid agencies say Palestinians facing famine in Gaza City are too exhausted to flee Israel's intensifying offensive. A spokeswoman for UNICEF said they did not have the capacity to move despite being told to flee south. On Friday, a U.N.-backed report said half a million people were starving in an entirely man-made famine. Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, dismissed the findings as "an outright lie." From Jerusalem, here's Emir Nader. "We can see the response of Israel to this report. Sitting in with a general hardening of its position on many fronts that we've been seeing in the past week or so, where we've heard from ministers saying, you can criticize us and threaten us with sanctions all you want. We believe invading Gaza City is the way to return the hostages and to defeat Hamas and to end the war. I don't imagine that we're gonna see any immediate shift in its policies around letting food into the Gaza Strip." U.S. police say a tour bus carrying dozens of passengers has crashed in the state of New York, killing five people. John Sudworth reports. The bus was about an hour into the seven-hour drive from Niagara Falls to New York City, traveling on Interstate 90 when it hit the median before cutting back across the carriageway and ending up in a ditch on its side. Some passengers are reported to have been thrown from the bus through the shattered windows, and helicopter crews have been working to transport more than 40 people to hospital with injuries including broken bones and head trauma. The driver survived the crash and is said to be cooperating with the investigation. This is the World News from the BBC. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man wrongly deported by the Trump administration to a notorious prison in El Salvador, is on his way home to Maryland. Mr. Abrego Garcia had been held in a jail in Tennessee after a judge ordered the government to secure his return to the U.S. Officials had admitted his deportation was a case of administrative error, but had refused to bring him back. A former soldier has been jailed for almost 70 years in the United States for torturing alleged opponents of the Gambia's former president, Yahya Jammeh. Michael Sang Correa was found to be a member of an armed unit known as the "Junglers," who reported directly to Mr. Jammeh in the mid-2000s. The UK has agreed to pay compensation to almost 8,000 people affected by a fire caused by a British military training exercise in Kenya four years ago. The claimants say they lost property and suffered health complications as a result of the fire in the Rift Valley. Police in Argentina have released 104 Chilean football supporters detained after a violent clash with local fans during a match for the knockout stage of the Copa Sudamericana on Wednesday. The violence led to the suspension of the game. Leonardo Rocha reports. The images broadcast live on TV showed supporters of the local club Independiente beating up dozens of cornered Universidad de Chile fans with metal bars and wooden sticks. The attack went on for about 10 minutes. Chile has accused Argentine police of complicity during the attack, adding that very few local supporters were detained. Argentine supporters said that Chilean fans had been hurling objects at them from the stands. Chile's Interior Minister Álvaro Elizalde has traveled to Buenos Aires to follow the situation. Leonardo Rocha reporting. BBC News. |