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Hello I'm Chris Barrow with the BBC News.
President Trump has said he'll ask his attorney general and the FBI to investigate the convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein's relationships with the former President Bill Clinton and other prominent Democrats. Congress will vote next week on whether the department should release all files related to Epstein. Nada Tawfik is in New York. This comes really after President Trump himself was right in the spotlight. The White House rocked again by this latest release of Epstein files, 20,000 plus pages from the Epstein estate, emails that raised new questions about whether Donald Trump knew more about Epstein's crimes than he let on because in private emails Epstein is seen calling him "the dog" that never barked about what he saw, saying that President Trump had spent hours with one of Epstein's victims Virginia Giuffre in Epstein's home. President Trump has lowered tariffs on imported food items like beef, tomatoes and coffee as his government faces pressure over the escalating cost of living. A senior administration official urged retailers to pass on the positive effects to American consumers. Anbarasan Ethirajan has more. This is the latest rollback of President Trump's key economic policy over growing concerns about high grocery prices for American consumers. He has long insisted his tariffs do not fuel inflation but a senior Democrat Richard Neal said his administration was now putting out a fire it had started and claiming it as progress. Friday's order followed framework deals that eliminate tariffs on certain foods and other items imported from Argentina, Ecuador, Guatemala and El Salvador. A court in Britain has ruled that the mining company BHP is legally responsible for the collapse of a dam in 2015 which caused one of Brazil's worst environmental disasters. The failure of the Mariana Dam unleashed a wave of toxic waste that killed 19 people and polluted a major river. Carolina Leti is a lawyer for some of the claimants. "I think it's a combination of every type of reaction but surely, surely everyone feels that justice was served today. Those people were moved to a different neighborhood. They lost their communities. It's generations of relationship that was just completely torn by the collapse. There is a huge amount that was destroyed that could never be fixed by any amount of money." Trinidad and Tobago has announced a new round of military exercises with the United States amid Washington's ongoing tensions with nearby Venezuela. The Caribbean country's foreign ministry said the week-long joint drills would start on Sunday. Last month a U.S. naval ship held exercises within firing range of Venezuela. BBC News. Indian media say at least six people have been killed in an explosion at a police station in Indian-administered Kashmir. A fire engulfed the building at Nowgam in Kashmir's summer capital Srinagar late on Friday. The cause was not immediately clear but it's been suggested the blast was an accident triggered during the handling of hundreds of killers of explosives. The military government in Mali has banned two French television channels LCI and TF1 for their reporting of jihadi activity. More details from Peter Hyatt. The army seized power in Mali five years ago promising to restore security. It threw out French and United Nations troops and invited in Russian mercenaries instead. But things haven't gone the way the army wanted. Jihadists have made much of north and east Mali ungovernable. They've also imposed a fuel blockade causing wide spread shortages. The Malian media regulator said it was banning the television stations for broadcasting false allegations that jihadists were at the gates of the capital Bamako and that the government had banned fuel sales. The stations haven't been available since Thursday evening. South Africa's president, Cyril Ramaphosa, says there'll be an investigation into the arrival of a chartered plane carrying more than 150 Palestinians from Gaza. The Palestinians were not allowed to disembark for about 10 hours on Thursday because their passports did not have the right stamps. They were eventually allowed in after intervention from a local charity. Most of the group have remained in South Africa. The U.S. military says it's monitoring the situation after an oil tanker changed course suddenly as it went through the Strait of Hormuz and entered Iranian waters. Western officials say they believe the Iranian Revolutionary Guard intercepted the vessel, the Talara, on its way from the United Arab Emirates to Singapore. The Talara's management company says it had lost contact. There's been no comment from Iran. That's the latest BBC news. |