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BBC News with Fiona MacDonald.
The U.S. Justice Department has released three million more pages of documents and photos and videos related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, said it had redacted images of all the women who feature except Epstein's accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. A number of public figures are named. Gary O'Donohue reports from Washington. After a month of silence on the Epstein files, the Department of Justice now believes it has fulfilled the requirements of the law passed by Congress albeit after the deadline. Democrats, however, continue to argue that the DOJ has withheld too many documents possibly around two and a half million without proper justification. The files that have been released do contain references to many public figures on this side of the Atlantic who have previously been associated with Epstein. The U.S. Senate has passed a compromise deal intended to prevent a partial shutdown of the government. It comes after Democrats supported by some Republicans blocked earlier attempts to pass funding bills because of anger at the Department of Homeland Security's handling of an immigration crackdown. The funding compromise still needs approval in the House of Representatives which is not due to meet until Monday. Mexico's President Claudia Schoenbaum was warned that U.S. tariffs on countries helping Cuba could trigger a humanitarian crisis there. Her comments come a day after President Trump signed an executive order threatening additional tariffs on countries that sell oil to Cuba which is experiencing its worst economic crisis in decades. Here's Will Grant. The aim it appears is to see the end of the Cuban Revolution in power in Havana. What we're seeing on the Mexican side is that message being delivered to the presidency of Claudia Schoenbaum and her reaction has been in her morning press briefing that the Trump step could essentially lead to what she called a widespread humanitarian crisis involving hospitals, the provision of basic food and other services to the Cuban people, something she said should be avoided through negotiation and mediation. The head of the United Nations says the organization's at risk of imminent financial collapse due to unmade fees and budget rules that force it to return unspent cash it might never have received. He said the U.N. programs were being threatened. Elektra Naismith reports. António Guterres warned the current trajectory of the United Nations was untenable. He said member states faced a choice either pay up or overhaul the organization's financial rules. The alternative he said was financial collapse. Mr. Guterres said the U.N. was dealing with a Kafkaesque situation - unpaid fees on one hand and on the other an obligation to return funds that were never received in the first place. BBC News. The U.N. Refugee Agency's representative for Mozambique has issued a warning about the level of displacement in the country. Xavier Créach said close to 400,000 people have been forced from their homes by weeks of heavy rain. The flooding is exacerbating an already dire humanitarian situation which has seen hundreds of thousands uprooted by ongoing conflict. Officials say 13 people have been killed in the flood so far. A court in Ivory Coast has sentenced a lawmaker from neighboring Mali to three years in prison for insulting the Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara. In an interview published in Mali three years ago, Mamadou Hawa Gassama referred to the president as a "tyrant" and an "enemy of Mali." He was arrested during a visit to Ivory Coast last July as relations with military-run Mali continued to deteriorate. Reports emerging from a rebel-held area of eastern Congo say more than 200 people including women and children have been killed in a collapse at an open-cast mine. The governor's office in North Kivu province said that after heavy rain the ground gave way at the Rubaya site. David Bamford reports. The Rubaya mine, northwest of Goma, has been under the control of M23 rebel forces for more than two years. For a few cents a day, miners scramble around in very dangerous conditions collecting coltan, which is in high global demand for the production of cell phones and computers. On Wednesday it appears part of the mine gave way during heavy rains. The number of dead is reportedly high. The local governor's office say more than 220 bodies have been recovered. The Emmy-winning actress Catherine O'Hara who starred in the 1990 blockbuster film "Home Alone" has died at the age of 71. The Canadian performer also starred in the sitcom "Schitt's Creek" and the satire show "The Studio." BBC News. |