Global News Podcast - White House to release Epstein files

Episode Date: November 20, 2025

President Trump has signed a bill that gives the US Justice Department thirty days to release its files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Some of the documents could be withheld or heavily redacted. Also: Silicon Valley's Nvidia sees record earnings amid AI boom; Israel conducts major airstrikes in Gaza despite ceasefire; FBI intensifies search for "modern day Pablo Escobar"; Colombia pushes ahead with controversial airstrikes on rebel groups; Ukrainian suspect faces extradition in Nord Stream investigation; the philanthropists filling the gap left by USAID withdrawal; and Gustav Klimt's Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer goes under the hammer. The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment. Get in touch: [e-mail]

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. It's the coziest time of year on Britbox. Very cozy. That means basking in the ambience. I know the body's turned up. How often do people get murdered around here? Unboxing the unexpected. Well, we know it wasn't an accident.

And starting new traditions. Oh, so you telling me to behave myself. Oh, shut up. Stream Britbox's original series based on best-selling novels, including Linley and a new season of Karen Piri. Smashing, smushy, breakie. It's all a bit warm. with Britbox. See holidays differently when you stream the best of British TV with Britbox.

America is changing. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London. And this is the global story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Global News Podcasts from the BBC World Service. I'm Nick Miles and in the early hours of the 20th of November, these are our main stories. I have just signed the bill to release the Epstein files, President Trump's post-marking a U-turn in the controversy that won't go away.

A 62% year-on-year quarterly rise in profits for the U.S. AI chipmaker NVIDIA has wowed the tech world. And Colombia vows to press on with deadly airstrikes in its fight against rebel groups. Also in this podcast. There might have been $6 million sitting there. Six million? Six million. Yeah. And I had no idea.

So I said, it's now or never. I might as well start spending this money. spend it. The anonymous international development donors stepping up where Washington has stepped down and the hunt for Ryan Wedding, the former Olympic snowboarder now suspected of being a dangerous drug kingpin. President Trump has posted on social media in all capitals. I have just signed the bill to release the Epstein files. The U.S. Justice Department now has 30 days to release. all of its documents on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Here's our North America correspondent, David Wiss. The big question now is how many of the files will be released. The Attorney General Pam Bondi said today that the Justice Department would, as she put it, follow the law. But the bill that's been passed by Congress and approved and signed into law by President Trump this evening allows for the withholding of any information, any material that could jeopardize an active or ongoing investigation. And just last Friday, President Trump ordered a federal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein's links to his democratic political opponents. So that ongoing investigation could potentially hamper the release

of new documents or the Justice Department could decide to heavily redact the contents of some of the files. We will have to wait and see how much more light the release of these documents actually shines on the activities of the late Jeffrey Epstein. This is very much a political story as well as a judicial one, isn't it? In that post-Donald Trump had a real swipe at Democrats. He said none of the files were released under Joe Biden. A lot of Democrats were very friendly with Epstein. Nevertheless, to what extent has the president been damaged by seeming to drag his feet until now? Well, you're right. And this affair has been a thorn in Donald Trump's side for months now.

He was once a friend of Jeffrey Epstein. There's no question about that. He's been dogged by questions about the extent of his involvement in Jeffrey Epstein's activities. And the saga has affected his approval rating, which has now fallen to a new low of Reuters-Ipsos poll published this week. revealed that just 20% of the American population approves of his handling of the Epstein files issue. Signing the bill into law, as he has done, will take some of the pressure off Mr. Trump, depending, of course, on what's actually in those files. But it could heighten the pressure on some other public figures. And earlier this week, of course, the former U.S. Treasury Secretary,

the former Harvard President Larry Summers announced that he was, as he put it, stepping back from all public commitments after documents were released, which showed that he also had a close relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. David Willis. Now on to another issue that's rarely left the headlines over the last year. Artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence.

AI. The AI. The AI. The AI. The AI boom. But as well. with any new big thing, the question for investors is whether AI is now a proven money spinner or whether it's a bubble that will burst. So there were lots of eyes on NVIDIA as it posted its latest revenue and profit figures. One of the biggest companies in the world, it makes the chips that power some of the most complex artificial intelligence systems out there.

Our North America business correspondent Michelle Flurry told me whether the numbers were good or bad. InVIDIA reported much stronger earnings than much stronger growth I think then people were necessarily sure would materialise and the reason I say that is that the company said revenue was 57 billion that was up 62% from a year ago

but not only did it see strong demand from big companies like Amazon, Microsoft and the like it also said that it continues to see that demand going forward so the next three months it's expecting 75% increase in revenue compared to a year ago. So that is really what initially is cheering people here on Wall Street. The question going forward is where that money continues to come from.

And I think that is where certainly Wall Street analysts will be quizzing the boss, Jensen Huang, when he speaks to investors. Indeed, Michelle, what does this tell us about the overall state of the health of the AI sector? Invidio is seen as a bellwether, and there are good reasons for that. I mean, it is so important, it's hard to underestimate. You know, it now accounts for 7% of a major US stock index. So what NVIDIA does, the rest of the market follows. It's seen as a bellwether for the artificial intelligence stocks,

in part because it is the backbone of the infrastructure. So as companies kind of want to build out and develop more and more and using AI more and more in their products, they turn to companies like NVIDIA. So it tells you where we're going. But the question mark comes in, and the reason people are talking about is there a bubble or not, is that you're starting to see a lot more borrowing to try and fund those investments. And so while Nvidia is seeing strong demand for its products and strong growth,

investors are beginning to question how all of these purchases are being funded. That means that you're seeing Nvidia's share price still performing very well, but other companies, it could be a meta, it could be an Oracle, are beginning to sort of face tougher questions from Wall Street. And just this week we heard, Michelle, the head of Google, admitting that there was a degree of the irrationality behind the AI boom. But what's fascinating is that in that same interview, the boss also talked about the importance of AI as he saw it to humanity as a whole. And it makes me think back to the dot-com bubble, where the power or the transformative nature of the internet is undeniable. But not all of the companies who were there at the beginning.

survived or did well. And I think that's what people are looking at now with AI. There isn't a doubt so much that AI is here to stay, but it's which companies will turn out to have been the winners with proven profits down the road. Michelle Fleury. It's almost a decade since a peace deal was signed in Colombia that many hoped would bring an end to the armed conflict there. But still, the killings continue. In recent weeks, at least a dozen children forcibly recruited to fight for rebel groups have died in government airstrikes. Well, despite calls from the opposition to halt the aerial bombardments, Colombia's defense minister Pedro Sanchez,

while apologizing to the mothers of the children who were killed, said they will continue. Mr. Sanchez went on to say that the army was following the law and blamed the guerrillas for the deaths of child recruits. He called the strikes the last option in the fight against ours. armed insurrection. Our Latin America expert, Luis Fajado, told me this marks a shift in the left-wing government strategy.

When the government of Gustavo Petro came into office in 2022, Petro had promised a very different strategy. He had said that Colombia had been relying for too long on military solutions. And he had promised that the last remaining rebel groups in Colombia would quickly disarm under his administration because of the political talks he had been promising. These have not turned out to be successful until now, three years into his administration. In fact, the widespread perception is that security is decreasing very substantially. These groups, many of which obtained substantial funding from drug trafficking, have become more

powerful. They have become more bracing in their attacks. And one of the reflections of this is the change in policy. Petro, when he was an opposition leader, he had been. very strongly against airstrikes against rebel targets because precisely he had mentioned other cases in which other children had also been killed during these attacks and he had promised that under his government it would be very different.

A few months ago he changed his mind, he started authorising it and now he is facing a lot of political criticisms. And what about the main rebel movement, the FARC dissident group, how they responded to all this? The FARC dissident groups, there are multiple. FARC disson groups, actually. There are several factions from the mostly the mobilized FARC that have continued operating and reacting militarily across the country. One of the main groups is one led by a guerrilla who calls himself or has been called Ivan Mordisco. He went recently on a video

appearance that has been distributed widely in Colombia, challenging the state, not only the state, but also sending threats against journalists and against many other, members of the civil society, which he accuses of being allied in what he describes as an authoritarian state. And he has been threatening even actions against the presidential elections, which will be held next year. So he remains very defiant, as do many other rebel groups right now in Colombia, despite all the hopes that had been maintained for a final peace process after so many years of internal strike in Colombia. Colombians must be very confused. A hardline approach doesn't seem to work.

a softer approach isn't working? What alternative is there? There is, as in many other countries, an extreme degree of polarization. There are left-wing candidates who still suggest that there are some ways to attempt some political dialogue with these groups, while many right-wing, many conservative opposition groups

say that it is useless to try to dialogue with these groups, which they describe as little more than criminal gangs that claim to have a political purpose but are really more interested in drug trafficking. and illegal mining in this kind of activities. What is certain is that security has become, once again, a very big electoral topic in Colombia. Luis Fahado in Miami.

Since the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into force some six weeks ago, numerous attacks by both sides have consistently threatened the fragile truce. But none has worried observers as much as the most recent wave of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza. Hamas claims the attacks left at least 25 people. Instead, three of the victims were killed when a United Nations sports club in the south of the territory was hit. Israel insists it was targeting a terrorist in Gaza. Our correspondent in Jerusalem, John Donelson, gave my colleague Sean Lay, his analysis of events. Probably the most serious airstrikes on Gaza since the ceasefire came into place, what, six weeks ago now,

25 people killed. The largest strike appears to be in the Zatun area of Gaza. City where the civil defence agency says 10 people were killed. There were additional strikes in Gaza City and also in the south of the Gaza Strip around Han Unis. And, you know, as well as the dead, many people it seems to have been injured. So it's another dangerous moment in the Middle East, I think. What explanation is Israel given for launching these attacks? Well, Israel says it was targeting terrorists and also terrorist infrastructure. There have been strikes all throughout the six weeks since the ceasefire on a daily basis.

And Israel sometimes says that it was Palestinians who were entering into areas where they are not meant to go into zones that Israel is designated as under their conditions. troll, but this appears to be on a greater scale than that. How fragile is the ceasefire? Because the rhetoric, at least, from American politicians, for example, the US Vice President J.D. Vance, when he visited

Israel, was that this ceasefire will hold, and we shouldn't be distracted by occasional exchanges of fire between the two sites. Yeah, I mean, I think this is more than an occasional exchange of fire. I mean, the ceasefire is fragile,

at best. It came into force six weeks ago and I think it's fair to say that every day or almost every day there have been Palestinians who have been killed in Israeli strikes and it should be said that there has been Hamas activity as well with them targeting Israeli forces inside Gaza. Now President Trump when that ceasefire was declared said the war was over if it is over it could be back at any time and many would dispute that it is actually over at all

and all the while you know we have a pretty desperate humanitarian situation in Gaza more aid is getting in but the weather has turned here we had torrential rain over the weekend many people flooded in Gaza people up to their shins in water and of course you've got hundreds of thousands of people living in tents there. So Gaza might have dropped out of the news a little bit, but it is still an ongoing situation. John Donelson. Still to come. Now, ladies and gentlemen, we come to an unequivocal masterpiece of Vienna's Golden Age. The Gustav Klimt painting, wowing bidders in New York. America is changing, and so is the world.

But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London, and this is the global story. Every weekday will bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. The story next of Ryan James Wedding. Wedding is the former Olympian from Canada, who is now the leader of a transnational criminal enterprise.

He is so important that the State Department has put up a $15 million reward. Make no mistake about it. Ryan Wedding is a modern day iteration of Pablo Escobar. That's just some of what was said. at a Department of Justice press conference in the US. It was an opportunity for the authorities to emphasise how much progress they were making in the investigation and to up the reward for finding Ryan Wedding to $15 million.

The newsroom's Will Chalk told me more. Well, strangely for a story about an alleged drug lord, Nick, a good place to start with this is probably the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. That's when Ryan Wedding competed in the giant slalom snowstorms, boarding event representing his country, Canada. Now, being an Olympian is something that millions of people aspire to and, you know, usually seen as a hugely respected thing. But in the years since, the FBI, I think Ryan Wedding's life took a very different turn and he

became one of the world's most dangerous fugitives running his own drug cartel and ordering dozens of murders around the world. Let's hear a bit more from Cash Patel, director of the FBI. This Justice Department and this FBI will work with our Canadian counterpart and the government officials across the world to bring him to justice. He is responsible for engineering a narco-trafficking and narco-terrorism program that we have not seen in a long time. He will not evade justice.

So what do we know about Ryan Wedding? Well, he's thought to have started his rise through the underworld after being released from prison in 2011 on drug dealing charges. His aliases include El Hefe, Giant and Public Enemy. and he's believed to be living in Mexico under the protection of the Sinaloa cartel. And, well, today we heard details of new charges against him. Yeah, the big one being that he orchestrated the killing of a witness

just last year using a fake news website. So the accusation is that Ryan Wedding wanted to track down a witness who was due to testify against him and put a bounty on his head. So he paid a website thousands of dollars to post pictures of the witness online in a bid to track him down. Here is the US Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The witness was gunned down in a restaurant in Medellin before he could testify against wedding. Today we're unsealing a new indictment, charging wedding with two additional counts of witness tampering and intimidation, murder, money laundering and drug trafficking. Now, although the authorities are still very much searching for Ryan Wedding, they said as part of this press conference, they've already made 10 other arrests, including, incidentally, the man who ran that Canadian website. But like Wedding himself, a person who actually committed the murder still hasn't been found to this very much an ongoing thing, Nick. Will Chalk.

The closure of the United States Agency for International Development or USAID early this year. There are thousands of health and nutrition programmes around the world on the brink of collapse. Many projects had been almost entirely dependent on the funding from America and did in fact shut down. But then a group of former USAID employees decided to act

and found some extraordinary saviors willing to help. Sam Fennick has the details. In southern Nepal, a mother watches anxiously as a health worker measures her toddler's arm. This is a malnutrition clinic supported by Helen Keller International. One of the hundreds of projects thrown into uncertainty when the US government cancelled USAID programs earlier this year. Helen Keller's country director for Nepal is Pugia Pandra.

When we received the stop work order, it was really truly heartbreaking, you know, because it came as a shop. USAID had been one of Helen Keller's primary funders. When the department closed, thousands of community health volunteers were stood down. And it left the charity wondering how they keep funding services across Nepal. most vulnerable districts? So the USAID funded project, because it was designed at scale, we covered almost 60% of the country.

One of our primary job was to really identify where are the most vulnerable areas that have high risk of man nutrition and their job was to really truly implement a community-focused program. And so what I mean by that, we would sort of employ local women that would go to communities after communities, screen children if they're malnourished. If they find a malnourished child, they would then refer them to the closest treatment centre. So how did the clinic keep going?

In the weeks after the cuts, a small group of former USAID staff formed a volunteer initiative called Project Resource Optimization or PRO. They sifted through more than 20,000 cancelled USAID projects, narrowing them down to 79 that were the most cost-effective and life-saving. Rob Rosenbaum explained. how they did it. We started with an algorithmic approach. So once we had that initial list that brought it down to about 600 projects. And how long did it take you then to get that list of 600 down to a list that you could actually do something with, that you could find donors and philanthropists who would be able to help them? Within a month, we got the first set of projects

up. I think there was about 10 projects at that point. They published the list online and hope donors would come. And they did. First individual step forward. forward. One retired lawyer found that she had millions sitting in an old charitable account that she'd forgotten about. There might have been six million dollars sitting there. Six million? Six million. Yeah. And I had no idea. So I said, okay, I'm looking at this list and there are things I can do on this list. I said, it's now or never. I might as well start spending this money. Just spend it. Her donation funded two projects, one in Ethiopia and one treating malnutrition in Nigeria. But then came the message, no,

one expected. Sasha Galant from PRO picked it up. This actually started with an email in our inbox from an interested donor. The next time we heard back from that donor, they said they wanted to do more than anticipated and they decided to fund all of the remaining projects on our bedded list at that point to ensure that they would all receive enough funding to keep them operational for the next 12 months. In total, that covered about $65 million of projects. Their identity remains unknown, but their money means that a handful of programs can keep going. Back at the clinic in Nepal, health workers are busy checking children for malnutrition. Helen Keller's country director, Pugia Pandre, says the funding it received from PRO has kept

their services running, but only for the time being. So it really helped restore our community-based nutrition activities or, you know, reinstate some of the key, like saving services. So you've got a year's worth of funding. Yes. Are you thinking about what happens after that? The funding climate is really difficult. The Nepali government's budget is not very high.

And the government is now sort of just finding very difficult that with their own budget, they have to now procure these essential sort of drugs. There's a lot of like system level collapse as well. And the government now is having a really tough time to prioritize. The Trump administration formally dissolved USAID on the 1st of July. Since then, PRO has raised more than $100 million and helped 79 projects around the world. It says it intends to continue its work matching donors with charity projects. Sam Fennick reporting.

Italy's top appeals court has ruled that a former Ukrainian military officer should be extradited to Germany to face charges of blowing up Russia's Nord Stream gas pipelines three years ago. Ukraine has denied any role in the blasts, but the case could have serious political implications, as Germany is Kiev's biggest supplier of military aid in Europe. From Rome, Sarah Rainsford reports. Serhi Kuznetsov will be extradited to Germany under police escort in the next few days to face the charge of anti-constitutional sabotage.

He's accused of coordinating the deal. see explosions in 2022 that destroyed three key gas pipelines from Russia to Germany. At the time, many suspected Russia. But this summer, Mr Kuznetsov was arrested on holiday here in Italy. Then another Ukrainian man was detained in Poland. Kiev is saying nothing. It needs German support in its war with Russia. But Zerhe Kuznetsov's lawyer has told the BBC, his client was an officer in the Ukrainian military at the time of the blasts. So if he was involved in such a a complex and significant operation than he must have been following orders.

His client, he said, felt abandoned. Last month, the court in Poland refused to extradite the suspect there because the judge said no Ukrainian could be prosecuted for what he called a legitimate act of self-defense against Russia. Sarah Rainsford. Now, the Austrian artist Gustav Klim's portrait of Elizabeth Lederer has had a chequered history. The two-meter-tall painting from the early 20th century has made history

by becoming the second most expensive artwork ever sold at auction when it went for more than $236 million at Sotheby's in New York. Our correspondent David Silato has the details. Now, ladies and gentlemen, we come to an unequivocal masterpiece of Vienna's Golden Age. It was one of those standing-room-only moments at Sotheby's. Paintings by Gustaville have a habit. of setting records. Bidding began at $130 million, at $130 million. Almost six feet high, this portrait of a woman in a white dress surrounded by a background of Chinese figures

looks you straight in the eye, Elizabeth Lederer. The daughter of the artist's most important patrons was 20 years old when Gustav Klimt painted her portrait. In 1939, the Laderer's paintings were seized by the Nazis. Many were lost in a fire. But the portrait survived because it was separated from the rest of the works because the subject of the painting was Jewish. Meanwhile, back in the auction room, bidding had reached. $200 million. And after some intense conversations with the telephone bidders, the hammer finally came down at... $205 million.

Here it is, for the Elizabeth Lader of portrait only at Sotheby's here in the Breuer. The Klimt, Julian, is yours. Add in the premium to the as-yet-unnamed buyer, and it's a total price of $2,000. The only painting to have gone for more at auction, Leonardo da Vinci's Salvatore Monday, which went for $450 million. But at a time when the art market has this year been heading downwards, a reminder that if the right painting comes along,

the super-rich buyers are still there. Thank you both to all of our bidders. Thank you so much. Thank you. And that is all from us for now. but there will be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email.

The address is Global Podcast at BBC.co.com. You can also find us on X at BBC World Service. Use the hashtag Global NewsPod. This edition was mixed by Zabi Hula Kurush and produced by Wendy Urquhart and Guy Pitt. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Mars and until next time. Goodbye.

Thank you.