Reuters World News - Clinton in Epstein files, Jake Paul and America hits IS

Episode Date: December 20, 2025

The U.S. Justice Department releases a huge, heavily-redacted cache of Epstein files. Anthony Joshua gives Jake Paul a reality check on a live Netflix stream. AI promised a revolution and companies are still waiting for it. Employees who quit their government jobs in protest of Trump are now running for Congress. And Iraq’s dreams of wheat independence are dashed. Plus, the U.S. hits IS targets in Syria.  Listen to Morning Bid podcast ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Find the Recommended Read here. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, I'm Sharon Reich Garson in New Jersey. It's Saturday, December 20th. Today, the DOJ releases a huge and heavily redacted cache of Epstein files. Anthony Joshua knocks out Jake Paul in their heavyweight fight. An AI-powered Somalia's palette isn't as sophisticated as hoped, and the people who quit government jobs because of Trump and are now running for Congress. This is Reuters' World.

news, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. The Department of Justice has released thousands of documents on its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein. Significant chunks of the files are redacted with at least 100 pages totally blacked out. What was readable made minimal references to U.S. President Donald Trump, but extensively featured former President Bill Clinton. Clinton's deputy chief of staff says the White House is attempting to shield themselves from scrutiny by focusing on the former president. Trump ordered the DOJ to investigate Clinton's ties to Epstein, a move critics say was an effort to shift the focus off his own relationship with the convicted sex offender. The partial release complies with a law overwhelmingly passed by Congress in November that mandated the disclosure of all Epstein files, despite the president's best efforts to keep them sealed.

The Justice Department acknowledges it's still reviewing hundreds of thousands of pages for possible release. I ordered a massive strike on the terrorists that killed our three great patriots last week. U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday's military strikes against dozens of Islamic State targets in Syria. They came shortly after the release of the Epstein document. retaliation for an attack on American personnel a week ago. The right hand landed. It found his home, and the referee waved it off. Former heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua has delivered a dose of reality and a savage sixth-round knockout to Jake Paul.

It's left the social media star-term prize fighter nursing a suspected broken jaw. Rory Carroll in L.A. has more on the fight, which was streamed live to Netflix's 300 million subscribers. Jake Paul can hold his head relatively high here. He managed to evade the much bigger, much more powerful, much more experienced Joshua through the first four rounds. Jake Paul and his most valuable promotion MVP fight promotion company has held his fights on Netflix

and attracted huge viewership, including his fight last year against former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson. Netflix is trying to cash in on sports move towards streaming services, and sees boxing is a winner for it. But I don't think anyone will be looking for a rematch. I think we've seen this fight, and everyone is satisfied that the Better Fighter won. This week's On Assignment podcast is a special,

year-end edition. Reuters editor-in-chief Alessandra Galloni joins Jonah Green to look back at a year defined by wars, economic shocks, and a U.S. president who kept the world guessing. I think we knew that the Trump administration was going to be big and that it was going to be the biggest news event in the world. I do not think we appreciated how big. If you look at what has happened over the last year, President Trump has done pretty much everything that he promised to do and more, right? And I think people going in, you know, journalists, but also just people on the street, you know, thought, oh, these are empty threats or, oh, you know, he's not going to wait into every single war in the world. And instead, it has happened.

Hear the full conversation on On Assignment out now. The sound of rushing water filling a small reservoir in Iraq. For endless miles, it's the only lifeline cutting through open sand. The rivers that once made this land, the cradle of civilization, are running dry. And that's created serious trouble for the country's wheat harvest. Our correspondent Sarah Softie has been in Najaf, where she met a farmer waiting for his ration of river water. So we spoke to Maana al-Fatlawi. He ended up planting only 20 Donams of the 100 because of the water crisis in Iraq right now.

He had to cut his workforce from 10 to two people. So there's only two people working on the farm this year. And he's kind of struggling to keep up with these changes. The decanates al-hadiah, can the government wafer the marjohns. Iraq relies on its neighbors for about 70% of its water. and upstream dams in Turkey and Iran have dramatically reduced the flow of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. So experts say this upstream control is now the single biggest factor driving Iraq's water

crisis this year, even more than climate change. For Iraq, it isn't just about food, it's about kind of sovereignty, but with production expected to fall sharply next year, analysts warn the country may need to start import. A wave of former federal employees who quit or were pushed out during Trump's second term are now running for Congress as Democrats. And they could determine control of the House in 26. Democrats need to flip just three Republican seats to win back the majority. I've never been in politics, but I have been in public service all my life. From former federal prosecutor, Ryan Crosswell, who resigned over Trump's dismissal of corruption charges against New York

city's mayor, an FBI agent who left following January 6th pardons and a climate scientist from the Department of Agriculture. The candidates are putting their government service at the center of their campaigns. Reporter Joseph Axe has been tracking these races, and he says the candidates believe in public service, but they felt they couldn't continue under the current administration. As former workers in the government, right, they can point to that at their experience. They can talk a bit about their record of public service. They can talk about the very real things they did within the government. They understand how it works. They understand how policy works. But the flip side of that is that these are bureaucrats, right? These are not folks that have run for

public office before. In most cases, they were barred from explicit partisan activity. And so they weren't party activists. You know, they weren't helping on campaigns. And so in that sense, this is all very new to that. And so I think for a lot of them, there's been a pretty steep learning curve here. Business leaders say artificial intelligence is the future, but right now it's falling short of expectation. Despite billions being poured into generative AI since Chat GPT's debut, most companies aren't seeing meaningful returns. Reporter Deepa Sita Raman has more. There's a clash there between how these systems were discussed and publicly promoted by the different labs. and how they function in the real world.

The number one complaint that I hear from companies was around reliability. That could mean hallucinations, like the tool just makes stuff up or it just stops functioning at odd times. The other issue, and this kind of touches on reliability, is a lot of these models are trained to be helpful.

They're nice, they're pleasant. And that is an issue that a lot of companies are dealing with trying to get these models to exhibit something that looks like human judgment. My favorite example is seller tracker, a tool that you could ask the way you would a human Somalié, would I like this wine? It worked well enough if you just ask general questions, but when you ask about specific bottle like this Merlot, this Malbec, it would pretty much just say, yeah, that one is good too. which doesn't help. And it's not what the customers are looking for. They are looking for, no, you're not going to like that.

You should actually try this instead, which is something that you do get from human Somaliers. And for today's recommended read, we head to northwest Italy to the village of Nebuno, where Anna Posse, who at 101 years old, still pulls espresso at the same Italian bar she opened in 1958, making her the country's longest-sergeau.

serving barista. And even after her husband passed away, the shop served as her family, with generations of customers stopping by for a cup of espresso or a little groppa. We'll drop a link in the pod description. For more on any of the stories from today, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast player. If you're listening on a smart speaker, just ask for the latest news for Reuters seven days a week. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headlines show.