Trump seeks release of grand jury papers on Epstein
US President Donald Trump’s administration has decided to allow the release of the grand jury testimony in the case of the late convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein, if the court accepts the proposition.
This change comes as some of Trump’s supporters reacted with anger to a report concluding there was no evidence to support the speculations surrounding Epstein’s “high-profile clients” and controversial death in jail.
On the social media platform, Truth Social, Trump wrote, “Based on the ridiculous amount of publicity given to Jeffrey Epstein, I have asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to produce any and all pertinent Grand Jury testimony, subject to Court approval. This SCAM, perpetuated by the Democrats, should end, right now!”
Voting age lowered to 16 in the UK
Britain Thursday proposed lowering the voting age to 16 years for all elections in the United Kingdom, aiming to boost voter participation and restore trust in the electoral system.
The decision comes in response to historically low voter turnout in the 2024 national elections, which recorded the lowest participation since 2001.
The proposal also seeks to standardise voting rights across the UK. Currently, 16- and 17-year-olds are allowed to vote in Scottish and Welsh devolved parliamentary elections but excluded from voting in the UK parliamentary elections. The latest move would eliminate inconsistencies and grant uniform voting rights to these younger citizens.
Amazon’s cloud unit cuts hundreds of jobs
Amazon Thursday cut at least hundreds of jobs in its Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing unit, sources said.
The layoffs come just months after CEO Andy Jassy warned that the adoption of generative Artificial Intelligence tools would trigger a workforce reduction.
With this, Amazon, which employed 1.6 million full- and part-time workers globally as of March this year, joined a growing list of firms, including Microsoft (MSFT.O), Meta (META.O), and CrowdStrike (CRWD.O), in announcing layoffs this year. Several employees told Reuters that they received emails Thursday morning, informing them of their job termination, with their computers deactivated soon after. Amazon announced that it has laid off several groups in AWS.
US designates TRF as ‘terrorist group’
The US government has designated The Resistance Force (TRF)—considered an offshoot of the Pakistani extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba—as a ‘foreign terrorist organisation’ over the 22 April militant attack in India-administered Kashmir, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday.
The Resistance Front, also known as Kashmir Resistance, initially took responsibility for the attack in Pahalgam, which left 26 people dead, before denying it days later. LeT, listed as a ‘foreign terrorist organisation’ by the US earlier, is an Islamist group accused of plotting attacks in India and the West, including the three-day deadly assault on Mumbai in November 2008.
Ukraine gets a new PM amid wartime overhaul
The Ukrainian parliament appointed a new prime minister Thursday. The move was the part of a major cabinet overhaul, aimed at revitalising wartime management, against the backdrop of Ukraine’s prospects for peace with Russia grow dim.
Yulia Svyrydenko, who will take over from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said he expected the new government headed by him to increase the share of domestic weapons, which could come into use on Ukraine’s battlefield to 50 percent from 40 percent within six months.
Svyrydenko, who negotiated with the Trump administration to reach a deal that gives the US preferential access to Ukraine’s mineral wealth, in a step considered crucial to bolstering Kyiv-Washington, DC, relations, knows the US government well.
Israel strikes on Gaza Catholic Church kill 3
An Israeli strike Thursday hit the Holy Family Church in Gaza City. Several people received injuries in the attack, said the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, which oversees the small parish.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his country “deeply regrets that a stray ammunition” hit Gaza’s only Catholic Church, killing three people sheltering there.
“Every innocent life lost is a tragedy. We share the grief of the families and the faithful,” he said in a statement. He added that Israel was “investigating the incident and remains committed to protecting civilians and holy sites”.
In a statement later on Thursday, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said: “An initial inquiry into reports regarding injured individuals in the Holy Family Church in Gaza City suggests that fragments from a shell fired during operational activity in the area hit the church mistakenly. The cause of the incident is under review.”
EU’s sanctions on Russia’s oil ‘unprecedented’
The European Union on Friday reached an agreement on an 18th sanctions package against Russia over its war in Ukraine, with measures aimed at dealing further blows to Russia’s oil and energy industry, which France’s top diplomat described as “unprecedented”.
The 18th round of economic punishment against Russia since its 2022 invasion received the EU’s approval after Slovakia dropped a weeks-long block following talks with Brussels over separate plans to phase out Russian gas imports.
“The EU just approved one of its strongest sanctions packages against Russia to date,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said. “Each sanction weakens Russia’s ability to wage war. The message is clear: Europe will not back down in its support for Ukraine. The EU will keep raising the pressure until Russia ends its war,” Kallas added.
British spies named in Afghan data breach
The identities of more than 100 British officials, including members of the special forces and MI6, were compromised in a data breach that had put thousands of Afghans at risk of a reprisal. The fallout from the breach was kept secret by an injunction until Thursday, when a High Court judge lifted it, allowing media organisations to reveal that detailed case notes in the database contain secret personal data of special forces and spies.
The British government, earlier Tuesday, admitted that the data of nearly 19,000 Afghans, who worked with the British during the 20-year war in Afghanistan, Afghans who then applied to resettle in the UK, had been inadvertently leaked.
Many are at risk of serious harm or even death if the Taliban seeks retribution—part of the reason the information was kept secret by a so-called “super-injunction”, which is a kind of gagging order that prevents the reporting of even the existence of the injunction.
‘Trump’s fund cuts bane for abducted Ukrainian kids’
Thordis Kolbrun Reykfjord Gylfadóttir, an envoy of the Council of Europe, Thursday warned US President Donald Trump that US cuts to foreign assistance and his administration’s sanctions against the International Criminal Court are hurting the ability of groups to track thousands of Ukrainian children, abducted by Russian forces during their war with Ukraine.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Russian military has forcibly taken roughly 20,000 Ukrainian children into Russian territory.
The Trump administration cut funding to monitoring programmes, run by Yale University and other institutions, in March as part of its freeze on US foreign assistance spending. The US state department later that month said it would resume short-term funding to the programme, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio reversed that announcement.
4 dead, 1,300 evacuated as heavy rains hit South Korea
Four people have died and more than 1,300 evacuated as torrential rain pounds South Korea, with authorities warning that the unseasonal deluge will continue.
Among those killed were two men in their 80s. Authorities believe one of them was trying to drain floodwaters from the basement of his home. A third victim was crushed when a wall collapsed onto his car. Moments before, he had called his wife to say the vehicle was “being swept away”, authorities said. The fourth victim died of a cardiac arrest.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
Also Read: World news of the day: 17 July, 2025