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© CBS This Morning and Albany Times Union, via Associated Press
The Trump administration has decided to destroy $9.7m worth of contraceptives rather than send them abroad to women in need.
A state department spokesperson confirmed that the decision had been made – a move that will cost US taxpayers $167,000. The contraceptives are primarily long-acting, such as IUDs and birth control implants, and were almost certainly intended for women in Africa, according to two senior congressional aides, one of whom visited a warehouse in Belgium that housed the contraceptives. It is not clear to the aides whether the destruction has already been carried out, but said they had been told that it was set to occur by the end of July.
“It is unacceptable that the State Department would move forward with the destruction of more than $9m in taxpayer-funded family planning commodities purchased to support women in crisis settings, including war zones and refugee camps,” Jeanne Shaheen, a Democratic senator from New Hampshire, said in a statement. Shaheen and Brian Schatz, a Democratic senator from Hawaii, have introduced legislation to stop the destruction.
“This is a waste of US taxpayer dollars and an abdication of US global leadership in preventing unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions and maternal deaths,” added Shaheen, who in June sent a letter to secretary of state Marco Rubio about the matter.
The department decided to destroy the contraceptives because it could not sell them to any “eligible buyers”, in part because of US laws and rules that prohibit sending US aid to organizations that provide abortion services, counsel people about the procedure or advocate for the right to it overseas, according to the state department spokesperson.
Most of the contraceptives have less than 70% of their shelf life left before they expire, the spokesperson said, and rebranding and selling the contraceptives could cost several million dollars. However, the aide who visited the warehouse said that the earliest expiration date they saw on the contraceptives was 2027, and that two-thirds of the contraceptives did not have any USAID labels that would need to be rebranded.
The eradication of the contraceptives is part of the Trump administration’s months-long demolition of the Agency for International Development (USAID), the largest funding agency for humanitarian and development aid in the world. After the unofficial “department of government efficiency” (Doge) erased 83% of USAID’s programs, Rubio announced in June that USAID’s entire international workforce would be abolished and its foreign assistance programs would be moved to the State Department. The agency will be replaced by an organization called America First.
In total, the funding cuts to USAID could lead to more than 14m additional deaths by 2030, according to a recent study published in the journal the Lancet. A third of those deaths could be children.
“If you have an unintended pregnancy and you end up having to seek unsafe abortion, it’s quite likely that you will die,” said Sarah Shaw, the associate director of advocacy at MSI Reproductive Choices, a global family planning organization that works in nearly 40 countries. “If you’re not given the means to space or limit your births, you’re putting your life at risk or your child’s life at risk.”
MSI tried to purchase the contraceptives from the US government, Shaw said. But the government would only accept full price – which Shaw said the agency could not afford, given that MSI would also have to shoulder the expense of transportingthe contraceptives and the fact that they are inching closer to their expiration date, which could affect MSI’s ability to distribute them.
The state department spokesperson did not specifically respond to a request for comment on Shaw’s allegation, but MSI does provide abortions as part of its global work, which may have led the department to rule it out as an “eligible buyer”.
In an internal survey, MSI programs in 10 countries reported that, within the next month, they expect to be out of stock or be on the brink of being out of stock of at least one contraceptive method. The countries include Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Senegal, Kenya and Sierra Leone.
Shaw expects the stock to be incinerated. “The fact that the contraceptives are going to be burned when there’s so much need – it’s just egregious,” she said. “It’s disgusting.” The Department of State spokesperson did not respond to a request for information on the planned method of destruction.
The destruction of the contraceptives is, to Shaw, emblematic of the overall destruction of a system that once provided worldwide help to women and families. USAID funding is threaded through so much of the global supply chain of family planning aid that, without its money, the chain has come apart. In Mali, Shaw said, USAID helped pay for the gas used by the vehicles that transport contraceptives from a warehouse. Without the gas money, the vehicles were stuck – and so were the contraceptives.
“I’ve worked in this sector for over 20 years and I’ve never seen anything on this scale,” Shaw said. “The speed at which they’ve managed to dismantle excellent work and really great progress – I mean, it’s just vanished in weeks.”
Other kinds of assistance are also reportedly being wasted. This week, the Atlantic reported that almost 500 metric tons of emergency food were expiring and would be incinerated, rather than being used to feed about 1.5 million children in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Meanwhile, almost 800,000 Mpox vaccines that were supposed to be sent to Africa are now unusable because they are too close to their expiration date, according to Politico.
The cuts to foreign aid are slated to deepen. Early Friday morning, Congress passed a bill to claw back roughly $8bn that had been earmarked for foreign assistance.
“It’s not just about an empty shelf,” Shaw said. “It’s about unfulfilled potential. It’s about a girl having to drop out of school. It’s about someone having to seek an unsafe abortion and risking their lives. That’s what it’s really about.”
Getty ImagesPresident Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal's parent company, its owner and two reporters, over a report claiming Trump wrote a "bawdy" personal note to paedophile Jeffrey Epstein in 2003.
The lawsuit, filed in Miami, names Dow Jones, News Corp and conservative media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, claiming the paper slandered him and violated libel laws.
Earlier, Trump had threatened that he would force Murdoch "to testify in my lawsuit against him and his 'pile of garbage' newspaper".
Trump says the note, which the paper reported he'd sent for Epstein's 50th birthday, is "fake". It comes amid a backlash from his supporters over his handling of the Epstein case files.
Trump acknowledged that he and members of his staff attempted to halt publication of the story. He said the newspaper and Murdoch "were warned directly" they would be sued if they printed the article, describing it as "false, malicious, and defamatory".
The lawsuit also names the two reporters who wrote the story, Khadeeja Safdar and Joseph Palazzolo.
Earlier on Friday, Trump took to his Truth Social platform, writing: "I look forward to getting Rupert Murdoch to testify in my lawsuit against him and his 'pile of garbage' newspaper, the WSJ. That will be an interesting experience!!!"
According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), a letter bearing Trump's name "contained several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy marker".
"Inside the outline of the naked woman was a typewritten note styled as an imaginary conversation between Trump and Epstein, written in the third person," the paper reports.
It reportedly contains a joking reference that "Enigmas never age" and allegedly ends with the words: "A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret."
Trump denied writing the note after the article was published on Thursday, posting: "These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I don't draw pictures."
On Friday, Trump declined to answer reporters' questions about his relationship with Epstein, and why he had not ordered the release of more documents.
Instead, he asked the Attorney General to produce documents related to secretive grand jury testimony, which could prove to be a lengthy court process. It's unclear when or if those documents will be released, or if they contain the details Trump's supporters have been demanding be released publicly.
Trump's order concerning grand jury testimony came after days of sustained pressure from some of his most loyal supporters demanding further disclosures in the Epstein case.
Some Trump loyalists have called for Attorney General Pam Bondi to resign after she reversed course on releasing certain documents related to Epstein.
In February, Bondi said that a "client list" belonging to Epstein was "sitting on my desk right now". Then last week, her office announced that there is no such "client list".
Chad Bianco, a Republican sheriff running for California governor, told BBC News that Trump's handling of the Epstein files was "not what I was expecting" and that "millions" of his followers are disappointed.
"We feel like we're being talked down to like stupid children."
Trump and Murdoch have a relationship that goes back decades.
The 94-year-old media tycoon's media empire, which includes Fox News, is often credited with helping propel Trump to the White House.
But the two grew more distant over the years and their relationship started to collapse following Trump's loss at the ballot box in 2020 to Joe Biden.
"We want to make Trump a non-person," Murdoch wrote in an email that emerged during court battles over Fox's role spreading misinformation in the 2020 election.
Trump's more recent victory in 2024 appeared to bring the two together again. During a February visit to the White House, Trump referred to Murdoch as "a class by himself" and "an amazing guy".
On Sunday, the two men were pictured together attending the Fifa World Cup in New Jersey.
Attorney General Bondi was also seen watching the match from the president's private box.
Meanwhile, members of Congress are pushing to pass a "discharge petition" that would force Bondi to "make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials in the possession of the Department of Justice, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and United States Attorneys' Offices" relating to Epstein.
The effort has brought together some of Congress's fiercest opponents, including Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene and Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who are both signed on as supporters.
Getty ImagesEl Salvador is repatriating dozens of detained Venezuelans in exchange for US nationals held in Venezuela, the governments of the US and El Salvador announced on Friday.
The central American country sent approximately 250 prisoners incarcerated in its notorious Cecot (Centre for the Confinement of Terrorism) prison in return for the release of 10 US nationals from Venezuela.
The planeload of migrants deported from the US to El Salvador is scheduled to arrive in Maiquetía, Venezuela later on Friday.
Relations between Salvadorean leader Bukele and US President Donald Trump have warmed significantly in recent months, especially as Bukele has agreed to detain deported US migrants.
A senior administration official told reporters on Friday that, with the release, there are currently no longer any US nationals being held by the government of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.
"Today, we have handed over all the Venezuelan nationals detained in our country, accused of being part of the criminal organization Tren de Aragua (TDA)," Bukele said in a post on X.
He said the exchange was done in return "for a considerable number of Venezuelan political prisoners" as well as the US citizens.
In a separate post, US Secretary of State Marc Rubio confirmed the exchange and thanked Bukele and American officials.
The Venezuelans had originally been deported by the US under the Trump administration to El Salvador earlier this year, under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which gives a US president power to detain and deport natives or citizens of "enemy" nations without usual processes.
A senior Trump administration official told reporters on Friday that El Salvador made the "independent decision" to release the Venezuelan prisoners - which it considers to be gang members - for humanitarian reasons.
The exchange of Venezuelans for Americans facilitated by El Salvador highlights the strong relationship between Trump and Bukele - the self-styled "world's coolest dictator".
"This deal would not have been possible without President Bukele," the administration official said. "We extend our deep, deep gratitude."
The Salvadoran leader visited Trump in the White House in April, where the pair appeared friendly as they spoke to reporters, often laughing and cracking jokes together.
Bukele has backed the deportation of migrants from the United States to El Salvador's Cecot maximum security jail.
Trump said at the time that Bukele is "really helping out" the US out by facilitating these detentions, as the Salvadoran president responded that his country is "very eager to help".
Around the same time, Bukele first proposed swapping Venezuelan deportees for "political prisoners", including family members of Venezuelan opposition figures, journalists and activists detained in a government electoral crackdown in 2024.
"The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud," he wrote to Maduro on X.
"However, I propose a humanitarian agreement that includes the repatriation of 100% of the 252 Venezuelans who were deported, in exchange for the release and surrender of an identical number (252) of the thousands of political prisoners you hold."
The senior administration official said that while the deal only pertained to US nationals kept in Venezuela, the Trump administration is still actively working on the release of "dozens" of political prisoners held by the Maduro government.
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© Eric Lee for The New York Times; Scott Heins for The New York Times
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© Jerry Holt/Star Tribune, via ZUMA Press Wire
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© Illustration by Sam Whitney/The New York Times
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Getty ImagesParts of the UK are braced for potentially dangerous flash flooding as thunderstorms and torrential rain are set arrive over the weekend.
The Met Office has issued an amber weather warning for south-east England as more than a month's worth of rain is forecast to fall in a matter of hours on Saturday morning.
It says fast-flowing and deep floodwaters are likely, leading to road and transport disruption, as well as power cuts.
The torrential downpours come days after a third UK heatwave of the year that parched swathes of the UK and led to several hosepipe bans being declared.
This will make flooding more likely and severe as the dry ground will not be able to absorb as much water.
The amber warning covers a stretch of the south coast, London and Cambridge, and is in force from 04:00 BST to 11:00 on Saturday.
Between 20 and 40mm of rain could fall within an hour in this area, the Met Office has warned, which could accumulate to 70-100mm in just a few hours.
It said homes and businesses are likely to be flooded, which will happen "quickly", while this amount of surface water will make driving difficult and may lead to road closures.
Lightning strikes, hail and strong winds may also cause train and bus cancellations.
Yellow weather warnings will cover the rest of eastern, central and northern England and a portion of eastern Scotland. A yellow warning is already in force for parts of eastern England.
Amber warnings indicated there is an increased chance severe weather could affect people's day-to-day lives, including a potential danger to life. Yellow warnings are less severe.
The last amber warning over London was in January 2024, when Storm Henk hit parts of central England and Wales, according to the Met Office.
After arriving on Friday night, the storm is forecast to move inland, pushing northwards across England on Saturday morning before arriving in Scotland by midday.
Yellow warnings for rain cover parts of England and Scotland on Sunday and Monday as residual parts of the storm linger.
Last weeks heatwave brought travel disruption, a number of water-related deaths and hosepipe bans being declared for millions living in Yorkshire, Kent and Sussex.
One might think a heavy dose of rainfall would help reduce these drought conditions - but because the rain will be very heavy in localised areas, it will run off the dry, baked earth rapidly, perhaps overwhelming local sewers and waterways.
A substantial recovery in reservoir and groundwater aquifer levels would require a more sustained spell of wet weather.
Yorkshire's hosepipe ban is expected to last until winter.
Thunderstorms following a heatwave in the summer of 2022 brought flash flooding to London and the surrounding areas, flooding roads and Tube stations.
The rainfall also caused cancellations and delays at Gatwick Airport.
Getty ImagesThree police officers were killed in an explosion at a County Sheriff's Department training facility in East Los Angeles, officials say.
The explosion occurred at the Biscailuz Center Academy Training on Friday morning at around 07:30 local time (15:30 BST), according to first responders.
Confirming the deaths in a post on X, US Attorney General Pam Bondi called it a "horrific incident" and said that federal agents have been deployed on the scene and are "working to learn more".
It was unclear what caused the explosion or if there were any more victims.
The explosion occurred in a parking lot of the Special Enforcement Bureau at the facility, the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department (LASD) told BBC's US partner CBS News.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has been briefed about the explosion and he is "closely monitoring the situation", his office said in a statement on X.
Newsom's office added that state assistance has also been offered to help respond to the incident.
Kathryn Barger, Chief of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, wrote in a statement that she is "closely tracking the situation as we learn more about what occurred and the condition of those affected".
"My heart is heavy, and my thoughts are with the brave men and women of the Sheriff's Department during this difficult time," she said.
The Trump administration has decided to destroy $9.7m worth of contraceptives rather than send them abroad to women in need.
A state department spokesperson confirmed that the decision had been made – a move that will cost US taxpayers $167,000. The contraceptives are primarily long-acting, such as IUDs and birth control implants, and were almost certainly intended for women in Africa, according to two senior congressional aides, one of whom visited a warehouse in Belgium that housed the contraceptives. It is not clear to the aides whether the destruction has already been carried out, but said they had been told that it was set to occur by the end of July.
“It is unacceptable that the State Department would move forward with the destruction of more than $9m in taxpayer-funded family planning commodities purchased to support women in crisis settings, including war zones and refugee camps,” Jeanne Shaheen, a Democratic senator from New Hampshire, said in a statement. Shaheen and Brian Schatz, a Democratic senator from Hawaii, have introduced legislation to stop the destruction.
“This is a waste of US taxpayer dollars and an abdication of US global leadership in preventing unintended pregnancies, unsafe abortions and maternal deaths,” added Shaheen, who in June sent a letter to secretary of state Marco Rubio about the matter.
The department decided to destroy the contraceptives because it could not sell them to any “eligible buyers”, in part because of US laws and rules that prohibit sending US aid to organizations that provide abortion services, counsel people about the procedure or advocate for the right to it overseas, according to the state department spokesperson.
Most of the contraceptives have less than 70% of their shelf life left before they expire, the spokesperson said, and rebranding and selling the contraceptives could cost several million dollars. However, the aide who visited the warehouse said that the earliest expiration date they saw on the contraceptives was 2027, and that two-thirds of the contraceptives did not have any USAID labels that would need to be rebranded.
The eradication of the contraceptives is part of the Trump administration’s months-long demolition of the Agency for International Development (USAID), the largest funding agency for humanitarian and development aid in the world. After the unofficial “department of government efficiency” (Doge) erased 83% of USAID’s programs, Rubio announced in June that USAID’s entire international workforce would be abolished and its foreign assistance programs would be moved to the State Department. The agency will be replaced by an organization called America First.
In total, the funding cuts to USAID could lead to more than 14m additional deaths by 2030, according to a recent study published in the journal the Lancet. A third of those deaths could be children.
“If you have an unintended pregnancy and you end up having to seek unsafe abortion, it’s quite likely that you will die,” said Sarah Shaw, the associate director of advocacy at MSI Reproductive Choices, a global family planning organization that works in nearly 40 countries. “If you’re not given the means to space or limit your births, you’re putting your life at risk or your child’s life at risk.”
MSI tried to purchase the contraceptives from the US government, Shaw said. But the government would only accept full price – which Shaw said the agency could not afford, given that MSI would also have to shoulder the expense of transportingthe contraceptives and the fact that they are inching closer to their expiration date, which could affect MSI’s ability to distribute them.
The state department spokesperson did not specifically respond to a request for comment on Shaw’s allegation, but MSI does provide abortions as part of its global work, which may have led the department to rule it out as an “eligible buyer”.
In an internal survey, MSI programs in 10 countries reported that, within the next month, they expect to be out of stock or be on the brink of being out of stock of at least one contraceptive method. The countries include Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Senegal, Kenya and Sierra Leone.
Shaw expects the stock to be incinerated. “The fact that the contraceptives are going to be burned when there’s so much need – it’s just egregious,” she said. “It’s disgusting.” The Department of State spokesperson did not respond to a request for information on the planned method of destruction.
The destruction of the contraceptives is, to Shaw, emblematic of the overall destruction of a system that once provided worldwide help to women and families. USAID funding is threaded through so much of the global supply chain of family planning aid that, without its money, the chain has come apart. In Mali, Shaw said, USAID helped pay for the gas used by the vehicles that transport contraceptives from a warehouse. Without the gas money, the vehicles were stuck – and so were the contraceptives.
“I’ve worked in this sector for over 20 years and I’ve never seen anything on this scale,” Shaw said. “The speed at which they’ve managed to dismantle excellent work and really great progress – I mean, it’s just vanished in weeks.”
Other kinds of assistance are also reportedly being wasted. This week, the Atlantic reported that almost 500 metric tons of emergency food were expiring and would be incinerated, rather than being used to feed about 1.5 million children in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Meanwhile, almost 800,000 Mpox vaccines that were supposed to be sent to Africa are now unusable because they are too close to their expiration date, according to Politico.
The cuts to foreign aid are slated to deepen. Early Friday morning, Congress passed a bill to claw back roughly $8bn that had been earmarked for foreign assistance.
“It’s not just about an empty shelf,” Shaw said. “It’s about unfulfilled potential. It’s about a girl having to drop out of school. It’s about someone having to seek an unsafe abortion and risking their lives. That’s what it’s really about.”
© Doug Mills/The New York Times
© Yamil Lage/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
© Photo illustration by The New York Times; source photograph by Richard Foreman/A24
© KC McGinnis for The New York Times
© Paul Buck/EPA, via Shutterstock
Getty ImagesThree police officers were killed in an explosion at a County Sheriff's Department training facility in East Los Angeles, officials say.
The explosion occurred at the Biscailuz Center Academy Training on Friday morning at around 07:30 local time (15:30 BST), according to first responders.
Confirming the deaths in a post on X, US Attorney General Pam Bondi called it a "horrific incident" and said that federal agents have been deployed on the scene and are "working to learn more".
It was unclear what caused the explosion or if there were any more victims.
The explosion occurred in a parking lot of the Special Enforcement Bureau at the facility, the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department (LASD) told BBC's US partner CBS News.
California Governor Gavin Newsom has been briefed about the explosion and he is "closely monitoring the situation", his office said in a statement on X.
Newsom's office added that state assistance has also been offered to help respond to the incident.
Kathryn Barger, Chief of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, wrote in a statement that she is "closely tracking the situation as we learn more about what occurred and the condition of those affected".
"My heart is heavy, and my thoughts are with the brave men and women of the Sheriff's Department during this difficult time," she said.
Eighteen workers trapped for about 18 hours in a gold mine in north-western Colombia have been rescued by emergency crews, the country's government has said.
The miners became stuck on Thursday in the El Minón mine, in Colombia's Antioquia region, after equipment failure, according to AFP news agency.
After a 12-hour-long rescue operation, all the workers are in good health, Colombia's National Mining Agency (ANM) said.
In a letter sent to the government, the local mayor in Remedios said the mine was apparently unlicensed.
The operation to free the miners finished at just after 03:00 local time (09:00 BST) on Friday, according to Colombia's energy minister.
Video of the rescue showed the miners' colleagues clapping and cheering as they climbed out of the mine shaft.
Yarley Erasmo Marin, a representative of a local miners' association, told the AFP news agency that a mechanical failure caused the collapse of a structure designed to prevent landslides, blocking the mine's main exit.
Oxygen had to be given to the trapped miners through hoses while they waited to be rescued, local radio station ABC reported.
The ANM said in a statement that the mining community should "refrain from illegal mining activities, which endanger the lives and safety of those involved and also impact the country's resources and the environment".
Mining accidents are not uncommon in Colombia and dozens of deaths have been recorded in recent years.
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