More images from the estate of convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein have been released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.

The Democrats said the 19 images came from a tranche of 95,000 photos the committee received from Epstein's estate as part of its ongoing investigation.

US President Donald Trump, former Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon are among the high-profile figures featured in the photos. The images, many of which have been seen before, do not imply wrongdoing.

It comes one week before a deadline for the US justice department to release all Epstein-related documents, which are separate from the images shared by the committee on Friday.

The individuals featured in the images have not yet commented. Many of them have previously denied wrongdoing in relation to Epstein.

In a statement, Representative Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the committee, said: "It is time to end this White House cover-up and bring justice to the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful friends."

"These disturbing photos raise even more questions about Epstein and his relationships with some of the most powerful men in the world. We will not rest until the American people get the truth. The Department of Justice must release all the files, NOW" he added.

Republicans, who are in the majority on the committee, have accused Democrats of "cherry-picking photos and making targeted redactions to create a false narrative about President Trump".

The White House called the release a "Democrat hoax" against Trump that has been "repeatedly debunked".

Trump appeared in three of the images released on Friday. One image showed him standing next to a woman whose face has been redacted.

Another showed Trump standing next to Epstein while talking to model Ingrid Seynhaeve at a 1997 Victoria's Secret party in New York – an image that was already publicly available.

A third photo showed Trump smiling with several women, whose faces have also been redacted, flanked on either side of him.

An additional photo showed an illustrated likeness of the president on red packets next to a sign that reads: "Trump Condom".

Among the images released was what appeared to be cropped photo of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor next to Bill Gates. A fuller version of the photo, which was available on photo agency Getty Images, showed King Charles, the then-Prince of Wales, on the right side of the photo.

The Getty Images' caption said the picture was taken during a summit during the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in London in April 2018.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon was also pictured in some of the images. He was shown speaking with Epstein at a desk, and in another, standing beside him in front of a mirror.

A third image showed him speaking with filmmaker Woody Allen.

A photo featuring former US President Bill Clinton's showed him standing next to Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 for her role in facilitating the disgraced financier's abuse.

Two other people the BBC has yet to identify are also in the image, which appeared to have been signed by Clinton.

Clinton has denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. In 2019, a spokesperson said he "knows nothing about the terrible crimes" Epstein pleaded guilty to.

Other prominent figures which appear in the images include US economist Larry Summers, lawyer Alan Dershowitz and entrepreneur Richard Branson. Not all the images show those individuals in the company of Epstein.

Epstein was charged with sex trafficking in July 2019. He died in prison a month later while awaiting trail.

The president was a friend of Epstein's, but has said they fell out in the early 2000s, years before he was first arrested.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein.

The justice department is required to release investigative material related to Epstein by 19 December under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was signed into law by Trump last month.

US President Donald Trump has said the prime ministers of Thailand and Cambodia will halt fighting "effective this evening".

Trump made the announcement after telephone conversations with the two leaders following deadly border clashes in recent days which have left at least 20 people dead and half a million displaced.

Neither Thai PM Anutin Charnvirakul nor his Cambodian counterpart Hun Manet has commented.

However, after his call with Trump earlier, Charnvirakul told a news conference that a ceasefire would only come about if "Cambodia will cease fire, withdraw its troops, remove all landmines it has planted".

In a post on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump said both leaders "have agreed to CEASE all shooting effective this evening, and go back to the original Peace Accord made with me.

"Both Countries are ready for PEACE and continued Trade with the United States of America."

The long-standing border dispute escalated on 24 July, as Cambodia launched a barrage of rockets into Thailand, which responded with air strikes.

After days of intense fighting which left dozens dead, the neighbouring South East Asian countries agreed to an "immediate and unconditional ceasefire" brokered by Trump and Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim.

Since then, tensions continued to build.

This week, violence expanded into at least six provinces in north-eastern Thailand and five provinces in Cambodia's north and north-west.

The two countries have been been contesting territorial sovereignty along their 800km land border for more than a century, since the borders of the two nations were drawn after the French occupation of Cambodia.

Warehouses supplying the vast majority of Ukraine's pharmacies have been destroyed in a series of Russian attacks over recent months.

Medical supplies worth about $200m (£145m) were destroyed in just two strikes in December and October.

A large warehouse storing medicines in the city of Dnipro was destroyed in a Russian air strike on 6 December. As a result, about $110m worth of medicines were destroyed - estimated at up to 30% of Ukraine's monthly supply.

"It was a missile and drone strike against our facility. The missiles flew past, but the drones hit it," said Dmytro Babenko, acting director-general of pharmaceutical distributor BADM.

"They caused a fire which unfortunately proved impossible to contain and the whole facility was destroyed."

BADM is one of two companies that supply about 85% of Ukrainian pharmacies in roughly equal shares.

The other company is Optima Pharm, whose warehouses have been hit three times this year - on 28 August, 25 October and 15 November.

The October attack destroyed its main storage facility in Kyiv, and cost the company more than $100m, says Optima Pharm's chief financial officer Artem Suprun.

Russia denies hitting civilian targets, but when the Optima Pharm warehouse was hit in October, the defence ministry in Moscow said only that it had targeted a factory producing drones.

On the day BADM's warehouse was destroyed, Russia said it had hit "a warehouse storing military equipment" as well as energy and transport infrastructure.

Such attacks significantly complicate the treatment of sick and wounded in Ukraine, after almost four years of Russia's full-scale war.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC), an NGO that had been using the warehouse in Dnipro, says it lost $195,000 worth of medication and supplies, which could have served 30,000 people in need.

"When I arrived at the site I was devastated, the scene was simply awful. All of this medicine could have served people for years, and in a single moment it was all lost," says the IRC's Andriy Moskalenko.

The IRC said the Dnipro facility had served "as a critical hub for hospitals, healthcare providers, pharmacies and humanitarian actors".

Mr Babenko from BADM said the Russian attack had destroyed "vitally important medicines" that had been imported and are not produced in Ukraine.

"It's a pretty complicated situation," he told the BBC.

But he is hopeful that the attack will not leave Ukrainians without medicines.

"There won't be significant shortages, possibly only of certain types of goods. We're hoping to restore all supplies in a month or a month-and-a-half," Mr Babenko said.

Ukrainian authorities accuse Russia of deliberately targeting hospitals, ambulances, medics and rescue workers, claims Moscow has denied.

According to the government in Kyiv, more than 2,500 medical institutions have been damaged or destroyed, and more than 500 civilian doctors, nurses and other medical workers killed.

Earlier this month, the World Health Organization said it had recorded 2,763 attacks on Ukraine's healthcare system since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion, and it said that in 2025 there had been a 12% increase in attacks from the previous year.

The US ambassador to the UN has accused Rwanda of leading Africa's Great Lakes region toward war, just over a week after a peace deal was signed in Washington to end the decades-long conflict.

US President Donald Trump Trump hailed the deal between DR Congo's President Félix Tshisekedi and Rwanda's President Paul Kagame as "historic" and "a great day for Africa, great day for the world".

But the M23 rebel group says it has "fully liberated" the key city of Uvira in an offensive the US and European powers say is backed by Rwanda. UN experts have previously accused it of having "de facto control" of the rebel force's operations.

Rwanda denies the allegations, however, its presence in Washington was a tacit acknowledgment of its influence over the M23.

The rebels were not signatories to Trump's deal - and have been taking part in a parallel peace process led by Qatar, a US ally.

The latest fighting risks further escalating an already deeply complex conflict.

Why did the M23 seize Uvira now?

Prof Jason Stearns, a Canada-based political scientist who specialises in the region, told the BBC that the view in M23 circles was that "they need more leverage in the negotiations", while the feeling in the Rwandan government is that Tshisekedi cannot be trusted.

He added that the assault on Uvira, in South Kivu province, "flies in the face of all the negotiations that are under way".

"It appears to humiliate the US government. I'm not sure what strategic purpose that would serve," Prof Stearns told the BBC.

The M23's new offensive in South Kivu started a few days before Kagame and Tshisekedi flew to Washington last week to ratify the agreement first hammered out in June.

Bram Verelst, a Burundi-based researcher with the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) think-tank, said the assault appeared to be an attempt to force Burundi to withdraw the troops it had in eastern DR Congo backing the army against the rebel forces and Rwanda.

He pointed out that Uvira - which lies just 27km (17 miles) from Burundi's capital, Bujumbura, on the northern tip of Lake Tanganyika - was of strategic importance because of the presence of at least 10,000 Burundian troops in South Kivu.

"Uvira is Burundi's gateway into eastern DR Congo, to send troops and supplies. That has now been cut off," Mr Verelst told the BBC.

"It seems that many Burundian troops are withdrawing, but it's not clear if all contingents will retreat," he added.

Yale Ford, an Africa Analyst for the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute, pointed out that Uvira, which had a population of about 700,000, was the DR Congo government's last major foothold and military hub in South Kivu.

He added that the M23 was now likely to establish a parallel administration in the city, and use its military gains "as a bargaining chip in peace talks".

As for the DR Congo government, it has not acknowledged its latest military setback, but says that the "gravity of the situation is compounded by the now proven risk of regional conflagration".

What does it mean for Burundi?

Burundi has been a natural ally of DR Congo for years because of its enmity with Rwanda.

Both accuse the other of backing rebel groups seeking to overthrow their respective governments.

The neighbours share a similar language and ethnic make-up - with Tutsi and Hutu communities often vying for power - and both have suffered terrible ethnic-based massacres.

But unlike Rwanda, which is headed by a Tutsi president, the majority Hutus are in power in Burundi.

Burundi's government fears that if the M23 cements its presence in South Kivu, it would strengthen a Burundian rebel group called Red Tabara.

Based in South Kivu, it is mainly made up of Tutsis - and has attacked Burundi in the past.

In an apparent attempt to placate Burundi's fears, the M23 said it had "no sights beyond our national borders".

"Our fight has the objective of peace, the protection of the population, the rebuilding of the state in DR Congo, as well as the stability of the Great Lakes region," the group added.

Burundi has shut its border with DR Congo, but, according to Mr Verelst, it is still allowing people to cross into its territory after carrying out security checks.

Aid agencies say that about 50,000 people have fled into Burundi in the past week.

Burundian troops - along with the Congolese army and allied militias - fought to block the rebel advance towards Uvira, but the city itself fell "without much fighting", Mr Verelst said.

The fall of Uvira would hit Burundi's already struggling economy as the country has been suffering from a severe shortage of foreign currency and fuel, and had been heavily dependent on eastern DR Congo for both, he said.

How did the M23 manage to capture Uvira?

The M23 began a major advance earlier this year when it captured Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, on the border with Rwanda.

At the time, South African troops were deployed to help DR Congo's army, but they were forced to withdraw after the M23 seized the city in January.

Shortly afterwards the rebels captured the next big city in eastern DR Congo, Bukavu, capital of South Kivu.

The move on Uvira came after the rebels broke the defence lines of the DR Congo army, militias allied with it and Burundian troops.

Prof Stearns said the M23 was estimated to have more than 10,000 fighters, but there was likely to have been an "influx" of Rwandan troops for the recent offensive to capture Uvira.

"The reason why they are able to defeat their enemy is that the Rwandan army, at least, is very disciplined, and I think discipline matters more than manpower," he said.

"The conflict in recent days has also featured the extensive use of drone technology on both sides but the Rwandans have used this more to their advantage than the Congolese," he added.

Where does this leave the peace process?

It appears to be in deep trouble.

The US ambassador to the UN blamed Rwanda for the recent fighting.

"Instead of progress toward peace, as we have seen under President Trump's leadership in recent weeks, Rwanda is leading the region toward more instability and toward war," Mike Waltz told a Security Council meeting.

An earlier statement - issued by the US, European Union, and eight European governments - went further, saying that both the M23 and the Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) should immediately halt "offensive operations", and Rwandan troops should withdraw from eastern DR Congo.

Prof Stearns said the policy experts he had spoken to were "baffled" by the timing of the move to capture Uvira.

"It was literally as they were signing a peace deal in Washington that Rwandan troops were amassing, and then invaded the area around Kamanyola, which is across the border from Rwanda, and then advanced on Uvira," he added.

Rwanda's foreign ministry has not responded to the claims that its troops were in South Kivu, but said the ceasefire violations and fighting could not be "attributed" to Rwanda.

It accused the DR Congo and Burundian armies of bombing villages near the Rwandan border, and said Burundi had "amassed" nearly 20,000 troops in South Kivu in support of DR Congo's army.

It added that it was now clear that DR Congo was "never ready to commit to peace", and even though Tshisekedi had attended the ceremony in Washington, it was "as if he had been forced to sign" the peace accord.

The DR Congo's government levelled a similar accusation against Kagame, saying he had made a "deliberate choice" to abandon the Washington Accord, and to undermine Trump's efforts to end the conflict.

Can the deal be salvaged?

Prof Stearns said the US-led peace process was now on a "troubled path, perhaps it is stuck".

He pointed out that the success of the deal hinged on DR Congo's army launching an operation to disarm the FDLR militia group, members of which were involved in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, and which Kagame's government sees as a continued threat.

But, Prof Stearns said, he could not see DR Congo's army launching such an operation at the moment.

The peace deal also envisaged economic co-operation between DR Congo and Rwanda, including on hydro-electric power, mining and infrastructure development - something that the US hopes would pave the way for American companies to increase investments in the mineral-rich region.

Prof Stearns said he could not see this happening either while Rwandan troops remained in eastern DR Congo, and fighting continued.

He added that his understanding was that the parallel peace process in Doha - led by Qatar's government to broker a peace deal between the M23 and DR Congo's government - was also on hold at the moment.

"It's very difficult to imagine the Congolese returning there right now after there has been this major offensive by the M23," he added.

What are Tshisekedi's options?

Prof Stearns said that Tshisekedi was under "very serious" pressure from the public for his failure to keep his numerous promises to bring an end to the fighting in the east.

He said Tshisekedi might also be under pressure from parts of the army, with whom he had a strained relationship after the arrest of generals for alleged corruption and because of the setbacks in the east.

He added that Tshisekedi was banking on the US to put pressure on Rwanda to withdraw its support for the M23.

"It's going to be very difficult for the Congolese army to muster a response.

"It's now in the hands of the various peace brokers, the US in particular, and perhaps Qatar and other donors," the academic said.

"It's to be seen how much they care about ending this conflict, and how much political capital they are willing to spend."

Go to BBCAfrica.com for more news from the African continent.

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A raccoon that broke into a Virginia store and joyfully drank its way through the liquor aisle is now suspected of a wider crime spree, officials say.

A Hanover animal control officer suspects the stripe-tailed mammal also broke into a nearby karate studio and then raided the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) for snacks.

"Supposedly, this is the third break-in he's had," said Officer Samantha Martin.

The raccoon, now nicknamed the "trashed panda", was first discovered passed out in the bathroom of the Ashland liquor store two days after Thanksgiving. After sobering up, the unlikely outlaw was released back into the wild.

A new study found the masked mammals known for rummaging rubbish bins for easy food, are evolving and getting comfortable around humans.

Ms Martin says it's only a matter of time before the masked bandit strikes the shopping centre again.

"This is not the first time he's been in one of the buildings," she told the county government's official podcast, Hear in Hanover, on Thursday.

"He was in the karate studio. I think he got into the DMV [and] ate some of their snacks one time," she said.

She later added that there is a chance the earlier break-ins could have been perpetrated by a different raccoon - but officials have identified him as their prime suspect.

Raccoons are known for breaking into peoples garbage cans, leading to the nickname "trash panda".

The county has been selling shirts with the logo "trashed panda" and has raised a whopping $207,000 (£155,000) as of Friday. The money will be used to renovate the shelter, and add to its capacity, Ms Martin said.

Officials say the little Kung Fu trash panda was living his best life when he was detained in the liquor store and kept his spirits up even after being placed in the county kennel.

"I just set him in there, [and] let him kinda relax for a few hours. The sun was beating on him so he was feeling good," Ms Martin said, adding that he was released about one mile away from the shopping complex. "He didn't do anything wrong. He was just having a good time."

The story has gone viral, which Ms Martin says is because it is so "relatable".

"Everybody's been there," she says. "Everybody's had a few extra and passed out by the toilet, and hopes somebody can come get you the next morning."

"I hope he learned his lesson," she said, before adding that there's a good chance he might be found committing another heist soon.

"He'll be back. He's not a dummy."

Warehouses supplying the vast majority of Ukraine's pharmacies have been destroyed in a series of Russian attacks over recent months.

Medical supplies worth about $200m (£145m) were destroyed in just two strikes in December and October.

A large warehouse storing medicines in the city of Dnipro was destroyed in a Russian air strike on 6 December. As a result, about $110m worth of medicines were destroyed - estimated at up to 30% of Ukraine's monthly supply.

"It was a missile and drone strike against our facility. The missiles flew past, but the drones hit it," said Dmytro Babenko, acting director-general of pharmaceutical distributor BADM.

"They caused a fire which unfortunately proved impossible to contain and the whole facility was destroyed."

BADM is one of two companies that supply about 85% of Ukrainian pharmacies in roughly equal shares.

The other company is Optima Pharm, whose warehouses have been hit three times this year - on 28 August, 25 October and 15 November.

The October attack destroyed its main storage facility in Kyiv, and cost the company more than $100m, says Optima Pharm's chief financial officer Artem Suprun.

Russia denies hitting civilian targets, but when the Optima Pharm warehouse was hit in October, the defence ministry in Moscow said only that it had targeted a factory producing drones.

On the day BADM's warehouse was destroyed, Russia said it had hit "a warehouse storing military equipment" as well as energy and transport infrastructure.

Such attacks significantly complicate the treatment of sick and wounded in Ukraine, after almost four years of Russia's full-scale war.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC), an NGO that had been using the warehouse in Dnipro, says it lost $195,000 worth of medication and supplies, which could have served 30,000 people in need.

"When I arrived at the site I was devastated, the scene was simply awful. All of this medicine could have served people for years, and in a single moment it was all lost," says the IRC's Andriy Moskalenko.

The IRC said the Dnipro facility had served "as a critical hub for hospitals, healthcare providers, pharmacies and humanitarian actors".

Mr Babenko from BADM said the Russian attack had destroyed "vitally important medicines" that had been imported and are not produced in Ukraine.

"It's a pretty complicated situation," he told the BBC.

But he is hopeful that the attack will not leave Ukrainians without medicines.

"There won't be significant shortages, possibly only of certain types of goods. We're hoping to restore all supplies in a month or a month-and-a-half," Mr Babenko said.

Ukrainian authorities accuse Russia of deliberately targeting hospitals, ambulances, medics and rescue workers, claims Moscow has denied.

According to the government in Kyiv, more than 2,500 medical institutions have been damaged or destroyed, and more than 500 civilian doctors, nurses and other medical workers killed.

Earlier this month, the World Health Organization said it had recorded 2,763 attacks on Ukraine's healthcare system since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion, and it said that in 2025 there had been a 12% increase in attacks from the previous year.

More images from the estate of convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein have been released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.

The Democrats said the 19 images came from a tranche of 95,000 photos the committee received from Epstein's estate as part of its ongoing investigation.

US President Donald Trump, former Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon are among the high-profile figures featured in the photos. The images, many of which have been seen before, do not imply wrongdoing.

It comes one week before a deadline for the US justice department to release all Epstein-related documents, which are separate from the images shared by the committee on Friday.

The individuals featured in the images have not yet commented. Many of them have previously denied wrongdoing in relation to Epstein.

In a statement, Representative Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the committee, said: "It is time to end this White House cover-up and bring justice to the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful friends."

"These disturbing photos raise even more questions about Epstein and his relationships with some of the most powerful men in the world. We will not rest until the American people get the truth. The Department of Justice must release all the files, NOW" he added.

Republicans, who are in the majority on the committee, have accused Democrats of "cherry-picking photos and making targeted redactions to create a false narrative about President Trump".

The White House called the release a "Democrat hoax" against Trump that has been "repeatedly debunked".

Trump appeared in three of the images released on Friday. One image showed him standing next to a woman whose face has been redacted.

Another showed Trump standing next to Epstein while talking to model Ingrid Seynhaeve at a 1997 Victoria's Secret party in New York – an image that was already publicly available.

A third photo showed Trump smiling with several women, whose faces have also been redacted, flanked on either side of him.

An additional photo showed an illustrated likeness of the president on red packets next to a sign that reads: "Trump Condom".

Among the images released was what appeared to be cropped photo of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor next to Bill Gates. A fuller version of the photo, which was available on photo agency Getty Images, showed King Charles, the then-Prince of Wales, on the right side of the photo.

The Getty Images' caption said the picture was taken during a summit during the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in London in April 2018.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon was also pictured in some of the images. He was shown speaking with Epstein at a desk, and in another, standing beside him in front of a mirror.

A third image showed him speaking with filmmaker Woody Allen.

A photo featuring former US President Bill Clinton's showed him standing next to Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 for her role in facilitating the disgraced financier's abuse.

Two other people the BBC has yet to identify are also in the image, which appeared to have been signed by Clinton.

Clinton has denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. In 2019, a spokesperson said he "knows nothing about the terrible crimes" Epstein pleaded guilty to.

Other prominent figures which appear in the images include US economist Larry Summers, lawyer Alan Dershowitz and entrepreneur Richard Branson. Not all the images show those individuals in the company of Epstein.

Epstein was charged with sex trafficking in July 2019. He died in prison a month later while awaiting trail.

The president was a friend of Epstein's, but has said they fell out in the early 2000s, years before he was first arrested.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein.

The justice department is required to release investigative material related to Epstein by 19 December under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was signed into law by Trump last month.

Some men are having vast numbers of children through sperm donation. This week the BBC reported on a man whose sperm contained a genetic mutation that dramatically raises the risk of cancer for some of his offspring.

One of the most striking aspects of the investigation was that the man's sperm was sent to 14 countries and produced at least 197 children. The revelation was a rare insight into the scale of the sperm donor industry.

Sperm donation allows women to become mothers when it might not otherwise be possible - if their partner is infertile, they're in a same-sex relationship, or parenting solo.

Filling that need has become big business. It is estimated the market in Europe will be worth more than £2bn by 2033, with Denmark a major exporter of sperm.

So why are some sperm donors fathering so many children, what made Danish or so-called "Viking sperm" so popular, and does the industry need to be reigned in?

Most men's sperm isn't good enough

If you're a man reading this, we are sorry to break it to you, but the quality of your sperm probably isn't good enough to become a donor - fewer than five in 100 volunteers actually make the grade.

First, you have to produce enough sperm in a sample - that's your sperm count - then pass checks on how well they swim - their motility - and on their shape or morphology.

Sperm is also checked to ensure it can survive being frozen and stored at a sperm bank.

You could be perfectly fertile, have six children, and still not be suitable.

Rules vary across the world, but in the UK you also have to be relatively young - aged 18-45; be free of infections like HIV and gonorrhoea, and not be a carrier of mutations that can cause genetic conditions like cystic fibrosis, spinal muscular atrophy and sickle cell disease.

Overall, it means the pool of people that finally becomes sperm donors is small. In the UK, half the sperm ends up being imported.

But biology means a small number of donors can make vast numbers of children. It takes just one sperm to fertilise an egg, but there are tens of millions of sperm in each ejaculation.

Men will come to the clinic once or twice a week while they're donating, which can be for months at a time.

Sarah Norcross, the director of the Progress Educational Trust charity which works on fertility and genomics, said the donor sperm shortage made it "a precious commodity" and "sperm banks and fertility clinics are maximising the use of available donors to meet demand".

Some sperm is more popular

From this small pool of donors, some men's sperm is just more popular than others.

Donors are not chosen at random. It's a similar process to the savage reality of dating apps, when some men get way more matches than others.

Depending on the sperm bank, you can browse photos, listen to their voice, find out what job they do - engineer or artist? - and check out their height, weight and more.

"You know if they're called Sven and they've got blonde hair, and they're 6 ft 4 (1.93m) and they're an athlete, and they play the fiddle and speak seven languages - you know that's far more attractive than a donor that looks like me," says male fertility expert Prof Allan Pacey, pictured, who used to run a sperm bank in Sheffield.

"Ultimately, people are swiping left and swiping right when it comes to donor matching."

How Viking sperm took over the world

Denmark is home to some of the world's biggest sperm banks, and has gained a reputation for producing "Viking babies".

Ole Schou, the 71-year-old founder of the Cryos International sperm bank where a single 0.5ml vial of sperm costs from €100 (£88) to more than €1000 (£880), says the culture around sperm donation in Denmark is very different to other countries.

"The population is like one big family," he says, "there is less taboo about these issues, and we are an altruistic population, many sperm donors also donate blood."

And that, Schou says, has allowed the country to become "one of the few exporters of sperm".

But he argues Danish sperm is also popular due to genetics. He told the BBC the Danish "blue-eyed and blonde-haired genes" are recessive traits, which means they need to come from both parents in order to appear in a child.

As a result, the mother's traits, such as dark hair, "might be dominant in the resulting child", Schou explains.

He says demand for donor sperm is coming mainly from "single, highly-educated, women in their 30s who have focused on their careers and left family planning too late". They now make up 60% of requests.

Sperm crossing borders

One aspect of the sperm donor investigation published earlier this week was how a man's sperm was collected at the European Sperm Bank in Denmark and then sent to 67 fertility clinics across 14 countries.

Nations have their own rules on how many times one man's sperm can be used. Sometimes it is linked to a total number of children, others limit it to a certain number of mothers (so each family can have as many related children as they want).

The original argument around those limits was to avoid half-siblings - who didn't know they were related - meeting each other, forming relationships and having children.

But there's nothing to stop the same donor's sperm being used in Italy and Spain and then the Netherlands and Belgium, as long as the rules are being followed in each country.

This creates circumstances where a sperm donor can legally father large numbers of children. Although the man is often in the dark about that fact.

"Many recipients, and also donors, are unaware that a single donor's sperm can be lawfully used in many different countries - this fact should be better explained," says Sarah Norcross, who argues it would be "sensible" to bring down the number of children one donor can have.

In response to the investigation into the sperm donor who passed on a gene that led to cancer in some of the 197 children he fathered, officials in Belgium have called on the European Commission to establish a Europe-wide sperm donor register to monitor sperm travelling across borders.

Deputy prime minister Frank Vandenbroucke said the industry was like the "Wild West" and "the initial mission of offering people the possibility of a family has given way to a veritable fertility business".

The European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology has also proposed a limit of 50 families per donor across the EU. That system would still allow one donor's sperm to make more than 100 children if the families wanted two or more babies each.

Concerns have been raised about the impact on the children conceived through sperm donation. Some will be happy, others can be profoundly distressed by the double discovery of being made with donor sperm and being one of hundreds of half-siblings.

The same is true of donors, who often have no idea their sperm is being so widely distributed.

These risks are amplified by readily available DNA ancestry tests and social media where people can search for their children, siblings or the donor. In the UK, there is no longer anonymity for sperm donors and there is an official process through which children learn the identity of their biological father.

Mr Schou at Cryos argues more restrictions on sperm donation would just lead families to "turn to the private, totally unregulated, market".

Dr John Appleby, a medical ethicist at Lancaster University, said the implications of using sperm so widely was a "vast" ethical minefield.

He said there are issues around identity, privacy, consent, dignity and more - making it a "balancing act" between competing needs.

Dr Appleby said the fertility industry had a "responsibility to get a handle on the number of times a donor is used", but agreeing global regulations would be undeniably "very difficult".

He added that a global sperm donor register, which has been suggested, came with its own "ethical and legal challenges".

The Trump administration has filed a lawsuit against a Georgia county seeking access to 2020 voting records, as Donald Trump continues to assert the presidential election was stolen from him.

The justice department lawsuit asks the state to turn over "all used and void ballots, stubs of all ballots, signature envelopes, and corresponding envelope digital files from the 2020 General Election in Fulton County".

The government accuses Fulton County of violating the Civil Rights Act, after local officials said that the ballots were sealed and could not be produced without a court order.

Trump narrowly lost the state of Georgia to Joe Biden in 2020 - a defeat that cost him the White House.

According to the lawsuit, the justice department sent a subpoena to Fulton County election officials in October demanding the ballot materials, citing a need to investigate "compliance with federal election law".

In a statement on Friday, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said that states must protect against "vote dilution".

"At this Department of Justice, we will not permit states to jeopardize the integrity and effectiveness of elections by refusing to abide by our federal elections laws," she said.. "If states will not fulfil their duty to protect the integrity of the ballot, we will."

The county did not immediately return requests for comment.

After losing the 2020 election to Biden, Trump alleged widespread fraud. Numerous courts rejected the legal challenges brought by his campaigns and allies.

Georgia, particularly Fulton County and the greater Atlanta region, became a focal point of Trump's challenges to the 2020 election results.

After the election, Trump called Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and told him, "I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have. Because we won the state."

Raffensperger, whose office oversees Georgia's elections and certifies results, confirmed that Biden won the state even after multiple reviews.

His office declined to comment on the justice department's lawsuit.

Later, it was in Fulton County that Trump was criminally charged in connection with a scheme to overturn the state's election results.

Fulton County prosecutor Fani Willis brought an unsuccessful racketeering case against him alleging he led a criminal conspiracy to undermine Georgia's election results. Trump pleaded not guilty to the charges in August 2023.

A judge dismissed the case earlier this month, after a series of procedural blows hampered the prosecution and Trump's return to the White House in 2025 put the case on ice.

The Georgia election interference case was once considered the most threatening of Trump's four criminal indictments, because he could not pardon himself from state-level charges if he returned to office.

The Last Time Is Now. It's the name given to the tournament in which 16 wrestling giants have been competing to be the one opponent in John Cena's final fight before retirement.

And that final fight is now - Saturday night - in Washington DC, bringing the curtain down on an illustrious career that has seen the American become one of wrestling's biggest and most bankable stars.

In the 8,570 days since his debut, Cena has clinched 17 world titles and coined the iconic "You Can't See Me" catchphrase - but the 48-year-old's impact goes far beyond that.

If you were to pose the question "who is John Cena?", depending on who you ask, the answers might vary from legendary WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) superstar, to successful film actor, while some will say he's Mr Make-A-Wish (more on that later).

How to watch John Cena's last match:

• Start time: WWE Saturday Night's Main Event is scheduled to begin at 01:00 GMT on Sun 14 Dec
• Where to watch: In the UK, you can watch for free on WWE's official YouTube channel. Internationally it can be watched on Netflix, and on Peacock in the US

'An exceptional wrestling talent'

Since his 2002 debut, there's been an evolution in his own wrestling character - transitioning from "ruthless aggression" rookie, to a "Doctor of Thuganomics" rapper, and eventually a heroic character known for a "Never Give Up" attitude.

Despite criticism from some fans of his in-ring ability, with occasional chants of "you can't wrestle" through the years, "there's no doubt that he's an exceptional wrestling talent", says Brandon Thurston, editor and owner of wrestling website, Wrestlenomics.

He feels something changed in 2005, after which WWE became "increasingly scripted in a way it had not been" before, as it entered into a more controlled, family friendly PG era. But Cena managed thrive.

"He's definitely been the biggest draw over the time which I would say stretches from 2005 to roughly 2015," Mr Thurston says, with Cena's merchandise also regularly topping sales for the company.

"There's little question that he was WWE's most important economic wrestler throughout that time - in terms of pay-per-view buys, which were still central in that era, TV ratings, and as a house show draw."

Outside the ring too, he's a personality who "people gravitate towards and want to listen to", says Mr Thurston - and wrestling fans like Joe Clarkson and Sabrina Nicole feel just that.

"To go for such a long time in an industry, which is quite heavily taxing on the body, is absolutely fascinating," says Joe, 24, who was five when he first saw Cena on TV.

"I think over time, the people just gained more and more respect for him, not just as a performer, but also as an individual."

For Sabrina, 37, who remembers Cena's WWE debut in 2002, it's "his charisma".

"He has just always had something about him that makes him a star," she says, adding that for most of his career, he's "always maintained a good guy persona".

"No matter what the crowd, no matter what the fans have thought of him. He has just been the testament to if you have a really good character, you can be on top," she says.

It also seems to be true that, beyond his ability and persona, Cena seized an opportunity.

With The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin no longer full-time performers, WWE bosses were looking for a new star to emerge.

Brandon feels WWE leadership recognised Cena "would be a very reliable and extremely hardworking person whom they could entrust with such a spot".

It's widely accepted within wrestling circles that the final decision to have Cena as the chosen star would ultimately have been taken by then-WWE chairman Vince McMahon.

While he was known for following his instincts, there will also have been a judgement on Cena's ability to connect with a passionate crowd on the mic, his marketability and whether he could be in the industry long enough to be profitable.

And when Cena started taking more time away from wrestling in 2015 and working a reduced schedule, Mr Thurston feels there was a "decline" in the WWE product.

Other wrestling experts have suggested Cena's presence over the years helped slow the slide of WWE ratings trending downwards which, according to analysis by wrestling site PWtorch, saw average viewership for its flagship weekly Raw programme fall by a million between 2010 and 2015, to 3.7m.

Having achieved so much within wrestling, Cena could "just come in and be a wrestler and walk out", adds Dr Gillian Brooks, associate professor in marketing at King's Business School, but instead she says he built a personal brand that comes across as real.

An 'authentic' character

Among the brands Cena has worked with is Neutrogena, becoming the face of its sunscreen campaign after revealing he had skin cancer spots - which he attributed to his own lack of sun protection use.

He also holds the Guinness World Record for the number of wishes granted through the Make-A-Wish Foundation, with more than 650 fulfilled wishes for children with critical illnesses. It's a partnership he revealed had started by "accident", but one he's kept since 2002, describing it as "the coolest thing".

"If you think about it from a child's perspective, they're seeing someone that they've seen on TV watching WWE or in films, and they suddenly get to meet him," Dr Brooks says. "The fact that he's doing charity work, he's written a children's book, been in films, made music… all these things illustrate that he's not a one show pony.

"It's coming across in a way that's very authentic and very sort of pure to who he is."

Both Cena's personal brand and his charisma are set to live on, but his time in the ring looks to have come to an end after Cena announced last year that 2025 would be his last as a competitor.

The retirement run

Explaining his reasoning at the time, he told of the physical toll wrestling had taken on his body.

His career has seen him undergo several operations, including on his neck, pec and triceps, with Cena saying in interviews that his "body hurts" and is "screaming to close the chapter".

While the old saying "never say never" is a popular one, Cena has repeatedly said he will be "100% done" - and has received rousing receptions around the world for his final appearances.

Overall, fan Joe is happy with Cena's "retirement run", with matches against old rivals such as AJ Styles, Randy Orton and CM Punk, and newer stars including Dominik Mysterio and Gunther.

He does feel the "execution" of his final year could have been better though, with Cena's short-term "heel turn" (becoming a villain) at the Elimination Chamber event in March drawing criticism.

"It could have been handled better," Joe says. "[But] he's had such a unique distinction of having a retirement run that no one's ever had before.

"It's very sad to see him retire now. But I think he said it himself - it's the right time."

Not that WWE fans will never see Cena again; he has signed a five-year deal to be an ambassador for the company.

Having won The Last Time Is Now tournament, it's former world heavyweight champion Gunther who will face Cena in his final fight.

With it not being broadcast on terrestrial TV, but rather on streaming platforms, it's been reported that there is no time limit on the match - and Gunther, who has never wrestled Cena before, has been giving much tough talk.

One thing's for sure: "You Can't See Me" might be the taunt Cena gives Gunther, but the last fight will be seen and remembered by many.

Crack open a tub of Celebrations or pull a Terry's Chocolate Orange from a stocking these days, and have you noticed, there seems to be a little less to go around?

Not only that, you might find – no, it is not your imagination – that some popular treats taste a little different, a little less "chocolatey".

To top it all the prices have risen too.

So will your festive favourites still hit the sweet spot this Christmas?

Chocs away

Many of the companies making popular bars and chocolates admit they have been looking for ways to save money. A tried-and-tested one is to replace some of the more expensive ingredients, like cocoa, with cheaper ones, a strategy that's been dubbed "skimpflation".

Some recipes have changed so much that bars like Toffee Crisp, Penguin and others can no longer be called chocolate.

There is even a debate among some chocolate fans over whether the year-round classic Cadbury's Dairy Milk has changed its recipe.

Becca Amy Stock, a TikTok influencer who goes by the name Becca Eats Everything, set herself the task of reviewing every milk chocolate bar at Britain's major supermarkets. The 29-year-old spent six hours and £100 on her rigorous research.

She concluded Dairy Milk was "more oily" since Cadbury's takeover by the American company Mondelez in 2010. And the brand, famous for its "glass and a half" of milk, was less milky, she said.

"You do notice the difference," Becca says, "Cadbury's does not taste how it used to taste."

Milk chocolate in the UK must have at least 20% cocoa solids and 20% milk solids to earn the name chocolate. Without that it has to be labelled "chocolate flavour" not chocolate. Cadbury's Dairy Milk still meets that standard.

Mondelez says it has not been fiddling with the recipe, at least not recently.

"Our Cadbury Dairy Milk products continue to be made with the same delicious recipes that consumers know and love," its spokesperson said. "The cocoa content has not changed for many years."

Crunching the numbers

But it is still one which you'll be paying more for.

Plenty of food manufacturers have been reducing the size of their products, without dropping prices, known as shrinkflation.

And some are also putting prices up, too.

Chocolate prices in supermarkets have risen by more than 18% on average from this time last year, according to market researchers Kantar.

We got these figures by analysing price data collected by market researchers Assosia across four of the UK's biggest grocers, Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda and Morrisons, between December 2021 and December 2025.

They show:

• Cadbury's Dairy Milk weighs 10% less, while the cost jumped from £1.86 to £2.75 - a 48% price increase
• Mars Celebrations has shrunk by 23%. The price has risen from £4.25 to £6.11 - a 44% jump
• Terry's Chocolate Orange is 8% smaller, while the cost has risen from £1.49 to £2.25 - a 51% price rise

Mondelez's spokesperson said putting up prices was a "last resort" but ingredients are costing more - in particular cocoa and dairy.

"This means our products continue to be much more expensive to make.

"As a result of this difficult environment, we have had to make the decision to slightly reduce the weight and increase the list price of some of our Cadbury products," they said.

Mars Wrigley told the BBC higher cocoa prices and manufacturing costs meant they had to "adjust some… product sizes... without compromising on quality or taste."

Sticky costs

So what has caused the price of cocoa and milk to shoot up?

Extreme weather caused by climate change has hit cocoa farmers' crop yields in Africa, says Ghadafi Razak, an academic at Warwick Business School.

Extreme rainfall in India, Brazil and Thailand in 2023, followed by droughts the following year have meant poor harvests in those countries too, pushing up prices.

The extra costs take time to feed through to customers, says Christian Jaccarini, a senior food analyst at the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit think tank, which means those extra costs are hitting shop shelves now.

"It takes about 18 months for the impact of a shock to be felt by consumers, so we still have quite a long time with higher prices for chocolate," he said.

Milk prices have shot up too. Diarmaid Mac Colgáin, founder of the Concept Dairy consultancy blames the rising cost of feed, fuel and fertilisers as well as farmers facing higher wage bills and production costs.

He says some brands have substituted palm oil and shea oil for some of the milk to make up the fat content of their chocolate.

Bad taste

Shoppers are becoming increasingly aware of these cost-saving tactics, but that does not mean they are happy about it.

It is the element of unwanted surprise that can leave a bad taste, according to Reena Sewraz, retail editor at consumer champion, Which?

It can feel "especially sneaky" when companies shrink products or downgrade their ingredients she said.

"With Christmas not far away, shoppers will be looking to get the best value from what they buy," she said. "Supermarkets and manufacturers should be more upfront about making these changes. Customers may not love the news - but [then] at least they don't feel misled."

But there is not much you can do about it. For Becca, who insists she's not "chocolated out" despite her chocolate-tasting marathon, quality not quantity is the way to go.

She suggests fellow chocoholics treat themselves to smaller premium bars such as Tony's Chocolonely. They'll cost more but she finds them more satisfying.

She also plans to treat herself to a selection-box on Christmas day.

Otherwise she generally advises against "food snobbery".

"I think supermarket own-brands are actually a much better way to get better quality chocolate."

"Every moment of that abortion was a surprise to me," says Annie Ernaux.

The French Nobel literature laureate is talking about an illegal abortion that nearly ended her life in 1963.

She was a 23-year-old student with ambitions to become a writer. But as the first in a family of labourers and shopkeepers to go to university, she could feel her future slipping away.

"Sex had caught up with me, and I saw the thing growing inside of me as the stigma of social failure," she wrote later.

Her one-word diary entries, as she waited for her period, read like a countdown to doom: RIEN. NOTHING.

Her options were to induce an abortion herself or find a doctor or backstreet abortionist who would do it at a price. The latter, usually women, were known as "angel-makers".

But it was impossible to get any information. Abortion was illegal and anyone involved - including the pregnant woman herself - could go to prison.

"It was secret, nobody talked about it," the 85-year-old says. "The girls of the time absolutely did not know how an abortion happened."

Ending the silence

Ernaux felt abandoned - but she was also determined. When writing about this time, she wanted to show how much strength it took to face this problem.

"Really it was a battle of life and death," she says.

In plain, factual language, Ernaux describes the events in unflinching detail in her book, Happening.

"It's the detail that matters," she says.

"It was the knitting needle I brought back from my parents' house. It was also that when I finally miscarried, I didn't know that there would be a placenta to pass."

She was rushed to hospital, haemorrhaging, from her university dormitory.

"It was the worst violence that could be inflicted on a woman. How could we have let women go through this?" she says. "I wasn't ashamed to describe all that. I was motivated by the feeling that I was doing something historically important.

"I realised that the same silence that had reigned over illegal abortion was carried over to legal abortion. So I said to myself, 'All this is going to be forgotten.'"

Happening, published in 2000, is now on the school syllabus in France and has been made into a multi-award-winning film.

Ernaux says it is important for young people to know the dangers of illegal abortion, because politicians sometimes seek to restrict access to legal abortion. She points to recent events in some US states and Poland.

"It is a fundamental freedom to be in control of your body and therefore of reproduction," she says.

Abortions are now a constitutional right in France - the first country to guarantee this - but Ernaux wants recognition for the countless women who died following illegal abortions.

Nobody knows exactly how many, because the cause of death was often disguised. It has been estimated that between 300,000 and one million women had illegal abortions every year in France before it was legalised in 1975.

"I think they deserve to have a monument, like there is to the unknown soldier in France," she says.

Ernaux was part of a delegation to propose such a monument to the Mayor of Paris earlier this year, but whether any action is taken will depend on the outcome of elections in March.

The subject still has the power to shock. Audience members are routinely carried out of the theatre when watching a stage adaptation of Ernaux's book, The Years, which also features an abortion scene.

Ernaux says she has had some funny reactions. One male university professor told her: "it could have been me!"

"That shows up this extraordinary fear of women's power," she says.

In her work, Ernaux fearlessly examines her own life.

Her books touch on shameful subjects that many have experienced, but few dare speak about - sexual assault, dark family secrets, losing her mother to Alzheimer's.

"These things happened to me so that I may recount them," is how she ends Happening.

In A Girl's Story, she recounts her first sexual experience, working at a summer camp, when an older camp leader assaulted her.

At the time, she did not understand what was happening, and was "a bit like a mouse in front of a snake, who doesn't know what to do".

Now, she accepts it would be considered rape, but she says her book does not include this word. "Because what's important to me is to describe exactly what happened, without judgement."

These events were recorded in her personal diaries, which Ernaux kept from the age of 16. After she married, these precious items were kept in a box in her mother's loft, together with letters from her friends.

But in 1970, when Ernaux's mother came to live with her and her family, she brought everything from the loft - except that box and its contents.

"I understood that she had read them and thought they should be destroyed," says Ernaux. "She must have been completely disgusted."

It was an incalculable loss, but Ernaux did not want to ruin their relationship with a pointless argument. And as an attempt by her mother to erase the past, it failed.

"The truth survived the fire," Ernaux writes in A Girl's Story.

Without her diaries to refer to she relied on her memory, which proved to be sufficient, she says.

"I can take a walk through my past, as I wish. It's like projecting a film."

This is also how she wrote her seminal book The Years, a collective history of the post-war generation.

"I simply had to ask myself, 'What was it like, after the war?' And I can visualise and hear it," she says.

These memories are not just her own, but those shared by the people around her. Ernaux grew up in her parents' cafe in Normandy, surrounded by customers from morning until night.

It meant she learned about adult problems from a young age - which embarrassed her.

"I wasn't sure if my classmates knew as much about the world as I did," she says. "I hated that I knew about men who were drunk, who drank too much. So I was ashamed of a lot of things."

'I will write to avenge my people'

Ernaux writes in a pared-down, unadorned style. She developed it, she once said, when she started writing about her father, a working man for whom plain language seemed appropriate.

At the age of 22, she wrote in her diary: "I will write to avenge my people," a sentence that has been her guiding light. Her aim was to "redress the social injustice linked to social class at birth", she said in her Nobel lecture in 2022.

As someone who moved from a rural, working-class life to a middle-class life in the suburbs, she calls herself an internal migrant.

For the past 50 years she has lived in Cergy, one of five "new towns" built around Paris, where she moved with her then husband and children. In 1975 it was still under construction, and she has watched the town grow around her.

"We are all equal in this space - all migrants, from within France and from outside." she says. "I don't think I would have the same perspective on French society if I lived in central Paris."

She bought the house she lives in now with money from her first literary prize.

The connection with her audience is important for Ernaux.

When a passionate love affair with a married Soviet diplomat ended in 1989, it was writing about it that helped her recover.

After the publication of that book, A Simple Passion, consolation came her way from readers.

"Suddenly I started receiving many many accounts from women, and men, who told me about their own love affairs. I felt like I had allowed people to open up about their secret," she says.

There is a certain amount of shame involved in having an all-consuming affair, she adds, "but at the same time, I have to say that it is the most wonderful memory of my whole life".

This content was created as a co-production between Nobel Prize Outreach and the BBC

More images from the estate of convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein have been released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.

The Democrats said the 19 images came from a tranche of 95,000 photos the committee received from Epstein's estate as part of its ongoing investigation.

US President Donald Trump, former Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and former Trump adviser Steve Bannon are among the high-profile figures featured in the photos. The images, many of which have been seen before, do not imply wrongdoing.

It comes one week before a deadline for the US justice department to release all Epstein-related documents, which are separate from the images shared by the committee on Friday.

The individuals featured in the images have not yet commented. Many of them have previously denied wrongdoing in relation to Epstein.

In a statement, Representative Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the committee, said: "It is time to end this White House cover-up and bring justice to the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and his powerful friends."

"These disturbing photos raise even more questions about Epstein and his relationships with some of the most powerful men in the world. We will not rest until the American people get the truth. The Department of Justice must release all the files, NOW" he added.

Republicans, who are in the majority on the committee, have accused Democrats of "cherry-picking photos and making targeted redactions to create a false narrative about President Trump".

The White House called the release a "Democrat hoax" against Trump that has been "repeatedly debunked".

Trump appeared in three of the images released on Friday. One image showed him standing next to a woman whose face has been redacted.

Another showed Trump standing next to Epstein while talking to model Ingrid Seynhaeve at a 1997 Victoria's Secret party in New York – an image that was already publicly available.

A third photo showed Trump smiling with several women, whose faces have also been redacted, flanked on either side of him.

An additional photo showed an illustrated likeness of the president on red packets next to a sign that reads: "Trump Condom".

Among the images released was what appeared to be cropped photo of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor next to Bill Gates. A fuller version of the photo, which was available on photo agency Getty Images, showed King Charles, the then-Prince of Wales, on the right side of the photo.

The Getty Images' caption said the picture was taken during a summit during the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in London in April 2018.

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon was also pictured in some of the images. He was shown speaking with Epstein at a desk, and in another, standing beside him in front of a mirror.

A third image showed him speaking with filmmaker Woody Allen.

A photo featuring former US President Bill Clinton's showed him standing next to Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, who was convicted in 2021 for her role in facilitating the disgraced financier's abuse.

Two other people the BBC has yet to identify are also in the image, which appeared to have been signed by Clinton.

Clinton has denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. In 2019, a spokesperson said he "knows nothing about the terrible crimes" Epstein pleaded guilty to.

Other prominent figures which appear in the images include US economist Larry Summers, lawyer Alan Dershowitz and entrepreneur Richard Branson. Not all the images show those individuals in the company of Epstein.

Epstein was charged with sex trafficking in July 2019. He died in prison a month later while awaiting trail.

The president was a friend of Epstein's, but has said they fell out in the early 2000s, years before he was first arrested.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein.

The justice department is required to release investigative material related to Epstein by 19 December under the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was signed into law by Trump last month.