Hillary Clinton to testify on Epstein ties

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Start today for 1 euro per month on Shopify.nl Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service. We're coming to you live from London. I'm James Menendez. And we're going to begin in a small town just north of New York City because it's there later today that the former US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, will answer questions from the Congressional Committee investigating the late paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein. Her husband, the former US President Bill Clinton, will follow suit on Friday. Their depositions have been recorded near the couple's home in Chia Pakwa. They'd only agreed to give evidence after they were warned they'd be held in criminal contempt of Congress if they refused. Mrs Clinton spoke to the BBC last week, saying she didn't remember ever meeting Jeffrey Epstein and that the couple had nothing to hide. We are more than happy to say what we know, which is very limited and totally unrelated to their behaviour or their crimes, and we want to do it in public. because let's make this transparent. The Democratic Congresswoman Yasemin Ansari sits on the oversight committee that will hear her testimony later. First of all, I do separate Secretary Clinton and former President Clinton in my mind, and I think that the public should as well. That's why there's two separate depositions to understand what each of them may or may not have known. What I do appreciate is that both Clintons have been very clear that they want the full and unredacted files released. I hope the White House listens to that, but truly this investigation is just getting started. Sidney Blumenthal is a former senior advisor to Bill Clinton and joins us now live from Washington, D.C. Welcome to NewsHour. Is that how you see it, that Bill Clinton does have questions to answer about his relationship with Epstein, even if his wife may not? well there are no documents that show improper conduct on the part of former president clinton and we know about former secretary of state hillary clinton that she had absolutely nothing to do with jeffrey epstein never met him never spoke with him and the fact that she is being uh brought into this shows the bad faith of the republican committee that is supposedly uh investigating this which is really a sham and a political show on their part to create a distraction and classic oneaboutism when there is nothing. By contrast, there do exist documents that involve a raging report now in The New York Times and elsewhere that the Justice Department has withheld notes and memos of FBI interviews of a woman who accused President Donald Trump of sexually abusing her when she was a minor. Yes, and we've got a detailed interview about that coming up just in a moment. But just on Hillary Clinton, I mean, she does say, though, that she met Epstein's co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell several times. I mean, isn't this process part of part of building up a picture um actually not i i know and i'm sure you do glane maxwell knew thousands upon thousands of people she had no relationship with glane maxwell and she has nothing really to offer the committee uh on this matter um what this is really about if you can provide the context, is Donald Trump's campaign of retribution against political enemies, an attempt to deflect the attention and focus from himself. He has threatened more than 400 people, individuals with criminal action who are his political opponents, including members of Congress. So the politics of this really are central to what's going on. And once again, the Clintons find themselves in the spotlight. If a former president in the form of Bill Clinton does appear before this committee and answers their questions, I mean, does that make it more likely that Donald Trump might do in the future and indeed other senior figures? um initially both uh former president clinton and former secretary clinton um had filed written affidavits about what they knew so it's the committee already knows whatever it is that they know they can ask questions now part of the reason was that as a former president um no former president has ever testified in a matter uh like this before a committee It establishes a precedent that when, if and when the Democrats gain control of the House or the Senate next year, Donald Trump will be called. And the extensive Department of Justice cover up of his activities will be also a subject that the Democrats will investigate next year. Yeah. So this is hardly a question that's going to be ended. Yeah. And of course, the DOJ, the Department of Justice denies a cover up and says it's released all the files. But again, we're going to be talking about that in just a minute. Can I just ask you this briefly? I mean, there's been huge fallout from the files around the world, especially in the UK. It does seem from the outside that accountability for Epstein's victims and influence peddling, I mean, hasn't really been getting off the ground in the US. Is that how you said? Absolutely correct. The contrast to what's going on in the UK with former Prince Andrew and with Peter Mandelson is stark to what's going on in the US. The parallel in the U.S. besides Donald Trump is to the Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, who violated his public trust by using public resources to conduct an interview that he initiated to lie about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and say he had cut it off and had only one incident with him. Whereas, in fact, he was a business partner. He lived next door and he had extensive relationships. We'll have to leave it there. We'll have to leave it there. I'm afraid we're out of time. Cindy Blumenthal, thank you. The senior Democrat on the U.S. Congressional Committee that's investigating Epstein has accused the Department of Justice of withholding files, as was mentioned there, that contain allegations of sexual abuse of a girl by Donald Trump. Mr Trump's repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in relation to the Epstein case. Well, Robert Garcia says he's written to the Attorney General Pan Bondi demanding the files be released. On Wednesday, the DOJ said it was looking into whether the documents should have been made public. Well, their absence was first flagged by the independent journalist Roger Sullenberger, who's been telling me how he noticed they were missing. Well, I discovered a couple of things. The first thing is I discovered that there is an allegation against Donald Trump. of child rape in the Epstein files that was told to the FBI by a woman who the DOJ also describes and identifies as a victim of Jeffrey Epstein. I first found this allegation on the slideshow. It was an internal presentation that the FBI put together last summer, just after Todd Blanch met with Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's accomplice in prison. They put together a very comprehensive slideshow. And then on page 18, you have these two allegations against Donald Trump that are right at the top on a list of prominent names of many people in the Epstein files that we would all recognize. The first two are Donald Trump. And the first one is this allegation, which it cites the woman herself making to the FBI directly, not from a tip. And that was when the light went off for me. I said, oh, wow, they must have interviewed her. That's citing her. That's never been reported before. And I looked into it. It turns out there are four formal interviews with her that the FBI did in the summer of 2019, shortly after Jeffrey Epstein's arrest. Now, the big question in my reporting, and that was confirmed this week by New York Times, NPR, different outlets, is where are three of four interviews? We only have one of them. And it appears that the Justice Department has been withholding three of them, which adds up to about 53 missing pages from this woman. Right. So these were long interviews that the FBI conducted with this woman. Yeah. The first one is nine pages, right? And there's four and some handwritten notes as well. And that accounts for 53 missing. So a total of about seven times as many pages as was provided with the release of the Epstein files, which again was done under the Epstein files transparency Act. It's a federal law that Donald Trump signed. And how did you discover that they were missing? I mean, they just simply when you searched for them by what their case number, they just didn't appear. Yeah, I'd been looking for a specific document. Actually, it's an index of files and interviews, evidence that the Justice Department shared with Ghislaine Maxwell, as part of the discovery for her trial. And I'd seen emails about this document. But I couldn't see the document in the files. I didn't know where it was. And then I found a website that had a searchable archive that captured some old documents. And I found it there. But at the time, it had been removed from the Justice Department's site. And what that document told me was that this woman was interviewed indeed four times. It has all the dates next to her case number. And it also told me that those four interviews were all given to Ghislaine Maxwell, who is now seeking clemency from Donald Trump. She has four interviews, and we have one interview. And what, she could potentially release them at some point? It's really unclear. We just know that she has them. The Justice Department, though, in response to questions, has put out a statement that forces us to pick and choose from a various group of options of the reasons that they could be withholding. Now they have put out a statement yesterday saying that the Justice Department is going to review to see if these records were withheld improperly. The interviews contain very serious allegations, as you suggested, very serious indeed. Now, she gave the interviews in 2019 and the abuse, the rape that she alleges took place in the early 1980s. And they are just allegations and they're allegations that Donald Trump has vehemently denied. But are you able to tell us what she told the FBI, a little bit of what she told the FBI. Yeah, again, these allegations have not been verified. And we do not know nearly enough about what she has said, you know, to speculate on the validity of the allegations. That's one reason I think we should have the rest of these notes, right? But what she did say was that when she was between 13 and 15 years old, between 1983 and 1985, she was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein. And in that same time period that Donald Trump had forced her to give him oral sex, She bit him and he hit her and kicked out of the room. That allegation appears in a lawsuit that she filed against Jeffrey Epstein estate later in 2019 after she had spoken with the FBI She joined a lawsuit with a number of other women anonymously And that allegation appears but it does not name Donald Trump It just mirrors the same allegation. The woman has been identified in other reporting as that same woman. But as far as we know, she refused to cooperate with the FBI. That's another detail that's in these emails. There's an internal FBI note that says she refused to cooperate. Yeah, well, that was going to be my next question. Why weren't these allegations pursued? And as you say, she didn't want to cooperate. Why was that? We do not know why she stopped cooperating. We do know that the civil settlement ended before it went to trial. And she's reported to have received a payment from that civil suit. We don't know what the terms of that were. We really don't know hardly anything about where this went. But we do know that the FBI took her seriously enough to consider cooperating with her offering, it seems, to cooperate with her on a criminal investigation. The independent journalist Roger Sullenberger. Well, the Department of Justice has denied deleting any material and said it's only withheld documents for specific reasons, such as those linked to ongoing investigations. And again, President Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing connected to the Epstein files. Contacted by the BBC on Wednesday, the Justice Department referred to a statement it made after the January release of files, saying some of the documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election. To be clear, the claims are unfounded and false. you're listening to news hour and coming up later on the program we're on the front lines in the war against mexico's drug cartels in sinaloa state it's just before eight in the morning i hear in central coolio can just outside one of the main shopping malls and another body on the pavement it gives you an idea of the extent the brutality the viciousness of the infighting within the Sinaloa cartel at the moment. We'll have a special report from our international correspondent, Quentin Somerville, in 15 minutes. Our main headlines from the newsroom right now. The US and Iran have ended the first session of crucial nuclear talks in Geneva, aimed at reaching a compromise on Tehran's nuclear ambitions. We'll be hearing live from Geneva in half an hour. And four people have been convicted in Greece in the first criminal verdicts linked to a spyware scandal from 2022. This is James Menendez with News Out Live from the BBC. Let's turn to Nepal now because a BBC investigation has found that it was the country's most senior police officer who gave the order to use live fire against demonstrators who took to the streets of the capital Kathmandu last year. 19 people were shot dead, including a 17-year-old schoolboy. What became known as the country's Gen Z protests was sparked by a government ban on social media following widespread outrage about the extravagant lifestyles of Nepal's elite. The ensuing unrest eventually led to the fall of the government. Subina Shrestha has this report. Camera footage shows a group of girls on the side of the road in their school uniform, white shirts and burgundy ties. Some still had their school blazer on. They're shouting, Gen Z, here we come. It's the morning of September the 8th, 2025, what soon would be known as one of the deadliest days of protest in Nepal's history. It all began months earlier on social media. The global Nepo baby trend came to Nepal. This trend, says 26-year-old Gen Z activist Raksha Bum, exposed the luxurious lifestyle of politicians' children. It showed the difference between the lifestyles of the politicians and their families and normal people. Our generation was exasperated by the behaviour of leaders who have been here forever. Discontent on social media grew. The government banned Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, X, LinkedIn and WhatsApp, claiming it wanted to tackle fake news and hate speech. Young people quickly found other ways to communicate. Using the Discord app, they planned an anti-corruption protest. At 9am in central Kathmandu, tens of thousands poured into the streets. This footage shows teenage boys in matching blue T-shirts emblazoned with a schoolgirl chanting for the Prime Minister to resign. Raksha Bhang stands on the back of a pickup truck with a microphone in her hand. She tells crowds of schoolchildren and young people to raise their voices in peace. We are living! By nightfall, 19 people will have been shot dead in Kathmandu, including 17-year-old Sri Amjala Man. Ganga Karki is his mother. He told us about the protests the day before. I told him not to go. Things can happen at these protests. He said, I'll be in my uniform. As we are minors, nobody will do anything to us. But how did a peaceful Gen Z protest end in bloodshed? The BBC forensically examined more than 4,000 videos and photos, along with exclusive testimonies, to piece together what happened that day. According to internal police documents seen by the BBC, permission to use live ammunition was granted at 12.40 on police radio. These were the exact words used, voiced by an actor. Curfew already in place. No further need to obtain permission. Deploy necessary force. The man who gave this order was Chandrakubir Kapung, Nepal's inspector general of police. He has denied responsibility. Nepal police told the BBC that the order had already been cleared by a government security committee. Less than two hours later, after at least four people are shot dead, Sriyam can be seen in the crowd. He's also wearing his school uniform. A group of protesters ahead of him pelt the police with stones. But Sriyam turns away from the violence. Unarmed, he holds his hand in the air and then is shot in the back of the head. Over the next 48 hours, chaos reigns. Parliament, along with hundreds of other buildings, are set alight. 13,000 inmates break free from prison. Three police officers and at least 50 more Nepalis are dead. Then the Prime Minister resents. Sriyam's mother again. For them, it was just a student who died. For us, the world we knew has fallen apart. An official inquiry into the violence is yet to report its findings. As the country waits to go to the polls on 5 March to elect a new leader, no one has been held accountable for these deaths. That was Subina Shrestha reporting there. Now, why are some older people's minds as sharp as they were when they were young? Many of us find that our memory and cognition deteriorate as we reach old age, But some people, so-called super-agers, have brains that remain almost perfectly intact. Well, a new study out of the US has found that at the age of 80, these lucky souls have about twice the number of new neurons as a typical person. In other words, they're continuing to grow new ones throughout their lives. Tara Spires-Jones is Professor of Neurodegeneration at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. She wasn't involved in this piece of research, but has been telling me more about the findings. This is a really interesting paper, and they focused on neurogenesis, which is the production of new neurons. When I trained as an undergraduate and a postgraduate student over 25 years ago, the dogma was you don't make new neurons. But over the past decade or so, now we understand that in some parts of the brain, you do make new neurons. One of those parts is the hippocampus, which is what this study was examining. It's really important for learning and memory and spatial orientation. and what they found was that in people who were super agers that is they had more of this neurogenesis than in other people who were older and much more than in people who had Alzheimer's disease so one of the things they're proposing is that making these new neurons in this part of the brain might be boosting cognitive function in these people. And how were they able to test it then was it comparing the brains of older people who seem to have great cognitive ability with those who didn't or with younger people? How did it work? So what the authors did is they looked at postmortem brain samples from this relatively small group of people. They isolated individual nuclei. That's the part of the cells that contains the DNA. And they looked at thousands and thousands of these individual nuclei from these dozen or so people. And it's from the patterns of the gene expression that they can tell which cells were likely to be newborn neurons. This is a snapshot of dead brain, right? So they couldn't prove for certain that these were newborn neurons. But based on work in animals over the years, we know the pattern of expression of genes that happens in these newborn neurons. And so they were just then comparing that pattern of both gene expression and how available the genes were for reading across these different groups. So is it just luck then if we become a superager? Partly. Partly it's luck in terms of the genes you inherit. So in the wider field, we know that about a quarter of the variability in cognitive decline and cognitive ability in aging is due to your genes. But there is some modifiable factors. So not all of us can be super-ageous if we got really unlucky with our genes, but all of us can boost our brain resilience a bit. The most well-substantiated evidence goes to exercise, which you won't be surprised. It's good for you. Exercise boosts your brain resilience. It boosts your vasculature. It reduces inflammation and both of those things are known to impact brain aging. And it also directly boosts this adult hippocampal neurogenesis. So you make a chemical called brain-derived neurotrophic factor when you exercise and that stimulates this neurogenesis in that part of the brain. Is it possible that if scientists can identify the sort of genetic differences between superagers and people who aren't, that that could then at some point lead to genetic treatments for people who develop Alzheimer's or to prevent Alzheimer's? I mean, do you see where I'm going? Is that a possible path? Yeah, it's a long-term path. But genetic treatments, I mean, I don't think we'd be going for gene therapy to make you a super agerist, at least not in the next coming decades. The brain is phenomenally complex, but as we get more and more little pieces of this picture, we will be able to, as scientists and clinicians, work towards drugs that can boost brain health, yeah. Professor Tara Spires-Jones of Edinburgh University. You're listening to News Out. Do stay with us. Lots more coming out. You can easily buy a beautiful website. You're ready to sell it? Then you're ready for Shopify. Make your entrepreneur's dream. And start today for 1 euro per month on Shopify.nl. You're ready to work in the technique not harder, but slimmer. Because warmtepompen can be used to be able to get out of time. So that your volunteers know exactly what they need to repair. Find our smart technology at kpn.com slash slimmer working. KPN. For a better work in a better country. starting a business can be overwhelming you're juggling multiple roles designer marketer logistics manager all while bringing your vision to life shopify helps millions of business sell online build fast with templates and ai descriptions and photos inventory and shipping sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at Shopify That Shopify It time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side America is changing. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London and this is The Global Story. Every weekday we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to News Air. One of the largest sources of carbon dioxide emissions in Europe is the construction industry. The making of cement and reinforced concrete accounts for about 40% of CO2 emitted on the continent. Flights make up less than 3%. Research suggests that huge reductions could be made by building in wood. In Portugal, an influx of well-off foreigners and a shortage of houses and construction workers is driving an increase in ready-made wooden houses, as Alistair Leithead reports. on a little piece of land in remote rural portugal professor of wood architecture alex de reicher has big plans for his retirement this is where the house will be above our heads all right on stilts it's a very steep hill and there's a couple of old cork oak trees yeah i want this wooden house to nestle amongst the canopies of these trees an abandoned piece of land on portugal's wild western coast is not where you'd expect to find the winner of Britain's top architectural prize. Alex de Rijka pioneered building in engineered wood. I did an experimental house for an exhibition in Oslo called Naked House where the whole house was made of cross-laminated timber panels. I basically cut the furniture from the walls so think table cut from wall becomes window which lights the table. So the offcut is the furniture. And now I've brought it here. Right, so that's the house that you're going to put up here. Critics say wooden houses are a fire risk, but Alex isn't worried, despite a wildfire near-miss a couple of years ago. Ironically, you know, wood is much better behaved in a fire than, say, steel. And steel collapses suddenly at 500 Celsius, whereas engineered timber, mass timber, just chars and protects itself, just like these trees here. You know, the only trees after the fire are the cork trees, because they're oak, it's dense timber, and the eucalyptus that caused the fire there are all, you know, stripped away. Professor de Raica is one of many new foreign arrivals to Portugal, buying up an abandoned plot of land. Locals have been leaving the countryside for decades, and with a shortage of builders, wooden houses are a good option. This is a two-bedroom house, 56 square metres. It's made of three different modules. We can step inside if you want. One of the biggest suppliers in Portugal is Jula. Amaro Santos showed me around the factory. The homes leave here 95% finished. So one of the main advantages is besides the sustainability, it's the certainty that we can provide to the customer on budget, on time, and with the quality that has been contracting with us. This is not easy to have that result with regular and traditional methods of construction, for sure. He says demand for modular houses is growing like a tide that can't be stopped. Regulatory pressure to use biomaterials and the laws of demand and supply are driving a revolution here. And even the big construction companies are starting to see the wood for the trees. Alessandro Leithard reporting there from Portugal. You're listening to NewsHour. This is the BBC World Service in London. You're listening to NewsHour and I'm James Menendez. Just a few months before Mexico is due to co-host the Football World Cup, there's been an eruption of violence linked to the country's all-powerful drugs cartels. Earlier this week, the security forces killed the head of one of the most feared gangs known as El Mencho, prompting a wave of retaliatory violence in his home state of Jalisco and its capital, Guadalajara. Some have voiced fears that El Mencho's death will lead to a bloody power struggle within his organisation. And that's certainly what's happened further north, where members of the powerful Sinaloa cartel are fighting each other for control of the highly lucrative trade-trafficking fentanyl into the US. As many as half a dozen murders take place there every day. Our international correspondent Quentin Somerville has just been to the state capital Culiacan and his report does feature graphic descriptions of violence from the start. We're just tearing through central Culiacan with the paramedics driving at speed and we're heading towards the scene of a shooting. Just arrived at the scene. We're actually inside the cordon now. It's a garage. A relative has just arrived. One murder, six shots in all body. So, Hector, as paramedics, there's nothing you can do. You mainly see bodies, the dead. Yeah, it's hard, hard job, hard job. There was, in fact, one person that was killed, the owner of the garage, found dead in his office. I can see a photograph of them now covered in a blanket, just his feet showing. And somewhat awfully typical for these men that, as paramedics, there's no help that they can provide really because they're dealing with execution-style killings and murders and it's only dead bodies, time after time. it's just before eight in the morning here in central coolio can just outside one of the main shopping malls and another body on the pavement this one is very grisly it's a man who's been tortured there's a message taped to his body it seems to have photographs and some writing but clearly a message has been sent. It gives you an idea of the extent, the brutality, the viciousness of the infighting within the Sinaloa cartel at the moment. Meeting with the cartels is difficult at the best of times but now even more so because they're right in the crosshairs of the United States and President Trump. He's labelled them terrorist groups. He says they're product fentanyl and other drugs. are a weapon of mass destruction, and he's promised that as well as bombing the cartels at sea, he's going to tackle them on land. So they're feeling under threat like never before. I'm about to go and meet with a group. I'm going to have to leave my phone behind. These men are vicious criminals fighting for an illegal drugs business worth billions. They've gone to war after the son of one of their leaders but create another. This power struggle is a fight to the death and they show little remorse. They insisted we disguise their voices. The civil war in the cartel has created a bloodbath in Culiacan. Women are being killed. Kids are being killed. Do you feel guilty about that? Yes. A lot of times innocent people die. Children die. There is a lot of death of innocent people. A lot of people will keep dying because the cartel is still fighting and it's going to keep getting worse. This war will continue. Nothing will come down until there is only one faction left. There's a small protest taking place outside the main cathedral on this beautiful sunny day in Kuliakam. Lots of relatives of the victims of the cartel violence are here. They're wearing white. Some are carrying pictures of their loved ones. They're all sexes, ages. It gives you a sense of how all-encompassing the violence is here. The chant here is, they took them away alive, we want them back alive. it's seven hours since the peace march and the sun is setting here in Kuleyakan and they almost made it through the day without a killing but just in front of me is a young man who's just been gunned down he's 16 years old he was on his bike he's wearing blue jeans and he's got a light blue t-shirt on he's still tangled up in his bike he's lying dead there on the pavement The family are here. They're on the other side of the police state, but I can hear the screams and wails from here. It seems that the kid was shot 10 or 12 times. The cartel is strong in this neighbourhood and uses young men as spotters. Its spies are ever-present and no-one was willing to answer our questions. You can follow me. In a cartel-owned basement, we meet a fentanyl smuggler. He has six kilos of the powder in tightly pressed bundles, each worth at least $20,000. What we have here is fentanyl. This product is ready to be sent to the United States and pressed into pills. The drug that he's holding and the battle to control it has cost the lives of tens of thousands here and in the United States. He doesn't take any responsibility. there is no shame for what he does. Even though President Donald Trump refers to us as terrorists, I would just remind him that as long as there are consumers, we're going to keep doing this. But that doesn't necessarily make us terrorists. No one forced them to start using this stuff. Even though the government has intensified their search, when it comes to production, we've never stopped. Sometimes we do scale back because the government gets too close. So we lay low for a few days. But once that problem passes, we either continue or move to other areas. I'm with a group of women, Madras en Lucha, mothers fighting back. They're here, we're about half an hour outside of Culiacan, in the grounds of a half-built church. They're looking for lost sons, lost brothers, who are victims of cartel violence. Now the women are heading into some rough ground and fields beyond. They have shovels, they have pickaxes, they have machetes. The woman leading the search here today is Rinalda de Rido. Her son disappeared back in 2019 and she won't stop searching for him. I wake up every day and I ask God, tell me why I'm here. And what gives me strength is realising that no one else is going to look for them. I realise it because no one is moving to search for the disappeared in Sinaloa. And a mother will always look for her child. No matter if it's to the ends of the earth, she will look. We responded to two people injured. They were asking for help at the incident. Paramedics Julio and Hector have been called to another cartel shooting, but this one is different. We've been following these paramedics for a week. We've been to multiple call-outs with them. This is the first time they've arrived at a scene and the person has still been alive. decapitating the Sinaloa cartel leadership may yet destroy it but for now there is only violence Our international correspondent Quentin Somerville reporting Well, preparations for the World Cup are firmly underway in Mexico. Indeed, a number of qualifying matches are due to be played there in the next few weeks. Among them, Jamaica versus New Caledonia, which is taking place in the city of Guadalajara, scene of this week's violence. and that's making people jumpy. Let's speak to Michael Ricketts. He's president of Jamaica's Football Federation and joins us live from Clarendon in Jamaica. Welcome to NewsHour. How are you feeling about next month's matches in Guadalajara? James, honestly, I'm a little bit nervous. Of course, we do have concerns about the safety and security of players and staff. and of course those who would want to come to Guadalajara to support us. But we have gotten assurances from both CONCACAF and FIFA and certainly from the Mexican president, football president that is, that normality is on its way and they are pretty confident and honestly I want to trust the process. they are pretty confident that we will be okay and the tournament will go ahead without any incidents. And what sort of assurances were you given? I mean, are there any specific arrangements for, for example, the team's security? Well, not yet. We have not gotten all the details, but we have been unofficially informed that the tournament will go ahead. Of course, based on utterances from the FIFA president, and from the Mexican Football Association's president. So we are now, hopefully, we will get some logistical details as to what are the definite plans that will be put in place to ensure that there is a highest level of security. And hopefully, we will be in a position to be comfortable to play. the team, the staff members and the fans who will come to Mexico to support Jamaica's delegation. Has the violence this week been so much that you've considered perhaps not traveling there next month? We will have a meeting with the technical staff. I think that's scheduled for next Thursday. and from there we might not be able to make decisions but certainly we'll make some suggestions and we are just hopeful that whatever we do will be the interest of the security and well-being of those who will be in Mexico or those who are planning to be in Guadalajara to support this exercise. Have you spoken to any of the players? Do you know how they're feeling? Well, we have, like I've said, not formally, but having had some discussions with the players and the coach, those with whom we would have had discussions, they are of the view that once FIFA gives the go-ahead, they are prepared to play. Because it is, just briefly, I mean, this is a big moment potentially for Jamaica. I mean, you might actually qualify for the World Cup for the first time in, what, nearly 30 years? Yes, since 1998. So you don't want to miss it for that reason alone. We don't want to. We don't really don't want to. But it's very important. The security and well-being of all of us is very, very critical and very important. Yeah. Thank you very much. Between a rock and a hard place, like they would say. Yeah. Thank you very much indeed. Michael Ricketts, president of Jamaica's Football Federation, joining us live. You're listening to NewsHour from the BBC. This is James Menendez with News Out Live from the BBC. Now, can an agreement be reached to avert a US military strike on Iran? That's the task facing negotiators from both sides meeting in Geneva today. President Trump said this week he preferred to see a diplomatic solution to the standoff. However, he has already assembled a vast array of American military hardware in the region. Well, let's head live to Geneva and speak to our chief international correspondent, Lise Doucette, who's there following these crunch talks. Lise, I think they're in a break at the moment. How's it looking so far? Well, as it's always said in negotiations, if you're still talking, then that's a good sign that there hasn't been a breakdown. But we still have no idea, though, if there has been a breakthrough. In all the other previous rounds of talks between the Iranian and American negotiators, they would meet for a few hours and then they would go away. They would fly out of wherever they were meeting. This time, the fact that they're staying, they're going to reconvene again this evening. They're working on a draft text. That is at least a positive sign, but we still don't have any real clear signal as to whether the gaps that we know still exist on nuclear issues, whether they can be narrowed enough to convince President Trump that diplomacy is going to work. And if not, he's made it clear that, as he puts it, very bad things will happen. In other words, military action. There's also been this talk, aside from the nuclear program, about Iran's ballistic missile program. Is that on the table at the moment too? It's quite striking, James, that all of a sudden in the past 48 hours, President Trump, in his State of the Union address, for the first time, raises the issue of Iran's ballistic missiles and says not only can they reach now American bases and American soldiers in the region, that Iran is developing intercontinental ballistic missiles, which can reach the United States. And then Marco Rubio also doubled down and said it was a big, big problem that ballistic missiles were not being included in the talks. Iran has made it absolutely clear that ballistic missiles will not be negotiated. Was President Trump and Marco Rubio simply raising the issue to placate the hawks in the U.S. administration and also Israel? Will they insist in the talks that ballistic missiles be included? If they do, then there will be no deal. There have also been these reports that Iran might be prepared to offer commercial opportunities to American companies in Iran. I mean, if that were to happen, that would be pretty extraordinary, wouldn't it? Well, it would be pretty extraordinary for Iran, which, after all, one of their signature slogans since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 is death to America. but Iran is learning from all the other world leaders who understand if you want to do a deal with President Trump, you have to give him benefits for Americans, make America great again. So like other deals that President Trump has done, and don't forget he regularly boasts that he's ended eight wars, the reality is somewhat different, but in all of them there are commercial deals. There is mineral development, there's energy deals, and Iran is also offering energy projects, minerals, opening up. There's been some discussion about whether the oil fields can be opened up. I mean, here you have a little echo of Venezuela. They realise that they need to offer these kind of incentives if there's to be any chance of doing a deal. Lise, thank you very much indeed. Our Chief International Correspondent, Lise Doucette, joining us live there from those talks taking place in Geneva. Now, nearly five years on from the death of the Broadway legend Stephen Sondheim, his genius and brilliance lives on. But how much do we know of the man behind hit musicals such as Into the Woods, Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Follies? One view of Sondheim is that he was somehow aloof, but now a new podcast made by a friend of his is set to change that with new insights about him, including his love of computer games. Martin Mills is an author, producer and performer and co-host of the new podcast, Loving You, the Untold Sondheim Story. He's been talking about his friendship with the composer to my colleague Emma Barnett. I was very lucky to be close to Steve in the last six years of his life. Having performed in his 85th birthday gala at Jury Lane, we discovered a shared passion for obscure old movies from the 1930s, 40s and 50s, and really bonded over this very, very niche interest, which led to a friendship which spans so many things. Steve introduced me to his close friend, Peter E. Jones, who was in fact his former partner and first love. And Peter and I together decided that there needed to be a tribute to Steve the man, Steve the friend, Steve the partner. There have been many tributes to Sondheim the genius and his work, but no tributes to the friend, which those of us who did know him were privileged to know. And I was just going to say quickly that, you know, you mentioned Peter E. Jones, his former partner and his first love. I mean, he didn't find love till much later in his life, did he? No, Steve was 60 when he had his first relationship. and in the podcast Peter is sharing for the first time in 25 years his story of life and love with Steve which is a very beautiful and extremely moving story. I don't feel I'm quite at the point to call Stephen Sondheim Steve but I'm very struck that you are. Was he much of a Steve? I mean this is the thing you know he comes across through the music and the genius of the lyrics and what people love him for as I said maybe aloof cerebral but but actually you know he also liked gaming is that right? That's correct. There is this myth that he was this scary, brooding intellectual. But the man behind the myth was completely different. He loved playing video games. For instance, one of our guests is Ronan Farrow, the investigative journalist. And just as Steve and I geeked out together over old movies, Steve and Ronan geeked out together over video games. I've got to get my head around Stephen Sondheim. Now, Steve was a gamer with Ronan Farrow, casually. Yes. You mentioned Ronan there as a guest. Mia, his mother's also on there. Dame Judi Dench, Julie Andrews. It's quite a cast list of Steve's mates. We've been extraordinarily lucky to speak to some wonderful people. But then again, all you have to do with Steve's friends is say, we'd love to talk to you about Steve. And they open up. There is a huge wealth of love for, again, the man, not the icon, but the man, the friend we all knew. So we've been extraordinarily lucky with other people like Maria Friedman as well, who's a director and performer, very close friend of his, Patti LuPone and Bernadette Peters, Lin-Manuel Miranda, and people like John Kander, who composed Cabaret in Chicago, who's now 98. Martin Mills, friend of Stephen Sondheim, talking there to my colleague Emma Barnett. As ever, there are updates throughout the day on all our main stories on our website, including those talks between the US and Iran. There's also a video from Quentin Somerville's reports from Sinaloa in Mexico. that you can find pretty easily on the front page and following the links there. It's all at bbc.com forward slash news. But that's it for this edition of News Hour from me and the rest of the team. Thanks so much for being with us. I'll be back at the same time tomorrow. Until then, bye-bye. Starting a business can be overwhelming. You're juggling multiple roles, designer, marketer, logistics manager, all while bringing your vision to life. Shopify helps millions of business sell online. Build fast with templates and AI descriptions and photos, inventory and shipping. Sign up for your one euro per month trial and start selling today at shopify.nl. That's shopify.nl. It's time to see what you can accomplish with Shopify by your side.