Bill Clinton: 'I saw nothing, I did nothing wrong'

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. J 다른 j spiraling for a better workَ and Hello and welcome to NewsHour Live from the BBC World Service in London. I'm Rebecca Kesby. I saw nothing and I did nothing wrong. That's the standout line from the former US President Bill Clinton's opening statement. He published it online shortly before beginning his testimony under oath to the House Oversight Committee investigating the crimes of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. It's happening behind closed doors, as did his wife Hillary Clinton's testimony yesterday. But while she says she never even met Epstein, Bill Clinton is documented visiting various Epstein properties. He appears in the flight logs of the sex offender's private jet, often dubbed the Lolita Express, and the recently released Epstein files reveal several photographs of Bill Clinton with both Jeffrey Epstein and convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. We voiced up more of Mr Clinton's statement. First, I had no idea of the crimes Epstein was committing, no matter how many photos you show me. I have two things that at the end of the day matter more than your interpretation of those 20-year-old photos. I know what I saw and, more importantly, what I didn't see. I know what I did and, more importantly, what I didn't do. I saw nothing and I did nothing wrong. As someone who grew up in a home with domestic abuse, not only would I not have flown on his plane if I had any inkling of what he was doing, I would have turned him in myself and led the call for justice for his crimes, not sweetheart deals. But even with 20-20 hindsight, I saw nothing that ever gave me pause. We are only here because he hid it from everyone so well for so long And by the time it came to light with his 2008 guilty plea, I had long stopped associating with him. Well, the head of the House Oversight Committee, Republican Congressman James Comer, spoke to journalists before the deposition. We've already seen a lot of very powerful people who have been held accountable by having to resign in disgrace from various boards all over the world. We're going to continue to seek the truth, try to figure out how the government failed the victims, and try to hopefully hold more people accountable. That's what the purpose of this investigation is. I will say this, it's very difficult to get people in for these depositions of great power and great wealth. And I used yesterday and today as an example, it took seven months, seven months to get the Clintons in here. But we've got them in here and we look forward to asking lots of questions that I think any curious media outlet in America would have. Yesterday, Ms. Clinton deferred a lot of questions to her husband today. There were at least a dozen times when she said, you'll have to ask my husband that. I can't answer that. So we already had a big portfolio of questions for him and that increased yesterday. Well, the BBC's Netta Tawfiq has been following the deposition in upstate New York. And I asked her about the sorts of questions Mr. Clinton is likely to face. Yeah, you know, I was just speaking actually with Representative Suhas Subramaniam, who's a Democrat from Virginia on the committee, just about the deposition and what's been asked. And he's been describing the atmosphere as respectful, saying the former president is answering all of the questions in a thoughtful and deliberative manner. And I should say the Republicans who have come out and spoken have said something quite similar. Now, he insists that Democrats aren't letting Bill Clinton off the hook, that they are asking about the flight logs that show Bill Clinton's took flight was on Epstein's private jets in 2002 and 2003 on several trips. He says they are asking about those photos that have now been seen around the world of Bill Clinton in a swimming pool with Ghislaine Maxwell and in a hot tub with other people that they are asking about Epstein's contributions to Mr. Clinton's charitable foundations. We have to wait until the transcript and video of the deposition is released to see how Bill Clinton answered those questions, because neither Republicans or Democrats are revealing too much in advance. But they are saying that while Bill Clinton hasn't been able to recall all details from the past 20 years, that he does appear to try, at least in his answers, to try to be helpful to the committee. And very briefly, Mr. Clinton's not facing any specific allegations, is he? But his wife said yesterday that calling her to give evidence was all about party politics. Did you get that sense from Mr. Clinton's statement today? Yeah, you know, just like the former Secretary of State, Bill Clinton, put out in opening remarks, very much hinting at the fact that he doesn't feel he has anything to offer to help the investigators, that he has put forward a sworn statement saying that he knew he didn't know anything, and yet slamming the fact that his wife, who never met Epstein, was forced to come in front of the committee and also telling the committee himself that he would have turned Epstein in if he knew anything. So a very defiant statement there from the former president. The BBC's Neda Taufik. Well, I've been speaking to Doug Sosnick, who was a political director for President Bill Clinton during his second term in office. And I put to him that statement from Mr. Clinton that he saw nothing and did nothing wrong. Given what's been revealed about Epstein's lifestyle, is that statement credible? You know, no one knows for sure unless you're there. But I think it is because he actually had very certainly compared to President Trump, who spent decades with Epstein. President Clinton spent a much more limited amount of time with Epstein. And he had stopped, at least to my knowledge, being around him prior to Epstein's conviction. There's not a single person anywhere that's alleged any wrongdoing by Clinton. Sure, but I mean, he says he saw nothing. And so many people have said that anyone walking into, well, for example, that townhouse in New York, couldn't have failed to notice the pornographic pictures on the walls, the number of young women there scantily clad. I mean, is it really credible that he couldn't have known anything was going on in that house? Well, I don't have any idea what was going on in that house. I have no idea how many times at all that Clinton had been there. But the fact of what he said, which is he saw nothing wrong, I take him at his word. But more importantly than that, there's not a single person so far that's made a single allegation that Clinton did anything wrong. OK, you mentioned that the relationship broke down. I think we're putting this at around 2003. Do you know why? I have no idea. What I can say to you, I worked as a senior advisor for the president for six years in the White House. For the last four years, I was with him on every trip, and I was the chief of staff on most of these trips. My office was next to the president's in the West Wing. And on the road, no calls went through to him without going to me first. and I can tell you that not a single time in my time in the White House that I ever see Epstein, hear about Epstein, have Epstein trying to make a phone call. He had absolutely, on my watch, not any presence at all. Well, you say that, but it does seem as if some of these interactions did take place while Mr. Clinton was the president and at that point he would have been surrounded by advisers like yourself making sure that he was surrounding himself with upstanding members of the public and others, making sure he was making good decisions about who he associated with. How come nobody picked up that he was having any kind of contact with somebody like Epstein, who was already raising suspicion at that point? Well, I believe that that occurred before I was in the roles I just described to you. so I don't know what I don't know in terms of what preceded me. I do know that while I was there, and I was, I think, by reputation, I think people would tell you I was the one that was telling the president what he needed to hear, not what he wanted to hear. All I can do is tell you that my extended period of time with him, next to him on the road and in the White House, I never once saw any signs of Epstein at all. I mean, there are questions about Mr. Clinton's judgment over all of this. But as you say, there aren't any allegations that he faces in connection to Epstein at the moment. But I mean, it does raise some questions about his judgment, doesn't it? What would you say about that as somebody who is very, you know, knowledgeable about the political sphere? Well, let's just put a little context to this first. Chairman Comer has been in the job now for three years. Any of your listeners, if they spend 30 seconds on the Internet looking up his tenure as chairman of this committee and what they've accomplished or not accomplished, you're going to see what a lightweight he is. And the members on this committee that are interviewing Clinton today are the fringes, the right wing backbenchers of the Republican conference. And to bring Hillary Clinton in yesterday, who's never met Epstein before and gets into questions during it about UFOs, and one of the members, a member of Congress, takes a picture illicitly and sends it out to the right-wing media, shows you what a joke this is. And if they want to bring Clinton in and their photos of Clinton and other things that you could legitimately say, he should be brought in to answer questions about. The fact that they're not bringing in Trump, who's known Epstein for 20 years, and all these other people, this is a joke. Well, we don't know whether that may happen in the future, but surely anyone who had connections with Epstein, who was photographed with Epstein, who took money from Epstein, as we know Bill Clinton did in his charitable ventures as well, surely could help any investigation into the Epstein crimes and to build up a picture of what was going on in the world of Jeffrey Epstein. I'm not questioning that. And I'm saying it's, I mean, it makes no sense to me at all that they brought Hillary Clinton in. Yes, of course you can bring Bill Clinton in. All I'm saying is that Trump has been in office now for 14 months. They have not had a single investigation about Trump or any people in his cabinet that were associated with Epstein. It is clearly partisan. Okay, but surely as somebody who worked for a Democratic president, I presume that is your sort of political leaning as well. Are you not disappointed, at the very least, that a president, a former president of the United States, your president, has found himself in this position with these photographs that we've seen? There are eyewitnesses that claim they saw Bill Clinton on Epstein's Island. I know he's denied ever being on the island. But are you not disappointed that this has happened? Of course I'm disappointed. He made a mistake. He has said he made a mistake. he regrets doing it. So of course I disappointed But just since you raised it let me just quickly say Bill Clinton has said he has never been on that island There not a single shred of evidence that he was ever on that island But more importantly than that, Bill Clinton has a Secret Service detail attached to him, and every single movement that he makes is logged. And so the fact that you raised his maybe visiting the island. And the fact that Trump has said it 28 times and campaigned on it shows you how partisan and political it is. But going back to your original question, of course, I'm disappointed. Of course, he shouldn't have done it. And he has said as much. And you trust him, do you? Because Bill Clinton did lie about what happened with Monica Lewinsky in the Oval Office. And he had to go back on that in the end. He did. So why don't we just go back to what Ronald Reagan famously said, trust but verify. So let's verify everything that Bill Clinton is asserting and see whether or not he's telling the truth or not. And all I'm saying so far is there's not a single shred of evidence that anyone has brought forward that he did anything wrong. That's former Clinton advisor Doug Sosnick speaking to us earlier. Still to come, we'll be hearing from one of the judges of the International Criminal Court who's had sanctions placed on her by the US government following the ICC's issue of an international arrest warrant for the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The sanctions have had and they continue to have a real impact on my life. So, for example, even the day after I was sanctioned, a European bank, in fact, informed me that is closing my bank account. And soon thereafter, your credit cards get cancelled and so on. More on that to come in about 30 minutes. And our top headline this hour, as we've been hearing, the former US President Bill Clinton has told a congressional committee that he saw nothing and did nothing wrong during his acquaintance with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. This is Rebecca Kesby with NewsHour live from the BBC. Nearly a month into a full oil blockade of Cuba, the US says it will ease the ban if the oil is sent to the island's small private sector and not the government. Since US forces removed its close ally, Nicolás Maduro, from power in Venezuela, Cuba has lost its most important source of crude oil. So far, other nations under pressure from Washington have been unwilling to step in to fill the gap. And so what's been the impact? Will Grant reports from Havana. With Washington in control of Venezuela's oil industry and President Trump threatening tariffs against any nation which sends Cuba fuel, Brainy Hernandez has to chop driftwood he found on the beach. Gas hasn't been delivered in months to their huddle of flimsy homes in a Havana suburb, so the construction worker has no choice but to cook with firewood. His daughter went to school with no breakfast this morning. Every day is the same hunger, the same misery, says Brainy, stirring a pot of rice. Hopefully I can get enough money together in the next couple of days for a packet of hot dogs or three or four eggs. The situation has worsened since the US imposed a total fuel blockade on Cuba. Yet Brainy doesn't direct his ire at Washington. Quite the opposite, in fact. I'd like Trump to take this place over. Then let's see if things get better, he says with disarming honesty. Brainy's remains an extreme view. Most don't want President Trump in charge, but such is the level of exhaustion at the dire circumstances, the public's fear of reprisals for speaking out is beginning to evaporate. On the streets, the effects of Washington's actions are even clearer. I'm at a crossroads in central Havana. It's always been a run-down and difficult neighbourhood for its residents. But now, every couple of corners, there is a huge festering pile of uncollected rubbish. Just discarded box after box and plastic bag after plastic bag. There's no fuel with which to run. The rubbish trucks, amid this energy crisis, such basic services are some of the first to go. I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas. The Trump administration's oil shutout is a far cry from the optimism of Washington's Cuba policy of a decade ago. Next month marks the 10th anniversary of Barack Obama's historic visit to Cuba, becoming the first sitting US president to step foot on the island in almost a century. The man who oversaw the diplomatic thaw was the then US ambassador to Cuba, Jeffrey de Laurentiis. It seems like they're taking sort of coercive steps to bring the government to the table or capitulate, but not necessarily collapse. And that's a pretty risky strategy, it seems to me, with a lot of potential for unintended consequences. The former US ambassador thinks the Trump administration is trying to repeat in Cuba the model it's applied in Venezuela. that is not overnight change, but rather working with an acceptable partner inside the existing regime. 20 years ago, the diaspora, mostly in South Florida, would have been completely opposed to that kind of approach. I'm guessing now they're going to give the president and the secretary the benefit of the doubt. Recent reporting by the Axios news outlet suggests that the person the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is speaking to inside the Cuban government is Raul Castro's grandson. Called Raul Rodriguez Castro, he's better known on the island as El Cangrejo, meaning the crab, and is considered business-oriented, not ideological. In the meantime, drivers must use a government-run app called Ticket, under which they're allowed a maximum of 20 litres of fuel paid for in US dollars. Esteban Bello is a tour operator with several almendrones, the big gas-guzzling 1950s automobiles. He drives me around in his own beat-up Hyundai on a fruitless search of the city's petrol stations. There's a problem here, the fuel problem, so surely the people at the top on both sides have to sit down and figure this out, Esteban says bluntly. This is affecting the entire country, all of us, from the very top to the very bottom. In a time of delicate diplomacy allegedly taking place over this beleaguered nation, it was a diplomatic answer. But the truth is those at the very top are feeling the oil blockade much less acutely than those at the very bottom. The BBC's Will Grant in Cuba. Now a genetic study has shed new light on interbreeding between early humans and Neanderthals but scientists have found that the pairings were predominantly between a male Neanderthal and a female early human. So how did they work that out? Dr Daniel Harris from the University of Pennsylvania took part in the study and has been giving us the details. What we did is we took a data set of modern human genomes from sub-Saharan Africa. In a prior study, we had determined that these groups of people do not have any Neanderthal ancestry themselves. And what we did is we looked and used them as a reference data set to find all of the modern human ancestry spread throughout the Neanderthal genome. And then what we did is we compared the patterns and distribution of that ancestry between what are known as the sex chromosomes, or in this case for this Neanderthal, the X chromosome, to the rest of the genome. And what we found is that X chromosome had way more modern human ancestry than the rest of that Neanderthal genome did. Right. So that would indicate that it was the female early humans. Have you worked out why this pairing happened that way around? we believe it's due to what is a uh what we think is a mate preference um scenario so one where we aren't entirely sure why there would be a mate preference but it appears that that's the most likely explanation and that it would be either that neanderthal males preferred modern human women or that modern human females preferred uh neanderthal males or it could have been a combination of of those two mate preferences right interesting because i mean the whole sort of Darwin theory is that, you know, it's a survival of the fittest. So you make these decisions based on what's going to be good for the species, I guess. Yeah, I mean, that could be certainly part of it. I mean, I think one of the things that we looked at is that in general, it's thought that upon modern human ancestry going into Neanderthal genomes or Neanderthal ancestry going into modern human genomes is that it's often selected out and selected against. And that's what we see across the rest of the Neanderthal genome and perhaps a little bit on the Neanderthal X chromosome. But overall, at least for this overarching pattern, it really seems to be more of a sex bias, and we aren't entirely sure why. So we do know that Neanderthals were a bit bigger or certainly stronger than early humans, don't we? I mean, would that suggest that perhaps it wasn't necessarily consensual, this pairing with early human females? That could have been part of the case and maybe contributed to some or all. With the current data that we have in our study, we can't really point to whether that was in fact the case or not. But it's definitely something that could have contributed to the signal that we are seeing, but we can't really say for sure. Right. I suppose the sort of modern day hope would be that it was the early females that chose the Neanderthals because they were strong and vigorous and I don't know, something like that. Right, right. And I think what I'm really interested in seeing how this research is followed up on is if it can create a, you know, I'm a geneticist. And so if we could start collaborating with anthropologists, evolutionary psychologists, archaeologists to see if other types of data could maybe start pinpointing, whether it could start differentiating between these scenarios and move beyond just genetics alone to address these types of questions. That's Dr. Daniel Harris from the... Thank you. For more information, visit shopify.nl. Get your business in more than you work harder, but smarter. Because your employees can be able to work with a phone call. And so, more time for your clients. Find our smart technology at kpn.com. KPN. For a better work in Germany. could have died because of melting ice. I'm Ikra, and on What's in the World, we're finding out how the emperor penguin's molting, that crucial shedding of feathers, has become riskier because of climate change. What's in the World is a daily podcast from the BBC World Service. We go in-depth on a different topic every weekday in under 15 minutes. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts. I've spent the last three decades trying to better understand money across the boardroom, the newsroom, and the trading floor. That's longer than most podcast hosts have been alive. But even though I've got questions, join me Merrin subset web every week for my show Merrin Talks Money from Bloomberg Podcasts where I have in conversations with fund managers strategists and experts about how markets really work And join me for a separate episode where I answer listener questions on how to make those markets work for you. Follow Merrin Talks Money on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. University of Pennsylvania. Yeah. Welcome back to NewsHour. Here in the UK, there's been a bit of a political shock. The governing Labour Party has lost control of one of its safest parliamentary seats in the country. Labour has held the constituency of Gorton and Denton in Manchester since 1931. But last night, the seat was won in a by-election by the Green Party. Its candidate, well, new MP, is the 34-year-old plumber Hannah Spencer. The right-wing populist party reform came second and then only then came Labour in third. It's putting Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer under a lot of pressure. But first, what does it tell us about the public mood in the UK right now? Our British affairs correspondent Rob Watson explains. I think, Rebecca, what it tells us about public opinion in Britain is that people are just incredibly fed up and angry with traditional political parties. In the case of Britain, that's the governing Labour Party, but also the main opposition Conservative Party. Because if you just think about the statistics of this vote, between them, right, between them, they barely got 27% of the votes cast. And then since the Second World War, in all of the general elections, those two parties have averaged about 80%. So that tells you there's a lot of voter anger out there, driven, I think, quite clearly by concern over living standards, the sense that nothing in Britain works properly and concerns over immigration and social cohesion. Right. So, I mean, you're framing this as the ultimate protest vote then, really. I'm not sure that you would entirely call it a protest. I mean, clearly, that's what the Labour and Conservative parties would want. And I think what isn't clear yet is whether this is just a protest vote or whether it's something more seismic. And what I mean by that is, is it possible, for example, that the Greens who won here in Manchester, could they somehow succeed Labour as the main party of the left in the way that the populist anti-immigration reform party is aiming to replace the Conservatives on the right? I mean, I think it's that big. The stakes are that big in British politics. We can't know it for sure. But what this why this by-election result is so significant is because it does confirm a trend that's been out there for a couple of years now. And that is the unpopularity of those two main parties in the sense amongst the voters that they're as bad as each other. Interesting. I mean, this could be personally quite damaging for the Prime Minister. Keir Starmer as well, couldn't it? Because he was blamed, rightly or wrongly, for blocking Manchester's popular mayor, Andy Burnham, from fighting that seat. Is that a decision he's going to be punished for? The Labour Party is furious with him. There's a lot of anger. But I don't get the sense that they're going to remove him right away. You get the sense he's a Prime Minister living on borrowed time. but that the party is likely to wait until early May. And that's when you have elections in England, in local government, to the Parliament in Scotland, to the Assembly and Wales. And if those results are as catastrophic, and this result in Manchester was catastrophic, if they're as catastrophic there as here, then you would think that his time would be up or very close to being up. That's our British affairs correspondent Rob Watson reporting from Manchester there. You're listening to NewsHour live from the BBC. I'm Rebecca Kesby. The Defence Minister of Pakistan says his country is now in open war with Afghanistan after clashes and strikes across the border escalated to a major offensive last night. that's some mobile phone footage sent to the bbc capturing the sound of the emergency services responding to a series of explosions in the afghan capital karbul overnight pakistan war planes also bombed the city of kandahar the twin strongholds of the country's taliban government and local people were terrified. We were all asleep when the plane came in very low. As soon as I heard the sound of the aircraft, I got up. I saw the plane descend and drop two bombs. Then it went back up again. It was around 2am. All of us, including the women, ran downstairs. By the grace of God, we didn't suffer any loss of life, but the doors were broken and the windows of the house were shattered. Well, there's been months of tensions between the two countries, despite agreeing to a fragile ceasefire in October. Both sides claim to have inflicted heavy casualties on the other. The Taliban in Kabul says they've captured 19 Pakistani military posts and two bases. A Pakistani military spokesman said his force had hit 22 Taliban targets and killed 200 Taliban fighters. There's no way to independently verify those figures at this stage. But the BBC's Yama Bariz in Kabul gave us the latest from there. Kabul experienced sort of a chaotic night. Last night there were sounds of aircrafts, explosions and gunfires. But at the dawn, the things were calm. Life has returned back to normal. Today, the Taliban say that during the day, some eastern parts of Afghanistan were bombed again by Pakistani planes, which had some casualties, and at least there are reports that three civilians have died in the southeast of Afghanistan. He also claimed that they also targeted some military targets in Islamabad in four locations, and there were drone attacks. Pakistani forces have accused Taliban that they had got help from TTP, a name for the Pakistani Taliban's movement. Well, the talk of open war was echoed by a Pakistani military analyst, former Brigadier General Farouk Hamid Khan. This is open war between Pakistan and Afghanistan. And Pakistan means business. Our tolerance level has really forced us to go on an offensive against the Afghan Taliban government for not stopping those terror strikes from Afghanistan soil against Pakistan, against the civilian population, against religious sites, and of course against our police and law enforcement agencies. So I think enough is enough, as they say. And we said it's time to teach the Afghan government a lesson as to how to be good, responsible neighbours. Former Brigadier General Farooq Hamid Khan there. Well, I've been speaking to Dr Farzana Shaikh. She's an associate fellow at the Chatham House Asia Pacific Programme, a foreign policy think tank based here in London. And I asked her about the fact that there's been these tensions and some cross-border clashes for months. But why is the conflict escalating now? Well, close observers of Pakistan and Afghanistan will surely not be surprised. I mean, this has been building up, the momentum has been building up over several months in the form of a very sharp escalation in militant attacks, mounted, it is claimed, by Pakistan, by Taliban groups, Pakistani Taliban groups who are based in Afghanistan. And that's what this current crisis is all about. Pakistan calling on Afghanistan's Taliban-led regime to curb and rein in militant hideouts that are under the control of the so-called Pakistani Taliban. Of course, Afghanistan has said this is Pakistan's internal problem, it has nothing to do with it, and has so far really shown very little inclination to do anything about it precisely. So it's a complex relationship, really, isn't it, between Pakistan and the Taliban, or has been historically. But how far is Pakistan willing to go, do you think? I mean, are they looking to try and topple the Taliban? Well, we did hear talk today of regime change. It's worrying. It's worrying because there is a lot of talk about coercive action and very little talk about finding a diplomatic solution. solution. Nobody pretends this is going to be easy. But I think to sort of completely abandon any diplomatic option has to be foolhardy. I mean, the other worrying thing is that, you know, one does wonder whether Field Marshal Mounir, who is, you know, at the helm of affairs in Pakistan has been somewhat emboldened, you know, by taking a very tough stance against Afghanistan's Taliban-led regime. I mean, President Trump this evening was asked whether he would intervene and call for restraint. And his answer was that, well, Pakistan was doing terrifically well under its prime minister and its field marshal. I mean, we have heard some countries, some regional powers come forward and offer their services as mediators. But I think it is troubling that we don't have a diplomatic roadmap ahead of us. Yeah, I mean, you talk about other regional players, of course, there's always a suspicion that India, you know, likes to play one country off against the other. That's often the accusation coming from Pakistan. I mean, is there any idea that the Indian government might get involved in this crisis in any way? Well, I don't think it's going to get involved directly. I mean, there has been a lot of circumstantial evidence to suggest that, you know, India probably does meddle in affairs along the Pakistan-Afghan border. There is enough evidence to point in that direction. But I think there's no doubting that Pakistan is concerned about what appears to be increasingly closer ties between the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and India. I mean, do remember that Pakistan's Afghan policy, such as it was, rested on the assumption that if the Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, Pakistan would be fairly secure along its western border. And that has proved to be absolutely not the case. Dr Farzana Sheikh, their associate fellow at the Chatham House Asia-Pacific Programme in London. Now, just days after President Trump returned to the White House at the beginning of last year, he set his sights on the International Criminal Court with an executive order accusing it of, quote, illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel. It followed the ICC's decision to issue warrants for the arrest of the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza. Warrants were also set to be issued for three senior Hamas leaders, although they were all subsequently killed in the conflict. Well, the impact of President Trump's order became clear later in 2025, when US sanctions were imposed on 11 ICC officials, including its chief prosecutor and eight judges, among them the Slovenian judge Betty Hola, who this week has been speaking to the European Parliament, calling for measures to protect EU citizens from US sanctions. NewsHour James Menendez spoke to her earlier and asked her how she felt when she found out she been sanctioned I was quite honestly shocked baffled one could say Although there was talk of sanctions even beforehand, you have to understand that imposing sanctions on independent international judges of an international court was really unprecedented. And the reality is that the consequences of sanctions were really immediate. And the sanctions have had and they continue to have a real impact on my life. So for example, even the day after I was sanctioned, a European bank, in fact, informed me that is closing my bank account. And soon thereafter, your credit cards get cancelled and so on. So what sort of changes have you had to make to your life to deal with the impact of those sanctions? Well, as a sanctioned individual, essentially, I no longer have access to any American products or services, even in Europe. So that means that my Apple ID, my iCloud, Amazon, Airbnb, PayPal, and all other accounts have been blocked or cancelled. And these cancellations happen overnight, essentially without any advanced warnings. So as you can imagine, without credit cards, it makes it difficult and sometimes impossible to do everyday things like making a reservation, buying a plane ticket or subscribing to an online news outlet. So sometimes there are solutions, sometimes there are none. With regard to credit cards, for example, because there is no non-U.S. credit card alternative, it is essentially impossible to have a credit card as a sanctioned individual. And is it just you or is there a broader impact for you and your fellow judges in terms of your family's ability to carry out many day to day activities? The consequences of sanctions do extend also to family members. This is also in the executive order. My fellow judges with children have, for example, reported that their children's visas and their employment and education opportunities have been, for example, affected. So besides the psychological effect, obviously, on the family members, there is also a further impact. I mean, what about the psychological impact on you? Well, as you can imagine, this is very unpleasant. It is disruptive. It is stressful. And living with sanctions essentially also means living in constant uncertainty, because even a bank card that works today may not work tomorrow. An insurance company that insures your house today may essentially terminate the contract tomorrow. But at the same time, we, of course, continue to do our work determined and undeterred. We are equally committed to performing our judicial duties like we always have, independently, impartially, with integrity and with courage. This is part of the personal resilience that we essentially promise in our judicial own. The thrust of the accusation is that the court is politicised. it's not impartial, as you just said, and that you're part of an illegitimate campaign to target, to go after the US and Israel. What's your response? The court is, as the name says, an international criminal court. It is not a political actor. It is a court of law, and it is absolutely an independent and impartial institution. And we apply the law within the mandate that is given to us in the Rome Statute by 125 state parties. And we apply the law on the basis of the facts and the evidence before us. That's Judge Betty Hola there of the International Criminal Court speaking to NewsHours James Menendez earlier today. you're with news hour live from the bbc i'm rebecca kesby argentina was the first country in the world to introduce a law to protect all glaciers and periglacial areas particularly from the mining industry when it came in 15 years ago it was hailed as a breakthrough by environmentalists. But now the government of President Javier Millet wants to scrap it. It seems many glacial areas in Argentina are also rich in minerals, especially copper, which is crucial in the manufacturing of batteries, including for renewable energy systems. President Millet says the changes could create a million jobs. But what do Argentine environmentalists think of it? I've been speaking to one, Cristian Fernandez. Well, this plan is really awful because In Argentina, glaciers are the beginning of 36 rivers. We have in Argentina 17,000 glaciers. They are really important for us, for food production, also for human consumption, and also for activities, for example, like preparing wine, preparing food. Is it because of the water, the fresh water that they supply? Yes, these fresh waters that begins at the glaciers of the Cordillera de los Andes is the way that Argentina feeds nowadays this human right, which is the access to water, is in danger because this water wants to be used by mining projects. So just on the water issue, is it the fact that mining actually uses quite a lot of water in the production and the running of the mine, but also then that I guess there is a fear that water sources could become polluted with the deposits of mining as well? Yes, of course, because these mining projects, they start exploding the mountain and then they mix the water with cyanide. And cyanide is pollution substance. OK, but the Argentine Chamber of Mining Companies is welcoming these reforms because they say the earlier law from 15 years ago wasn't very clear and it meant that all glaciers were out of bounds for mining. And as you say, that's 17,000, which meant that they were banned from any kind of mining. And as you know, there are precious metals and minerals in glacial areas. So now it's going to be that the provinces get the say over whether or not mining can go ahead. Won't that make it easier for mining companies companies to make headway in certain provinces without destroying all the glacial areas? No, it's not a good idea. It's not a good idea. And I believe that there are a lot of promises of works, of shops that are not really true. For example, the glaciers are important for tourism. And in the last days, in the last weeks, we read a United Nations report about the bankruptcy of water in the whole world. So we are nowadays facing climate change, rivers that are drought. And so we need to preserve these rivers. We need to preserve these waters because they are the water for the future. Okay, but the president does say that these plans could make up to a million jobs in the end, which is bound to be welcome to many people in the country. I mean, isn't that something that does make it worth looking into? I don't think so, because we need to see the big picture. And the big picture is that these 17 southern glaciers are only 1% of Argentinian land. We are speaking about the 1% where it is prohibited, it is not allowed to advance with mining, silver mining, gold mining or copper mining. So it's only 1%. The mining companies are not prohibited. They could work in all the 99% that exist. That's environmentalist Christian Fernandez in Argentina. Finally, this hour to Gaza, where many people are marking the Islamic holy month of Ramadan under a shaky ceasefire after two years of war. The Israeli authorities still don't allow international journalists free access to Gaza, but using material gathered by local journalists inside the strip for us, our Middle East correspondent Yolan Nel reports on how Muslims in Gaza are trying to worship, reflect and celebrate through Ramadan amid the widespread destruction and displacement. A song and drums wake up residents of Khan Yunus for their pre-dawn Ramadan breakfast or suhur. The Musaharati picks his path around flattened buildings. Amid their ongoing hardships, this year, Palestinians in Gaza are getting a taste of traditional Ramadan festivities. There are decorations hung among the rubble at communal gatherings to break the daily dawn to dusk fast. But most people in Gaza remain displaced, living in tents after two years of devastating war. This Ramadan, Alia Al Ansari in Gaza City is thinking of her son who was killed and all she's lost. Our lives changed. Our food, our clothes, everything in our lives changed. The difference is vast, like heaven and hell. Before the war, God be praised, we were very well off. Now, God be praised that we are alive. Gaza's markets are now bustling. Late last year, global hunger experts said there was no longer a famine in the Strip, with more aid allowed to enter by Israel, as well as private imports. Still, with little income and nearly the entire population living in poverty, one shopper, Alaa Hijazi, says many are feeling the strain this holiday. Today, prices are very high and unaffordable for many. Many people see the goods but can't buy them. We hope that God will ease it on people and life returns to how it was before 7th October 2023. God willing, things will improve for the better. Praying in the ruins, the iconic Great Omri Mosque was Gaza's biggest and oldest. Most mosques in the strip were destroyed or damaged in the war. Israel says Palestinian armed groups operated in civilian sites, including places of worship, which Hamas denies. Palestinians now resort to praying in special tents or what's left of their mosques. At this time of spiritual reflection, there's fear about what happens next. The ceasefire still looks fragile, with regular deadly Israeli airstrikes and claims of violations by both sides. A US peace plan is slow to take effect. Struggling to find the usual joy in Ramadan, many Gazans are seeking comfort in its religious rituals. Our Middle East correspondent Yolande Nell reporting there. Well, that's it for this edition of NewsHour from me and the whole team here in London. Thanks for joining us. Scientists are desperately searching for penguin feathers on their satellite screens. They're worried it's a sign that thousands could have died because of melting ice. I'm Ikra and on What's in the World we're finding out how the emperor penguin's molting, that crucial shedding of feathers has become riskier because of climate change What's in the World is a daily podcast from the BBC World Service We go in depth on a different topic every weekday in under 15 minutes Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts