Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba denied on Wednesday he had decided to quit after a source and media reports said he planned to announce his resignation to take responsibility for a bruising upper house election defeat.

Asked about media reports that he had expressed his intention to step down as early as this month, the 68-year-old leader Ishiba told reporters at party headquarters on Wednesday: "I have never made such a statement...The facts reported in the media are completely unfounded."

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard made a surprise appearance at the White House press briefing on Wednesday to outline to reporters details of key findings from a House Intelligence Committee report published in 2020 that was newly made public.

Gabbard said her office has referred documents it has released to the Justice Department, suggesting it could implicate former President Obama.

The revelations come as President Trump and the White House continue to fend off controversy surrounding disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein and the administration’s handling of releasing files on his case.

The federal government plans to spend $1.26 billion to build the country's largest immigration detention center at Fort Bliss, an army base in El Paso, according to a recently-announced contract.

The U.S. Department of Defense on Monday announced that Virginia-based company Acquisition Logistics LLC was given nearly $232 million up front to build and run the 5,000-bed tent camp. The federal agency said the facility is expected to open by September 2027.

The contract is one of the biggest for Acquisition Logistics, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the contract. But the company does not appear to have experience running detention centers.

Using tents in the sprawling West Texas to detain migrants has been a long-time concern for immigrant rights activists because of scorching desert heat.

The suit seeks damages after the podcaster claimed Brigitte Macron is a man. The French president and his wife said the statement caused “pain to us and our families.”

A top Iranian official warned on Wednesday that Iran could withdraw from a key nuclear nonproliferation treaty if Europe followed through on its threats to reimpose sanctions on Tehran.

The remarks, from Iran’s deputy foreign minister, Kazem Gharibabadi, came during a rare on-the-record briefing with reporters in New York, where he was attending meetings at the United Nations. Mr. Gharibabadi laid out his country’s positions on a range of issues, setting the stage for nuclear talks with European counterparts in Istanbul on Friday.

Attorney General Pam Bondi notified President Trump months ago that he was named in the Jeffrey Epstein files, multiple outlets reported Wednesday.

The reports come as the Trump administration faces mounting accusations that the DOJ isn't being transparent enough about its Epstein investigations.

Bondi and deputy attorney general Todd Blanche allegedly told the president this spring that his name, as well as those of other high-profile individuals, appeared as they re-examined documents related to the case that hadn't been made public, per the New York Times.

Washington had been a buffer against China’s efforts to use UNESCO to influence education, historical designations and even artificial intelligence.

Renewed fighting in the DRC’s eastern North Kivu region, despite the ink being barely dry on a peace deal signed last week in Doha between Kinshasa and the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels.

Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote has warned that heavily discounted Russian petroleum products are flooding African markets, threatening the continent’s emerging refining sector.

Columbia University has expelled and suspended students who were involved in a pro-Palestinian demonstration that shut down the main campus library in May, moving more quickly to hand down punishments than it has in the past, university officials announced on Tuesday.

A statement from the university did not say how many students were disciplined, but a person with knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that just over 70 students had been punished. Of those, about 60 were suspended, with most suspensions to last for two years, the person said. A handful of students were expelled.

The Dinah Project says the report is based on a review of evidence including first-hand testimony from a survivor of an attempted rape and 15 former hostages held in Gaza, as well as accounts from witnesses to sexual assaults.

It lays out what the group describes as "a legal blueprint for prosecuting these crimes, even when direct attribution to individual perpetrators is impossible".

Hamas has denied its forces committed sexual violence against women or mistreated female hostages.

However, a UN mission concluded in March 2024 that there were "reasonable grounds" to believe that conflict-related sexual violence occurred during the 7 October attack in multiple locations, including rape and gang rape, and that there was "convincing information" that hostages had been subjected to sexual violence, including rape and sexualised torture.