Category World News

United States Attorney General Pam Bondi faced fierce questioning at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, as Democrats accused her of politicising the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Republicans rallied behind her pledge to restore law enforcement’s core mission.

In her first appearance before the Republican-controlled committee since the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, Bondi on Tuesday defended the department’s direction under her leadership, saying she came into office determined to end the “weaponisation of justice” and refocus on violent crime.

She said the DOJ was now “returning to our core mission of fighting real crime”, pointing to increased federal activity in Washington, DC; and Memphis, Tennessee.

Bondi also defended the deployment of National Guard troops to cities like Chicago and Portland, saying local governments failed to protect citizens. She tied challenges in enforcing public safety to the ongoing government shutdown, blaming Democrats for undermining law enforcement readiness.

One of the critical moments of the hearing came with Bondi’s justification for prosecuting Comey, a longtime critic of US President Donald Trump. Comey faces charges of false statements and obstruction of Congress related to his 2020 congressional testimony, and is scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday. Democrats pressed whether the indictment followed from independent prosecutorial judgement or political pressure. Bondi declined to answer questions about private conversations with the White House, calling them “personnel matters”.

The Jeffrey Epstein files were another flashpoint in the hearing as Bondi repeatedly refused to explain her decision to reverse course on releasing documents. She instead accused Democratic senators of having accepted campaign donations from an affiliate of the late, convicted sex offender.

Democrats also quizzed her on allegations that Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, accepted $50,000 in cash from undercover agents last year, before the current US administration came into office. Bondi said the decision to drop the inquiry preceded her tenure and declined to state whether the money had been recovered.

Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, the top Democrat on the panel, repeatedly accused Bondi of using her leadership to help weaponise the DOJ. “Our nation’s top law enforcement agency has become a shield for the president and his political allies when they engage in misconduct,” he said. The Illinois senator claimed Bondi “fundamentally transformed the Justice Department and left an enormous stain on American history”.

“It will take decades to recover,” he added.

Under Bondi’s leadership, key divisions such as civil rights have seen mass departures, and career prosecutors tied to investigations into Trump or the January 6 attack on the US Capitol have been removed or reassigned.

A letter by nearly 300 former DOJ employees, released just before the hearing, warned that the administration was “taking a sledgehammer to other longstanding work” and urged a return to institutional norms.

At least 15 people have been killed after debris from a massive landslide hit a bus in India’s northern state of Himachal Pradesh, local authorities have said.

The bus was travelling on a hilly stretch near Bilaspur district when, late on Thursday, a landslide struck following days of torrential rains. At least 20 to 25 passengers were on the bus at the time. Nine men, four women and two children were among those killed, police said.

Three injured children were rescued and admitted to a local hospital for treatment, according to a statement from the office of Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu, the state’s highest elected official. Rescue operations continued on Wednesday in an attempt to find other missing passengers who are believed to be dead, police said.

ANI visuals showed the bus’s mangled wreckage lying on a mountain road as rescuers dug through the debris for the people buried when the landslide struck. Other television visuals from the site showed some rescue workers clearing mounds of earth with heavy machinery while others sifted through mud-soaked belongings.

Intermittent rains have lashed the region since Monday, making the fragile mountain slopes unstable.

President Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi offered their condolences following the landslide.

Extreme rains this year have caused flooding and landslides across the South Asian region, which includes India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, the Maldives and Nepal.

Flash floods swept away an entire village in India’s northern state of Uttarakhand in August, while at least 44 people were killed in neighbouring Nepal over the weekend due to mudslides and flooding triggered by severe rainfall.

The weekend’s heavy rainfall arrived at the end of Nepal’s monsoon season, which usually begins in June and ends by mid-September. It also left parts of the capital, Kathmandu, flooded and caused the cancellation of all domestic flights on Saturday.

More than 20 people were killed in central Myanmar after the military launched motorised paraglider attacks during an antigovernment candlelight vigil, according to Amnesty International and media reports.

The attacks hit a village in Myanmar’s Sagaing Region twice on Monday night as community members gathered to mark a Buddhist festival and call for the release of political prisoners, among other demands, the reports said.

“This would be the latest in a long line of attacks that stretch back almost five years to the start of the 2021 military coup,” said Amnesty International Myanmar Researcher Joe Freeman.

“As the military attempts to solidify power with a stage-managed election later this year, it is intensifying an already brutal campaign against pockets of resistance,” he said.

The attacks on Chaung-U Township came in two waves at 8pm (13:30 GMT) and then again at 11pm (16:30 GMT), killing between 20 and 32 people and injuring dozens more, according to The Irrawaddy, an independent news outlet based in Thailand.

The official death toll has not been confirmed, but the use of motorised paragliders is a known tactic from Myanmar’s military to drop munitions on civilian locations, according to the UN Human Rights Office.

Myanmar has been torn by civil war since 2021 between the military-led government, armed opposition groups, and ethnic armed organisations following a military coup that removed a democratically elected leadership.

The conflict has killed more than 75,000 people and displaced more than 3 million, according to UN estimates.

The military has frequently attacked ethnic minority civilians or communities like Chaung-U Township that are near strongholds of armed groups, according to rights groups.

A 2024 BBC investigation estimated that the military only controlled about 20 percent of the country, while armed opposition and ethnic armed groups controlled about 40 percent of Myanmar’s territory, with the rest territory contested by the various forces.

The military government lifted a long-running state of emergency in July and called for elections at the end of the year, but critics, like the government of Japan, say a peace process is first needed before Myanmar can restore a “democratic political system”.

Amnesty International’s Freeman called for more action from international groups like the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the UN.

Hundreds of hikers, local guides and yak herders have now reached safety after becoming stranded in freezing temperatures by a heavy snowstorm over the weekend on the east face of Mount Everest in Tibet, authorities said.

The evacuation of the last 200 or so hikers from the isolated Karma Valley on Tuesday came after about 350 trekkers were guided to safety on Sunday, marking one of the largest ever search-and-rescue operations in the region.

China’s official Xinhua news agency said that a total of 580 hikers and more than 300 local mountain guides and yak herders had arrived safely in Qudeng township and nearby areas of Dingri county in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China.

Rescue teams carrying food, medicine, oxygen supplies and materials to provide warmth had guided the almost 900 stranded trekkers and guides out of Karma Valley, which lies at an average altitude of 4,200 metres (13,800 feet) at the base of Mount Everest, after a powerful blizzard dumped heavy snowfall in the region on Friday and Saturday.

Xinhua said all the trekkers had reached safety and local government officials were now organising the return to their homes in “an orderly manner”.

The Reuters news agency said that outdoor enthusiasts had flocked to China’s rugged interior since an eight-day holiday began on October 1.

Chinese social media users have been scathing of the mass stranding on the mountain, many taking to WeChat and Douyin – the Chinese TikTok – to criticise what they see as a frivolous pastime by the wealthy in a potentially dangerous area.

One user on WeChat asked if the stranded trekkers would be charged for the cost of the huge search-and-rescue operation.

“Even when I have enough money, I still want to bury myself at the foot of Mount Everest,” said another Douyin user.

First explored by Western travellers a century ago, the Karma Valley is relatively pristine. But it is less visited compared with the north face of Everest, where there is road access.

“Thankfully, some people ahead of us were breaking trail, leaving footprints we could follow – that made it a little easier,” Eric Wen, 41, told Reuters, adding that he trudged through 19km (12 miles), most of it heavy snow, to leave the valley.

“Otherwise, it would’ve been impossible for us to make it out on our own,” he said.

Western China is dominated by the Tibetan Plateau, a vast elevated area stretching from the Himalayas on the border with Nepal to Qinghai province and the Xinjiang region in the north. It is known for its scenic, snow-capped mountains and crystal-clear lakes and is the source of the Yangtze, Mekong and other major rivers that flow down to nearby countries and other parts of China.

In neighbouring Nepal, Sherpa communities have been adapting to increasingly unpredictable conditions as climate change contributes to more frequent and dramatic climate shifts in the Himalayas, posing risks to climbers and the Sherpas who work there.

The White House is attempting to challenge a legal precedent that grants automatic back pay to hundreds of thousands of furloughed federal workers at the end of a government shutdown, according to media reports.

A new White House memo claims that the US Congress must specifically earmark funding for furloughed workers, under a new interpretation of the “Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019”, according to the US news outlet Axios.

Axios reported the news on Tuesday evening in the US, citing a memo from the Office of Management and Budget and senior White House officials. The news was later corroborated by other US media outlets.

The Fair Treatment Act was passed during the first administration of US President Donald Trump, following a 35-day shutdown that lasted from December 2018 to January 2019.

The Trump administration is now arguing that the wording of the law requires a specific action from Congress rather than an automatic payment to furloughed workers, as the shutdown is due to enter its eighth day on Wednesday.

“Does this law cover all these furloughed employees automatically? The conventional wisdom is: Yes, it does. Our view is: No, it doesn’t,” a senior White House official told Axios.

Not all Republicans agree with the White House strategy.

Louisiana Senator John Kennedy, a Republican, told CBS News that Trump alone could not determine whether federal workers are paid.

“It’s not up to the president. His opinion matters, but Congress has got to appropriate the money,” he said.

“We’ve always paid back pay to the military and federal workers, and Congress has always appropriated the money, and we will this time,” Kennedy said.

As many as 750,000 federal workers have been on furlough since the shutdown began on October 1, and their compensation amounts to approximately $400m per day, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The Office of Personnel Management, an independent government agency, said in September that retroactive pay would be disbursed “as soon as possible” once the shutdown ends. The US government now owes employees $2.8bn, with no end in sight for the shutdown.

The threat to furloughed worker pay has been interpreted by US media as a way to force Democrats to negotiate and end the shutdown. Trump previously threatened to use the shutdown to fire federal workers, as well.

Many US parks and museums have closed their doors until the shutdown ends, while non-essential government operations are also suspended.

The impact of the shutdown is spreading beyond Washington.

The Hollywood Burbank Airport operated without air-traffic controllers on site for six hours on Monday night due to shutdown-linked staffing problems, according to a local affiliate of ABC News.

Air traffic control was operated remotely by a team from San Diego, but the airport still faced flight cancellations and delays. Other airports have reported similar problems since the shutdown began last week.

Democrats continue to block a Republican-sponsored spending bill from passing in the US Senate to force Republicans to negotiate on healthcare.

Democrats want Republicans to reverse cuts to Medicaid assistance and extend expiring healthcare subsidies. Without them, healthcare premiums will more than double in November for many Americans, according to the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, which works on healthcare policy.