“Former U.S. president Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, will testify in a congressional investigation into the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a staffer said on Monday. The House’s Republican-led oversight committee recommended last week that the Clintons be held in contempt for refusing to testify about their relationship with Epstein, with several Democrats on the panel agreeing. The Clintons had offered to co-operate with the panel but had refused to appear in person, saying the investigation was a partisan exercise aimed at protecting Republican President Donald Trump. The House of Representatives had later this week planned to hold the two prominent Democrats in contempt, a finding that potentially could lead to criminal charges.” (02/03/26)
“Pope Leo XIV is facing his first major crisis with traditionalist Catholics, after a breakaway group attached to the traditional Latin Mass announced plans to consecrate new bishops without papal consent in a threatened revival of schism. The Swiss-based Society of St. Pius X … has been a thorn in the side of the Holy See for four decades, opposed to the modernizing reforms of the 1960s Second Vatican Council. In 1988, the group’s founder, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, consecrated four bishops without papal consent, arguing that it was necessary for the survival of the church’s tradition. The Vatican promptly excommunicated Lefebvre and the four other bishops …. But in the decades since that original break with Rome, the group has continued to grow, with branches of priests, nuns and lay Catholics who are attached to the pre-Vatican II traditional Latin Mass.” (02/03/26)
“Sudan’s military says it has broken through a siege by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group of the South Kordofan capital of Kadugli, marking its second major advance in less than a week. General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the de facto leader of the country, visited Sudan’s public television station in the city of Omdurman on Tuesday to assert that his forces had opened a supply route to the capital. … Al-Burhan insisted that the military government of Sudan supports peace efforts but will not agree to a truce with the RSF, with which it has been fighting a vicious civil war since April 2023, while cities are under siege.” (02/03/26)
“PayPal said on Tuesday it was booting its CEO and replacing him with its board chair Enrique Lores, sparing no ambiguity as to why: ‘The pace of change and execution was not in line with the Board’s expectations,’ it said in a statement. One group that was blindsided was HP, where Lores was until Tuesday serving as CEO, according to people familiar with the matter. Lores’[s] switchup sent them rushing to launch a search process, those people said. HP’s board does have internal candidates which it’s considering for the top job, according to a person familiar with the board’s thinking. As chair of PayPal’s board, Lores played a role in a process evaluating internal and external candidates. It was unclear when or if he recused himself from the final decision to name him as CEO.” (02/03/26)
“NASA early Tuesday announced it was pushing the launch date of its Artemis II mission to March, after engineers encountered a liquid hydrogen leak during a critical prelaunch test. … NASA had initially aimed to launch Artemis II in a Feb. 8-11 window. Moving the mission’s launch window will give teams time to review data and conduct a second wet dress rehearsal, NASA said in a separate statement.” (02/03/26)
“French state prosecutors have asked appeal court judges to maintain a five-year election ban on the far-right leader Marine Le Pen for embezzlement of European parliament funds in a fake jobs scandal. If the judges decide to grant the request, Le Pen would probably not be able to run in France’s 2027 presidential election. The state prosecutors also recommended a four-year prison sentence against Le Pen, three of which would be suspended, and one served at home with an electronic bracelet. They also requested a €100,000 fine.” (02/03/26)
“Eight international NGOs said they would refuse to provide information about their staff in Gaza and the occupied West Bank to Israel, defying new registration requirements as Tel Aviv continues to restrict the flow of aid into the besieged enclave. The eight organisations are ActionAid, Alianza por la Solidaridad, Médecins du Monde, Médicos del Mundo, Première Urgence Internationale, the American Friends Service Committee, medico international, and Medical Aid for Palestinians. Their stance follows similar decisions by Oxfam and Doctors Without Borders (MSF).” (02/03/26)
“Spain has set a new tourism record, welcoming nearly 96.8 million foreign visitors in 2025, according to figures released Tuesday by the National Statistics Institute. The number of international visitors witnessed an increase of 3.2%, compared to 2024, which saw 94 million tourists. Spain is one of the world’s most popular destinations, where tourism accounts for 12.6% of the country’s gross domestic product. It has ranked third as the world’s top tourism earners, after the United Kingdom and France, on the U.N. World Tourism Barometer.” (02/03/26)
“At least 30 people have died and another 324 injured due to heavy snowfall along the Sea of Japan coast over the past two weeks, the Fire and Disaster Management Agency said Tuesday. The highest death toll was seen in Niigata Prefecture, with 12 fatalities, followed by six in Akita Prefecture and four in Aomori Prefecture. Many deaths involved people attempting to remove snow from around their homes. … The Sea of Japan coast continued to see heavy snowfall on Tuesday as a result of wintry pressure patterns bringing freezing cold air above the Tohoku region.” (02/03/26)
“The cybercrime unit of the Paris prosecutor’s office on Tuesday launched a search of the French offices of social media platform X. The raid was connected to an ongoing investigation launched in January 2025 over alleged algorithm manipulation and illicit data extraction that has since expanded to look into allegations of complicity in spreading child sex abuse materials and sexualised deepfakes. … The Paris prosecutor’s office said it launched the investigation after being contacted by a lawmaker alleging that biased algorithms in X were likely to have distorted the operation of an automated data processing system.” (02/03/26)
