BBC News Briefing

27 February, 2026

Sofia has shoulder-length light brown hair and brown eyes and wears a green blouse.

Sofia Lotto Persio

Hello. Former US President Bill Clinton is testifying before the congressional committee investigating the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. We have the latest. In Cuba, correspondent Will Grant sees the impact of the US oil blockade. Test your memory of the week's events in our news quiz and, finally, see the works of a 91-year-old painter who is marking a milestone.

TOP OF THE AGENDA

Bill Clinton's opening statement released

It is the first time a former US president has testified to a congressional panel since Gerald Ford in 1983. Credit: Getty Images

In his opening statement about his association with Epstein to the US Oversight Committee, Clinton said their "brief acquaintance" ended "years before his crimes came to light" and "I saw nothing, and I did nothing wrong." He also criticised the committee for having his wife, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, testify. Republicans say they will release video of her testimony, which lasted six hours, either later today or tomorrow. Images of the former president were published in the Epstein files, and he has previously said he took trips on Epstein's plane. The files reveal the work going on behind the scenes by Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite now in prison for sex trafficking, to bring Clinton into Epstein's orbit. There is no suggestion that appearing in the Epstein documents implies wrongdoing.

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GET UP TO SPEED

Tehran newspapers give wide coverage to U.S. President Donald Trumpâs remarks on Iran in Congress

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Former King Juan Carlos waves with his right hand from a car to reporters after competing in a regatta in Sanxenxo, Spain in October 2023.

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Spain's main opposition party has called for the disgraced former King Juan Carlos to return from self-imposed exile.

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NEWS FROM THE UK

By-election winner: In her victory speech, plumber - and now MP - Hannah Spencer apologised to her clients for having to cancel their bookings.

Churchill statue: Police have detained a man on suspicion of defacing the monument to the former prime minister.

Cruz Beckham: The youngest son of David and Victoria is fronting a rock band that launched its first headline tour this week.

AT THE SCENE

Havana, Cuba

Toughest days in Cuba's recent history

People walk past rubbish piled up on a street in Havana

Rubbish is piled high on street corners with no fuel for garbage trucks to collect it. Credit: AFP via Getty Images

US President Donald Trump has stepped up the decades-long economic embargo on Cuba like never before, threatening tariffs on any nation that sends oil to the island. With the effects of the fuel crisis being felt across the country, Trump has declared that "Cuba is ready to fall", intensifying pressure on the island at its most vulnerable moment since the Cold War.

Will has short brown hair and brown eyes. He is wearing a dark shirt.

Will Grant, Cuba correspondent

A sizeable exhibit in the Museum of the Revolution in Havana is dedicated to conditions in Cuba before the revolution took power in 1959. The enduring image is of a woman in a dirt-floored palm-leaf hut cooking with firewood. The inference is clear: the revolutionaries saved Cubans from the ignorance and hardship of life under a Washington-backed de facto leader and led them to dignity, education and true independence.

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Yet today, Lisandra Botey identifies more with the impoverished woman in the photograph than with the revolutionaries who liberated her country from the dictatorship of Cuba's then-military strongman, Fulgencio Batista. "We're living like that now, we're exactly like that", says housewife Lisandra outside her home in Havana, which is cobbled together with pieces of sheet metal and wood.

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Cigar festival: The annual event in Havana has become the latest casualty of a fuel shortage caused by the US oil blockade.

PICK OF THE WEEK

Trail for gunman conspiracist goes cold

Dezi Freeman wears a grey t-shirt in a grainy photo.

Freeman, also known as Desmond Filby, has a well-documented hatred of authority. Credit: Nine/A Current Affairs

Moments after allegedly shooting dead two police officers on his property last August, Dezi Freeman took off into the bush and vanished. The manhunt is ongoing, but there have been no successful leads. In the meantime, the self-described "tight-knit" residents of the small town of Porepunkah have been left to pick up the pieces of a crime that has shattered their community.

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