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Analysts had been expecting 0.2% growth for the UK economy at the beginning of the year.
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Two Black female candidates may split Democratic primary voters, and anger is growing at well-funded efforts to widen the divide.
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It is the seventh day of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, and Israel is escalating attacks on Lebanon after ordering the entire population of southern Lebanon to flee. This comes as Israel's far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich threatened to turn areas of Lebanon into another Gaza in a video shared on social media Thursday. "The word on everyone's mouths here is ethnic cleansing," says Lylla Younes, an investigative journalist speaking with Democracy Now! from Beirut. "People are basically fleeing north with nowhere to go. Shelters are filling up rapidly. People are sleeping on the pavement in the winter nights."
Human rights lawyer Omar Shakir, the new executive director of DAWN, has urged Iran to give the International Criminal Court jurisdiction over apparent crimes committed by the U.S. and Israel in strikes on schools and hospitals. "There is more and more evidence emerging every single day of grave war crimes being carried out by the United States and Israel," he says. "The Israeli government, because of impunity, is emboldened across the region. And unless we see a strong response from states that are willing to use the tools of accountability, … the risk to civilians across the region will continue to grow."
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As fallout from the Epstein files continues, we speak with investigative journalist Barry Levine, author of The Spider: Inside the Tangled Web of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Recordings of the House Oversight depositions of Bill and Hillary Clinton are set to be released today and tomorrow. The Clintons were called by House Republicans to testify on their relationships with Jeffrey Epstein, but Levine emphasizes that credible allegations tying either the Clintons or Donald Trump to Epstein's criminal activities are currently limited. Meanwhile, files known to contain allegations of sexual abuse of a minor by President Trump have been withheld or removed by the Department of Justice. Levine says that the focus on the Clintons is a political distraction targeted at Trump's "perceived enemies" while millions of documents on the Epstein case that could directly implicate his other associates have still not been released or unredacted for the public. "There are men who are out there who took part in the sex trafficking that have not been brought to justice," says Levine.
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