Donald Trump apparently isn’t the only president that sent a birthday letter to Jeffrey Epstein. “The biggest name in the album” was Bill Clinton, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. The ex-president’s letter appeared alongside nearly 50 others, including other prominent celebrities and executives.

Last week, the Journal reported that Trump had authored a “bawdy” letter to Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 after he was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges. The letter was included in an album Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell compiled on the occasion of his 50th birthday in 2003. Trump has sued Rupert Murdoch, two Wall Street Journal newspaper reporters and the newspaper’s publisher Dow Jones for libel and slander over the reporting.

In Thursday’s article, the Wall Street Journal provided additional details on the album, including names of some of the nearly 50 people who wrote to Epstein. They reportedly include billionaire investor Leon Black, fashion designer Vera Wang, billionaire media owner Mortimer Zuckerman, billionaire former Victoria’s Secret owner Les Wexner, attorney Alan Dershowitz, model scout Jean-Luc Brunel and billionaire former Microsoft executive Nathan Myhrvold.

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US President Donald Trump has spent months attacking the head of the US central bank on social media and in remarks to reporters, calling Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell names like "numbskull".

On Thursday, the dishttps://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1ljlvg1e7eopute played out in person, with cameras rolling, as the two men clashed over the cost of building renovations.

The tense moment came as Trump has been escalating his pressure on Powell, who Trump says is moving too slowly to cut interest rates.

He has repeatedly floated the possibility of firing Powell, only to quickly disavow the idea, which analysts say would rock financial markets and spark a legal battle.

Trump's visit to the Federal Reserve is the first by a sitting president in roughly two decades.

It comes ahead of the Fed's meeting in Washington next week, where policymakers are widely expected to vote to leave interest rates unchanged.

Speaking to reporters at the start of his tour, Trump said that the administration was "taking a look at what's happening" at the Fed's $2.7bn (£1.8bn) renovation.

"It looks like it's about $3.1bn," Trump said, as Powell shook his head.

"I'm not aware of that," Powell shot back. "I haven't heard that from anybody at the Fed."

Trump then produced a document from his jacket pocket, which Powell briefly read and brusquely handed back to the president, saying that Trump was "adding a third building" to the total.

"It's a building that's been built," Trump said.

Powell responded: "It's a building that was built five years ago... it's not new."

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New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor, Alina Habba, on Thursday said she would continue on in the position despite a judicial decision declining to extend her interim status and instead opting to replace her.

She doubled down in her first remarks since the decision, declaring that she is now the state’s acting U.S. attorney.

“Donald J. Trump is the 47th President. Pam Bondi is the Attorney General. And I am now the Acting United States Attorney for the District of New Jersey,” Habba said in a statement posted to the social platform X. “I don’t cower to pressure. I don’t answer to politics. This is a fight for justice. And I’m all in.”

A Justice Department official said that Trump withdrew her nomination to be the state’s U.S. attorney and she was appointed first assistant U.S. attorney, meaning she becomes acting U.S. attorney because the position is now vacant.

The announcement comes hours after Desiree Grace, the attorney tapped by the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey judges to succeed Habba, said she was prepared to assume the role, elevating the standoff to new heights.

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Columbia University, in hopes of restoring hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen funding, has struck another deal with the Trump administration, the university announced.

The Ivy League school in New York City will pay a $200 million fine over three years to the government to settle allegations it violated federal civil rights laws and failed to protect members of its Jewish community from discrimination.

It will also jointly appoint an independent monitor to update the federal government on its compliance with new policies, and pay an additional $21 million fine to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The agreement marks the second major concession from the university in its protracted negotiations with the government. Despite the drawn-out talks, and many compromises on Columbia's part, the Trump administration has yet to reroute hundreds of millions of dollars back to the school.

The school previously agreed, among other things, to bolster campus law enforcement, appoint a new administrator to oversee its Middle Eastern studies department and retool its protest policies in an effort to assuage the White House.

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