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Congress agreed to release all documents related to the investigation of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The bill passed the House by a near-unanimous margin yesterday. President Donald Trump had fought to block the release for months. The Senate swiftly agreed to pass it, too. Mr. Trump鈥檚 prior relationship with the late Mr. Epstein has fueled speculation as to why he opposed making the files public.

The Trump administration moved to hand off Education Department functions to other agencies. The Department of Labor will now administer grants for low-income students, while the Department of the Interior will largely handle Indian Education programs, among other changes. Only Congress can formally dissolve the department, but President Trump鈥檚 March executive order sought to close it and 鈥渞eturn authority鈥� to states. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the 43-day shutdown 鈥減roved our schools don鈥檛 depend on Washington bureaucracy.鈥�

Fewer international students chose American colleges for fall 2025. The Institute of International Education surveyed 825 schools and found a 17% drop in first-time international enrollment and an 11% decline in graduate enrollment. The decline comes as President Trump has sought to reduce foreign student numbers and cut research funding. Most schools are allowing international students to defer until next spring or fall.

Japan and China have dug in as their diplomatic row deepens. China continues demanding, without success, that Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae retract her statement that Japan could activate self-defense forces if China uses military force against Taiwan. A mission by a senior Japanese envoy to Beijing this week made little headway. Japan has protested China鈥檚 retaliatory moves, including warnings against travel to Japan. China is reportedly poised to reimpose a ban on Japanese seafood imports.

A Cloudflare outage brought down large swaths of the internet yesterday, with sites from ChatGPT to Spotify showing errors. The online security firm, which resolved the problem it attributed to 鈥渦nusual traffic,鈥� says one-fifth of the world鈥檚 websites rely on its services. A similar Amazon Web Services outage last month took over 1,000 sites offline. Analysts say these events highlight the vulnerability of reliance on highly concentrated service providers.

A federal judge ordered some Texas schools not to display the Ten Commandments, siding with 15 families suing their districts. The ruling covers only certain districts and is part of an ongoing legal fight over a bill Gov. Greg Abbott signed this summer mandating the biblical text be posted in every classroom. The judge allowed schools until Dec. 1 to remove posters. Supreme Court precedent holds that such displays violate the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.

Florida will reopen Apalachicola Bay to oyster harvesting in early 2026. The bay once supplied 10% of U.S. oysters, but upstream development reduced suitable harvest areas. A six-year ban enabled the mollusks to make a modest recovery, bringing welcome economic news. Going 鈥渇rom a boat captain to cutting somebody鈥檚 grass ... that鈥檚 a pretty big change,鈥� one oysterman told the Associated Press.

鈥� From our staff writers around the world

Despite Israel鈥檚 war with Hamas and Iran, its economy grew, if modestly, due mostly to its strong tech sector. But calls to boycott Israel over the conduct of its war in Gaza appear to have hit some exports. Will that rage subside if the ceasefire holds?

After the deadliest fire in 100 years of U.S. history, houses are rising from the ground once again in Hawaii. But the people of Lahaina are trying to do more than rebuild buildings 鈥� they are also trying to rebuild their culture.

Views on whether girls should marry before age 18 have radically shifted in Bolivia, allowing for a prohibition to be put in place this year. But the cultural norms and attitudes that drive the practice remain.

Cashless bail is meant to ensure low-income people don鈥檛 have to stay in jail pretrial, unless a judge deems them dangerous. President Donald Trump says the system is dangerous and is pressuring cities and states to end it.

Driving from聽Cornwall in the south to the Lake District in the north, travelers will find聽plenty to marvel at along the way. The scenery is indeed tranquil and picturesque, just as one would hope.

President Donald Trump鈥檚 military approach to cocaine traffickers in the Americas keeps hitting bumps. His assistance to the armed forces in Colombia 鈥� the largest source of cocaine 鈥� has slowed since October because of a feud with that country鈥檚 leftist leader. In a referendum on Sunday, voters in Ecuador 鈥� where some 70% of global cocaine flows 鈥� soundly rejected the idea of foreign bases in the country to help fight the drug trade.

And in the last three months, as the United States military has built up forces near Venezuela and conducted lethal strikes against alleged drug-carrying boats 鈥� dubbed by the White House as 鈥渘arco-terrorists鈥� 鈥� cries have grown louder that such attacks might violate international law.

Meanwhile, amid this forceful approach, one country in the Caribbean, the Dominican Republic, has received a largely unnoticed accolade for an alternative tactic to dealing with crime 鈥� whether it is petty theft or international drug runners coming to its shores.

A global ranking of countries on democratic rule of law found the Dominican Republic had the highest increase this year 鈥� 2.1% 鈥� in the overall scoring for areas from judicial independence to police performance to civic participation.

That was up from a 1.1% improvement the year before. While its overall rank is still No. 76 out of 143 countries, the Caribbean鈥檚 second-biggest country has become a model in how to make progress in democratic rule of law. More than two-thirds of nations, including in Latin America, saw a decline in their rankings this year.

Which country had the lowest overall score in the rankings by the World Justice Project? Venezuela, a southern neighbor to the Dominican Republic and home to one of the world鈥檚 worst authoritarian regimes.

The recent progress in the Dominican Republic began in earnest about two decades ago but picked up speed in 2020 after an anti-corruption crusader, Luis Abinader, was elected president. Before his easy reelection in 2024, he acknowledged how much citizens have achieved in government transparency and accountability. 鈥淲hen you work with ethics and honesty,鈥� he said, 鈥渞esources yield more and the possibilities of solving problems expand.鈥�

In all societies, law itself is not as visible as, say, a drone attack on a boat. Yet it helps keep people away from illicit activities.

As the late American legal scholar Harold J. Berman wrote, a belief in law not only appeals to people鈥檚 finite interests, 鈥渂ut also to their faith in a truth, a justice, that transcends social utility.鈥�

Perhaps the best armor against the drug trade can be found in places like the Dominican Republic, which is striving to anchor itself in qualities from honesty to equality.