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The Trump administration is recalling nearly 30 career diplomats from ambassadorial and other senior embassy posts as it moves to reshape the US diplomatic posture abroad with personnel deemed fully supportive of President Donald Trump's America First priorities. The chiefs of mission in at least 29 countries were informed last week that their tenures would end in January, according to two State Department officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal personnel moves. All of them had taken up their posts in the Biden administration but had survived an initial purge in the early months of Trump's second term that targeted mainly political appointees. That changed on Wednesday when they began to receive notices from officials in Washington about their imminent departures. Ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the president, although they typically remain at their posts for three to four years. Those affected by the shake-up are not losing their foreign service jobs
The Justice Department's much-anticipated release of records tied to Jeffrey Epstein arrived in a flood of documents that did little to quell the long-simmering intrigue, largely because some of the most consequential records were nowhere to be found. The initial disclosures, spanning tens of thousands of pages, offer scant new insight into Epstein's crimes or the decisions that allowed him to avoid serious federal prosecution for years. Missing are FBI interviews with survivors and internal Justice Department memos examining charging decisions records that could have helped explain how investigators viewed the case and why Epstein was allowed in 2008 to plead guilty to a relatively minor state-level prostitution charge. The gaps go further. The records, required to be released under a recent law passed by Congress, contain no references to several powerful figures long associated with Epstein, including Britain's former Prince Andrew, renewing questions about who was scrutinised,