President Donald Trump signed legislation Wednesday that compels his administration to release files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, bowing to political pressure from his own party after initially resisting those efforts.

Trump could have chosen to release many of the files on his own months ago.

National Book Awards judges honored authors worldwide on Wednesday night, from Lebanese novelist Rabih Alameddine's "The True True Story of Raja the Gullible (and His Mother)" to Chicago-born poet Patricia Smith's "The Intentions of Thunder."

Alameddine's narrative of intense family bonds within the chaos of modern Lebanon received the fiction prize, while Smith, who has received numerous previous awards for her lyricism and intensity, won for poetry. The nonfiction prize was given to the Canadian Iranian novelist-journalist Omar El Akkad for his fierce indictment of the contemporary West, "One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This."

Two global power players will spend Wednesday pushing negotiators to find compromises at United Nations climate talks in Brazil's Belém, where a self-imposed deadline is rushing up fast.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres roamed the meeting rooms on Tuesday, while Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was set to join the COP30 talks Wednesday morning.

In South Africa 's oldest township, volunteers in wetsuits jump into the thigh-deep water of the polluted Jukskei River to untangle a net that's designed to trap garbage but damaged by heavy rains. Without the nets, the shacks of low-lying Alexandra on the outskirts of Johannesburg could face disastrous flooding.

World leaders with the Group of 20 rich and developing nations will meet this weekend in Johannesburg for the bloc's first summit in Africa. Host South Africa wants to prioritize issues affecting poor countries, including responses to disasters made worse by climate change.

Britain's Royal Mint is celebrating Freddie Mercury with a new coin design that marks 40 years since his iconic Live Aid concert performance.

The coin features an image of the Queen front man, head thrown back and holding the microphone stand midperformance. A musical stave that runs around the edge of the coin represents his four-octave vocal range.

Inflation in the U.K. fell to a four-month low in October, official figures showed Wednesday, in a move that has raised expectations of another Bank of England interest rate cut next month.

The Office for National Statistics said the annual rate of inflation, as measured by the consumer prices index, fell to 3.6% in October from 3.8% the previous month.

A stunning bicycle kick and two stoppage-time goals sealed Scotland's dramatic return to the World Cup after a 28-year wait.

Neither Kylian Mbappé nor his former club Paris Saint-Germain are ready to back down as their legal dispute reaches a new climax — with gigantic sums at stake.

Lawyers for both sides argued on Monday before an industrial court in Paris, each demanding hundreds of millions of euros from the other as they sought to settle a score over the end of the player's contract before his move to Real Madrid in the summer of 2024.

LeBron James certainly didn't look like he had been away from an NBA court for nearly seven months when he began his unprecedented 23rd season Tuesday night — even if his burning lungs told him otherwise.

After reaching another landmark in what is now officially the longest career in league history, James was not at all surprised to return from his lengthy injury absence by fitting in seamlessly with the surging Los Angeles Lakers in yet another victory.

The tiny Caribbean island country Curaçao will go to the 2026 World Cup as the smallest nation by population ever to qualify for the marquee event in men's football.

Curaçao, an autonomous territory of about 156,000 people within the Netherlands kingdom, takes the record of Iceland, with a population of just over 350,000, which was the previous smallest country to reach the World Cup when it qualified for Russia 2018.