Luckily you can help prevent this issue with some simple steps

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A neurologist has highlighted an often “overlooked” risk factor for both strokes and dementia. You may not realise that your mouth health is linked to these conditions.

In a video shared on the social media platform TikTok, Dr Baibing Chen, also known as Dr Bing online, emphasised the importance of maintaining good dental hygiene.

Dr Chen said: “ One risk factor for stroke and dementia that people often overlook is dental and gum health and let me explain. Large studies have now shown that people with gum disease, cavities or major tooth loss have higher stroke risk.

“And many of these studies control for things like socioeconomic status, income, or other demographics and risk factors, and the association still held. Now, some people will say, well, of course, because people who take care of their teeth also tend to take care of the rest of their health.

And they may be right. In statistics, we call this residual confounding, where healthy behaviours tend to cluster together, and it is very hard to separate one habit from the rest. So this does not prove that bad teeth directly causes strokes.”

But he said that gum disease can result in inflammation. He continued: “It’s important to know that chronic gum disease can create ongoing inflammation. Inflammation can damage blood vessels, and oral bacteria have been found inside clots that cause strokes.

“And this is why sometimes I check my patient’s teeth during my physical exam. It’s not about judging what their teeth look like, it’s more about understanding their whole health picture.”

He added: “People who see their dentist regularly, people who brush more consistently, and people who protect their gums tend to show lower stroke risk in large studies. Not zero risk, but lower.

“So think of your oral health as part of your brain health. So flossing, water flossing, and brushing is not just protecting your smile and your breath, it may be also quietly protecting your brain.”

A study, published in Neurology journal in 2023, backed Dr Bing’s claims. Study authors wrote: “Among middle age Britons without stroke or dementia, poor oral health was associated with worse neuroimaging brain health profiles.

“Genetic analyses confirmed these associations, supporting a potentially causal association. Because the neuroimaging markers evaluated in this study precede and are established risk factors of stroke and dementia, our results suggest that oral health, an easily modifiable process, may be a promising target for very early interventions focused on improving brain health.”

To keep your teeth healthy, the NHS recommends you:

• Brush your teeth twice a day
• Clean between your teeth
• Cut down on sugar
• Quit smoking
• Limit your alcohol intake
• Have regular dental check-ups

‘Better than Broadchurch’

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With countless British crime dramas available to stream, choosing what to watch next can feel overwhelming. Massive successes such as Happy Valley, Line of Duty and Adolescence have captivated both audiences and critics.

Recent years have also seen viewer favourites including Vera, Unforgotten, The Fall, Luther and, naturally, Peaky Blinders. However, a brand new drama has just dropped that’s already being hailed as “better than Broadchurch”. And it’s available to stream right now.

Launched within the past week, Under Salt Marsh boasts an impressive cast featuring Kelly Reilly (of Yellowstone fame), Rafe Spall of The English and legendary acting powerhouse Jonathan Pryce, whose credits include The Two Popes, The Crown, Game of Thrones and Glengarry Glen Ross, which has been dubbed the film with the “greatest cast of all time”.

The moody, atmospheric new drama, which holds a perfect 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, unfolds in an isolated coastal village in north-west Wales under threat from rising sea levels. Known as Morfa Halen in the programme, it’s actually inspired by the genuine Welsh village of Fairbourne, whose inhabitants genuinely face the possibility of abandoning their picturesque village due to rising sea levels, reports the Express.

Sequences from the series were shot in the village itself. The breath-taking footage of marshland featured throughout was captured in the nearby Mawddach Estuary. It’s within this wetland setting that Reilly’s character, Jackie Ellis, a former detective turned teacher, discovers the corpse of a young lad. Whilst tragic on its own, the find also brings back the trauma of an unresolved case involving a missing girl from the village three years earlier, which brought Ellis’s policing career to an end.

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Reviewers claim it “could be the best British crime drama in years”. In Vogue, Daisy Jones wrote: “It’s hard to find a genuinely compelling British crime drama these days. Netflix is crammed with throwaway Harlan Coben offerings… ITV detective shows are a dime-a-dozen… But Under Salt Marsh… is one such drama that’s worth paying attention to. It’s one of the more gripping thrillers I’ve seen in years.”

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Craig Mathiseon described Under Salt Marsh as “as good as Broadchurch”, the massive success featuring Olivia Colman and David Tennant that aired from 2013-2017. Meanwhile, Irish News declared it “the best thing on TV right now”.

Is Under Salt Marsh based on a true story?

Under Salt Marsh features two distinct storylines. One centres on the finding of a young boy’s remains (and the unresolved vanishing of a missing girl three years before). This isn’t based on actual events.

The other focuses on the environmental crisis threatening the community. And this is rooted in actual events. Whilst Morfa Halen is fictional, it’s inspired by (and shot in) Fairbourne, where residents were told in 2013 they could become the globe’s first “climate refugees”.

Authorities said then that the village’s sea defences wouldn’t be kept up after 2054, with a “managed retreat” strategy proposed that would see inhabitants relocated and the village ultimately surrendered to the ocean.

Residents mounted fierce opposition to the proposals, which have never been spelled out in significant detail, and it appears officials may now be backtracking and prepared to abandon earlier pledges to “decommissioning” the community.

Under Salt Marsh is streaming on Now TV now.

Charlotte Hamilton thought the council had made a mistake when she received the bill for her business, Cots to Tots in Haxby, last year. “It was a bit of a shock when that came,” she said.

But the rate increase was very much real – and will likely rise again in April, when Covid-era discounts for businesses come to an end.

For Cots to Tots, which sells new and pre-loved equipment for babies and children, the business rate changes come on top of a 27 per cent rent increase, as well as hikes to its service charges and utilities.

Cots to Tots owner Charlotte Hamilton outside the shop in Haxby (Image: Charlotte Hamilton)

Charlotte, 46, said she welcomed calls for further support for the high street, adding that she has witnessed other businesses in Haxby close due to rising costs.

The married mother of two from Appleton Roebuck added that her business has also seen a drop in footfall.

She said the drop in footfall started during the pandemic when buyers moved online but has got worse in the past two years.

Her business, located in Haxby Shopping Centre, has been in the town for the past 13 years.

But Charlotte admitted that people had “forgotten we were here”, as customers stopped using the shop after their children grew up.

Charlotte decided to write to her customers on Facebook as a “last resort”, urging people to share the word about the business.

“We are not asking for anything big – just awareness,” the post said. “If you love what we do, please tell a friend, share a post, or pop in to see our amazing savings on preloved, new, and refurbished items.”

“We didn’t want it to seem like a begging call,” Charlotte said. “It was just what we could put out to encourage people.”

Recommended reading:

She praised the response to the post, saying it has resulted in people raising awareness about the business in the community.

“There’s a lot of local people coming in and saying, ‘We have loved your shop and we wouldn’t want to see you go’,” Charlotte said.

“I want to thank people for all the support. Keep sharing and we’ll get some new people coming through.

“Our best form of advertising has always proven to be word of mouth and recommendations. If anyone is able to leave us a review on our Facebook page that would be amazing.”

The Friday letters page is relatively enthusiastic about Horizon Hunters Gathering, as one reader thinks Nintendo should ditch GameChat on Switch 2.

Games Inbox is a collection of our readers’ letters, comments, and opinions. To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Poor Partner
So that Partner Showcase from Nintendo was awful, as we all thought. Although it was actually quite a bit worse than I was expecting, to be honest. There was no real surprises for anything big, Elden Ring and The Duskbloods weren’t there, and the mic drop at the end was Bethesda.

I don’t want to get into fanboy territory but if there is one developer whose success I have never understood it’s Bethesda. OK, Skyrim was innovative back when it came out but stuff like The Witcher 3 did the same idea much better. More importantly, Bethesda has never made anything that good again.

Fallout 4 is significantly worse than 3 and I, along with most people, didn’t even bother with Starfield – which you’ll notice was not one of the three games they revealed. But what really gets me is how bad Bethesda is technically. Everyone’s been saying it about them for years and yet they never change.

And so what do we see in that new trailer? What looks like a terrible port of a game that should have no problem working on the Switch 2. If that’s what you’re showing off I hate to think what the rest of the game looks like.
Torrence
PS: The only saving grace was two different dinosaur games!

Welcome bomb
What a nice surprise the Nintendo Direct pulled today.

A Bomberman Collection? Heck, yes! Takes me back to when I was 10 years old playing Super Bomberman 2 single and multiplayer and destroying the CPUs.

Also, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth in June, for Xbox and Switch 2? I will take that!
ShaunOMacY2J (gamertag)

Small screen gaming
Yikes, that Partner Showcase was weak sauce. I know we were told not to get ourselves hyped up but I really question what the point of it was. It’s not like the proper Nintendo Directs don’t have third party games, so why exactly did we need this bunch of third rate games and lazy-looking ports?

Fallout 4 looks like it runs terrible on Switch 2 and it’s going to be nearly 11 years old by the time it makes it, so I really find it impossible to get excited about it.

But what else was there to tempt anyone? Resident Evil Requiem looks like a pretty good port but there’s no way I’d buy it on Switch 2 instead of PlayStation 5. Third party games on a Nintendo format need to offer something special or be really well suited to portable play, but that didn’t seem to be the case for most of the games they showed.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth on a handheld screen would be such a waste given how over-the-top and detailed the graphics are. Another Nintendo Direct and yet more disappointment.
Goldwing

Email your comments to: gamecentral@metro.co.uk

Evil deal
While most of what I was interested in from yesterday’s Direct was already known about, the release of the Pragmata demo was at least a welcome surprise.

Short but sweet as a demo, but it’s sold me on the game. Hopefully I get better at the hacking and combat at the same time, it’s a bit like rubbing your stomach and patting your head. But it already feels like it’ll be a good game.

Capcom are really going through a golden period. The new Resi looks good too, the triple pack of 7, 8 and 9 on Switch is just £82 at Argos, which is tempting, even for Game-Key cards.

I do wish Elden Ring had been in the Direct though.
Euclidian Boxes

GC: That is a very good price for the Resi trilogy.

Forgotten birthday
We are getting very close to that Zelda 40th anniversary and Nintendo still hasn’t said a thing, except for some concerts. Are they really going to ignore such a big number, even as they make a fuss about Pokémon turning 30?

You’d think they’ have a game lined up to go along with it, probably a remaster or remake, but I don’t see how they’ve got time to release it now. Even if they shadow-dropped it. Considering how multiple leakers knew about the Partner Showcase, and were accurate about it, I don’t see how we get a surprise Nintendo Direct in the next two weeks.

I’d love if it did happen but at the moment I’m not even confident Nintendo will mention anything to do with Zelda this year. Since when did Link become the unloved loser who can’t get anyone to go to his birthday party?
Paulie

Wasted time
As achingly trend chasing as it all looked, I surprisingly found myself quite fluffed by the Horizon Hunters Gathering reveal, it looked very polished and fun.

But live service games’ moment-to-moment gameplay often is very good, it’s that they are designed to drag on forever that’s the problem; for the well documented reason of being forever games and all the monetisation models around them, I genuinely feel I need to boycott live service games.

Jan-Bart Van Beek’s assurance at the start of the video, that Guerrilla bloody love making single-player games, and will continue to make them, didn’t convince me one bit. If it’s a hit they’ll divert more time and resources to it.

At the start of the gen, and the talk of Sony having 500 or so live service games in development, I convinced myself that it was additional to single-player. But we learnt that wasn’t the case and nearly all of their traditionally single-player studios were significantly tied up with the live service push. With the $3.6 billion purchase of Bungie as well, Sony committed massive resources to it all.

So no live service games for me, or Nintendo Directs from now on. Time better spent elsewhere.
Simundo

Honest addition
Interesting to see Valve admit that the RAM problems have caused them to change their Steam Machine plans, at least a little bit. I think that’s the first time a company has actually admitted it, because usually they just say it won’t even when they turnaround and do a price raise straight after.

Maybe Valve would be a good addition to the console world if they’re actually going to… tell the truth and engaged with people? They’re not saying much at the moment, because the thing hasn’t been properly unveiled yet, but I’m hoping they can bring some straight talking to the industry… as well as Half-Life 3.
Gantz

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Always in motion is the future
The steady stream of news about the Switch 2’s fortunes is kinda interesting, it seems like it’s destined to get locked in a debate over whether it is a success or not for a while to come. I think both things can be true, it’s the fastest-selling console ever and taking Japan by storm, but also underperforming in the West and third party games sales are floundering. 18 million consoles sold is great but if everyone is just replaying Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom at 60fps, as Ubisoft weep into their Star Wars Outlaws sales, that isn’t the gaming saviour we were hoping for.

I did suspect performance in the UK might not be in line with the blockbuster figures elsewhere, the Black Friday deals (admittedly modest) ended up running right up until the end of January and the console wasn’t ever sold out over that time.

In Japan, it’s worth remembering that the machine is essentially being subsidised due to the currency problems with the yen. They have a much cheaper, locked Japanese language version that’s unavailable in other territories. Suggesting in the West, at least, Nintendo really need to bring that price down significantly somehow. Maybe ditch GameChat? I recently saw figures it was being used by less than 4% of console owners.

The latest Partner Direct lent into Japanese developed titles and franchises (outside the Bethesda reveals) in a strategy that seems to double down on the console’s trajectory so far. If Western publishers can’t turn a profit on it and so ditch support, it won’t be good for anyone at a time when we need games to be as widely available as possible. If the market fractures everything will be even worse.
Marc

GC: GameChat Is unlikely to have cost very much in either R&D or manufacturing. That’s probably why it exists. Nintendo actually did better, proportionally, in the UK than most other countries, over Christmas. Whereas it did unexpectedly poorly in France, which is usually it’s biggest market in Europe. Everything is very much in flux at the moment.

Inbox also-rans
So if the PlayStation 5 is selling roughly the same as the PlayStation 4 that means it’s going to come out at about 117 million sales, right? So somewhere around the fifth best-selling console of all time, above the Wii and PS1. That seems a pretty good achievement to me.
PhantomZ

So glad to see that Rave Racer is getting a proper console. I was always sore it never got a proper home version, as it was my favourite in the arcades. Can’t wait to play it again.
Johno

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New Inbox updates appear every weekday morning, with special Hot Topic Inboxes at the weekend. Readers’ letters are used on merit and may be edited for length and content.

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MORE: Games Inbox: What will a post-GTA 6 video games industry be like?

MORE: Games Inbox: When will GTA 6 Trailer 3 be released?

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The NHS has shared simple advice on plating up food to help you lose weight

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Two straightforward principles for portioning your meals could support your weight loss journey. The NHS has advocated these strategies as components of a healthy lifestyle to assist those pursuing slimming goals.

Statistics indicate that approximately one in four adults across the UK are affected by obesity. Given the various health complications linked to excess weight, shedding pounds is consequently a widespread ambition for numerous people.

Nevertheless, embarking on this path can prove challenging and intimidating. Recognising this, the NHS offers online guidance featuring fundamental measures to adopt when working towards a healthier weight.

Through its Better Health website, the health organisation outlines two uncomplicated principles for meal preparation to facilitate your progress. These include:

• Filling half your plate with vegetables
• Using smaller plates or bowls

Vegetables

The NHS advises targeting a minimum of two vegetable portions per meal, which should occupy approximately half your plate. This approach ensures satiety whilst maintaining lower calorie consumption.

The NHS stated: “Aiming for two or more portions of veg in a main meal means about half of your plate. Try to make sure you have at least two portions of veg as part of your main meals.

“This helps to fill your plate with low-calorie, fibre-rich, filling foods, leaving less room for higher-calorie foods or ingredients.”

Plate size

Part of the issue stems from the reality that many individuals are consuming quantities beyond their requirements. According to the NHS: “Everywhere we look there are large and extra-large portions of food and drinks – this has left many of us eating more than we need.”

The health service went on to advise: “Scale down when plating up. Try using smaller plates and bowls to help reduce your portion sizes at mealtimes.”

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Calories

The NHS added that the amount you eat is “just as important” as what you eat. It warned: “No matter how healthy your diet is, you can still put on weight if you are eating too much.

“Having more calories than your body needs each day can lead to weight gain.” To lose weight, the NHS said the average person should reduce their daily calorie intake by 600kcal.

That means having:

• 1,900kcal per day for men
• 1,400kcal per day for women

This will vary slightly depending on the individual, though. For more information, visit the Better Health site here.

Authorities in the Japanese city of Fujiyoshida have decided to cancel a long-running spring cherry blossom festival at one of the country’s most photographed Mount Fuji viewpoints after residents raised concerns about overcrowding and disruptive tourist behaviour.

The city government in Yamanashi prefecture said on 3 February that it would not stage the annual Arakurayama Sengen Park Cherry Blossom Festival this year. The festival, which has been organised for about a decade, typically draws around 200,000 visitors who come to photograph Mount Fuji framed by blooming cherry blossoms and a five-storey pagoda.

Authorities said the number of tourists had surged in recent years, fuelled by a weaker yen and the viral popularity of scenic locations on social media. Now, nearly 10,000 people pass through the area every day during peak blossom season – a volume that the small community says it can no longer comfortably manage.

Japan welcomed a record number of foreign tourists last year, with arrivals surpassing 40 million for the first time.

Fujiyoshida city representatives pointed to a growing list of resident complaints for the cancellation, describing nuisance behaviour that was affecting daily life. Authorities cited sanitation issues among the most serious problems, including cases of visitors entering private homes to use toilets, relieving themselves in residential yards, and causing confrontations when challenged, according to Kyodo News.

Safety worries have also emerged, particularly from families living nearby. According to the city, parents have reported children being pushed aside on school routes as large crowds gather along narrow pavements to reach popular photo spots.

There are numerous cherry trees inside the Arakurayama Sengen Park, including a few around the Arakura Fuji Sengen Shrine at the entrance. It provides a picturesque frame for tourists to capture Mount Fuji and the cherry blossoms.

Fujiyoshida mayor Shigeru Horiuchi said the decision reflected growing anxiety among residents about balancing tourism with community life.

“I feel a deep sense of crisis as I witness the reality that, behind this beautiful scenery, the quiet lives of our citizens are being threatened,” he said.

Japan’s enthusiasm for welcoming more tourists has not been without challenges, not least concerns about overtourism. In some cases, inappropriate behaviour by visitors or cultural misunderstandings has caused friction with local communities.

Popular destinations like Kyoto have faced particularly intense pressure. Residents have pointed to worsening traffic congestion, longer queues, and disruption to daily life.

Although the festival will not take place as an official event – and will not be promoted under its usual name on tourism platforms – officials expect visitor numbers to remain high when cherry blossoms bloom in April.

Preparations are underway to handle the influx, with officials planning to step up security and establish temporary car parks and portable toilet facilities to reduce pressure on neighbourhoods.

The Arakurayama Sengen Park is one of the most popular viewing points for Mount Fuji, especially in the spring season when long queues, sometimes lasting up to three hours, form as travellers wait to capture images of the mountain behind the pagoda and pink blossoms.

MUSCAT, Oman (AP) — Iran and the United States stood poised Friday to hold negotiations in Oman at least over Tehran’s nuclear program after a chaotic week that initially saw plans for regional countries to take part in talks in Turkey.

The two countries have returned to Oman, a sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, months after rounds of meetings turned to ash following Israel’s launch of a 12-day war against Iran back in June. The U.S. bombed Iranian nuclear sites during that war, likely destroying many of the centrifuges that spun uranium to near weapons-grade purity. Israel’s attacks decimated Iran’s air defenses and targeted its ballistic missile arsenal as well.

U.S. officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio believe Iran’s theocracy is now at its weakest point since its 1979 Islamic Revolution after nationwide protests last month represented the greatest challenge to 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s rule. Khamenei’s forces responded with a bloody crackdown that killed thousands and reportedly saw tens of thousands arrested — and spurred new military threats by U.S. President Donald Trump to target the country.

With the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and other warships in the region along with more fighter jets, the U.S. now likely has the military firepower to launch an attack if it wanted. But whether attacks could be enough to force Iran to change its ways — or potentially topple its government — remains far from a sure thing.

Meanwhile, Gulf Arab nations fear an attack could spark a regional war dragging them in as well. That threat is real — already, U.S. forces shot down an Iranian drone near the Lincoln and Iran attempted to stop a U.S.-flagged ship in the Strait of Hormuz.

“President Trump seeks to corner Iran into reaching a negotiated solution, strong-arming its leaders into making concessions on the nuclear deal,” said Alissa Pavia, a fellow at the Atlantic Council. “The Iranians, on the other hand, are weakened after years of proxy warfare, economic crisis, and internal unrest. Trump is aware of this vulnerability and is hoping to use it to extract concessions and make inroads toward a renewed nuclear agreement.”

Few details on talks ahead of meeting

The scope, nature and participants in the talks remain unclear, just hours before they were due to begin in Muscat, the Omani capital nestled in the Hajar Mountains. Officials at Oman’s borders on Thursday showed particular concern over anyone carrying cameras into the sultanate before the negotiations.

On the Iranian side, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi arrived at night along with multiple Iranian diplomats, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.

Araghchi wrote on X that “Iran enters diplomacy with open eyes and a steady memory of the past year.”

“Commitments need to be honored,” he wrote. “Equal standing, mutual respect and mutual interest are not rhetoric — they are a must and the pillars of a durable agreement.”

Ahead of the meeting, a top adviser to Khamenei appeared to offer the theocracy’s support to the 63-year-old career diplomat.

Araghchi “is a skilled, strategic and trustworthy negotiator at the highest levels of decision-making and military intelligence,” Ali Shamkhani wrote on X. “Soldiers of the nation in the armed forces & generals of diplomacy, acting under the order of the Leader, will safeguard the nation’s interests.”

On the U.S. side, it appeared that talks would be led by U.S. Mideast special envoy Steve Witkoff, a 68-year-old billionaire New York real estate mogul and longtime friend to Trump. Traveling with Witkoff on his Mideast trip so far is Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law who in recent weeks has shared proposals for the Gaza Strip and took part in trilateral talks with Russia and Ukraine in Abu Dhabi earlier on the trip.

The two men had traveled from Abu Dhabi to Qatar on Thursday night for meetings with officials there, the Qatari-funded satellite news network Al Jazeera reported. Qatar, which shares an offshore natural gas field in the Persian Gulf with Iran, also hosts a major U.S. military installation that Iran attacked back in the June war.

Nuclear program on the table at the least

It remains unclear just what terms Iran will be willing to negotiate at the talks. Tehran has maintained that these talks only will be on its nuclear program. However, Al Jazeera reported that diplomats from Egypt, Turkey and Qatar offered Iran a proposal in which Tehran would halt enrichment for three years, send its highly enriched uranium out of the country and pledge “not initiate the use of ballistic missiles.”

Russia had signaled it would take the uranium, but Shamkhani in an interview earlier this week had said ending the program or shipping out the uranium were nonstarters for the country. Meanwhile, the talks would not include any pledge by Iran over its self-described “Axis of Resistance,” a network of militias in the region allied to Tehran as a deterrent to both Israel and the U.S. However, Israeli attacks on the militias during its war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip decimated the network.

Rubio, America’s top diplomat, said talks needed to include all those issues.

“I think in order for talks to actually lead to something meaningful, they will have to include certain things, and that includes the range of their ballistic missiles,” Rubio told journalists Wednesday. “That includes their sponsorship of terrorist organizations across the region. That includes the nuclear program, and that includes the treatment of their own people.”

He added: “I’m not sure you can reach a deal with these guys, but we’re going to try to find out.” ___

The Associated Press receives support for nuclear security coverage from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Outrider Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

One of the hardest tasks of any government in a democracy is balancing the right to know against the need to know. Just because the public wants to know something doesn’t necessarily mean that they should. But without this access to information, how can voters make informed choices and the powerful be held to account? This debate is now central to the release and redaction of the Epstein files.

For the past decade or so the Epstein files have been used by Democrats and Republicans as a political stick with which to beat each other. In the meantime, speculation has run rife online with a global guessing game of what these files contain and who is or isn’t named in them.

This is the dilemma facing the Trump administration at the moment. On the one hand there is justifiable public anger that they have not been told the truth, and that some of the richest and most powerful people in the world may have committed terrible crimes with impunity. This fury – and its political implications – is the chief reason why the US Congress voted in November 2025 to release the Epstein files.

What is often missed in this discussion is the fact that the files are not a single set of documents. Instead, these are multiple packages of information including files gathered by the FBI investigation, court records and grand jury documents. This distinction is extremely important legally.

Of the documents that have been made available so far, many of these have been heavily redacted with black bars covering names, addresses, emails and photos. In some cases, it is clear why this had happened. In others, the absence of any reason for the redaction has simply added fuel to the fire, with spectators filling in the blanks themselves.

The US has long prided itself on being one of the freest societies on Earth. Since the Watergate scandal seriously dented public confidence in government integrity, various pieces of landmark legislation have been passed to make sure government files can be made available to the public. These include the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) of 1966, the Electronic FOIA Amendments of 1996, and the FOIA Improvement Act of 2016.

These acts cover the federal government – including the FBI and Department of Justice, which have been overseeing the Epstein case. But there has also been legislation that has limited what can be released. This includes the Privacy Act of 1974. This legislation was designed to ensure that random members of the public do not have their names released and their reputations damaged.

Given the number of government agencies that can be involved, this process has not always been consistent. One agency might redact one part of a document, while another might redact a separate part. In some cases, documents might be redacted despite the fact that they are already publicly available.

Because the process is so legally and politically complicated, the work is normally done by civil servants in the federal bureaucracy. But it should also be remembered that some files and information are not covered by the freedom of information laws. The two most significant are probably court and grand jury records. These records can only be released by judges – and due to the separation of powers, Congress has no jurisdiction here.

The freedom of information acts give several important reasons for why files might be redacted. The trouble is that without explanation it’s difficult to know which ones apply. The first and most obvious is national security. If an agency feels that the release of any particular information might damage America’s reputation, they have sweeping powers to withhold information.

This applies even if the information doesn’t mention specific things such as the names of undercover agents, details of troop movements or programmes that could be harmed, but does include important information on how agencies operate. Other information can be redacted if it includes financial data or patents.

Perhaps the most significant are redactions covered by the Privacy Act of 1974. These can include third parties (people simply cc’d into emails or in the background of photos who are of no relevance to the investigation), addresses, phone numbers and – crucially in this case – the names of victims and witnesses.

In the case of the Epstein files, this means that, rightly, a lot of information has been blacked out (although there are reports that a few of the victims have been named and in some cases their addresses and even photos have been published).

Striking a balance

Critics have argued that the public needs to be given greater context about the redactions. Namely, who gets to decide what is redacted and why. Whether, for example, a person whose name is blacked out is a potential perpetrator, a crucial witness or an innocent third party.

The issue is made more complicated by the fact that, for law enforcement reasons, court cases resulting from some of this information are likely to proceed. So it’s important not to release information that could compromise investigations or future trials.

All of this is impossible to challenge without knowing the background details.

Because Epstein was such a prominent figure and seemed to know everyone in positions of power, it’s possible that information is being redacted for all of these reasons.

Assuming good faith on all sides (not always easy in today’s political climate in the US) this leaves government officials with a dilemma. While justice demands that innocent people’s reputations are protected, it equally demands that the public’s right – and need – to know is properly served. All of which must be balanced by the need to ensure that the right people, no matter how powerful or influential, involved in any wrongdoing revealed in the files are held accountable.

At this stage it seems likely that the debate over what should be made public and what should remain secret will run on indefinitely.