Tag Archives: oceania

Wild weather set for Victoria with severe thunderstorms, bushfires

Parts of Victoria have been warned to brace for severe thunderstorms, while an extreme fire warning has been issued in the state's northwest.

The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) said storms with large amounts of rain and high winds may hit the Gippsland region today, advising residents hail is also possible.

Rain has already battered parts of the state this morning, with 46.4mm of rain recorded in just three hours to 9.40am at Ovens River near Wangaratta.

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Severe storms swept western NSW on Tuesday bringing heavy rain , strong winds and hail as well as thousands of lightning strikes. Taken near Nyngan Photo Nick Moir 24 Nov 2023

The official warning said the severe weather could last for several hours.

"Locations which may be affected include Bairnsdale, Orbost, Bright, Falls Creek, Dargo and Buchan," BoM said.

The wild weather has been caused by a "moist and unstable airmass" moving in a line across the state.

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The Gippsland region in Victoria is bracing for huge storms today.

Meanwhile, near the Victoria-New South Wales border, an extreme fire danger has been declared in the Mallee region close to Mildura.

"Warm and dry conditions over northwest Victoria, with fresh to strong and gusty west to southwesterly winds in the afternoon, will lead to elevated fire dangers," the BOM said.

There is currently one out-of-control bushfire in the state, in and around the Wyperfeld National Park and Patchewollock, Yaapeet, and Hopetoun.

It is not threatening any homes or communities, but officials are urging residents to be on alert.

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How a Reddit tip-off helped police track down the Brown University shooter

Police lights flashed for hours as law enforcement officers surrounded a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, finally closing in on a suspect who unleashed deadly attacks on two communities and had managed to evade authorities for six days.

Outside was an abandoned car linked to both the Brown University mass shooting on Saturday and the killing of an MIT professor at his home on Monday.

Inside a rented storage unit the 48-year-old suspect, Claudio Neves Valente, was dead

Leaving behind a satchel, two 9mm firearms and high-capacity magazines matching ballistics at both crime scenes, along with even more questions about a motive as investigators begin peeling back the layers of his life to fill the gaps in his known past.

READ MORE: Andrew pictured lying on laps in latest Epstein release

Claudio Neves Valente, the suspect in Brown University shooting, at a rental car place in Boston, Massachusetts.

What motivated two separate attacks?

Authorities have said the suspect's intent was to cause harm in targeting the Ivy League university and esteemed professor Nuno Loureiro.

It became clear because his actions showed signs of premeditation, for example, obtaining access to firearms and a bulletproof vest, said CNN law enforcement analyst and former Secret Service agent Jonathan Wackrow.

He also took strategic steps to avoid detection like swapping the licence plates on a rental car linked to both shootings, concealing his identity and avoiding Brown University's expansive network of 1200 security cameras by opening fire in a building equipped with only two exterior cameras, and with multiple exits and entrances.

Without the ability to interview or prosecute the suspect, the motive remains the hardest question, Wackrow said, and there's a chance investigators will not find the answers even after doing exhaustive searches of digital history and physical evidence.

Investigators have mapped some of the suspect's movements in the years before his attacks, but much of his past remains a mystery.

The Portuguese national attended the same academic program as Loureiro in Portugal from 1995 to 2000, after which he studied at Brown University on an F1 visa, a non-immigrant visa for international students to study full-time.

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Nuno Loureiro, a professor at MIT, was killed at his home on Monday.

He was enrolled in Brown from September 2000 to April 2001, when he took a leave of absence before formally withdrawing in July 2003, the university said.

There has been no formal explanation from the university on the basis for the leave, but according to CNN's chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller, it could also point to a potential motive.

Miller said investigators will likely ask questions like: Did he blame a life event for derailing his success as a former student who was described by his then-classmates as "brilliant" but also exceptionally difficult? What issue caused him not to return?

Details on the suspect's whereabouts between 2001 and 2017, however, have proved elusive at this stage.

But the suspect's strategies do suggest he may have been planning for an encounter with police or an escape, Wackrow said.

And it begs the question, according to Miller: What happened to make the suspect change course and decide to take his own life? One scenario, he says, could be the suspect was alerted authorities were on his trail.

What were his movements after the shootings?

The suspect's last known address was in Miami this year, and he rented a storage unit in Salem starting from an unspecified date in November.

He rented a hotel room in Boston from November 26 to 30 before renting a grey Nissan Sentra with Florida plates in the same city and then driving in the car to Brown University on December 1.

The car was seen several times by witnesses in the area of the school over the course of the next 12 days.

On December 13, the suspect opened fire at students in the on-campus auditorium of the Barus and Holley building, killing Ella Cook and MukhammadAziz Umurzokov, and injuring nine others.

Over the next day, the suspect returned to Massachusetts and switched the licence plates of the rental car during his time there to an unregistered plate from Maine.

On December 15, the suspect fatally shot Loureiro at the professor's home in Brookline before immediately driving back to a storage facility in Salem where he had rented a unit.

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This image provided by Providence Police Dept. shows surveillance images of Claudio Neves Valente, a suspect in the mass shooting at Brown University.  (Providence Police Dept. via AP)

It appears the suspect then swiped into his storage unit in Salem the same day and did not swipe out, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha told CNN.

Details of the autopsy released Friday estimated the suspect died on December 16, two days earlier than officials previously believed.

The development called into question a line in the affidavit filed by prosecutors, which said Neves Valente called the car rental agency at the airport in Hartford, Connecticut on Thursday.

A federal agent testified a man identifying himself by the name of the suspect called into the branch and asked to return the rented Nissan Sentra there.

Some leads developed in the investigation turned out not to be valid, according to Neronha, which he said is not unusual. When asked by CNN's Erin Burnett whether the Thursday call wasn't actually from the suspect, Neronha said, "That's correct."

Beyond the discrepancy, authorities on Thursday spent frantic hours trying to track the suspect and the car they believed he was driving, and had information he would be returning his rented car in Boston and boarding a flight out of Logan International Airport, according to a law enforcement official.

His storage unit served as a "logical base of operations," said Miller, and his arrival in the Brown University area nearly two weeks before the shooting indicates he had been planning for the attack.

Was there any relationship between the suspect and the MIT professor he killed?

Investigators were only able to identify a potential link between the Brown University shooting and the MIT professor killing in the past two days after officials initially said there was no connection between the crimes.

After authorities confirmed the suspect and Loureiro were students at the same university, it left more uncertainty as there's no information the two had any relationship beyond briefly overlapping as physics students and a shared time on campus.

Still, authorities say he targeted the professor.

Nuno Morais, one of his former classmates, told the Portuguese website Publico the suspect and Loureiro were among the top students at the school, but their personalities were starkly different.

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A crowd of people holding candles gather outside the home of Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro. The Portuguese-born professor was shot and killed on Monday.

A former colleague of Loureiro said the professor and the suspect were enrolled in the best physics course in Portugal and described their academic environment as highly competitive.

"It's completely inexplicable," Bruno Soares Goncalves, president of the Institute of Plasmas and Nuclear Fusion at Instituto Superior Tecnico in Lisbon, told CNN.

Some of the questions investigators will be asking, according to Miller, are: Did Loureiro and the suspect know each other? Were they competitors or rivals? Did the suspect see Loureiro as an enemy he felt he needed to kill or someone he blamed for any failures?

The suspect had to research the home address of Loureiro, and it was a highly targeted killing, which points to premeditation, Miller said.

A former classmate of the suspect told CNN's Burnett he recognised Loureiro when the news of his death came out. Scott Watson, a professor at Syracuse University, said the MIT professor would sometimes come to Brown, but added he was unsure if Loureiro and the suspect were friends.

Who was the tipster who helped crack the case open?

At Thursday's news conference when officials announced the suspect was found dead, they repeatedly praised an unidentified tipster and graduate of Brown University who broke the case open, saying "everybody in Providence owes this individual a debt of gratitude."

Investigators in their affidavit specifically pointed to a post on Reddit, in which a user described seeing a "grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental" near the shooting scene.

The author of the post is the same individual seen in the photo released by Providence Police as they sought to talk to the man they believed to have been "in proximity" to the suspect, according to Providence Mayor Brett Smiley.

Police later interviewed him, and he told them he recognised the person seen in surveillance images released by police as the man he saw near the car shortly before the shooting.

The Reddit poster, identified in the affidavit only as John, said he first encountered the man inside a bathroom in the Barus and Holley building and noticed his clothing seemed inadequate for the cold weather.

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Once the man left the building, John saw him approach the Nissan and appear to unlock it with a key fob before suddenly turning from the vehicle and walking in a different direction, the affidavit said.

John said he remained outside as the man kept circling back to the area before quickly changing directions every time he saw John, the document said.

At one point, John confronted the man, asking him why he kept circling the block, he told investigators, according to the affidavit, to which the suspect responded: "Why are you harassing me."

John then kept walking down the street as the man walked toward the car and the two didn't have any further encounters, the affidavit said.

The rental car was just one piece of data investigators used to link the Brown shooting suspect to the fatal shooting of the MIT professor, along with a financial probe, the storage unit and extensive security footage.

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Major security breach detected at two Adelaide prisons

An investigation is under way into a suspected security breach at two Adelaide prisons.

Police are trying to determine if a forged access pass was used by an unauthorised person to gain entry to high-security areas at Yatala and the women's prison.

A person with limited access and possibly a criminal record was found with what may be a doctored pass, 9News understands.

READ MORE: Photograph of Andrew lying on laps released from Epstein files

Adelaide prison security breach

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The incident has raised fears the person accessed unauthorised areas at one or both prisons without an escort.

The South Australia Department for Correctional Services confirmed that an "identification card was confiscated and suspended at the gatehouse at Yatala Labour Prison".

The department said the prisons have "stringent access control measures", including identification checks and biometric registration.

Adelaide prison security breach

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"Any attempt to breach these stringent controls is treated very seriously," a spokesperson said.

The matter has been referred to SA Police.

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Andrew pictured lying on laps in latest Epstein release

A photograph of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor lying on a couch has been released, along with thousands of Epstein files dripfed to the public by the US Department of Justice (DOJ).

The black-and-white heavily-redacted image shows the royal lying on the laps of unidentified women, dressed in formal wear, as convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell stands in the background.

Multiple reports allege this photo was taken in the saloon room at Sandringham, a royal estate belonging to the King and Queen located in Norfolk.

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Prince Andrew seen in Epstein files

Sandringham was the scene of what Andrew said was a "straightforward shooting weekend" during his infamous BBC Newsnight interview in 2019.

Buckingham Palace declined to comment on the photograph.

Andrew has denied any wrongdoing.

He was stripped of his official titles this year due to his links to Epstein.

The latest tranche of released files includes a photograph of Andrew with Jeffrey Epstein and Maxwell shooting on the heathlands of Balmoral.

There is also an image of Maxwell standing outside 10 Downing Street in London.

Some of the most consequential records expected about Epstein are nowhere to be found in the DOJ's initial disclosures, which span tens of thousands of pages.

The records, required to be released under a recent law passed by Congress, hardly reference several powerful figures long associated with Epstein, including Andrew, renewing questions about who was scrutinised, who was not, and how much the disclosures truly advance public accountability.

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Britain's Prince Andrew leaves after attending the Easter Matins Service at St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle in Windsor, England, Sunday April 9, 2023. (Yui Mok/Pool via AP)

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Federal prosecutors in New York brought sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail after his arrest.

Maxwell is serving 20 years in prison for sex trafficking.

One of Epstein's accusers, Virginia Giuffre, accused Epstein of arranging for her to have sexual encounters with men, including the prince.

Marina Lacerda, one of the women who says she survived sexual assault by Epstein, beginning when she was 14, said she wanted to see greater transparency from the DOJ and expressed frustration over redactions and the incomplete release.

"Just put out the files," she said. "And stop redacting names that don't need to be redacted."

Multiple photographs show former President Bill Clinton

Many of the most discussed photos from the files show former Democratic president Bill Clinton.

Clinton has acknowledged that he travelled on Epstein's private jet but said through a spokesperson he had no knowledge of the late financier's crimes.

Some of the photos show Clinton on a private plane, including one with a woman seated next to him with her arm around him.

Her face is redacted from the photo.

Another photo shows him in a pool with British socialite Maxwell, who has been convicted of luring young girls to Epstein so he could molest them, and with another person whose face is redacted.

One shows Clinton with the late pop star Michael Jackson, singer Diana Ross and a woman whose face is redacted.

And another shows Clinton in a hot tub with a woman whose face is redacted.

The DOJ did not explain how those photos were related to the criminal investigation.

Ghislaine Maxwell, Mick Jagger and Bill Clinton in a photo released in the Epstein files.

READ MORE: Calls for royal commission into Bondi Beach terror attack

Nevertheless, senior White House aides quickly called attention to them on X.

Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, wrote "Oh my!" and added a shocked face emoji in response to the photo of Clinton in the hot tub.

Angel Urena, Clinton's deputy chief of staff, said in an X post that "this isn't about Bill Clinton" and accused the White House of trying to protect others.

"There are two types of people here," he wrote. "The first group knew nothing and cut Epstein off before his crimes came to light. The second group continued relationships with him after. We're in the first."

Clinton has never been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and the mere inclusion of someone's name or images in files from the investigation does not imply otherwise.

Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).

Bondi tributes to be cleared to make way for permanent vigil

Since the horror's of last Sunday's tragedy unfolded in Bondi, the community has come together to remember the 15 lives lost.

Each day a makeshift memorial in front of Bondi Pavilion has grown with flowers, notes, soft toys and balloons added as people gather each evening in tribute.

Last night was no different – on the eve of the National Day of Reflection, hundreds gathered, turning on their phone lights to shine brightness during the dark time.

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Bondi shooting terror attack memorialBondi shooting terror attack memorial

But after today's events, Waverly Council has announced it will clear the massive sea of tributes as it considers a permanent memorial.

"The discussions around a permanent memorial will happen at a later stage," Waverly Mayor Will Nemesh said.

Signs have been posted around Bondi Pavilion to notify people that the removal process will begin from December 22.

"The Sydney Jewish Museum and the Australian Jewish Historical Society will help collect and preserve the materials," the sign read.

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Bondi shooting terror attack memorialBondi shooting terror attack memorial

The council will work together with the premier's department in a process similar to that which followed the Bondi Junction attacks in April last year.

It plans to "respectfully" dispose of flowers, while donating any toys.

Some cards and notes will be kept, while others will be recycled.

While the council is mulling over the idea of a permanent memorial, it is also discussing whether to remove the footbridge the shooters used to commit the terror attack.

The bridge at Bondi Beach

It's argued it could be a painful reminder for the community of the country's worst mass shooting since 1996.

But, the mayor said, nothing is confirmed.

"At this stage the bridge will remain where it is for now," Nemesh said.

If you have been impacted by the terror attack in Bondi, there is support available.

To contact Lifeline Australia, call 13 11 14 or text 0477 13 11 14.

For people under 25 years old, you can contact Kids Helpline at 1800 55 1800.

Both of these are available on a 24/7 basis.

If you wish to donate blood, you can find your nearest donor centre here.

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Pressure mounts on Victorian government to take action over anti-Zionist rally

Jewish leaders are calling on the Victorian government to prevent an anti-Zionism protest happening in Melbourne on Monday.

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has warned that people who attend the rally will be "dealt with by police".

Anti-Zionism Australia originally planned to protest in the city today.

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Jactina Allan has warned there will be consequences for people who attend the rally in Melbourne's CBD.

Instead, they will protest on Monday, a day after the National Day of Reflection.

"It is unthinkable that these rallies or protests would happen, full stop," Education Minister Jason Clare said.

Victoria Police has said there will be a significant presence in the city and has said any unlawful behaviour will not be tolerated.

NSW Police have also issued warnings to those planning to attend unauthorised gatherings this weekend in Sydney.

"Fifteen people are dead. There are still people in hospital. Many more people that are injured. What we need in this country right now is love, not hate, not protest," the Education Minister said.

Clare said that he hopes the Victorian government does everything in its power to ensure that the protests do not take place.

"Any right-thinking Australian would know this is absolutely wrong and shouldn't happen in the first place," he said.

"So I'm hoping that it just doesn't happen."

Former federal treasurer and prominent Jewish Victorian Josh Frydenberg has voiced his displeasure with the rally, saying it is unthinkable that the government would not intervene.

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Clinton looms large in Epstein files, but no sign of Trump

The US Justice Department has begun releasing its files on Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender and wealthy financier known for his connections to some of the world's most influential people, including Donald Trump, who as president had tried to keep the files sealed.

The release included photographs, call logs, grand jury testimony and some documents and records that have already been in the public domain.

READ MORE: New Epstein photos 'no big deal', says Trump

Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein together.

Photos of pop icon Michael Jackson

The late "King of Pop" appears in multiple photos released by the DOJ. In one image, Jackson is standing next to a smiling Epstein. In another image he appears alongside singer Diana Ross and former President Clinton. Clinton has his hand on Jackson's shoulder in the image while the pop icon stares off camera. The photo also includes a woman whose face is redacted.

There is no other context for the photos including when and where they were taken.

Jackson's name was first connected to Epstein in documents released in January 2024; Jackson was mentioned during a deposition in the lawsuit against Maxwell, though he was not accused of any wrongdoing.

Jeffrey Epstein and Michael Jackson.Michael Jackson, Bill Clinton and Diana Ross in a photo included in the Epstein files.

DOJ posts another batch of photos

The DOJ posted another batch of Epstein-related records a few hours after an initial wave of documents were released.

The new batch contains 120 photographs from the FBI, mostly of boxes, envelopes and folders of evidence from investigations into the late sex offender and his longtime confidante Ghislaine Maxwell.

But for the most part, they didn't show the evidence itself.

Some of the photographs pertained to the investigation into Epstein's suicide at a Manhattan jail in August 2019.

One showed a hard drive with a label stating that it contained security camera footage from the special housing unit and attorney visiting areas at the now-shuttered Metropolitan Correctional Centre, where Epstein died.

Jeffrey Epstein died at the Manhattan Correctional Centre, a jail in downtown New York.

Other photos showed boxes of records from the Palm Beach, Florida, police department's investigation into Epstein in the 2000s, including a folder labeled "Probable Cause Affidavit" and photos of envelopes which appeared to contain records of interviews in 2007 and telephone surveillance conducted in 2009.

There were also photos of computer hardware seized from his home on Little St. James in the US Virgin Islands, as well as CDs and other items.

Photos of Bill Clinton

Several photos of former President Bill Clinton are in the documents released by the Justice Department

Some show Clinton on a private plane, including one with a woman whose face was redacted from the photo sitting on his lap. Another photo shows him in a pool with Maxwell and a person whose face also was redacted.

Another photo shows Clinton in a hot tub with a woman whose face was redacted.

The files do not say when the photos were taken.

Clinton has never been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and the mere inclusion of someone's name or images in files from the investigation does not imply otherwise.

Clinton minimised his relationship with Epstein, acknowledging that he traveled on Epstein's private jet but saying through a spokesperson that he had no knowledge of the late financier's crimes.

Several White House officials, including press secretary Karoline Leavitt and top aide Steven Cheung, made social media posts on Friday highlighting the photos.

Bill Clinton in a hot tub in a photo from the Epstein files.

In a statement, Clinton spokesman Angel Ureña said the Epstein investigation "isn't about Bill Clinton".

"There are two types of people here," he said. "The first group knew nothing and cut Epstein off before his crimes came to light. The second group continued relationships after that. We're in the first. No amount of stalling by people in the second group will change that."

Clinton has never been accused of misconduct by Epstein's known victims.

The released files include a small number of photos of Trump which appear to have been in the public domain for decades, including two in which the president and Epstein are posing with now-first lady Melania Trump.

The photo was taken in February 2000 at an event at Trump's Palm Beach club, Mar-a-Lago, before the pair's friendship ruptured.

Epstein accuser calls for files to be fully released

Marina Lacerda, one of the women who says she survived sexual assault by Epstein, beginning when she was 14 years old, said she wanted to see greater transparency from the Justice Department and expressed frustration that all the files aren't out yet.

"Just put out the files," she said. "And stop redacting names that don't need to be redacted." She said she was skeptical of the administration saying it's aiming to be transparent.

"In the beginning, they were calling us a hoax, right?" she said. "Now they're like, 'We believe you, we're gonna release the files,' but yet you still haven't released the files and it's not even fully transparent."

Ghislaine Maxwell, Mick Jagger and Bill Clinton in a photo released in the Epstein files.

More than 1200 people identified as Epstein victims or their relatives

The Justice Department says more than 1200 people were eventually identified as victims of Epstein or their family members.

That disclosure came in a letter that DOJ sent to Congress discussing how they reviewed the Epstein files and prepared them for public release.

During the review process, DOJ asked lawyers representing Epstein's victims to provide those peoples' names, whether they were previously identified or not.

That process led to more than 1200 people being identified.

DOJ 'must set out timeline for full release': Democrats

Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California said the release so far has been "disappointing".

Khanna, who worked in Congress with Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky on legislation to force the release the files, said they will explore "all options" to ensure compliance with the law.

If Justice Department officials need more time to review, he said, they need to publicly explain their timeline for release.

Meanwhile Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer decried how much of the files had been completely blacked out.

"The law Congress passed calls for the complete release of the Epstein files so that there can be full transparency," Schumer said in a statement.

"Simply releasing a mountain of blacked out pages violates the spirit of transparency and the letter of the law. For example, all 119 pages of one document were completely blacked out. We need answers as to why."

Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

What Democrats could do to force complete release

Democrats in Congress say they are reviewing all their legal options as they assess the Department of Justice's release of the Epstein files, which they say is not a full release of documents.

Lawmakers could go to court to force the Justice Department to comply with the law passed earlier this year forcing the release, but that would almost certainly be a lengthy process that plays out while the Justice Department releases more files.

Separately, the House Oversight Committee has issued a subpoena for the Epstein files. That could give Congress another avenue to force the release of more information to the committee, but it would require Democrats to convince Republicans to join them in contempt of Congress proceedings. It would be highly unusual for GOP politicians to take such a move against a Republican administration.

Democratic senator vows to use 'all avenues and legal tools' for full release of documents

Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon expressed frustration that the Trump administration had not taken steps to "appropriately redact the Epstein Files to prepare them for release" of their own accord over the last year.

Some files redact everything but Jeffrey Epstein's name.

"Instead of meeting the legally required deadline today to release all of the files, they have chosen to illegally disregard the law I led the fight in the Senate to pass," Merkley said. "By failing to comply, the Administration is openly denying 'equal justice under the law' to all of Jeffrey Epstein's victims."

Merkley continued: "I'll keep fighting to release all the Epstein Files and am exploring all avenues and legal tools to get justice for the victims and transparency for the American people."

Files appear online after a waiting room-like queue

High interest led the Justice Department to regulate access to its Epstein files website for a time.

The webpage went live Friday afternoon with a waiting room-type queue akin to what concertgoers sometimes see when they go online to purchase tickets.

Visitors were greeted with the message: "You are in line for Department of Justice web content. When it is your turn, you will have 10 minutes to enter the website."

The webpage then refreshed to reveal a landing page with various categories of documents, including court records and other disclosures.

Some pages of Jeffrey Epstein's flight logs are near impossible to make out.

Inside the records

The records could contain the most detailed look yet at nearly two decades worth of government investigations into Epstein's sexual abuse of young women and underage girls.

Their release has long been demanded by a public hungry to learn whether any of Epstein's rich and powerful associates knew about — or participated in — the abuse. Epstein's accusers have also long sought answers about why federal authorities shut down their initial investigation into the allegations in 2008.

Bowing to political pressure from fellow Republicans, Trump on November 19 signed a bill giving the Justice Department 30 days to release most of its files and communications related to Epstein, including information about the investigation into his death in a federal jail. The law's passage was a remarkable display of bipartisanship that overcame months of opposition from Trump and Republican leadership.

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Jeffrey Epstein was a notorious child sex trafficker and friend to many powerful people.

What the law allows

That law allows for redactions about the victims or ongoing investigations but makes clear no records shall be withheld or redacted due to "embarrassment, reputational harm, or political sensitivity."

Attorney General Pam Bondi said on November 14 that she had ordered a top federal prosecutor to investigate Epstein's ties to Trump's political foes, including former President Bill Clinton. Bondi acted after Trump pressed for such an inquiry, though he did not explain what supposed crimes he wanted the Justice Department to investigate. None of the men Trump mentioned in a social media post demanding the investigation has been accused of sexual misconduct by any of Epstein's victims.

In July, Trump dismissed some of his own supporters as "weaklings" for falling for "the Jeffrey Epstein hoax." But both Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., failed to prevent the legislation from coming to a vote.

Trump did a U-turn on the files once it became clear that congressional action was inevitable. He insisted that the Epstein matter had become a distraction to the Republican agenda and that releasing the records was the best way to move on.

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Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein at a Victoria's Secret Angels event in 1997.

The Epstein investigations

Police in Palm Beach, Florida, began investigating Epstein in 2005 after the family of a 14-year-old girl reported she had been molested at his mansion. The FBI joined the investigation, and authorities gathered testimony from multiple underage girls who said they had been hired to give Epstein sexual massages.

Ultimately, though, prosecutors gave Epstein a deal that allowed him to avoid federal prosecution. He pleaded guilty to state prostitution charges involving someone under age 18 and was sentenced to 18 months in jail.

Epstein's accusers then spent years in civil litigation trying to get that plea deal set aside. One of those women, Virginia Giuffre, accused Epstein of arranging for her to have sexual encounters, starting at age 17, with numerous other men, including billionaires, famous academics, US politicians and Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, then known as Britain's Prince Andrew.

All of those men denied the allegations. Prosecutors never brought charges in connection with Giuffre's claims, but her account fuelled conspiracy theories about supposed government plots to protect the powerful. Giuffre died by suicide at her farm in Western Australia in April at age 41.

Federal prosecutors in New York brought new sex trafficking charges against Epstein in 2019, but he killed himself in jail a month after his arrest. Prosecutors then charged Epstein's longtime confidant, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, with recruiting underage girls for Epstein to abuse.

Donald Trump with billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2000, with their respective partners Melania Knauss (now Trump) and Ghislaine Maxwell at the president's Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.

Maxwell was convicted in late 2021 and is serving a 20-year prison sentence, though she was moved from a low-security federal prison in Florida to a minimum-security prison camp in Texas after she was interviewed over the summer by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. Her lawyers argued that she never should have been tried or convicted.

The Justice Department in July said it had not found any information that could support prosecuting anyone else.

Lots of Epstein records were already public

After nearly two decades of court action and prying by reporters, a voluminous number of records related to Epstein is already public, including flight logs, address books, email correspondence, police reports, grand jury records, courtroom testimony and transcripts of depositions of his accusers, his staffers and others.

Yet, the public's appetite for more records has been insatiable, particularly for anything related to Epstein's associations with famous people including Trump, Mountbatten-Windsor and Clinton.

Trump was friends with Epstein for years before the two had a falling out. Neither he nor Clinton has ever been accused of wrongdoing in connection with Epstein, and the mere inclusion of someone's name in files from the investigation does not imply otherwise.

Mountbatten-Windsor denied ever having sex with Giuffre, but King Charles III stripped him of his royal titles this year after Giuffre's memoir was published after she died.

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‘Really rare find’: 20-million-year-old whale fossil discovered

A 20-million-year-old whale fossil has been unearthed by a family exploring at Victorian beach.

Palaeontologists will soon be able to analyse the remains of the "really rare find" by a family simply enjoying a day by the sea at Ocean Grove on the state's Bellarine Peninsula.

Unusual currents and shifting sand have exposed the ancient relic, which appears to be part of a whale's backbone.

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Ancient whale fossil

"It's just such a beautiful part of the world, I'm not surprised another wonder has been found," one punter said of the find.

"It's incredible, I think it's a miracle," another said.

Geelong Gem and Mineral Club member Yestin Griffiths rushed to the beach on Wednesday when the find was reported.

"I was ecstatic, I couldn't get down here fast enough," Griffiths said.

"It's hard to find these fossils in the first place, and it's even harder to find them again sometimes."

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Ancient whale fossil

The fossil has now been covered again by sand and water but Griffiths will return in the new year with Museums Victoria to properly excavate the 20-million-year-old find.

"Usually when you have anything that's fossilised, it'll break up and it'll disperse a little bit before it gets buried," Griffiths said.

"The good thing about this is that there's a lot there."

Scientists are eager to identify the species and analyse whether the remains can share more information about whale evolution.

A similar discovery by a school principal just 30 minutes up the road helped experts name a new type of whale in August.

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