Newly released documents reveal Lutnick sent email to ‘Jeff’ and floated plan for ‘Sunday evening for dinner’

Howard Lutnick, currently serving as Trump’s US secretary of commerce, arranged to visit Jeffrey Epstein’s island in 2012, according to Epstein-related files released by the Department of Justice on Friday.

According to the newly released documents, on 20 November 2012, Epstein’s longtime assistant emailed Lutnick saying that “Jeffrey Epstein understands you will be down in St Thomas some over the holidays” and that “Jeffrey requested I please pass along some phone numbers to you so the two of you can possibly get together”.

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Rubaya mine produces about 15% of the world’s coltan, which is processed into tantalum, used in mobile phones

More than 200 people were killed this week in a collapse at the Rubaya coltan mine in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Lumumba Kambere Muyisa, a spokesperson for the rebel-appointed governor of the province where the mine is located, told Reuters on Friday.

Rubaya produces about 15% of the world’s coltan, which is processed into tantalum – a heat-resistant metal that is in high demand by makers of mobile phones, computers, aerospace components and gas turbines. The site, where local people dig manually for a few dollars a day, has been under the control of the M23 rebel group since 2024.

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George Zinn, 71, further admitted to possessing child sexual abuse material and pleaded no contest to allegations

A man accused of trying to thwart authorities investigating Charlie Kirk’s killing by falsely confessing to the deadly shooting faces up to 15 years in prison after pleading no contest to the allegation – and separately admitting to possessing child sexual abuse material.

The case centering on George Zinn, 71, all but concluded at a court hearing on Thursday in Provo, Utah, about 5 miles away from the college campus where the Turning Point USA executive director was fatally shot on 10 September 2025.

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Sundance film festival: a once-in-a-lifetime dinner party from 1972 is transformed into a thrilling and inspiring hang-out movie

In August 1972, the experimental film-maker William Greaves convened a once-in-a-lifetime dinner party at Duke Ellington’s townhouse in Harlem. The occasion was a celebration and reconsideration of the Harlem Renaissance, the watershed African American cultural movement of the 1920s. The guest list included its still-living luminaries, some of the 20th century’s most influential – and still underappreciated – musicians, performers, artists, writers, historians and political leaders, all in their sunset years. Over four hours and untold glasses of wine, talk wheeled freely from vivid recollections to consternation, lively anecdotes to contemplations of ongoing struggle. Greaves, by then niche renowned for his innovatively meta documentary Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, lightly directed the conversation but otherwise let the energy flow. He considered it the most important footage he ever recorded.

You could probably release that remarkable footage in full, completely unedited and unstructured, and still have a good documentary; every piece is now, 50 years later – the same distance to us as the Harlem Renaissance was to them – a bridge to a time no living person can remember, each face and gesture informed by decades of aftermath no straightforward nonfiction film on the period could capture. But Once Upon a Time in Harlem, directed by Greaves’s son David, who was one of four cameramen that day, manages to seamlessly clip and contextualize the party into 100 mesmerizing minutes. It’s both a sublime hang-out of a film and a celebration of individual achievements, a fascinating map of a long-ago scene and a referendum on legacy.

Once Upon a Time in Harlem is screening at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution

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Thursday’s arrests of Lemon and independent journalist Georgia Fort demonstrate the administration’s lawless crusade against routine journalism

Two federal courts reviewed the government’s evidence against journalist Don Lemon and declined to approve his arrest last week. But nevertheless, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, persisted, desperate to please her authoritarian boss no matter what the constitution and law say or what her ethical obligations as an attorney require.

Thursday’s arrests of Lemon and independent journalist Georgia Fort – like the recent raid on the Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson – demonstrate the administration’s lawless crusade against routine journalism. In normal times the expectation is that even when a journalist’s conduct might technically fit the legal elements of a crime – jaywalking to get footage of a protest, for example – prosecutors will exercise their discretion and judgment to not apply the law in a manner that chills the free press.

Seth Stern is the director of advocacy at Freedom of the Press Foundation and a first amendment lawyer

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Newly released files from DoJ show the pair making plans in 2013 for the Tesla CEO to visit Epstein’s private island

Elon Musk had more extensive – and more friendly – communications with the financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein than previously publicly known, according to documents released on Friday by the Department of Justice. Emails in the files appear to show the two cordially messaging each other to make plans for Musk to visit Epstein’s island.

The documents include Musk and Epstein emailing in December 2013 to determine when Musk should make the trip to Little St James.

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The Canadian actor, comedian and writer has died at the age of 71 after a brief illness. She was known for roles in Home Alone, Best in Show, Beetlejuice, Schitt’s Creek and The Studio

• Catherine O’Hara, actor known for Home Alone and Schitt’s Creek, dies aged 71

• Catherine O’Hara managed to make difficult characters utterly delightful

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Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

A new species of squid. pretends to be a plant:

Scientists have filmed a never-before-seen species of deep-sea squid burying itself upside down in the seafloor—a behavior never documented in cephalopods. They captured the bizarre scene while studying the depths of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), an abyssal plain in the Pacific Ocean targeted for deep-sea mining.

The team described the encounter in a study published Nov. 25 in the journal Ecology, writing that the animal appears to be an undescribed species of whiplash squid. At a depth of roughly 13,450 feet (4,100 meters), the squid had buried almost its entire body in sediment and was hanging upside down, with its siphon and two long tentacles held rigid above the seafloor.

“The fact that this is a squid and it’s covering itself in mud—it’s novel for squid and the fact that it is upside down,” lead author Alejandra Mejía-Saenz, a deep-sea ecologist at the Scottish Association for Marine Science, told Live Science. “We had never seen anything like that in any cephalopods…. It was very novel and very puzzling.”

As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven’t covered.

Blog moderation policy.

Consider yourselves compromised, experts warn

Ivanti has patched two critical zero-day vulnerabilities in its Endpoint Manager Mobile (EPMM) product that are already being exploited, continuing a grim run of January security incidents for enterprise IT vendors.…

Lying means dying

Lying means dying, at least for one falsehood-peddling government AI. A Microsoft-powered chatbot that New York City rolled out to help business owners answer frequently asked questions – but was often wrong – has been silenced as the city grapples with a $12 billion budget shortfall.…

Network access from China and side hustle as AI upstart CEO aroused suspicion

A former Google software engineer has been convicted of stealing AI hardware secrets from the company for the benefit of two China-based firms, one of which he founded. The second startup intended to use these secrets to market its technology to PRC-controlled organizations.…

MINNEAPOLIS (ANP) - Duizenden mensen hebben zich verzameld in het centrum van Minneapolis om te protesteren tegen immigratiedienst ICE. CNN meldt dat demonstranten teksten scanderen en borden omhooghouden met de tekst 'ICE Out'.

De Amerikaanse zanger Bruce Springsteen was vrijdag ook aanwezig. Hij bracht deze week het lied 'Streets of Minneapolis' uit, een protestlied ter ere van Alex Pretti en Renée Good, die door federale agenten werden doodgeschoten. Hij zong het nummer tijdens een benefietconcert voor de families van de slachtoffers.

Verslaggevers van The New York Times melden ook demonstraties in New York en Los Angeles. Er zijn ook protesten gepland in andere Amerikaanse steden, zoals Atlanta en Chicago. Talloze bedrijven in het land zeggen hun deuren te sluiten uit protest tegen de federale immigratieacties in Minneapolis.

NEW YORK (ANP) - De aandelenbeurzen in New York zijn vrijdag met rode cijfers de handelsweek uitgegaan. Apple stond in de belangstelling na publicatie van cijfers. Daarnaast maakte president Donald Trump bekend dat hij Kevin Warsh voordraagt als nieuwe voorzitter van de Amerikaanse centrale bank. Warsh zou dan opvolger worden van Jerome Powell bij de Federal Reserve.

Apple steeg 0,4 procent, na een recordomzet van 143,8 miljard dollar in het afgelopen kwartaal dankzij een zeer sterke verkoop van de nieuwe iPhone 17. Topman Tim Cook sprak van een "ongekende vraag" naar de iPhone. Apple waarschuwde wel dat de stijgende prijzen van geheugenchips de winstgevendheid onder druk zetten.

De Dow-Jonesindex eindigde 0,4 procent lager op 48.892,47 punten. De brede S&P 500 daalde 0,4 procent tot 6939,03 punten en de technologiebeurs Nasdaq zakte 0,9 procent tot 23.461,82 punten.

ExxonMobil

Powells termijn loopt in mei af. Warsh was van 2006 tot 2011 Fed-gouverneur en heeft Trump geadviseerd over economisch beleid. In 2017 passeerde Trump Warsh nog voor de hoogste functie bij de Fed. Trump koos toen voor Powell.

Daarnaast kwamen nog cijfers van de grote oliemaatschappijen ExxonMobil (plus 0,6 procent) en Chevron (plus 3,3 procent). Andere bedrijven die de boeken openden, waren onder meer de producent van verzorgingsmiddelen Colgate-Palmolive (plus 6 procent), telecomconcern Verizon Communications (plus 12 procent) en creditcardmaatschappij American Express die 1,7 procent aan waarde verloor.

Goudprijs

De goudprijs ging flink omlaag na de zeer sterke opmars. Goudproducenten als Barrick Mining en Newmont daalden tot 12 procent. Ook de zilverprijs liet een stevige daling zien.

Roblox zakte 13 procent. De Autoriteit Consument & Markt (ACM) onderzoekt Roblox vanwege de risico's die minderjarige gebruikers in de Europese Unie mogelijk lopen op het gameplatform. De ACM wil nagaan of Roblox genoeg doet om kinderen te beschermen, onder andere tegen seksueel getinte spellen en kwaadwillenden.

Op macro-economisch vlak werd bekend dat de Amerikaanse producentenprijzen in december sterker zijn gestegen dan verwacht. Dat wakkerde de zorgen over de inflatie weer aan omdat producenten die hogere prijzen kunnen doorberekenen aan afnemers.

WASHINGTON (ANP/RTR) - Blue Origin, het ruimtevaartbedrijf van miljardair Jeff Bezos, heeft vrijdag aangekondigd vluchten met het New Shepard-raketprogramma te pauzeren. Dat doet het bedrijf om zich te richten op het maanlandingsprogramma in samenwerking met NASA.

New Shepard is sinds 2021 de belangrijkste raket voor ruimtetoerisme. Onder anderen zangeres Katy Perry maakte hierin een vlucht richting de ruimte. De toeristische vluchten worden minimaal twee jaar opgeschort, om versneld te kunnen werken aan een maanlander en andere technologieën.

De New Shepard-raket heeft de afgelopen jaren meer dan negentig mensen naar de rand van de ruimte gebracht, waar zij korte periodes van gewichtsloosheid konden ervaren. Aan boord van de eerste vlucht in 2021 zat ook de toen 18-jarige Nederlander Oliver Daemen. Hij is de jongste persoon die ooit in de ruimte is geweest.

ST. PAUL (ANP/AFP) - De Amerikaanse journalist Don Lemon, die donderdagavond werd opgepakt vanwege betrokkenheid bij een anti-ICE-protest in Minnesota, wordt aangeklaagd voor het schenden van burgerrechten. De bekende oud-presentator van CNN werd opgepakt voor het verhinderen van een kerkdienst. Lemon was daar naar eigen zeggen om verslag te doen van een protest tegen immigratiedienst ICE.

Het protest was op 18 januari, enkele dagen nadat Renée Good werd doodgeschoten door agenten van immigratiedienst ICE. Dat leidde tot grote protesten in Minneapolis en de staat Minnesota. Tijdens een livestream zou Lemon herhaaldelijk hebben gezegd dat hij bij het protest was als journalist, niet als activist.

De aanklachten tegen Lemon gaan over de bescherming van de vrijheid van meningsuiting, inclusief godsdienst. Een eerdere poging hem en zeven anderen aan te klagen, haalde het niet. Een rechter wees dat af vanwege een gebrek aan bewijs.

As the Barcelona Shakedown draws to a close, F1.com has the lowdown on how Day 5 unfolded.

Apple "runs on Anthropic at this point" and that the AI company is powering much of what Apple does internally for product development and internal tools, according to Mark Gurman, the most influential reporter on the Apple beat.

Apple had initially pursued an AI deal with Anthropic before the Google partnership came together, but negotiations fell apart over pricing -- Anthropic reportedly wanted several billion dollars per year and a doubling of fees over time. Apple's deal with Google is costing roughly one billion dollars annually.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

In de documentaire ‘Melania‘ wil de Amerikaanse presidentsvrouw Melania Trump zichzelf presenteren als liefdevol, empathisch en bovenal stijlvol. Is dat gelukt?