The strange night of Jeffrey Epstein

Mathilde Gremaud of Switzerland, one of the top medal hopefuls for Monday's freestyle skiing Winter Olympics big air final, pulled out just before the start of the race due to injury.

Good morning everyone.

The Justice Department has now blown through another deadline.

Swiss police say derailment near Goppenstein injured five as large areas of western Alps remain under category 5 avalanche risk Avalanches from heavy snowfall in the European Alps claimed more lives over the weekend, as a train was derailed by a snow slide in Switzerland on Monday and roads and villages around Mont Blanc were closed or placed under evacuation orders. As large areas of the western Alps remained under a high risk of avalanche – following a week in which alerts reached category 5, the highest level – Swiss police said a train derailment caused by an avalanche injured five people near the town of Goppenstein. Continue reading...

The U.S. speedskating star has already won the 500 and 1,000 and now sets his sights on the 1,500 to achieve full domination at these Games.

Good evening everyone.

YouTube video by Aaron Parnas

YouTube video by Aaron Parnas

The Trump administration has been accused of "purposefully muddying the waters" after releasing a list of hundreds of names mentioned in the Epstein files.

An assault on Europe’s most important climate law, the Emissions Trading System, took the fight against green rules to a whole new level.

A train carrying around 80 people derailed following an avalanche on Monday morning

Team GB chiefs have hailed Britain’s greatest day at a Winter Olympics after celebrating two gold medals in the mixed snowboard cross and mixed skeleton

Technology secretary Liz Kendall says several organisations have concerns about ban on social media for under-16s before conclusion of government consultation Good morning. Parliament is in recess this week, but politics goes on, and the government an announcement about social media. The Online Safety Act, a vast piece of legislation that was first proposed in the last decade and passed in 2023, is only now fully coming into force. But already there are claims that it is out of date and, under pressure from campaigners – and particularly the Conservative party – the government last month announced that it will consult on the case for banning under-16s from social media. Australia has introduced a ban of this kind, and in countries around the world governments are under growing pressure to do the same. The Tories are fully committed to a ban for under-16s, and recently won a vote on this in the Lords. Today’s government “announcement” on social media is actually three announcements. There are explained in this news release from No 10. They are: A loophole is being closed to ensure that material produced by AI chatbots is covered by Online Safety Act rules. When the act was being passed, AI chatbots weren’t widely available. Robert Booth has focused on this in is overnight Guardian story. The government is committing to legislating now so that, when its three-month consultation on a social media ban for under-16s wraps up later, if it decides it wants to change the law, it will be able to do so via secondary legislation (ie quickly), without having to wait for a new bill. (This is broadly what the Labour MP Fred Thomas, who is pushing for a ban on under-16s using social media, was arguing for after the government lost the vote on this in the Lords last month.) The government is also promising legislation to ensure that, if a child dies and social media is deemed relevant, that content gets preserved, not wiped. Campaigners refer to this as Jool’s law. We do think it’s right to have a consultation on whether or not to ban social media for the under-16s Lots of people have made up their minds, Lord Nash (the Tory peer who tabled the amendment that led to the government defeat in January) included. Continue reading...

YouTube video by Aaron Parnas

YouTube video by Aaron Parnas

YouTube video by Aaron Parnas