Morning Report

TODAY’S JEFFREY EPSTEIN story

Judge orders release of Ghislaine Maxwell records

What happened
U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer yesterday cleared the way for the release of potentially hundreds of thousands of documents from the sex trafficking case against Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell. The recently passed Epstein Files Transparency Act “unambiguously applies” to the Maxwell grand jury testimony and “voluminous” other records from the case, Engelmayer ruled, including evidence not used in the 2021 trial that resulted in Maxwell’s 20-year prison sentence.

Who said what
Engelmayer said he was approving the Justice Department’s request to unseal the files, but “cautioned that people shouldn’t expect to learn much new information from them,” The Associated Press said. They “do not identify any person other than Epstein and Maxwell as having had sexual contact with a minor,” he wrote, nor do they “discuss or identify any client of Epstein’s or Maxwell’s.”

The Justice Department also has a “pending” request before a second federal judge in New York to “unseal records from the grand jury that indicted Epstein on sex-trafficking charges in 2019,” before his suicide in jail, The Washington Post said. “A third federal judge, in Miami, last week ordered the release of transcripts from the grand jury that investigated Epstein from 2005 to 2007.”

What next?
Before the government releases any of the material, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton must “personally certify, in a sworn declaration,” that the records have been “vigorously reviewed” and “found to be in compliance” with the law’s requirements on protecting victims’ identities, Engelmayer wrote. Previously, “although paying lip service to Maxwell’s and Epstein’s victims,” the Justice Department “has not treated them with the solicitude they deserve.”

TODAY’S INTERNATIONAL Story

Australia’s teen social media ban takes effect

What happened
Australia’s pioneering social media ban for teenagers went into effect today, barring kids under age 16 from 10 popular platforms: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, Twitch, Threads, X and Kick. The social media companies face fines of up to 49.5 million Australian dollars ($32.9 million) if they fail to take “reasonable steps” to identify and remove underage users.

Who said what
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said it was “a proud day” for Australian families that “will make an enormous difference” in protecting kids from the harms of social media. Polls show that the ban, which passed a year ago with broad political support, is “wildly popular with parents” but “far less popular with children,” said the BBC. In a video message, Albanese suggested kids “start a new sport, new instrument or read that book” lingering on their shelf.

The law’s “rollout caps a year of debate over whether any country could practically stop children from using platforms embedded in daily life,” Reuters said, “and begins a live test for governments worldwide frustrated that social media firms have been slow to implement harm-reduction measures.” Critics, including tech companies “desperate to stop other countries from implementing similar bans,” argue that the law is overly broad, will leave kids isolated and can easily be flouted by tech-savvy teens, the BBC said.

What next?
Two 15-year-olds, backed by an advocacy group, have filed a challenge to the law, arguing it “improperly robs 2.6 million young Australians of a right to freedom of political communication implied in Australia’s constitution,” The Associated Press said. An initial hearing will be held in February.

It’s not all bad

In the Great Barrier Reef, an AI-powered robotic assistant is helping Australian Institute of Marine Science researchers restore damaged coral reefs. The Deployment Guidance System scans the seafloor to find sections with bleached reef segments, then drops down coral larvae housed inside ceramic analogues “specially designed to offer protection to juvenile coral while they grow to adulthood,” said Good News Network. DGS uses its deep-learning algorithm to make the drops at optimal times, within 3 feet of the targeted area.

Under the radar

Homo floresiensis: the Earth’s real-life hobbits

Experts have “long debated the date that humans arrived in Australia,” said LiveScience. Now, a study using DNA from both ancient and modern Aboriginal people across Oceania may have finally “settled the debate.”

The research, published last week in the journal Science Advances, examined what the study called an “unprecedentedly large” dataset of nearly 2,500 genomes to determine that humans began to settle in northern Australia about 60,000 years ago. But even more interestingly, LiveScience said, the study added to growing evidence that these “early human pioneers likely interbred with archaic humans,” including a species known as “the hobbit” — Homo floresiensis.

Twenty-five years ago, most paleoanthropologists believed that Homo sapiens was the only human species that had managed to reach Sahul, an ancient landmass that includes modern-day Australia. “It seemed very unlikely that archaic humans had watercraft capable of crossing the ocean,” said London’s Natural History Museum. The discovery of Homo floresiensis in 2003 “changed things dramatically.”

A team working on a remote Indonesian island called Flores uncovered more than 100 fossils in a cave, including the partial skeleton of a female, the most complete Homo floresiensis fossil to date. The adult female was just 1.05 meters (3.4 feet) tall, earning the species its nickname, the hobbit.

Before the discovery, anthropologists had “assumed that the evolution of the human lineage was defined by bigger and bigger brains,” anthropology professors Tesla Monson and Andrew Weitz said at The Conversation. This, they believed, enabled early modern humans to perform “more complex tasks such as using fire, forging and wielding tools.” The discovery of hobbit-sized humans with a “chimp-sized brain” has forced scientists to throw these theories “out the window.”

On this day

December 10, 1962

The Columbia Pictures film “Lawrence of Arabia” had its world premiere in London. The movie starred Peter O’Toole as World War I officer T.E. Lawrence, a role that would garner him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. “Lawrence of Arabia” is widely ranked as among the greatest films ever made.

TODAY’S newspaperS

‘Trump on defense’

“A price blitz puts Trump on defense,” The New York Times says on Wednesday’s front page. “In defiant flyover, U.S. F-18 fighter jets enter Venezuelan airspace for 40 minutes,” says the Miami Herald. “Republicans wary of Venezuela escalation,” The Washington Post says. “Exodus of Texas GOP may signal trouble” ahead of “critical midterms,” the Houston Chronicle says. “Trump’s shift on Nvidia chips bolsters China’s AI ambitions,” The Wall Street Journal says. “Trump’s power likely to expand” under Supreme Court firing ruling, says USA Today. “Justices question parties’ funding limits,” the Los Angeles Times says. “Justices let Texas book ban stand,” says The Dallas Morning News.

► See the newspaper front pages

Tall tale

Jurassic jerk

In Essex, England, a person donned a pink blow-up dinosaur costume to avoid detection while illegally dumping trash. A doorbell camera captured footage of the culprit throwing garbage bags onto Carmine Rizzo’s property, before swinging around a lamppost and running away. Rizzo said the caper left him and his family “laughing our heads off” when they saw the footage. “I thought: ‘That cheeky bugger,’” he added.

Morning Report was written and edited by Nadia Croes, Catherine Garcia, Scott Hocker, Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, Alex Kerr, Justin Klawans, Rafi Schwartz, Peter Weber and Kari Wilkin, with illustrations by Stephen Kelly and Julia Wytrazek.