Thursday’s Top Stories: Covid-19 inquiry to hear from bereaved families and Sinn Féin pushes for removal of judge convicted of sexual assaults

Jeffrey Epstein: Documents naming associates of sex offender unsealed

Numerous court documents identifying associates of notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were made public on Wednesday.

Some of the high-profile names in the court documents include Prince Andrew, the former US president Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson and David Copperfield.

These associates’ just-unsealed names were contained in court documents filed as part of Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre’s lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell; the documents include excerpts of depositions and motions in this case. The British socialite was convicted in December 2021 of sex trafficking and similar charges for procuring teen girls for disgraced financier Epstein.

Top News Stories

News from around the World

The Big Read

• Dave Hannigan: US sports talk bloviators delight in blaming Taylor Swift for Travis Kelce’s dip in form: There is a shouty corner of the American sports television universe where (mostly) men make huge sums of money offering outrageous opinions specifically designed to generate viral videos and clickbait. Some of the tiresome guff they may well believe, most of it, any discerning person can see, they are spouting to provoke and antagonise. Controversy for controversy’s sake in an obvious grift that is a daily race to the bottom of a very lucrative barrel. Skip Bayless, who earns $8 million (€7.3 million) a year spewing ludicrous, ill-founded critiques of players like LeBron James, last week trained his blunderbuss on Travis Kelce, Kansas City Chiefs’ tight end and boyfriend of Taylor Swift.

The best from Opinion

Today’s Business

• Karlin Lillington: You think last year was big for data protection? Brace yourself for 2024: For anybody trying to peer into the next business year and imagine what it may bring, the fast-shifting technology sector is generally one of the most difficult to make predictions about. Just cast your mind back over 2023 to one single explosive event. Many industry watchers thought artificial intelligence was advancing in notable ways, but who could have envisaged the seismic repercussions last year after a small company called OpenAI quietly released an AI chatbot called ChatGPT at the close of 2022?

Top Sports news

Picture of the Day

Culture and Life & Style Highlights

• A 2024 resolution for culture lovers – get physical: If you’re contemplating a list of cultural resolutions for 2024, may I suggest this one: get physical. No need to send your mind into the gutter, as I’m talking here about buying records. (Or if you’re a film fan too, why not get back to Blu Rays and DVDs, or aim for paperbacks if you’re a book nut?) It’s become even clearer to me in the past year that when you’re a buyer of records, whether on CD or vinyl, you’re creating an irreplaceable archive of your life in music, writes Aoife Barry.

Video & Podcast Highlights

Why not try one of our Crosswords & Puzzles?

Like this?

Get the best content direct to your inbox by signing up to one of our newsletters