First Thing: Documents linking associates to Jeffrey Epstein unsealed

Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson, David Copperfield and Prince Andrew among high-profile names in court documents. Plus, 20 easy, mind-expanding ways to be more creative

Good morning.

Numerous court documents identifying associates of the notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were made public last night.

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

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

Prior to the unsealing, the names were listed in court papers as variants of J Doe. Many of the names are people who had been publicly identified as Epstein associates before this unsealing. The inclusion of a name in this list does not mean that said associate has been accused of wrongdoing in relation to Epstein. Among the names are people mentioned in passing at legal proceedings.

• Epstein’s elite circle was huge. What was the source of his $580m fortune? The documents released shed some light on the circumstances of Epstein’s lifestyle, but they do not answer any of the pending questions about his financial arrangements with wealthy men, and how he came to amass such a fortune.

• Where can we see the unsealed court papers? Hundreds of pages of documents linked to Epstein associates were made public on Wednesday. You can read them here in full.

Claudine Gay warns of ‘a broader war’ in op-ed after being ousted from Harvard

The first Black president of Harvard, who resigned on Tuesday after a successful rightwing campaign to oust her, said the tactics used against her were “merely a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of American society”.

“Trusted institutions of all types – from public health agencies to news organizations – will continue to fall victim to coordinated attempts to undermine their legitimacy and ruin their leaders’ credibility,” Claudine Gay wrote in the New York Times on Wednesday, a day after she announced she was resigning from her position.

Gay, a political scientist who was appointed six months ago as the first Black woman to serve as president of Harvard, had the shortest tenure in the university’s 388-year history.

In her first major comment since her official Harvard statement announcing her resignation, Gay admitted that “I made mistakes”. But she also argued that her invitation to testify to Congress about antisemitism on elite college campuses had been “a well-laid trap” and that “the campaign against me was about more than one university and one leader”.

• What was behind the campaign to get her sacked? Some of the activists who campaigned most prominently against Gay made clear this week that their broader aim was opposing “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) programs in all US universities and attacking DEI as a movement, not just opposing the choices of one individual Harvard president.

Trump asks US supreme court to review Colorado ruling removing him from 2024 ballot

Donald Trump appealed to the US supreme court yesterday to undo the Colorado ruling that removed him from the ballot in the western state under the 14th amendment to the US constitution, for inciting an insurrection.

“In our system of ‘government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people,’ Colorado’s ruling is not and cannot be correct,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in their Wednesday filing. They also said the Colorado supreme court’s ruling “if allowed to stand, will mark the first time in the history of the United States that the judiciary has prevented voters from casting ballots for the leading major party presidential candidate”.

They went on to lay out several reasons why the supreme court should restore him to the ballot. Only Congress, not the courts, had the authority to evaluate a dispute over the eligibility of a presidential candidate, they wrote. As president, Trump’s lawyers argued, he was not an “officer” of the US – relevant language in the constitution bars anyone from serving if they have “engaged in insurrection” as an officer of the United States.

They also argued that Trump’s conduct did not amount to an insurrection and argued that the Colorado supreme court’s decision ran foul of a provision of the constitution that empowers state legislatures to decide how to appoint presidential electors.

• When will a decision be made? A ruling either pausing or allowing the Colorado supreme court’s decision to stand could come fairly quickly, though the exact timeline is unclear. Colorado must begin mailing ballots to overseas voters for its 5 March primary on 20 January. Clerks must start mailing ballots to all other voters between 12 and 16 February.

In other news …

• The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will leave today for the Middle East, including a stop in Israel, according to reports. The trip comes after a suspected Israeli strike killed a top Hamas leader in the suburbs of Beirut, raising fears of a wider conflict.

• Elvis Evolution, an “immersive concert experience” using AI and holographic projection, will premiere in London in November, with shows also planned in Las Vegas, Tokyo and Berlin. The technology will create a lifesize digital Elvis from thousands of his personal photos and home-video footage.

• Russian hackers were inside the Ukrainian telecoms company Kyivstar’s system from at least May last year in a cyber-attack that should serve as a “big warning” to the west, Ukraine’s cyber spy chief told Reuters. The hack is one of the most dramatic since Russia’s full-scale invasion nearly two years ago.

• Pilots on a Japan Airlines plane that became engulfed in flames just after all 379 passengers and crew escaped were initially unaware the aircraft was on fire, according to fresh details reported in local media. The aircraft collided with a coastguard plane after landing at Tokyo’s Haneda airport on Tuesday evening.

Don’t miss this: artists on 20 easy, mind-expanding ways to be much more creative

Helen Cammock, one of the winners of the Turner prize in 2019, says she did not have artistic tendencies as a child, despite being the daughter of an art teacher. “Just because you can’t draw something in a representative, representational way, it doesn’t mean that you’re not creative,” she says. Cammock was 35 when she began studying art after a 10-year career as a social worker. She says it is important to keep challenging ourselves by trying new things. “The older we get as adults, the less we feel comfortable taking risks. If we think about the kinds of things we did when we were children and tested out when we were teenagers, somehow it gets squeezed out of you and risk-taking is not a space that you can inhabit. There is something about enabling yourself to try things and not have expectations about what you will produce.”

Climate check: first large-scale US offshore wind project produces power for first time

The US’s first large-scale offshore wind project, located off the coast of Massachusetts, has started producing power for the first time, boosting Joe Biden’s ambitions of a proliferation of coastal wind turbines to help combat the climate crisis.

The first wind turbine in the Vineyard Wind development started to whirr on Tuesday, producing around 5MW of power for the New England grid. The operator of the project said it expects to have five turbines operational in the early part of this year, before eventually having 62 turbines as part of the project, which will produce enough electricity to power 400,000 homes.

Last Thing: Oklahoma 13-year-old believed to be first person to beat Tetris

A 13-year-old in Oklahoma is believed to be the first person to beat Tetris since the game’s release more than three decades ago. Previously, only bots powered by artificial intelligence had forced the game to its “kill screen”, where its signature blocks are falling so fast that the game itself cannot continue. In a video documenting his feat, the game freezes and the Oklahoma teenager, known as Blue Scuti online and by his legal name, Willis Gibson, says: “Oh my God! Yes! I’m going to pass out. I can’t feel my hands.” His score read “999999”.

Vince Clemente, the president of the Classic Tetris world championship, told the New York Times: “It’s never been done by a human before. It’s basically something that everyone thought was impossible until a couple of years ago.”

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