Alexander Acosta, the former U.S. attorney in Miami who gave Jeffrey Epstein and an untold number of his co-conspirators immunity for sex trafficking dozens of underage girls, defended his decision not to prosecute Epstein during a closed-door congressional hearing Friday. The hearing, held by the House Oversight Committee, is the latest in a series of efforts by Congress to scrutinize how the late financier managed to get away with abusing hundreds of girls and young women over more than two decades — despite Epstein being on the FBI’s radar since 2006. The scandal continues to consume the Trump administration, which has been unable to satisfy public outrage over the Justice Department’s decision in July to not release all of its Epstein files. Most of the material the DOJ has released thus far has already been in the public domain. “It’s important to remember that this is a massive cover up,” said Rep. Yassamin Ansari. “There are many, many more people involved, financial institutions involved, potentially foreign governments involved, but this is one key part to getting to the bottom and getting to the answers that we need to get justice for the survivors.” Ansari and other Democratic congressional leaders, on a break from the hearing, described Acosta’s testimony as “defiant,” “unremorseful” and “evasive.” They said the former FIU law professor said Epstein’s victims weren’t credible — and that he didn’t believe that their stories of sexual assault would lead to a successful federal prosecution. Acosta “essentially said he didn’t have faith in the victims, their stories and their ability to tell their own story and their own testimony, which is deeply disturbing to all of us sitting in there,” said Rep. Maxwell Frost during the break. They said they also found it disturbing that, even in hindsight, Acosta would not admit that mistakes were made and was not apologetic about how his actions led to other victims being abused by Epstein. “There was a clear lack of remorse,” said Rep. Suhas Subramanyam, a Democrat. “…This is someone who should at least acknowledge that he made a mistake … his memory faded whenever we asked pointed questions.” Acosta largely ignored questions from reporters on his way in and out of the hearing, but did stop to answer a question about FBI Director Kash Patel saying Tuesday that the plea deal was the “original sin” in the government’s handling of Epstein’s criminal case. “I’ve testified for six hours,” he said. “I’ll let the record speak for itself.” This is the first time that Acosta, 56, has testified under oath about his decision to give Epstein a plea deal. The agreement allowed Epstein to plead guilty to lesser prostitution charges in state court rather than be prosecuted for federal sex trafficking crimes that could have sent him to prison for life. Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in the county jail, but served just 13 months — most of it as a work-release inmate which allowed him to leave jail and go to his office in West Palm Beach almost every day. While he was monitored by Palm Beach County sheriff’s deputies, he was nevertheless able to have women come into his office, where he pressured them to have sex with him while a sheriff’s deputy was standing outside the door. Rep. Robert Garcia, the committee’s ranking Democrat, noted that they met with survivors last month and “one of the survivors that was there was very clear that she was abused and assaulted and raped by Jeffrey Epstein during his work release, and during that time when he was out during that 18-month period that was given to him by Mr. Acosta and his team.” Acosta, the representatives said, refused to characterize the plea bargain as a “sweetheart deal” — maintaining that even today he believes the deal was the best course of action.
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YouTube Expands AI Age Checks, Users Face ID Verification
Google’s video platform is tightening its controls, and a growing number of YouTube users are suddenly finding themselves locked out of content unless they hand over proof of age through ID verification.
The new direction stems from YouTube’s decision to push its AI-driven age estimation system much more broadly than before.
The technology, which YouTube began experimenting with in Europe before confirming its US debut in July, surveils people’s accounts and examines everything from account details and viewing habits to search activity.
Those surveillance signals are then used to guess whether someone is under 18.
The pace of enforcement has accelerated sharply. Within the 24 hours leading up to September 24, Reddit’s r/youtube subreddit saw a flood of posts from users saying their accounts were suddenly flagged for verification, suggesting a big uptick in restrictions.
Accounts flagged as too young are immediately restricted: targeted advertising is reduced, recommendations deemed unsafe are cut back, and access to adult material is blocked outright.
When YouTube’s system determines that an account likely belongs to someone under 18, the platform automatically enforces a set of limits designed to control how the service is used.
Ex-FBI Director James Comey charged with making false statement, obstruction, AP source says
James Comey was charged Thursday with making a false statement and obstruction in a criminal case filed days after President Donald Trump appeared to urge his attorney general to prosecute the former FBI director and other perceived political enemies.
The indictment makes Comey the first former senior government official to face prosecution in connection with one of Trump’s chief grievances: the long-concluded investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump and his supporters have long derided that investigation as a “hoax” and a “witch hunt” despite multiple government reviews showing Moscow interfered on behalf of the Republican’s campaign.
The criminal case is likely to deepen concerns that the Justice Department under Attorney General Pam Bondi, a Trump loyalist, is being weaponized in pursuit of investigations and now prosecutions of public figures the president regards as his political enemies.
Air Force AI Targeting Tests Show Promise, Despite Hallucinations
The Air Force is on its third of a series of sprint exercises intended to show how artificial intelligence can supercharge human decision-making. And while officials are raving about the results, they also demonstrate that the algorithms can still propose bad or nonsensical options that need to be babysat.
Maj. Gen. Robert Claude, Space Force representative to the Air Force’s Advanced Battle Management Cross-Functional Team, said participating in the Decision Advantage Sprint for Human-Machine Teaming (DASH) series, led by his team, was an “eye-opening experience,” though it proved the limitations of AI processing as well.
The DASH-2 sprint, held at Shadow Operations Center-Nellis (SHOC-N), the USAF’s premier tactical command and control battle lab, outside of Las Vegas earlier this summer focused on a decision-intensive process: matching the right platform and weapon to a desired military target, Claude told The War Zone at the U.S. Air Force Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference.
According to a release, six industry teams and one SHOC-N innovation team participated in the exercise, attacking the challenge of designing AI-enabled microservices that could help operators select a weapon to destroy an identified target. The kinds of targets identified in the scenario were not described. Developers watched human-only battle-management crews and designed their microservices based on their observed needs and processes. Finally, human-only teams went head to head in the weapon-matching exercise against human-machine teams.
In terms of generating courses of action – or COAs – the machines easily had it over their human counterparts on speed and quantity.
“I think it was roughly eight seconds [for the algorithm] to generate COAs, as opposed to 16 minutes for the operators,” Claude said, adding that the machine generated 10 different COAs to the human team’s three.
But AI-generated slop continues to be a problem.
“While it’s much more timely and more COAs generated, they weren’t necessarily completely viable COAs,” Claude said. “So what is going to be important going forward is, while we’re getting faster results and we’re getting more results, there’s still going to have to be a human in the loop for the foreseeable future to make sure that, yes, it’s a viable COA, or just a little bit more of this to make a COA viable, to make decisions.”
Claude clarified in response to another question the kinds of mismatches the AI was creating.
“If you’re trying to identify a targeting package with a particular weapon against a particular target, but it didn’t factor in, it’s an [infrared] target, or it’s an IR-sensor weapon, but it’s cloudy and [bad] weather conditions,” Claude said. “So that’s just as an example, those fine-tuned types of things that they found these COAs weren’t where they needed to be. But as we build this out, theoretically into the future … those sorts of things will be factored in.”
War Secretary’s Emergency Meeting A Mystery To Hundreds Of Top Officers Ordered To Attend
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has summoned hundreds of generals and admirals to an urgent meeting in Virginia next week, but the reason is unknown to many who have been ordered to attend, The War Zone has learned.
Many of these high-ranking officers have been in contact with each other to find out why Hegseth has ordered such an unprecedented gathering that will upend the schedules of hundreds of them, a U.S. official told The War Zone.
“They know about this through scheduling, but they have no idea what this is all about,” the official added. “It is something everyone is wondering. There is no indication of what the topic is.”
The Pentagon confirmed the meeting but provided no details.
“The Secretary of War will be addressing his senior military leaders early next week,” Chief Pentagon Spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement.
The meeting, first reported by The Washington Post, comes as Hegseth is looking to trim the ranks of the military’s top commanders and reduce the number of headquarters.
“The directive was issued earlier this week…months after Hegseth’s team at the Pentagon announced plans to undertake a sweeping consolidation of top military commands, according to The Post.
Utah Rancher Enlists Paranormal Investigators in Cattle Mutilation Case
A Utah rancher who lost one of his bulls to a cattle mutilation earlier this summer enlisted paranormal researchers and other experts to look at the curious case, and their collective findings were rather remarkable. Paul Martinez discovered the downed animal on his property back in July, and the incident made headlines in late August. Speaking to a local media outlet last week, the rancher revealed several intriguing details about the case that came to light throughout the summer when he allowed an array of intrigued individuals to examine the animal and the scene of the strange slaying.
The first such weird insight came to light around 10 weeks after the incident, when livestock investigator Rob Wilcox used a metal detector on the downed bull, which remained where it had been killed. Strangely, he noted, something about the creature’s carcass or the land around it activated the device. Even stranger was that, following his visit to the site, the metal detector stopped functioning. Meanwhile, paranormal investigator Ryan Burns, who was also brought on to study the situation, recounted how the land around the downed bull was particularly peculiar in that it was “like walking on memory foam,” which only held tracks for “about an hour” before they “just disappeared.”
Another interested party invited to visit the ranch was Dustin Eskelsen, who serves as the director of the Mutual UFO Network’s Utah branch. He extracted soil samples from the location of the mutilation as well as 25 feet away and sent them off to a lab for testing. While the results were fairly routine, a significant difference in sulfur levels stood out as being unusual to Eskelsen. Similar tests done by Utah’s Department of Agriculture found contrasting calcium and iron levels between the target area and a control area.
Martinez’s rigorous attempt at figuring out what happened to his bull extended even further as he also turned to Johnny Alberto Gamiochippi, of the Northern Ute Tribe, who posited that something could have disturbed ancient spirits at the site. To that end, the pair pointed to a bizarre incident that occurred a few weeks before the cattle mutilation in which an intoxicated man escaped from police custody and wound up on Martinez’s ranch, where he stole his ATV and led police on a wild chase. “He might have been possessed by some demons,” Gamiochippi mused, suggesting that the sinister spirits then somehow turned their attention to the unfortunate bull.
Charlie Kirk assassination suspect Tyler Robinson’s brush with police six hours AFTER shooting revealed
Charlie Killer’s accused killer made contact with cops investigating the death of the conservative activist in the immediate aftermath of his murder, it has been revealed.
Tyler Robinson, 22, is accused of murdering Kirk with a single bullet that hit the father-of-two as he spoke to a crowd at a university in Utah on September 10.
After Robinson is said to have made a quick escape and dumped the Mauser rifle he is alleged to have used in the shooting, he returned to recover the weapon.
Two law enforcement sources told Fox News that Robinson appeared at a wooded area where the gun was found and ‘made contact’ with officers guarding the area.
That brief encounter appears to have thwarted an attempt by the main suspect to collect the firearm used to kill Kirk.
No further details of the ‘contact’ were shared and its unclear if the officers saw Robinson, or realized how close they were to the suspect.
Robinson has since been revealed as being a college dropout that had shifted his political views to the radical left in the last year.
Prosecutors say that after gunning down Kirk he confessed to the killing in a message to his transgender partner.
He is alleged to have got in contact with them via text message, saying that he killed Kirk because he ‘had enough of his hatred.’
Robinson fled the scene and traveled some 250 miles south to his home in St. George, Utah, eluding capture for nearly two full days.
He was ultimately caught after being handed in by his father and a local minister, rather than through direct police intervention.
Unbeknownst to investigators, Robinson’s parents Matthew and Amber, from Washington, Utah, were both convinced that their son was involved.
Charging documents say that his mother had seen the photo shared by authorities and immediately thought they looked like her son.
After calling Robinson, he is said to have told her he was at home and unwell, and had been the day when Kirk was gunned down.
Still, the documents say this did nothing to quell her suspicions, and she raised her concerns with his father who agreed with her.
His father then got in touch and asked him to send him a picture of it, but Robinson never responded, the documents say.
After a phone call between the two eventually happened, Robinson laid out plans to commit suicide, his parents said they were able to convince him to meet them.
Anti-ICE shooter Joshua Jahn used Nazi battle rifle in deadly Dallas attack: experts
The anti-ICE gunman who killed one person and wounded two others at a Dallas ICE facility appears to have used a variant of a Nazi battle rifle in the attack, multiple firearms experts tell The Post.
Joshua Jahn, 29, used an antique 8mm Mauser rifle when he opened fire on a bus that was unloading at the federal building, the FBI confirmed on Thursday.
Authorities say he obtained the rifle in August.
The 8mm Mauser is a bolt-action rifle originally developed in Germany in the late 1800s and served as one of the main weapons used by Berlin in both World Wars.
Million-Year-Old Skull Discovery Rewrites Human Evolution Timeline
A remarkable million-year-old skull discovered in China has shattered long-held beliefs about human evolution, suggesting that modern humans and their closest relatives diverged from common ancestors at least half a million years earlier than previously thought. The discovery challenges the fundamental narrative of human origins and raises the tantalizing possibility that Homo sapiens may have first emerged not in Africa, but in Asia. This bold research, published in the prestigious journal Science, represents one of the most significant advances in understanding human evolution in decades, forcing scientists to completely reconsider the timeline and geography of our species’ emergence on Earth.
The reconstructed Yunxian 2 skull, originally excavated in 1990 from Hubei Province in central China, was initially classified as belonging to the primitive human species Homo erectus. However, sophisticated digital reconstruction techniques have revealed that this ancient cranium possesses a unique combination of features that place it much closer to the mysterious Denisovans and the Homo longi lineage, dramatically reshaping our understanding of human evolutionary history.
Revolutionary Digital Reconstruction Reveals Hidden Identity
For over three decades, the badly crushed and distorted Yunxian 2 skull remained an enigma, its true significance hidden beneath layers of geological damage. The breakthrough came when researchers led by Professor Xijun Ni of Fudan University and Professor Chris Stringer of London’s Natural History Museum applied cutting-edge CT imaging and sophisticated digital reconstruction techniques to virtually restore the cranium to its original form.
“From the very beginning, when we got the result, we thought it was unbelievable. How could that be so deep into the past?” Professor Ni told the BBC.
“But we tested it again and again to test all the models, use all the methods, and we are now confident about the result, and we’re actually very excited.”
The painstaking reconstruction process involved CT image segmentation to digitally separate fossil bones from surrounding rock matrix, followed by careful repositioning of displaced fragments. When the skull’s true shape was finally revealed, it displayed a remarkable mosaic of primitive and advanced features that clearly distinguished it from both Homo erectus and modern humans.
DoD Redacts Nearly All Records Explaining AARO’s Use of Law Enforcement Exemption for UAP Files
The Department of Defense (DoD) has released a set of heavily redacted emails in response to a FOIA request seeking records that would explain why AARO and UAP materials are now being largely withheld under FOIA Exemption (b)(7). This exemption is intended for “law enforcement” records, raising questions about how it applies to AARO, which is not a law enforcement body.
The release was supposed to show the internal decision-making behind this new practice. Instead, nearly all substance was withheld, and more than 95%+ of the content is either blacked out or withheld in full. The result is another chapter in a growing saga of secrecy surrounding AARO, FOIA, and UAP records.
This issue has now persisted for more than two years. The Pentagon’s Public Affairs office, through spokesperson Susan Gough, continues to refuse to answer The Black Vault’s roughly four dozen inquiries and follow-ups over the course of 27 months sent to her about how this exemption can be legally justified.
The September 18, 2025, release (case 24-F-0154) consisted of 23 pages. Three pages were withheld in their entirety under Exemption (b)(5), while the rest were redacted under (b)(5) and (b)(6).
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