The Algorithm Age

Of the five charges Sean 'Diddy' Combs faced trial over, he was only found guilty of two — and they were the least serious ones. A relieved Combs celebrated in court and told his family he would be home soon, but the matter is not over yet. And the verdict is not the end of the road for alleged victims, with dozens of civil lawsuits accusing him of sexual abuse which are yet to be dealt with. Here's what happens next. What was Diddy found guilty of? Two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution These were the least serious charges against Combs. What was Diddy found not guilty of? One count of racketeering conspiracy Two counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud, or coercion One of the trafficking charges was related to Combs's ex girlfriend Casandra "Cassie" Ventura. The other trafficking charge related to another ex-gir...

Queensland Police have been handed a covert recording in which it is alleged a representative of a Chinese investment group asks a player at an NPL club to engage in match-fixing – and even provides instructions on how he could manipulate a game without being caught. The audio file has been submitted to Football Australia, Football Queensland and the police as investigations continue into a suspected failed betting scheme at Gold Coast United , the former A-League club previously owned by billionaire Clive Palmer which now participates in the Queensland NPL, the state’s top men’s division. This masthead revealed last week that a match between third-placed Gold Coast United and second-placed rivals Moreton City Excelsior had been called off just hours before it was to begin, as football authorities learned of a suspected plot to lure players into a match-fixing operation. Multiple sources with knowledge of what took place, who spoke to this masthead on ...

A woman walks her dog down a street in Clayfield. It’s windy, but sunny, and tradesmen rush about renovating multimillion-dollar homes. Most of the houses are empty on this weekday afternoon. A scattering of teenagers, having ditched their private school blazers during the holiday weeks, roam palatial properties barefoot and carefree. In a nearby park, small children laugh and squeal in the playground. But just days earlier, flashing sirens and homicide detectives swarmed the streets, slicing through the gentle holiday buzz following reports of a brutal stabbing. Halfway up the road, a towering white wall wraps around a property protecting the home from peering eyes. Behind it is a sprawling home with bay windows lapping up vistas from Brisbane’s city skyline. The events inside this $5.4 million home reverberated beyond the close-knit neighbourhood and captured the nation’s attention. Greg Josephson, the co-founder of clothing chain Universal Store, w...

One of OJ Simpson’s attorneys has explained how a single “smart move” made by Sean “Diddy” Combs’s defense team may have been why the rapper was found not guilty on two of the more serious charges in his sex trafficking trial. Alan Dershowitz, part of the Simpson “Dream Team” that got the late disgraced athlete acquitted in the killing of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman in 1994, said Combs’s defense team was right not to put him on the stand. “Ultimately, the smart decision was not putting OJ on the witness stand. The smart decision here was not putting Combs on the witness stand,” Professor Emeritus Dershowitz told Fox News Digital. “The difference is we want a complete victory. They got a partial victory, but an almost complete victory, so I commend them for excellent work.” “I think this was a good day for justice today, and it showed the power of juries to stand up against the federal government,” he added. “And that's a nec...

Footage appears to show Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents urinating on the grounds of a Los Angeles public school, which they described as a “deeply disturbing” incident. Members of the El Rancho Unified School District Board wrote to the Department of Homeland Security to complain about the alleged incident and accused the ICE agents of risking “exposing themselves to minors.” It follows a period of heightened tension in LA and Southern California as communities push back against ICE and the Trump administration’s aggressive deportation agenda. The school board claimed the agents urinated against a storage container beside the playground of the Ruben Salazar High School in Pico Rivera on the morning of June 17. It was also close to where students were in session. Footage shared by the school appears to confirm the claims, as one by one the agents walk toward the storage container and stand for a few moments. The DHS did not respond to questions abo...

The family of the Egyptian national who carried out the antisemitic attack in Boulder can be deported, a US federal judge ruled. On June 1, Mohamed Sabry Soliman threw Molotov cocktails at a pro-Israel demonstration in Boulder, Colorado, while yelling “Free Palestine.” One of the people wounded on the day, 82-year-old Karen Diamond , died of her injuries on June 25. Soliman now faces over 70 charges, including first-degree murder. Following his arrest, Soliman was found to be in the United States illegally on an expired visa, and his wife and five children are also illegal immigrants. On June 4, the District of Colorado issued a temporary restraining order preventing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from deporting the mother, Hayam El Gamal, and her five children, ages 4 to 18, from the United States. The case was then transferred to the Western District of Texas on June 18, where the court extended the order for an additional 14 da...

Would you play a video game with the police? In Denmark, a special team of police officers stream online gaming to connect with young people and combat crimes such as fraud and sexual harassment. “We try to be very aware of the evolution of online crimes,” Jeppe Torup, a police sergeant at the National Special Crime Unit of the Danish Police, told Euronews Next. “It becomes a lot easier to commit crimes across language barriers and across countries and we need to be very aware of what is going on in the technosphere,” he added. They also “patrol” on popular platforms such as Discord, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, where they say they receive leads about suspicious behaviour from the communities. The team was set up in 2022 to tackle the rise in online crime in Denmark. “It was needed because we saw that a lot of the children are actually online most of the time – 99 per cent of the kids in Denmark are using social media or gaming platforms on a daily basis. So we...

Would you play a video game with the police? In Denmark, a special team of police officers stream online gaming to connect with young people and combat crimes such as fraud and sexual harassment. “We try to be very aware of the evolution of online crimes,” Jeppe Torup, a police sergeant at the National Special Crime Unit of the Danish Police, told Next. “It becomes a lot easier to commit crimes across language barriers and across countries and we need to be very aware of what is going on in the technosphere,” he added. They also “patrol” on popular platforms such as Discord, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, where they say they receive leads about suspicious behaviour from the communities. The team was set up in 2022 to tackle the rise in online crime in Denmark. “It was needed because we saw that a lot of the children are actually online most of the time – 99 per cent of the kids in Denmark are using social media or gaming platforms on a daily basis. So we have to ...

Sean 'Diddy' Combs has been found not guilty of racketeering and sex trafficking following a lengthy public trial, which saw a number of women testify against him, including former girlfriend and singer, Cassie Ventura . He has, however, been found guilty of two lesser charges of transportation to engage in prostitution, and will be sentenced in due course. The jail time for these charges can carry up to a maximum of 10 years each. Given the scale of the trial, which heard from 34 witnesses in less than two months, including former employees of Combs, male sex workers, federal agents, and his ex-girlfriends, the news that the jury had made their decision sent shockwaves around the globe - not least because of the nature of some of the evidence against him. He has consistently denied the charges. Most notably, people will remember the video of Cassie Ventura being dragged through and beaten in a hotel corridor by Combs in 2016. It's not a new tale, and ...

When detectives discovered a cache of child abuse material allegedly in the hands of a Melbourne childcare worker, it started the clock ticking on an unprecedented response from police and public health authorities. After raiding the home of 26-year-old Joshua Dale Brown in May, police faced the daunting and distressing task of trying to identify eight children, some as young as five months old, whom it is alleged he had abused and filmed. They also tracked Brown’s work history, fearing the allegations against him at one centre in the city’s west may be only the tip of the iceberg. They uncovered that he had worked at 20 childcare centres across the city since 2017. Sex crimes detectives have now focused their attention on Brown’s time at a centre in Essendon, where they are investigating whether abuse occurred, and police are urging anyone with further information to come forward. For weeks, police and the Health Department grappled with how to reveal the ...

When detectives discovered a cache of child abuse material allegedly in the hands of a Melbourne childcare worker, it started the clock ticking on an unprecedented response from police and public health authorities. After raiding the home of 26-year-old Joshua Dale Brown in May, police faced the daunting and distressing task of trying to identify eight children, some as young as five months old, whom it is alleged he had abused and filmed. They also tracked Brown’s work history, fearing the allegations against him at one centre in the city’s west may be only the tip of the iceberg. They uncovered that he had worked at 20 childcare centres across the city since 2017. Sex crimes detectives have now focused their attention on Brown’s time at a centre in Essendon, where they are investigating whether abuse occurred, and police are urging anyone with further information to come forward. For weeks, police and the Health Department grappled with how to reveal the ...

Netflix viewers are in mourning after the streamer cancelled one of its ‘best shows’, The Residence, in a shock move. The eight-episode murder-mystery series starred Orange is the New Black actor Uzo Aduba as Detective Cordelia Cupp who must get to the bottom of a murder at the White House . After coming out in March, fans have had nothing but praise for the quirky show with an eccentric cast of characters, including pop icon Kylie Minogue herself as well as Breaking Bad ’s Giancarlo Esposito, Always Be My Maybe’s Randall Park. In fact, people were rooting for multiple seasons of the show with our bird-obsessed detective solving a new mystery every time, Knives Out style anthology series. With an 85% Rotten Tomatoes score and a tidy 6.4 million views in the first four days alone – there’s no denying there was appetite for more. Get personalised updates on all things Netflix Wake up to find news on your TV shows in your inbox every morning with ’s...

Former Irish Olympic swimming coach George Gibney, who was arrested in the US on Tuesday, will appear before a US court on July 11 to either fight or accede to extradition to Ireland. Mr Gibney, who is now in his 70s, is facing a total of 79 charges relating to historical sex abuse allegations. Of these, 78 are for indecent assault while one is for attempted rape, court documents filed at the District Court of Orlando, Florida, have shown. These charges relate to allegations made by four girls. They were all aged between eight and 15 at the time and were being coached by Gibney at the time of the alleged abuse. Gibney remains in custody in the US. Speaking yesterday, Taoiseach Micheál Martin praised the cooperation of members of the gardaí with the US justice system. The allegations regarding Gibney were highlighted in a BBC podcast which was released over five years ago. The Garda National Protective Services Bureau has been wo...

A Chinese national has been found guilty in the ACT Supreme Court of his part in a brutal attack during a violent home invasion where the victims said their attackers suggested they were from Chinese special forces. Xiantao Shang, 38, has been found guilty of aggravated burglary and assault by joint commission after he went to the apartment with a second man in June 2023, looking for a woman known as 'Linda'. Shang said she owed him over $100,000, with more owed to the other man, 46-year-old Wengao Zheng. The debt appeared to be gambling related. 'Linda' had not been answering their calls and had left town for a while. Before the home invasion the pair discovered she had returned to Canberra. Justice Verity McWilliam said in her judgement 'Linda' had once been the lover of Zheng, who did some "detective work of his own" tracking her to the apartment through a site advertising sexual services. Zheng pleaded guil...

The board of the ASX-listed childcare provider that employed an accused sexual abuser has been criticised for lacking “sufficient expertise” to oversee child safety, with shareholder advisers questioning the CEO’s multi-million dollar pay packet amid rising reputational and financial challenges. Roughly $120 million has been wiped off the market capitalisation of G8 Education in the two days since confidence in the childcare sector was rocked by allegations that Joshua Dale Brown committed multiple child sexual abuse offences while working at a range of early education facilities across Victoria, including at G8’s Creative Garden Point Cook, from 2017 until this May. The revelations have so far led to a wave of snap reforms in Victoria to apply greater pressure on childcare providers to oversee staff, including a mandatory ban on mobile phones, and triggered calls for a national register of staff to more clearly communicate issues with specific worke...

Bryan Kohberger has pleaded guilty to the murders of four University of Idaho students , more than two years after the grisly quadruple stabbing that shocked the nation. The decision to enter a plea this week allows Kohberger to avoid the death penalty. During a court hearing, lead prosecutor Bill Thompson laid out key evidence that painted a dramatic picture of the investigation. Among the details revealed was the discovery of a DNA-laden Q-tip retrieved from the garbage, a getaway car described as "essentially disassembled inside" to strip it of evidence, and a fateful early-morning DoorDash order that may have inadvertently placed one of the victims in Kohberger's path. These insights offered a clearer understanding of how the crime unfolded on 13 November 2022, and the meticulous efforts by investigators to solve the case. Their methods included extensive use of surveillance footage, cell phone tracking data, and DNA matching. Despite the guilty plea, the...