Por Helen Regan, CNN

El miércoles se realizaron los primeros funerales de algunas de las 15 personas murieron en el peor tiroteo masivo ocurrido en Australia en casi tres décadas, mientras la policía presentaba cargos de homicidio y terrorismo contra uno de los presuntos atacantes.

Se produjeron escenas emotivas fuera del Jabad de Bondi en Sydney, donde una gran multitud rindió homenaje antes del servicio en honor al rabino Eli Schlanger, quien murió en la masacre del domingo que tuvo como blanco a familias judías que celebraban la primera noche de Hanukkah.

Los familiares lloraron cuando el ataúd de Schlanger, envuelto en terciopelo negro con una estrella de David dorada, fue llevado a la sinagoga.

Schlanger, de 41 años, organizó el evento “Janucá junto al mar” en Bondi Beach y fue rabino asistente en el Jabad de Bondi. Era padre de cinco hijos, cuyo hijo menor tiene solo dos meses.

Conocido como el “Rabino de Bondi”, Schlanger ha sido descrito como un capellán devoto y querido que trabajó incansablemente “para apoyar la vida judía en la comunidad de Bondi” a través de Chabad, una organización judía global que busca promover la identidad y la conexión judías, dijo la organización.

Durante el servicio, el suegro de Schlanger rompió a llorar al describirlo como “el mejor esposo, el mejor padre, el mejor hijo”.

“Lo que diga hoy será un eufemismo ante lo que significas para todos, para tu familia y para mí personalmente”, dijo el rabino Yehoram Ulman. “Eres mi hijo, mi amigo, mi confidente”.

“Un día sin ti es imposible.”

Antes del funeral, el primer ministro australiano, Anthony Albanese, dijo a los periodistas que Schlanger “era claramente muy querido en la comunidad, no solo por su familia”.

“Creo que los pensamientos y corazones de todos los australianos están con esas familias mientras se despiden de sus seres queridos”, dijo.

Los funerales de Reuven Morrison, de 62 años, Peter Meagher y el rabino Yaakov Levitan, de 39 años, también están programados para este miércoles.

Horas después del funeral de Schlanger, el hombre que presuntamente llevó a cabo la masacre junto a su padre fue acusado por la policía australiana de 59 delitos.

Naveed Akram, de 24 años, fue acusado de 15 cargos de homicidio, 40 cargos de intento de homicidio y otros cargos, incluida la comisión de un acto terrorista, dijo la policía este miércoles.

Sajid Akram, de 50 años, murió a raíz de disparos propinados por la policía, mientras que Naveed recibió un disparo y fue trasladado al hospital. Mal Lanyon, comisionado de policía del estado de Nueva Gales del Sur, declaró que las autoridades esperaban que recuperara la lucidez para ser imputado tras despertar del coma el martes.

“Intentaremos proceder con él en el hospital, desde allí será trasladado a un centro penitenciario”, dijo Lanyon.

Las autoridades australianas dicen que los presuntos atacantes estaban motivados por la “ideología del Estado Islámico”, y los funcionarios antiterroristas australianos creen que ambos recibieron entrenamiento de estilo militar mientras estaban en el sur de Filipinas el mes pasado, en un área conocida por el extremismo islamista, informó el martes la emisora ​​pública ABC.

Sajid Akram era propietario de armas con licencia, lo que generó preguntas desde la masacre sobre si las leyes de armas de Australia, ya estrictas y establecidas a nivel estatal, requieren un endurecimiento aún mayor.

Los líderes de Nueva Gales del Sur, donde se encuentra Sídney, están redactando una nueva legislación para endurecer las restricciones,

By Annie Grayer, Ella Nilsen, CNN

(CNN) — A group of moderate Republicans have warned for months that their party’s plan to eliminate clean energy tax credits would contribute to utility bills skyrocketing.

Now, their predictions are coming true. And more Republicans are starting to openly worry that the issue could hurt them in next year’s midterm elections.

Electricity and heating bills around the country are soaring. Since last September, residential electricity rates nationwide increased by 7.4% – with over a dozen states seeing double digit increases year-over-year.

And anger over high bills is showing up on the campaign trail. Emphasizing the rising cost of energy bills, food and health care, Democrats rode an affordability message to a string of victories in November, winning governors’ races in New Jersey and Virginia and flipping two seats on Georgia’s public utility commission.

The issue is “not going away,” said Adrian Deveny, founder of consulting firm Climate Vision and a former top Senate Democratic staffer. Republicans “should be very worried because they are going to be held accountable for it.”

The Republican leading the House GOP campaign arm, Rep. Richard Hudson, told CNN that Republicans are working on solutions to drive down energy costs.

“We’re living right now with high cost because of Democratic policies,” Hudson claimed. “They’re doing a very good job of trying to blame us for it.”

Most Republicans argue the party inherited the problem of high utility bill prices as a result of Biden administration policy, but there are still moderates who have been advocating for the embrace of as many energy sources as possible, including clean energy – and raising alarms that their party has not done enough to address the issue of high energy costs.

The party tensions came to a head on Tuesday when a small group of Republicans almost tanked a procedural vote on a bill looking to speed up the federal permitting and regulatory process for energy infrastructure projects.

High energy bills are being driven by a few key factors: the high cost of energy infrastructure, a spike in the cost of natural gas and the significant amount of power AI data centers are suddenly consuming. There’s a massive imbalance in the amount of electricity they need, and the amount of power that exists now to serve it.

“You have to get more power on the grid,” GOP Rep. Andrew Garbarino of New York told CNN.

Earlier this year, Republicans voted to do the opposite. At the behest of President Donald Trump, the GOP gutted generous Biden-era tax credits for renewable energy. That move, experts and some moderate Republicans fear, is taking the cheapest and fastest-to-build forms of energy off the table – in turn, making America’s growing electricity crisis worse.

“One of the arguments being made when we were talking about going after the credits in the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ is this is going to affect utility payments,” said Garbarino, who had initially pushed to not kill the tax credits before ultimately supporting the bill.

GOP Rep. Gabe Evans was another Republican who pushed his colleagues to extend the clean energy tax credits. The Colorado Republican was in House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office arguing for it a day before the final vote.

“Myself and a few other Republicans understand that business needs to have a runway to be able to make good decisions,” Evans

By Marshall Cohen, Holmes Lybrand, CNN

(CNN) — A new federal law requires the Justice Department to release by Friday a massive trove of investigative documents related to Jeffrey Epstein.

The release of the Epstein files, detailing the probes into the disgraced multimillionaire and sex offender who died in 2019, has attracted significant attention. The public has been captivated by Epstein’s lavish lifestyle, claims of underage sex trafficking, and his ties to President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton, celebrities and foreign dignitaries.

Veto-proof majorities in Congress passed a law last month requiring the Justice Department to release all of the Epstein-related files in its custody. Trump fought hard to stop the law but signed it after being outmaneuvered by a bipartisan groundswell of support from lawmakers and the public.

However, it’s unclear exactly which records will be made public and how much of the material will be new. Over the 20-year saga surrounding Epstein’s sex crimes, thousands of files have already been disclosed through civil litigation and public records requests.

Here’s what you need to know about the files:

Why is this happening now?

The law, called the Epstein Files Transparency Act, is only three pages long and spells out in simple language what the Justice Department must release and what it can withhold.

The federal government is required to release “searchable and downloadable” copies of “all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials” related to Epstein and Maxwell that are in the possession of the Justice Department or FBI.

The law explicitly calls for the release of travel logs, materials about Epstein’s associates, any related immunity deals, relevant corporate records, all internal Justice Department communications about the investigations, and documents about Epstein’s 2019 death.

What’s in DOJ’s Epstein files?

CNN has reported that there’s more than 300 gigabytes of data that lives within the FBI’s primary electronic case management system, called Sentinel. This includes videos, photographs, audio recordings and written records.

The FBI conducted two probes into Epstein. The first began in 2006 after sex abuse allegations emerged in Florida. That led to a non-prosecution deal in which Epstein avoided federal charges. Much of the same conduct was also scrutinized by the Palm Beach Police Department, leading to Epstein’s 2008 guilty plea on state charges. He would serve just 13 months in a Florida jail for state prostitution charges, though he was allowed to spend nearly half of that time on “work release” at his office.

The second FBI investigation led to Epstein’s federal sex trafficking indictment in 2019. The bulk of the “Epstein files” comes from that New York-based second FBI probe, though there are also materials from the first investigation in Miami, CNN previously reported.

What has DOJ said it may release?

The Ju

By Aditi Sangal, Taylor Romine, Karina Tsui, CNN

(CNN) — Just two days after Hollywood director Rob Reiner and producer Michele Singer Reiner were found dead in their home, their son, Nick Reiner, was charged with the first-degree murder of his parents.

Many aspects of what happened are uncertain as investigators keep details close during an active investigation. But the deaths of the two Hollywood fixtures have upended the entertainment industry, leaving colleagues, friends and fans to pay tribute to their legacy.

As the investigation unfolds, here is what we know about the case against Nick Reiner and what comes next.

Son faces first-degree murder charges

Prosecutors charged 32-year-old Reiner with two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the fatal stabbing of his parents, they announced during a news conference Tuesday.

The charges include a special allegation for allegedly using a knife, and rises to the level of a “special circumstance first-degree murder case” as there were multiple murders, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said.

The charges, if convicted, carry a penalty of life in prison without parole or the death penalty, Hochman said. His office hasn’t decided if they would seek the death penalty, and they would take the “thoughts and desires of the family into consideration” when making that decision, he said.

If prosecutors decide to pursue the death penalty, a 2019 moratorium instituted by California Governor Gavin Newsom through an executive order will prevent the execution from being carried out. That could change when a new governor is elected in the 2026 election.

Cases that involve family members are among “the most challenging and the most heart-wrenching,” Hochman said at a news conference. That’s due to the “intimate and often brutal nature of the crimes involved,” he added.

Reiner is currently being held on no bail and will be arraigned at a later date, the district attorney’s office said. He is going through medical clearance, which is standard procedure, Hochman said.

Reiner is being represented by prominent defense attorney Alan Jackson, who has previously represented Kevin Spacey, Harvey Weinstein and Karen Read. Jackson told CNN on Tuesday that it wasn’t clear when his client would make his first court appearance.

More information on the day of the incident

Officials have previously given little details of what exactly happened in the deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner, but clarified Tuesday that Nick Reiner fatally stabbed his parents in the “early morning hours of December 14” in their Brentwood home before fleeing, the district attorney’s office said in a news release.

The Reiners’ daughter, Romy, lives across the street from their home, and went to check on her parents around 3 p.m. local time Sunday when she discovered their bodies, a source said. She left the house, found a friend who was staying with her, and told her to call 911, the source said.

Nick was arrested later that evening in the Exposition Park area near the University of Southern California campus, Los Angeles Police

Análisis por Stephen Collinson, CNN

El presidente Donald Trump podría hacer algo peor que atenerse al guión de J.D. Vance en su discurso nacional en horario de máxima audiencia este miércoles por la noche.

El vicepresidente acaba de regresar de Allentown, Pensilvania, donde presentó el argumento más coherente y disciplinado de la administración para su gestión de la economía durante diez meses.

Vance, a diferencia de su jefe, puede ceñirse a un mensaje político preelaborado y transmitirlo con eficacia.

Trump, en cambio, disfruta burlándose de los asesores que lo envían de viaje con declaraciones preparadas. “No he leído prácticamente nada del estúpido teleprompter”, se jactó en su propio evento en Pensilvania la semana pasada.

El presidente recibió la tarea de mostrar empatía por los altos precios y, en cambio, se desvió hacia despotricar sobre los somalíes y los molinos de viento.

El argumento de Vance, en su discurso en Keystone State, fue que cualquier estrés que sintieran los estadounidenses por los altos precios de los alimentos y la vivienda era culpa de los demócratas y que, cuando las políticas de Trump empiecen a surtir efecto el próximo año, todo mejorará. “Heredamos una economía de pesadilla de Joe Biden”, apuntó.

A diferencia de Trump, Vance estuvo dispuesto a admitir que muchos estadounidenses no reconocen la “época dorada” económica que su jefe no deja de pregonar. “Aunque hemos logrado avances increíbles, entendemos que queda mucho por hacer”, manifestó Vance. “Lo que le pediría al pueblo estadounidense es un poco de paciencia”.

La administración espera que la muestra de reconocimiento de Vance convenza a los votantes de que a Trump también le importa, a pesar de su incapacidad para demostrarlo. “Les prometo que no hay persona más impaciente por resolver la crisis de asequibilidad que Donald J. Trump”, afirmó el vicepresidente a su público.

Vance tiene mejores credenciales de clase trabajadora que su superior multimillonario. El martes se refirió a su difícil infancia en los Apalaches, retratada en sus memorias “Hillbilly Elegy”.

El libro describe cómo la abuela a la que conocía como “Mamaw” compró una calculadora que apenas podía permitirse para ayudar a su nieto, futuro graduado de la Facultad de Derecho de Yale, a aprobar un examen.

Incluso si desde entonces ha ganado millones, según los documentos presentados ante la Comisión Federal de Elecciones, Vance al menos puede demostrar que comprende lo que enfrentan los estadounidenses trabajadores.

Aun así, Vance ofreció una evaluación claramente optimista de una economía acosada por el debilitamiento de sus fundamentos, lo que ha dejado a muchos estadounidenses de clase trabajadora y media con una profunda sensación de inseguridad.

No tuvo más remedio que repetir la calificación de “A+-plus-plus-plus-plus” que Trump le dio a su propio desempeño en el tema. (Vance usó menos “+”).

Argumentó que los aranceles de Trump, que según muchos economistas están elevando los precios, generaron un flujo masivo de inversión extranjera.

Prometió que la administración no permitiría que más empleos estadounidenses se trasladaran al extranjero.

Afirmó que Trump ya había impulsado salarios más altos y una inflación más