By CNN’s Barbie Latza Nadeau

Rome (CNN) — Vivid scenes of battlefield decapitations and female prisoners dragged off by their hair, carved into the 1,840-year-old marble Column of Marcus Aurelius towering over central Rome, are being brought back into focus through a $2.3 million laser restoration.

A team of 18 specialist restorers has been working since the spring of 2025, using handheld short-pulse lasers and chemical wraps to remove centuries of grime from the 100-foot-tall monument. The column was built between 180 CE, the year the Roman philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius died, and 193 CE.

The project marks the most extensive use of laser technology ever undertaken on an ancient monument, according to the chief restorer, Marta Baumgartner, who said the decision came despite the cost.

“The laser is a tool that is producing excellent results in restoration work, and the choice we made was to use it on the entire external frieze, the decorative band, of the column,” Baumgartner told reporters granted rare access to the 16-levels of scaffolding surrounding the monument.

“It costs more than traditional methods.” But it is “a method that delivers better restoration results, including in terms of timing.”

She also said the technology helps preserve the monument’s integrity. “But above all, it ensures respect for the material, the marble itself. It has fully guaranteed respect for the material and for the patinas, which are evidence of the stone’s natural aging.”

Scenes of divine intervention

Restorers are removing extensive black and gray deposits, filling cracks, repairing breaks and addressing marble erosion caused by decades of exposure to smog, rain and wind. They have also found that unsuitable materials used in 19th-century restorations compromised the fragile Carrara marble. Those materials are now being removed.

The column is one of the few Roman-era war monuments still standing in its original location. It’s located in front of the Palazzo Chigi, the official residence of Italy’s prime minister, build in 1562, linking ancient Rome with the modern state.

Spiral friezes depicting the Roman Empire’s wars under Aurelius wrap 23 times around the monument, forming a continuous narrative from base to summit. Plaster casts made in 1955 are displayed in the Museum of Roman Civilization in the Italian capital and remain an important resource for scholars.

The tower is made up of 18 marble drums carved with more than 2,000 figures, including soldiers, prisoners, gods and animals. There’s even a scene of divine intervention in the form of a deluge of rainfall. Marcus Aurelius appears repeatedly. While the scenes are difficult to discern from the ground, they are striking at close range.

In 1589, the original statue of Marcus Aurelius on top of the column was replaced with a bronze statue of St. Paul. A later restoration in the 1980s, used unsuitable materials, now removed. The square around the column was closed after a 2013 assassination attempt targeting guards at Palazzo Chigi and only reopened in 2023.

The laser restoration is scheduled for completion in early 2026.

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By CNN’s Barbie Latza Nadeau

Rome (CNN) — Vivid scenes of battlefield decapitations and female prisoners dragged off by their hair, carved into the 1,840-year-old marble Column of Marcus Aurelius towering over central Rome, are being brought back into focus through a $2.3 million laser restoration.

A team of 18 specialist restorers has been working since the spring of 2025, using handheld short-pulse lasers and chemical wraps to remove centuries of grime from the 100-foot-tall monument. The column was built between 180 CE, the year the Roman philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius died, and 193 CE.

The project marks the most extensive use of laser technology ever undertaken on an ancient monument, according to the chief restorer, Marta Baumgartner, who said the decision came despite the cost.

“The laser is a tool that is producing excellent results in restoration work, and the choice we made was to use it on the entire external frieze, the decorative band, of the column,” Baumgartner told reporters granted rare access to the 16-levels of scaffolding surrounding the monument.

“It costs more than traditional methods.” But it is “a method that delivers better restoration results, including in terms of timing.”

She also said the technology helps preserve the monument’s integrity. “But above all, it ensures respect for the material, the marble itself. It has fully guaranteed respect for the material and for the patinas, which are evidence of the stone’s natural aging.”

Scenes of divine intervention

Restorers are removing extensive black and gray deposits, filling cracks, repairing breaks and addressing marble erosion caused by decades of exposure to smog, rain and wind. They have also found that unsuitable materials used in 19th-century restorations compromised the fragile Carrara marble. Those materials are now being removed.

The column is one of the few Roman-era war monuments still standing in its original location. It’s located in front of the Palazzo Chigi, the official residence of Italy’s prime minister, build in 1562, linking ancient Rome with the modern state.

Spiral friezes depicting the Roman Empire’s wars under Aurelius wrap 23 times around the monument, forming a continuous narrative from base to summit. Plaster casts made in 1955 are displayed in the Museum of Roman Civilization in the Italian capital and remain an important resource for scholars.

The tower is made up of 18 marble drums carved with more than 2,000 figures, including soldiers, prisoners, gods and animals. There’s even a scene of divine intervention in the form of a deluge of rainfall. Marcus Aurelius appears repeatedly. While the scenes are difficult to discern from the ground, they are striking at close range.

In 1589, the original statue of Marcus Aurelius on top of the column was replaced with a bronze statue of St. Paul. A later restoration in the 1980s, used unsuitable materials, now removed. The square around the column was closed after a 2013 assassination attempt targeting guards at Palazzo Chigi and only reopened in 2023.

Análisis por Daniel Dale, CNN

Fue difícil elegir solo 25. Pero resultó más fácil de lo que solía ser.

Al igual que su primer mandato, el primer año del presidente Donald Trump en su regreso a la Casa Blanca fue un desfile incesante de mentiras. Sin embargo, la cantidad de afirmaciones falsas de Trump en 2025 se redujo, a pesar de que mantuvo su característica frecuencia asombrosa.

Las falsedades de Trump siempre se han caracterizado por su tenaz repetición. Se volvieron especialmente repetitivas en 2025.

Si bien continuó añadiendo nuevas mentiras con regularidad, se basó en un conjunto básico de invenciones que usaba prácticamente sin importar el contexto ni las veces que han sido desmentidas.

¿Has oído la ficción sobre cómo Trump consiguió US$ 17 o US$ 18 billones en inversiones? Probablemente sí, si has visto algunos discursos o entrevistas del mandatario.

Lo mismo ocurre con aquella falsedad sobre la caída de los precios al consumidor este año, o cómo puso fin a siete u ocho guerras, y lo mismo sobre cómo líderes extranjeros de todo el mundo vaciaron sus cárceles e instituciones psiquiátricas para enviar a ciudadanos no deseados a través de la frontera estadounidense como migrantes.

Aquí está nuestra lista altamente subjetiva de las 25 principales mentiras de Trump de 2025.

Elegimos unas que el presidente las repitió con especial frecuencia, otras que se referían a temas notablemente importantes y algunas porque eran especialmente atroces en su distancia con la realidad.

Mentira: Trump aseguró US$ 17 o US$ 18 billones en inversiones en 2025

El presidente, amante de las grandes cifras, incluso si son falsas, citó una cifra ficticia en todos sus discursos: la afirmación de haber conseguido “US$ 17 billones” en inversiones en Estados Unidos en menos de un año, cuando estaba en la Casa Blanca.

No ayudó a Trump que el propio sitio web de la Casa Blanca indicara en aquel momento que en realidad eran US$ 8,8 billones —e incluso esa cifra estaba exageradamente inflada— , pero procedió a aumentar su afirmación a “US$ 18 billones”, aunque el sitio web aún la situaba por debajo de los US$ 10 billones.

Mentira: “Todos los precios están bajos”

Trump mintió incluso sobre temas que la gente común podía ver. En otoño, afirmó que “no había inflación”, aunque sí la había. Read more

By Marshall Cohen, Hannah Rabinowitz, CNN

(CNN) — The “Epstein files” saga will spill into 2026, despite a deadline last week to release all of the records.

Congress passed a law last month — with near-unanimous support — requiring the Justice Department to release all of its files about Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender who was accused of abusing dozens of underage girls. Epstein died by suicide in 2019.

The so-called “Epstein files” are made of over 300 gigabytes of data, papers, videos, photographs and audio files that live within the FBI’s main electronic case management system and largely originate from the FBI’s two major investigations into Epstein, in Florida and New York, spanning decades.

The new transparency law gave the Justice Department a December 19 deadline to release all the records related to Epstein. The department has since published hundreds of thousands of files over the past week to a landing page on the DOJ website, dubbed the “Epstein Library.”

The records included on the Justice Department website include court records, responses to public records requests, and documents previously released by the House Committee on Oversight and Government reform.

But many of Epstein’s victims, as well as lawmakers from both parties, have criticized these releases for being incomplete and over-redacted. Others raised concerns about under-redacted portions that exposed at least one victim’s identity.

And then the Justice Department made a surprise announcement Wednesday that there are over a million more newly discovered documents potentially related to Epstein — and that they’ll take “weeks” to review and release them.

Trump appointees at the Justice Department say they’re acting in good faith to release as much material as fast as possible, while also going through the painstaking work of reviewing every file to make sure victims’ identifies are shielded, as required by the law.

The Justice Department didn’t respond to CNN’s request for comment Friday.

Here’s what you need to know about the records tha

By Daniel Dale, CNN

(CNN) — It was hard to pick only 25. But it was easier than it used to be.

Just like his first presidency, President Donald Trump’s first calendar year back in the White House was an unceasing parade of lies. In 2025, though, the variety of Trump’s false claims shrunk even as he maintained his trademark staggering frequency.

Trump’s lying has always been characterized by dogged repetition. It became especially repetitive in 2025. While he continued to regularly sprinkle in new lies, he relied on a core set of go-to fabrications he deployed virtually no matter the setting and no matter how many times they had been debunked.

Did you hear the one about how Trump secured $17 trillion or $18 trillion in investment? You probably did if you watched even a few Trump speeches or interviews. Same with the one about how consumer prices have fallen this year, the one about how Trump ended seven or eight wars, and the one about how foreign leaders around the world emptied their prisons and mental institutions to send unwanted citizens across the US border as migrants.

Here is our highly subjective list of Trump’s top 25 lies of 2025. We chose some because the president repeated them particularly often, some because they were about notably consequential topics, and some because they were especially egregious in their distance from reality.

Inflation, tariffs and the economy

Lie: Trump secured $17 trillion or $18 trillion in investment in 2025

The president who loves big numbers, even if they’re fake, had a fictional figure he cited in speech after speech: a claim that he had secured “$17 trillion” in investment in the US in less than a year back in the White House. It didn’t help Trump’s case that the White House’s own website said at the time that it was actually $8.8 trillion – and even that figure was wildly inflated – but he proceeded to increase his claim to “$18 trillion” even though the website still had it under $10 trillion.

Lie: ‘Every price is down’

Trump lied even about subjects that everyday people could themselves see he was lying about. He claimed in the fall that there was “no inflation,” though there was inflation; that “every price is down,” though prices were up on thousa