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Over a dozen men have been charged with sex crimes in Australia following an American FBI investigation that proved fatal for two agents. Officials announced Tuesday that 19 men had been arrested and charged with a combined 138 offenses in connection to an international pedophile ring. "We will allege that these men were members of a technologically sophisticated online child abuse network that was operating across the country," Australian Federal Police Commander Helen Schneider told news outlets. Two of the suspects have already been convicted and sentenced, according to authorities. Those convicted are set to serve approximately 15 years in...

Senate Republicans accused President Joe Biden Wednesday of creating "the largest child trafficking ring in U.S. history." The video accompanying the statement, which contains remarks from various senators, including Ted Cruz (Texas) and Josh Hawley (Mo.), echoes recent remarks made by Tim Ballard, the former Department of Homeland Security agent whose relentless pursuit of child traffickers across the globe is the subject of the massively successful new film "Sound of Freedom." Cruz says in the footage that "the Biden administration has utterly failed to secure the border and has encouraged parents to send their minor alien children on dangerous trips...

A Minnesota man was arrested Wednesday in alleged connection to the cold case murder of a 15-year-old Chicago-area girl found stabbed to death in a field nearly five decades ago thanks to genetic genealogy, authorities said. Barry Lee Whelpley, 76, of Mounds View, was charged by the Will County State Attorney’s Office with murder in the death of Julie Ann Hanson, the Naperville Police Department in Illinois said. At a Friday court hearing, he waived extradition and is expected to return to the state within a few days. The retired welder was 27 at the time of the alleged killing...

The Florida mansion where prosecutors say Jeffrey Epstien raped underage girls and women for many years has “finally” been demolished. Developer Todd Michael Glaser said the sprawling Palm Beach property met the wrecking ball on Monday, according to a report in The Palm Beach Daily News. Glaser bought 358 El Brillo Way for $18.5 million in March, and announced his plans to raze the property. The funds from the sale have been allocated to the Victims’ Compensation Program to make payments to Epstien’s victims, after the convicted pedophile managed to kill himself in a Manhattan jail in 2019.

On Sunday, a gunman shot and killed the son of a federal judge in Newark, New Jersey, at the family’s home, and shot and injured her husband in the same attack. The judge, Esther Salas, 51, was at home at the time of the shooting but was not injured, and her husband, Mark Anderl, a 63-year-old attorney and former Essex County assistant prosecutor, is reportedly in stable condition. Officials believe the gunman who opened fire Sunday, killing Salas’ 20-year-old son and injuring her husband, had been dressed as a FedEx employee, The Associated Press reported. Unidentified law enforcement officials told...

The FBI for the first time has identified fringe conspiracy theories as a domestic terrorist threat, according to a previously unpublicized document obtained by Yahoo News. (Read the document below.) The FBI intelligence bulletin from the bureau’s Phoenix field office, dated May 30, 2019, describes “conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists,” as a growing threat, and notes that it is the first such report to do so. It lists a number of arrests, including some that haven’t been publicized, related to violent incidents motivated by fringe beliefs. The document specifically mentions QAnon, a shadowy network that believes in a deep state conspiracy...

Performance artist Marina Abramovic has backed out of her grandiose plans for her upstate arts institute and questions loom over what happened to the $2.2 million she raised over four years for the project, including donations from the likes of Jay-Z and nearly 5,000 donors in a Kickstarter campaign. The edgy artist, who became world famous for staring down people in her blockbuster 2010 MOMA show, The Artist is Present, touted her multi-million dollar Marina Abramovic Institute for the Preservation of Performance Art as a place for artists to conduct grand experiments

Terry Bean, a Portland power player in national Democratic politics and the gay rights movement, was arrested today on charges of sex abuse in a case involving a 15-year-old boy. Law enforcement sources familiar with the case say Bean will be charged with two counts of sodomy in the third degree, a felony, and sex abuse in the third degree, a misdemeanor. The arrest comes after a six-month investigation that began with allegations Bean secretly made video recordings of men having sex in his bedroom. As WW reported in June, Bean accused a former lover, Kiah Lawson, of attempting to...