Ghislaine Maxwell found guilty of aiding in Epstein’s abuse
Ghislaine Maxwell, former companion to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, was convicted Wednesday of conspiring with him for at least a decade to recruit, groom and sexually abuse underage girls. A federal jury in Manhattan found Maxwell, 60, guilty of sex trafficking and four of the five other charges against her. She was acquitted of one count of enticing a minor to travel across state lines to engage in an illegal sexual act. Maxwell’s trial was widely seen as the courtroom reckoning that Epstein never had. Epstein, who was arrested in July, killed himself in a Manhattan jail cell the following month while awaiting his own trial on sex trafficking charges.
Feds: Early omicron data suggests a less deadly wave
Top federal health officials emphasized Wednesday that data on skyrocketing coronavirus cases in the United States and from other countries reinforced early signs that the highly contagious omicron variant was milder and less lethal than previous variants, even as it threatened to overwhelm health systems already on the brink from earlier surges. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a White House news conference that as cases increased by about 60% over the past week, to around 240,000 each day, hospital admissions and deaths had remained “comparatively low,” hinting at a less deadly wave of the virus.
Ungerrymandered: Michigan’s maps, independently drawn, set up fair fight
One of the country’s most gerrymandered political maps has suddenly been replaced by one of the fairest. A decade after Michigan Republicans gave themselves seemingly impregnable majorities in the state Legislature by drawing districts that heavily favored their party, a newly created independent commission approved maps late Tuesday that create districts so competitive that Democrats have a fighting chance of recapturing the state Senate for the first time since 1984. With lawmakers excluded from the mapmaking process, Michigan’s new districts will much more closely reflect the overall partisan makeup of the hotly contested battleground state.
WHO warns of a ‘tsunami’ of delta and omicron cases as US officials stress omicron’s ‘milder’ effects
The World Health Organization warned Wednesday that circulation of the delta variant and the emergence and rapid spread of omicron could create a “tsunami” of infections that could overwhelm health care systems, even as U.S. health officials emphasized that early data showed omicron infections producing milder illness. The global average of new cases hit a new high of more than 930,000 Tuesday, according to a New York Times database. The previous high was more than 827,000, reached in late April. Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general, said he is highly concerned that omicron “is leading to a tsunami of cases.”
Pentagon building new secret courtroomat Guantánamo Bay
The Pentagon is building a second courtroom for war crimes trials at Guantánamo Bay that will exclude the public from the chamber. The new courtroom will permit two military judges to hold proceedings simultaneously starting in 2023. On those occasions, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the four other men who are accused of plotting the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, would have hearings in the existing chamber, which has a gallery for the public. Smaller cases would be held in the new $4 million chamber. Members of the public seeking to watch those proceedings at Guantánamo would be shown a delayed video broadcast in a separate building.
Biden and Putin to hold call on Ukraine
President Joe Biden will talk to President Vladimir Putin of Russia Thursday about the Ukrainian border crisis, White House officials said, the second time in a little over three weeks that the two leaders will speak directly about what Washington sees as Moscow’s effort to redraw the map of Europe. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine, and to his British, French and German counterparts. U.S. officials said it was part of an effort to make clear that the United States would not negotiate about the future of Ukraine or borders in Europe behind the backs of the region’s leaders.
Israel faces a severe blow to wildlife amid outbreak of bird flu
Israel is acting to contain a severe outbreak of bird flu that has already led to mass culling of infected poultry and has caused the deaths of about 5,000 migratory cranes in a popular nature reserve in the north of the country. The minister of environmental protection, Tamar Zandberg, described the outbreak, identified as the H5N1 type, as “one of the worst blows to wildlife in Israel’s history” after a visit to the Hula Nature Reserve this week. Hula is a wetland that is a central stop on the winter migration route to Africa. The reserve is temporarily closed to visitors.
By wire sources