Month: November 2021

Activists and concerned citizens on both sides of America’s generations-old battle over abortion have mobilized as a closely watched court case that could alter reproductive rights nationwide reaches a critical phase. 

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on the constitutionality of a 2018 Mississippi law that banned abortion procedures in the southern state after the first 15 weeks of a pregnancy. 

How the conservative-leaning court rules could reinforce abortion rights across America or allow individual states to limit or potentially ban the practice. 

In Mississippi, the epicenter of the case before the high court — Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — emotions are running high. 

“I know women who have had abortions, and the decision is gut-wrenching for them,” said Matthew Burke, a Gulfport, Mississippi, resident who works for a nonprofit that rebuilds storm-damaged homes. “The decision is theirs to make, and now the supposedly highest court in the country might take away that right based on politics. It’s crazy.” 

Many others disagree.

“The idea of taking a life, no matter how young, breaks my heart,” said Danielle Rodriguez from Jackson, the state’s capital. “I think there are extreme instances where maybe an abortion should be allowed, but this law can help save children’s lives.” 

The Mississippi law at the center of Wednesday’s debate is the Gestational Age Act. Passed in March 2018, it was quickly blocked from taking effect by two federal courts that found the law to be unconstitutional. The Supreme Court will decide whether to uphold or reverse the decisions of the lower courts.

That the Supreme Court even agreed to hear this case concerns those who support abortion rights, according to Mary Ziegler, a legal historian and law professor at Florida State University. 

“They didn’t have to take this case,” she said, pointing to the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision of 1973 that set forth a constitutional right to abortion in America. “The Supreme Court could have done the same as the lower courts and said Roe v. Wade already settled this. Instead, they’ve agreed to hear arguments, which might mean they feel they have enough conservative justices willing to overturn or reinterpret that decision.” 

A unique moment in time 

In the 19th century, U.S. states began criminalizing abortions. Over time, more restrictive and punitive laws were adopted, eventually prompting Roe v. Wade, in which a woman successfully challenged a Texas state law that prevented her from obtaining an abortion. 

Writing for the 7-2 Supreme Court majority in 1973, Justice Harry Blackmun noted “the sensitive and emotional nature of the abortion controversy” but concluded that “the right of personal privacy includes the abortion decision, but that this right is not unqualified and must be considered against important state interests in regulation.” 

“In 1973, the Supreme Court set the line at fetal viability,” Ziegler noted. Viability refers to a fetus’ ability to survive outside the uterus. It has been generally believed fetal viability begins at approximately 24 weeks, or roughly six months.

“The court decided a state must allow access to abortions until that point. But that was a different court than this one,” Ziegler said, referring to the Supreme Court’s current 6-3 conservative majority. “(Former) President Trump nominated three conservative justices, and as a result, we haven’t had a Supreme Court this conservative in a very long time. It’s hard to guess what they’ll decide.” 

Backing for Roe 

Mississippi has been at the forefront of the debate since 2018 when the Gestational Age Act was passed. Billboards trying to sway public opinion line highways, while talk radio and social media have amplified the discourse. 

Some hope the Supreme Court will follow the lead of the lower courts and find the act unconstitutional based on the precedent set by Roe v. Wade.

“I think the Supreme Court’s original finding that the right to an abortion is protected by the Fourth Amendment’s ‘right to privacy’ is the correct one,” said Evan Ash, a student living in Oxford, Mississippi. “I think any woman who wants an abortion should be able to get one. Let’s hope this court sticks with that thinking.” 

Many of the act’s opponents worry it will endanger the lives of women. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights, the average distance a Mississippi woman would need to drive for an abortion would grow from 125 to more than 600 kilometers if the law goes into effect, as they would need to travel out of state to reach a clinic.

Ash believes women of color will be disproportionately impacted if the Mississippi law is upheld. 

“Mississippi is the Blackest state in the country, and our public schools aren’t even allowed to teach proper sex education, only abstinence,” he said. “It’s this huge cycle that creates an inordinate amount of teen pregnancies and children that can’t be cared for, which creates more poverty.”

Ash added, “Without access to legal abortions, I’m worried women, desperate, will risk more dangerous methods (to terminate pregnancies).”

Rights of the fetus 

Others argue for the rights of the unborn and for establishing those rights earlier in a pregnancy. While the case before the Supreme Court originated in Mississippi, it has prompted a deluge of television advertisements elsewhere in America, including the nation’s capital, where presumably the justices who will decide the case might watch them. 

“By six weeks (in a pregnancy), we can detect a heartbeat with ultrasound technology. By 15 weeks, they (fetuses) can feel pain,” said an ad sponsored by the Susan B. Anthony List, a nonprofit anti-abortion group. “The scientific data that Roe v. Wade was based upon is antiquated.” 

The ad, narrated by a physician who opposes abortion, continues, “The case going before the Supreme Court from Mississippi to place limits on late-term abortion is absolutely necessary. … We have a responsibility to stand up for the vulnerable and those who can’t speak for themselves.”

“The thing I think liberals get wrong about many of us that are pro-life is that we’re not against the woman carrying the baby,” said Jackson, Mississippi, resident Danielle Rodriguez. “We’re just passionately for protecting the baby they’re carrying.”

Possible outcomes 

Ziegler doubts the Supreme Court will find the Gestational Age Act wholly unconstitutional. 

“They’ve surprised us before, but why would they accept the case if they’re going to make the same decision the court made 50 years ago?” she wondered. “It’s likely some change is coming.” 

Whether that change means a complete overturn of Roe v. Wade, reducing the time period in which states must allow access to abortions from 24 weeks to 15 weeks, or some other form of restriction remains to be seen. 

Ziegler said the court might opt for incremental change now, setting the stage for a more sweeping transformation of reproductive rights in a future case.

“I think the justices are very aware of optics right now,” she said. “They prefer to be seen as above politics, but they understand they are being viewed cynically by many Americans at the moment. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were careful with this decision before they do something broader on abortion in years to come.” 

Polling data 

Gallup polling earlier this year found 32% of respondents believe abortion should be legal in any circumstance, 19% believe abortion should be illegal in all circumstances and 48% believe abortion should be legal under certain circumstances. Such data fluctuates from year to year, but a nation divided on the question of abortion has remained constant. 

Should the Mississippi law survive Supreme Court review, other Republican-led states stand ready to enact restrictive abortion laws. That America could one day have a patchwork of abortion laws that vary widely from one state to another does not bother abortion opponents. 

“The Constitution is clear on the rights of the state(s) versus the federal government,” said Denver Mullican, a resident of Natchez, Mississippi. “These are decisions for the individual states to make with input from medical experts.” 

“This isn’t an issue of state’s rights,” Ziegler countered. “This is an issue of human rights. If you believe access to abortion — even if it’s tied to some time frame benchmark — is a right women should have, then the Supreme Court is where this decision should be made.” 
…

A longtime pilot for the late financier Jeffrey Epstein resumed his testimony at Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking trial Tuesday, saying that the British socialite charged with helping the financier find teenage girls to sexually abuse was “Number 2” in the hierarchy of Epstein’s operations.

Lawrence Paul Visoski Jr. is the first witness in the sex trafficking trial of Maxwell, 59, a woman who traveled for decades in circles that put her in contact with accomplished and wealthy people before her July 2020 arrest.

Asked where Maxwell stood in the hierarchy of Epstein’s world, Visoski said Maxwell “was the Number 2.” He added that “Epstein was the big Number 1.”

The testimony supports what Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Pomerantz told jurors in her opening statement Monday when she said Epstein and Maxwell were “partners in crime.”

Pomerantz said Maxwell recruited and groomed girls for Epstein to sexually abuse from 1994 to at least 2004.

Maxwell has pleaded not guilty and her lawyer says she’s being made a scapegoat for Epstein’s bad behavior.

Visoski testified briefly on Monday before beginning Tuesday on the witness stand. Prosecutors have used his testimony to show jurors photographs of Epstein’s homes and properties.

Epstein killed himself in his Manhattan jail cell in August 2019 as he awaited a sex trafficking trial. 

Maxwell has been held without bail since her arrest on charges alleging she recruited teenage girls for Epstein to abuse from 1994 to 1997. Earlier this year, the indictment against her was expanded to accuse her of continuing to aid Epstein’s sexual abuse of teenagers from 1997 to 2004.
…

The United States has removed a former Colombian Marxist rebel group from a list of foreign terrorist organizations.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement Tuesday the move came five years after a U.S.-Colombia agreement “formally dissolved and disarmed” the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC.

“It no longer exists as a unified organization that engages in terrorism or terrorist activity, Blinken said.

Blinken said revoking FARC’s designation does not affect U.S. charges or potential charges against the group’s former leaders. FARC was responsible for thousands of kidnappings and murders.

He also said the move will make it easier for the U.S. to support the deal’s implementation in parts of Colombia where disbanded FARC guerrillas are located.

While the 2016 accord has significantly reduced violence, FARC guerrillas and members of other armed groups continue to engage in violent activity.

The U.S also designated the two rebel groups formed from FARC, La Segunda Marquetalia and FARC-EP, as terrorist groups.

“The designation of FARC-EP and Segunda Marquetalia is directed at those who refused to demobilize and those who are engaged in terrorist activity,” Blinken said.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse.
…

Former President Donald Trump thrust the National Archives and Records Administration into the national spotlight after suing to keep the agency from releasing Trump White House documents to the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. 

A court is expected to hear the latest arguments in the case on November 30. 

Why are the call logs, drafts, speeches, handwritten notes and other documents from Trump’s term in office in the possession of the National Archives? 

“Presidential records are the property of the United States government and are administered by the National Archives,” says Meghan Ryan Guthorn, acting deputy chief operating officer of the agency. “So, all presidential papers, materials and records in the custody of the National Archives, whether donated, seized or governed by the Presidential Records Act, are owned by the federal government.” 

The Presidential Records Act of 1978 established that all presidential records are owned by the public and automatically transfer into the custody of the National Archives as soon as a commander-in-chief leaves office. All presidential libraries and museums are part of the National Archives. Former President Barack Obama’s presidential library will be the first to be fully digital. 

“The National Archives and Records Administration is the official record keeper for the United States government,” Ryan Guthorn says. “Only about one to 3% of the records are considered permanent records, and those are the documents that are essential to understanding the rights and entitlements of U.S. citizens, that hold our elected officials accountable for their actions, (and) document our history as a nation.” 

Presidential records weren’t always owned by the public. 

“From George Washington through Jimmy Carter, the papers of a presidential administration were considered the private property of a president to do with as they saw fit,” Ryan Guthorn says. 

Most commanders-in-chief have donated their presidential papers, a precedent started by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940. That continued until the 1970s when President Richard Nixon fought to destroy his records, including secret tape recordings, during the Watergate scandal that eventually led to his resignation from office. 

Congress suspected the tapes contained evidence that could incriminate the president. Lawmakers passed the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act of 1974, which applied only to Nixon’s presidential materials and instructed that materials related to Watergate be retained by NARA.

During his lifetime, Nixon fought to keep his presidential records private. NARA received most of the recordings related to Watergate, but not all. After Nixon’s death, his family donated his presidential papers and other materials. 

“Julie Nixon Eisenhower calls me, said she wanted to meet with me, said the family wanted to settle,” says John Carlin, who served as archivist of the United States from 1995 until 2005. 

Nixon’s daughter reached out to Carlin during his first week on the job in June of 1995, more than 20 years after Watergate. 

‘“You have to remember that in those days, the president’s records were personal,” Carlin says. “Nixon was going to keep them, and he had the law on his side. … And so, when she called that day and said, ‘We’re ready to settle,’ that was good news. …When he (Nixon) was alive, he fought it. I mean, tooth and toenail. There wasn’t going to be any settlement.” 

Carlin says dealing with Nixon’s papers consumed most of his decade-long term at the helm of NARA. But now, with the Presidential Records Act in place, he does not expect the same complications to arise with Trump’s records. 

“I’m not a lawyer, so take that into consideration, but I don’t think he has a leg to stand on,” Carlin says. “The law is on the side of the government. The law is clear. Those are government records, presidential records that the government controls and has access to.” 

Among those who access White House records are presidential scholars like Shannon Bow O’Brien who are interested in documenting history. 

“The public can start making requests through the Freedom of Information Act five years after an administration ends, but also the president can invoke certain restrictions for public access for up to 12 years,” says Bow O’Brien, a professor in the government department at The University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts.

“If we don’t have access to this material, we don’t have access to the truth. We only have access to curated truths, in many ways, which is what people want to tell us, or what people want us to see, and that’s not always the most accurate.” 

Bow O’Brien sees an upside to Trump’s fight to keep his presidential records out of Congress’ hands. 

“If nothing else, this Trump administration might be giving us additional clarity on some areas of the law that have never previously been challenged,” she says. 
…

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Latvia Tuesday for talks with the country’s leaders and a NATO ministerial meeting as the alliance expresses concern about Russia’s military buildup along the border with Ukraine.

Blinken’s schedule in Riga includes sessions with Latvian President Egils Levits, Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins and Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics. He is also due to meet with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg ahead of the ministerial talks later in the day.

Levits told reporters after his own talks with Stoltenberg on Monday that Russia’s military presence represents direct pressure on Ukraine, and that NATO “will remain in solidarity with Ukraine.”

Stoltenberg called on Russia to reduce tensions in the region, saying the military buildup is “unprovoked and unexplained.”

“Any future Russian aggression against Ukraine would come at a high price and have serious political and economic consequences for Russia,” Stoltenberg said.

A main focus of work at the NATO ministerial meeting is updating what the group calls its Strategic Concept, which was last changed a decade ago.

Stoltenberg said it is important to revisit the strategic document given the changed nature of the threats NATO faces, what he called a “more dangerous world.”

“We see the behavior of Russia, we see cyber, we see terrorist threats, we see proliferation of nuclear weapons,” Stoltenberg said. “And we see the security consequences of China which is now becoming more and more a global power.”

The talks in Riga also come as NATO members Latvia, Lithuania and Poland deal with a border crisis with neighboring Belarus.

The European Union accuses Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of enticing thousands of migrants, mainly from the Middle East, to travel to Belarus and try to cross into Latvia, Lithuania and Poland in order to destabilize the European Union. The EU says Lukashenko is retaliating for sanctions it imposed against his government.

Blinken is scheduled to travel Wednesday to Sweden to meet with fellow ministers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and to discuss bilateral ties with Swedish officials.
…

Americans are spending freely and going back to store shopping, knocking out some of the momentum in online sales from last year when Americans were making many of their purchases exclusively via the internet.

Shopper traffic roared back on Black Friday, but it was still below pre-pandemic levels, in part because retailers spread out big deals starting in October. The early buying is expected to also take a bite out of online sales on Monday, coined Cyber Monday by the National Retail Federation in 2005.

In fact, Adobe Digital Economy Index said that it was the first time online sales on Thanksgiving and Black Friday hadn’t grown, and Cyber Monday could likewise see a decline compared with a year ago. Adobe, which tracks more than one trillion visits to U.S. retail sites, had previously recorded healthy online sales gains since it first began reporting on e-commerce in 2012.

Still, Cyber Monday should remain the biggest online spending day of the year. For the overall holiday season, online sales should increase 10% from a year ago, compared with a 33% increase last year, according to Adobe.

A possible game changer is the omicron variant of the coronavirus, which could put a damper on shopping behavior and stores’ businesses. The World Health Organization warned Monday that the global risk from the omicron variant is “very high” based on early evidence, saying the mutated coronavirus could lead to surges with “severe consequences.”

Jon Abt, co-president and a grandson of the founder of Abt Electronics, said that holiday shopping has been robust, and so far overall sales are up 10% compared to a year ago. But he said he thinks Cyber Monday sales will be down at the Glenview, Illinois-based consumer electronics retailer after such robust growth from a year ago. He also worries about how the rest of the season will fare given the new variant.

“There are so many variables,” Abt said. “It’s a little too murky.”

Here is how the season is shaping up:

Cyber Monday still king but cooling 

Consumers are expected to spend between $10.2 billion and $11.3 billion on Monday, making it once again the biggest online shopping day of the year, according to Adobe. Still, spending on Cyber Monday could drop from last year’s level of $10.8 billion as Americans are spreading out their purchases more in response to discounting in October by retailers, according to Adobe.

Both Black Friday and Thanksgiving Day online shopping came in below Adobe’s prediction. On Black Friday, online sales reached $8.9 billion, down from the $9 billion in 2020, the second largest day of the year. On Thanksgiving Day, online sales reached $5.1 billion, even from the year-ago period.

Harley Finkelstein, president of Canadian e-commerce platform Shopify, which has 1.7 million independent brands on its site, said that so far, Cyber Monday is off to a strong start. Sales on his platform were up 21% on Black Friday compared with 2020 and more than double compared with 2019. He said he believes that independent brands will see better percentage sales gains online than big national chains, as shoppers gravitate more toward direct-to-consumer labels and look for brands with social conscience. And he says these brands have been able to get the inventory. Among some of the hot items on Shopify are children’s couches from Nugget and luxurious linens from Brooklinen.

“I think it is a tale of two different worlds,” he added.

Black Friday back but not the same 

Overall, Black Friday store traffic was more robust than last year but was still below pre-pandemic levels as shoppers spread out their buying in response to earlier deals in October and shifted more of their spending online. Sales on Friday were either below or had modest gains compared with pre-pandemic levels of 2019, according to various spending measures.

Black Friday sales about 30%, compared with the year-ago period, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks all types of payments, including cash and credit cards. That was above its 20% growth forecast for the day. Steve Sadove, senior adviser for Mastercard, said the numbers speak to the “strength of the consumer.” For the Friday through Sunday period, sales rose 14.1% compared with the same period in 2020 and were up 5.8% compared to 2019, Mastercard reported.

Customer counts soared 60.8% on Black Friday compared with a year ago, but were down 26.9% on the same day in 2019, according to RetailNext, which analyzes store traffic with monitors and sensors in thousands of stores. Sales rose 46.4% on Black Friday but were down 5.1% in 2019, according to RetailNext. Sensormatic, another firm that tracks customer traffic, reported a 47.5% surge in traffic on Black Friday compared with a year ago but that number fell 28.3% compared with 2019.

The changing discount landscape 

Unlike in years past, many big box stores like Walmart didn’t market their discounted goods as “doorbusters,” in their Black Friday ads, choosing instead to stretch the deals out throughout the season or even the day. And the discounts are smaller this season as well.

Shoppers were also expected to pay on average between 5% to 17% more for toys, clothing, appliances, TVs and others purchases on Black Friday this year compared with last year, according to Aurelien Duthoit, senior sector advisor at Allianz Research. That’s because whatever discounts are offered will be applied to goods that already cost more.

And for the first time, discounts on Cyber Monday compared with a year ago are expected to be weaker, according to Adobe. Still, Cyber Monday remains the best day to buy TVs with discount levels at 16%, compared with 19% discounts last year. Other categories where consumers will find deals include clothing at a 15% markdown, compared with 20% last year. Computers are being discounted at 14%, compared with 28% last year, according to Adobe.

Overall holiday sales could be record breaking. For the November and December period, the National Retail Federation predicts that sales will increase between 8.5% and 10.5%. Holiday sales increased about 8% in 2020 when shoppers, locked down during the early part of the pandemic, spent their money on pajamas and home goods.
…

U.S. President Joe Biden met at the White House Monday with chief executives of major retailers to learn about supply chain challenges during the busy holiday season. 

“The business leaders we gathered here today represent a broad swath of American shopping: brick and mortar and online stores, national and local grocery chains, our nation’s largest retailer, and makers and sellers of toys, electronics and health supplies,” the president said. 

“I want to hear from each of you about what you’re seeing this holiday season,” he told the business leaders.

The Biden administration has been struggling to fix supply chain problems, including backlogged ports and a shortage of truck drivers to haul goods across the country. The supply chain issues, fuel prices that rose markedly earlier this year and other factors have contributed to rising U.S. inflation.

Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said, “While we’re all concerned about the supply chain, we have more inventory than we did a year ago, and we have the inventory that we need to be able to support the business.”

He told the meeting virtually, “We are seeing progress. The port and transit delays are improving.” Walmart has seen a 26% increase in shipping containers getting through U.S. ports in the past month, according to McMillon. 

Food Lion President Meg Ham told the meeting the company’s supply chain “is strong and robust, and we have ample product inside of our stores for customers to choose from during this holiday.” 

The White House said other participants at Monday’s meeting, both in person and virtual, included the CEOs of Best Buy, Samsung North America, Qurate Retail Group, Todos Supermarket, Etsy, Mattel, CVS Health and Kroger. 

Some information in this report came from the Associated Press and Reuters. 

 
…

Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein were “partners in crime” in the sexual abuse of teenage girls, a prosecutor said Monday, while Maxwell’s lawyers said she was being made a scapegoat for a man’s bad behavior as the British socialite’s sex trafficking trial got under way in New York. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Pomerantz said at the start of Maxwell’s sex trafficking trial that the British socialite and Epstein enticed girls as young as 14 to engage in “so-called massages” in which sex abuse came to be seen as “casual and normal” after vulnerable victims were showered with money and gifts. 

The prosecutor sought to make clear to a jury of 12 that there was no confusion about whether Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime companion, was his puppet or accomplice. 

She described Maxwell, 59, as central to Epstein’s sex abuse scheme, which prosecutors say lasted over a decade. 

“She was in on it from the start. The defendant and Epstein lured their victims with a promise of a bright future, only to sexually exploit them,” Pomerantz said, as U.S. Attorney Damian Williams looked on from a spectator bench. 

Maxwell “was involved in every detail of Epstein’s life,” the prosecutor said. “The defendant was the lady of the house.” 

Even after Maxwell and Epstein stopped being romantically involved, the pair “remained the best of friends,” Pomerantz said. 

She said Maxwell “helped normalize abusive sexual conduct” by making the teenagers feel safe and by taking them on shopping trips and asking them about their lives, their schools and their families. 

The prosecutor spoke from an enclosed plastic see-through box that allowed her to take off her mask as Maxwell, in a cream-colored sweater and black pants, at times wrote and passed notes to her lawyers. 

‘She’s not Jeffrey Epstein’ 

When she finished, attorney Bobbi Sternheim said her client was a “scapegoat for a man who behaved badly,” just like so many women all the way back to Adam and Eve. 

“She’s not Jeffrey Epstein. She’s not like Jeffrey Epstein” or any of the powerful men, moguls and media giants who abuse women, Sternheim said. 

She called Epstein “the proverbial elephant in the room.” 

“He is not visible, but he is consuming this entire courtroom and overflow courtrooms where other members of the public are viewing,” she said. 

Sternheim said the four women who would testify that Maxwell recruited them to be sexually abused were suffering from quarter-century-old memories and the influence of lawyers who guided them to get money from a fund set up by Epstein’s estate after his August 2019 suicide in a Manhattan federal jail as he awaited his own sex trafficking trial. 

The lawyer said, “Accusers have shaken the money tree, and millions of dollars have fallen their way.” 

The openings set the scene for a six-week trial that Maxwell settled into with frequent gazes at her sister in the front row of a spectator section diminished in space by coronavirus restrictions. 

Allegations of grooming 

Maxwell — who once dated the financier — is accused of acting as Epstein’s chief enabler, recruiting and grooming young girls for him to abuse. The charges against her stem from the allegations of four women who say she and Epstein victimized them as teens from 1994 to 2004. 

Pomerantz said the abuse occurred at Epstein’s homes, including his estate in Palm Beach, Florida; his posh Manhattan townhouse; a Santa Fe, New Mexico, ranch; a Paris apartment; and a luxury estate in the Virgin Islands. 

The government’s first witness was Lawrence Paul Visoski Jr., who worked for Epstein starting in the 1990s as a pilot on the private jets that shuttled Epstein, Maxwell and others between his various homes. 

A prosecutor had Visoski start by describing the layout of the New York residence that he regularly visited to pick up luggage and do other chores. He was to return to the stand Tuesday. 

Authorities charged Maxwell in July 2020, arresting her after tracking her to a $1 million New Hampshire estate where she had been holed up during the coronavirus pandemic. 

Maxwell has pleaded not guilty and vehemently denies wrongdoing. She has been jailed in Brooklyn since her arrest, calling the claims against her “absolute rubbish.” Maxwell’s lawyers and family say she was Epstein’s pawn, now paying “a blood price” to satisfy public desire to see someone held accountable for his crimes. 

The wealthy, Oxford-educated Maxwell is the daughter of British newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell, who died in 1991 after falling off his yacht — named the Lady Ghislaine — near the Canary Islands. Robert Maxwell, whose holdings at the time included the New York Daily News, was facing allegations that he had illegally looted his businesses’ pension funds. 

Ghislaine Maxwell holds U.S., British and French citizenships and was repeatedly denied bail in the run-up to her trial. 

 
…

U.S. President Joe Biden made a new plea Monday to Americans to get vaccinated against the coronavirus¸ or get booster shots if they have already been inoculated, in the face of what his top medical adviser says is the inevitability that the new omicron variant will enter the country.

“Do not wait,” Biden told the estimated 60 million unvaccinated people in the country during a short White House address. “If you are not vaccinated, go get it now.”

But the president said he does not currently believe that additional shutdowns of businesses and schools are needed because of the new omicron threat.

Biden said he would “spare no effort” to fight the new variant but health officials expressed the hope that those already vaccinated have a measure of protection against it, even as more scientific studies are being conducted.  

Cases of the variant, first identified in South Africa, have now been found in several countries and Biden, starting Monday, has banned flights into the United States from South Africa and seven other countries in Africa.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” show that scientists are hoping to learn in the next week or two how well the existing COVID-19 vaccines will protect people against the omicron variant, and how dangerous it might prove to be.

“We really don’t know,” Fauci said.

COVID-19, the disease cause by the coronavirus, has killed more than 750,000 people in the U.S. during the 20-month pandemic, more than in any other country.

Biden said vaccines in the U.S. will always first be available for Americans and for free. He said, however, that the country also has a “moral obligation” to help the rest of the would get vaccinated and that widespread inoculations would help end the global pandemic.

He said 275 million vaccine doses produced in the U.S. have already been shipped to 110 other countries.

“We’re throwing everything we can at this virus,” he said.
…

The statue of President Thomas Jefferson will be removed from New York City Hall and sent on long-term loan to the New-York Historical Society after some City Council members objected to its presence. The reason: Thomas Jefferson owned hundreds of slaves. Nina Vishneva has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.
…

Twitter founder and CEO Jack Dorsey is stepping down as the company’s leader.  

In a news release, Twitter said Dorsey would be replaced by Parag Agrawal, who has been the company’s chief technology officer since 2017. The move is effective immediately.  

“I’ve decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders. My trust in Parag as Twitter’s CEO is deep. His work over the past 10 years has been transformational. I’m deeply grateful for his skill, heart, and soul. It’s his time to lead,” Dorsey said in a statement.

Dorsey’s most recent tweet, posted Sunday, simply said, “I love twitter.”

Dorsey, 45, founded the microblogging platform in 2006 and was CEO until 2008 when he was pushed aside only to return to the top spot in 2015.  

Last year, Elliott Management, a major stakeholder in the company, wanted Dorsey to choose between being CEO of Twitter or CEO of Square, a digital payment company he founded.  

Twitter’s stock rose on the news, but trading of the shares was suspended.

Some information in this report came from Reuters.
…

U.S. lawmakers have a busy month ahead as they face deadlines for major budget and defense actions, and what Democrats are hoping will be the completion of a $2 trillion collection of health care, climate and family services programs.

The most pressing issue for Congress is funding the federal government. A previous stopgap agreement in late September allowed government agencies to continue operating through December 3, but that means by Friday there needs to be a new deal in order to avoid a government shutdown.

Shortly after, Congress will need to address the debt limit by either raising the current level or suspending the cap on how much debt the Treasury Department is allowed to issue. Without any action, the government would have to delay payments or even default on some of its debt obligations, with potential complications for financial markets and the global economy.

The exact date of a debt limit deadline is hard to pinpoint because it involves balancing government spending commitments with the flow of money into the Treasury. But Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said the debt limit could be reached by December 15.

Lawmakers are also working toward approving the annual defense spending bill known as the National Defense Authorization Act before the end of the year. The measure, which authorizes appropriations for the Department of Defense and sets Pentagon policies, has a long history of bringing Democrats and Republicans together, having been approved every year since 1961. This year’s version has a price tag of about $768 billion.

Democrats are also hoping to get one of President Joe Biden’s major policy initiatives through Congress in the coming weeks by earning Senate approval for the $2 trillion program that includes items such as a child tax credit, housing aid, incentives to combat climate change and efforts to limit prescription drug costs.

The Democrat-led House of Representatives approved the package without the votes of any Republicans. The measure faces more uncertainty in the Senate, where Democrats hold an even slimmer majority.
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With an expanded definition to reflect the times, Merriam-Webster has declared an omnipresent truth as its 2021 word of the year: vaccine.

“This was a word that was extremely high in our data every single day in 2021,” Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor-at-large, told The Associated Press ahead of Monday’s announcement. 

“It really represents two different stories. One is the science story, which is this remarkable speed with which the vaccines were developed. But there’s also the debates regarding policy, politics and political affiliation. It’s one word that carries these two huge stories,” he said.

The selection follows “vax” as word of the year from the folks who publish the Oxford English Dictionary. And it comes after Merriam-Webster chose “pandemic” as tops in lookups last year on its online site.

“The pandemic was the gun going off and now we have the aftereffects,” Sokolowski said.

At Merriam-Webster, lookups for “vaccine” increased 601% over 2020, when the first U.S. shot was administered in New York in December after quick development, and months of speculation and discussion over efficacy. The world’s first jab occurred earlier that month in the UK.

Compared to 2019, when there was little urgency or chatter about vaccines, Merriam-Webster logged an increase of 1,048% in lookups this year. Debates over inequitable distribution, vaccine mandates and boosters kept interest high, Sokolowski said. So did vaccine hesitancy and friction over vaccine passports.

The word “vaccine” wasn’t birthed in a day, or due to a single pandemic. The first known use stretches back to 1882 but references pop up earlier related to fluid from cowpox pustules used in inoculations, Sokolowski said. It was borrowed from the New Latin “vaccina,” which goes back to Latin’s feminine “vaccinus,” meaning “of or from a cow.”  

The Latin for cow is “vacca,” a word that might be akin to the Sanskrit “vasa,” according to Merriam-Webster. 

Inoculation, on the other hand, dates to 1714, in one sense referring to the act of injecting an “inoculum.”

Earlier this year, Merriam-Webster added to its online entry for “vaccine” to cover all the talk of mRNA vaccines, or messenger vaccines such as those for COVID-19 developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. 

While other dictionary companies choose words of the year by committee, Merriam-Webster bases its selection on lookup data, paying close attention to spikes and, more recently, year-over-year increases in searches after weeding out evergreens. The company has been declaring a word of the year since 2008. Among its runners-up in the word biography of 2021:

INSURRECTION: Interest was driven by the deadly Jan. 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol. Arrests continue, as do congressional hearings over the attack by supporters of President Donald Trump. Some of Trump’s allies have resisted subpoenas, including Steve Bannon. Searches for the word increased by 61,000% over 2020, Sokolowksi said.

INFRASTRUCTURE: President Joe Biden was able to deliver what Trump often spoke of but never achieved: A bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law. When Biden proposed help with broadband access, eldercare and preschool, conversation changed from not only roads and bridges but “figurative infrastructure,” Sokolowski said.

“Many people asked, what is infrastructure if it’s not made out of steel or concrete? Infrastructure, in Latin, means underneath the structure,” he said. 

PERSEVERANCE: It’s the name of NASA’s latest Mars rover. It landed Feb. 18, 2021. “Perseverance is the most sophisticated rover NASA has ever sent to the Red Planet, with a name that embodies NASA’s passion, and our nation’s capability, to take on and overcome challenges,” the space agency said.  

The name was thought up by Alexander Mather, a 14-year-old seventh-grader at Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke, Virginia. He participated in an essay contest organized by NASA. He was one of 28,000 K-12 students to submit entries. 

NOMAD: The word had its moment with the 2020 release of the film “Nomadland.” It went on to win three Oscars in April 2021, including best picture, director (Chloé Zhao) and actress (Frances McDormand). Zhao became the first woman of color to win best director.  

The AP’s film writer Jake Coyle called the indie success “a plain-spoken meditation on solitude, grief and grit. He wrote that it “struck a chord in a pandemic-ravaged year. It made for an unlikely Oscar champ: A film about people who gravitate to the margins took center stage.”

Other words in Merriam-Webster’s Top 10: Cicada (we had an invasion), guardian (the Cleveland Indians became the Cleveland Guardians), meta (the lofty new name of Facebook’s parent company), cisgender (a gender identity that corresponds to one’s sex assigned at birth), woke (charged with politics and political correctness) and murraya (a tropical tree and the word that won the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee for 14-year-old Zaila Avant-garde).
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Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper claims in a lawsuit against the Defense Department that material is being improperly withheld from his use as he seeks to publish an “unvarnished and candid memoir” of his time in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet.

The lawsuit, which was filed Sunday in U.S. District Court in Washington, describes the memoir, “A Sacred Oath,” as an account of Esper’s tenure as Army secretary from 2017 to 2019 and his 18 months as defense secretary, which ended when Trump fired him in a tweet just days after the president lost his reelection bid.

The period in which Esper was Pentagon chief was “an unprecedented time of civil unrest, public health crises, growing threats abroad, Pentagon transformation, and a White House seemingly bent on circumventing the Constitution,” the lawsuit says.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the department was aware of Esper’s concerns.

“As with all such reviews, the Department takes seriously its obligation to balance national security with an author’s narrative desire. Given that this matter is now under litigation, we will refrain from commenting further,” he said in a statement.

Esper and Trump were sharply divided over the use of the military during civil unrest in June 2020 following the killing of George Floyd. Other issues led the president to believe Esper was not sufficiently loyal while Esper believed he was trying to keep the department apolitical. Firing a defense secretary after an election loss was unprecedented, but the opening allowed Trump to install loyalists in top Pentagon positions as he continued to dispute his election loss.

The lawsuit contends that “significant text” in the memoir, scheduled for publication by William Morrow in May, is being improperly held under the guise of classification and that Esper maintains it contains no classified information. The suit notes that Esper is restricted by his secrecy agreements from authorizing publication without Pentagon approval, or face possible civil and criminal liability.

The lawsuit quotes from a letter Esper sent to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin criticizing the review process. He wrote that he had been asked not to quote Trump and others in meetings, not to describe conversations he had with Trump, and not to use certain verbs or nouns when describing historical events.

The letter describes other problematic subjects and says some 60 pages of the manuscript contained redactions at one point. Agreeing to all of those redactions would result in “a serious injustice to important moments in history that the American people need to know and understand,” Esper wrote.

The suit itself says some stories Esper relates in the manuscript under consideration appeared to have been leaked to some mainstream media “possibly to undermine the impact” it would have had in his book.

Esper, 57, a West Point graduate and Gulf War veteran, said in a statement that he had waited for six months for the review process to play out but found “my unclassified manuscript arbitrarily redacted without clearly being told why.”

“I am more than disappointed the current Administration is infringing on my First Amendment constitutional rights. And it is with regret that legal recourse is the only path now available for me to tell my full story to the American people,” he said.
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Talks about reviving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal resume Monday in Vienna after a five-month break and for the first time since a new president took office in Iran.

Like six previous rounds of negotiations, which began in April, the United States is participating indirectly, similar to the 2015 deal, which was known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Iran will talk directly with the remaining signatories of the 2015 deal — Britain, China, France, Russia and Germany — with European diplomats shuttling back and forth to consult with the U.S. side. 

At stake is the resumption of the agreement that brought limits to Iran’s nuclear program lasting between 10 and 15 years in exchange for sanctions relief.

The United States withdrew from the agreement in 2018 during the administration of President Donald Trump, after which Iran began stepping away from its commitments.

To date, Iran has exceeded its agreed limits on the amount of uranium it stockpiles, enriched uranium to higher levels and utilized more advanced centrifuges in its nuclear facilities.

The original agreement came in response to fears that Iran was working to develop nuclear weapons, which Iran has denied, saying its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes such as research and generating power.

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Phil Saviano, a clergy sex abuse survivor and whistleblower who played a pivotal role in exposing decades of predatory assaults by Roman Catholic priests in the United States, has died. He was 69. 

Saviano’s story figured prominently in the 2015 Oscar-winning film “Spotlight” about The Boston Globe’s investigation that revealed how scores of priests molested children and got away with it because Church leaders covered it up. He died on Sunday after a battle with gallbladder cancer, said his brother and caregiver, Jim Saviano.

In late October, Saviano announced on his Facebook page that he was starting hospice care at his brother’s home in Douglas, Massachusetts, where he died.

“Things have been dicey the last few weeks,” he wrote, asking followers to “give a listen to Judy Collins singing ‘Bird on a Wire’ and think of me.”

Saviano played a central role in illuminating the scandal, which led to the resignation of Boston’s Cardinal Bernard Law and Church settlements with hundreds of victims. The Globe’s 2002 series earned it the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 2003, and “Spotlight” won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. Actor Neal Huff played Saviano in the film.

“My gift to the world was not being afraid to speak out,” Saviano said in mid-November in a brief telephone interview with The Associated Press.

Born June 23, 1952, Saviano recalled going to confession as a young boy at St. Denis Church in tiny East Douglas, Massachusetts, in the 1960s and whispering his transgressions through a screen to the Rev. David Holley. The priest, he said, violated that sacred trust and forced the 11-year-old to perform sex acts. Holley died in a New Mexico prison in 2008 while serving a 275-year sentence for molesting eight boys.

“When we were kids, the priests never did anything wrong. You didn’t question them, same as the police,” Phil Saviano’s brother Jim Saviano told the AP. “There were many barriers put in his way intentionally and otherwise by institutions and generational thinking. That didn’t stop him. That’s a certain kind of bravery that was unique.”

A self-described “recovering Catholic,” Saviano went on to establish the New England chapter of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, an organization working to bring specific allegations of clergy sexual abuse to light.

His faith in the Church shattered, Saviano instead leaned on politicians and prosecutors to bring offenders to justice. 

“We’re putting our faith in legislators and prosecutors to solve this problem,” he told reporters in 2002.

“Phil was an essential source during the Spotlight Team’s reporting on the cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, providing other critical sources, research materials and the names of several accused priests,” said Mike Rezendes, a member of the Globe team that brought the scandal to light and a current AP investigative reporter.

“He also shared his own heartbreaking story of abuse, imbuing us with the iron determination we needed to break this horrific story,” Rezendes said. “During our reporting, and over the last 20 years, I got to know Phil well and have never met anyone as brave, as compassionate or as savvy.”

Saviano earned degrees in zoology and communications from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Boston University and began working in hospital public relations. Later, he shifted to entertainment industry publicity and concert promotion, working closely with Collins, a lifelong friend and confidante, as well as Ella Fitzgerald, Mel Torme and other artists.

In 1991, he became seriously ill with AIDS and went public with his childhood abuse the following year, becoming one of the first survivors to come forward.

“Father Holley forced me and two of my friends to have repeated sexual contact with him,” Saviano said in an interview with the Globe — the first of many that would lead not only to criminal charges against the disgraced cleric but widespread prosecutions of others as the enormity of the scandal became evident.

By the early 2000s, Saviano was spending 10 hours a day on the phone with victims and journalists. He was an outspoken critic of the Vatican’s reluctance to deal decisively with the fallout from the scandal. In 2008, when Pope Benedict XVI hinted to U.S. bishops during a visit that they’d mishandled the Church’s response, Saviano questioned the pontiff’s decision to follow his remarks with Masses in New York and Washington. 

“If he was really serious about the issue, that Mass would not be held in New York. It would be held here in Boston,” he said.

In 2009, suffering kidney failure and unable to locate a match among family or friends, he found a donor after SNAP spread the word in a nationwide email to 8,000 clergy sex abuse survivors.

The abuse that came to light as a result of Saviano’s work prompted Cardinal Law, Boston’s highest-ranking churchman, to step down. The Globe’s reporting showed Law was aware of child molesters in the priesthood but covered up their crimes and failed to stop them, instead transferring them from parish to parish without alerting parents or police.

When the archbishop died in Rome in 2017, Saviano asked bluntly: “How is he going to explain this when he comes face to face with his maker?”

In 2019, at the Vatican for an abuse prevention summit convened by Pope Francis, Saviano said he told summit organizers to release the names of abusive priests around the world along with their case files.

“Do it to launch a new era of transparency. Do it to break the code of silence. Do it out of respect for the victims of these men, and do it to help prevent these creeps from abusing any more children,” he said.

Although there was a hard edge to much of his life, Saviano enjoyed traveling extensively and developed a soft spot for Indigenous art. In 1999, he launched an e-commerce website, Viva Oaxaca Folk Art, showcasing handmade decorative pieces he purchased on trips to southern Mexico and resold to collectors across the U.S.

He is survived by three brothers, Jim Saviano of Douglas; John Saviano of Douglas; and Victor Saviano of Boston; two nieces; and two nephews. Funeral arrangements were incomplete.
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Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter is changing his name to “Enes Kanter Freedom” to celebrate becoming a United States citizen.

Kanter’s manager, Hank Fetic, told the Associated Press that Kanter will have his citizenship oath ceremony on Monday afternoon and at the same time will complete his legal name change. 

The news was first reported by the Athletic. 

Kanter, 29, is a native of Turkey who has been an outspoken critic of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Turkish government. Kanter has said his passport was revoked by his homeland in 2017.

The 2011 first-round draft pick has also taken to social media to support Tibetan independence and criticize Chinese treatment of the Uyghur people. During games, he has worn shoes decorated to say “Free Tibet” and argued for a boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympics.
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