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https://www.instagram.com/tv/cyior-pvq4u/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link Published by OK Magazine MEGA Britney Spears is reflecting on her whirlwind year. 2021 was full of major events for the Princess of Pop, most notably being the termination of the restrictive conservatorship that has taken over her life since 2008. As the year draws to a close, Britney is looking back at her newly-regained freedom. In a cryptic video posted to her Instagram page on Thursday, December 30, the 40-year-old pop star shared a clip of hundreds of birds being released from their cages and flying away into the open sky, which clearly resonated with her in a special way. MEGA “SYMBOLIC of my year this year,” she wrote in the caption, seemingly alluding to the major legal victory that finally liberated her from the “abusive” arrangement under her father Jamie Spears and other conservators. BRITNEY SPEARS’ BEAU SAM ASGHARI SPILLS HE AUDITIONED FOR ‘AND JUST LIKE THAT…’ AS SEASON 2 REPORTEDLY SCRAPPED AFTER CHRIS NOTH SCANDAL Back in November, the judge presiding over Britney’s case decided to terminate the conservatorship, giving the “Toxic” singer the ability to rule her own life again. While she has been celebrating her new freedom alongside her handsome fiancé Sam Asghari, the singing sensation still has a few bones to pick with her family over their involvement in the conservatorship. MEGA “From every angle I was being hurt for no reason and my family was hurting me,” she stated in an Instagram post earlier this week. “They say go to the source for healing …. the person who hurt you … go to them and tell them … I’ve never gotten to do that. I wanted to be nice but what they did to my heart was unforgivable.” “I asked for 13 years to perform new songs and remixes of my old songs …. I had two months off in between each show settings for four years in Vegas … and every time I asked I was told ‘No…’ !!!!!” she explained. “It was a set up to make me fail yet I knew exactly what I wanted my fans to see.” BRITNEY SPEARS WAS AN ‘AMAZING MOM AND SUPER INVOLVED WITH HER KIDS’ AT ART EXHIBIT, FOUNDER SAYS She also insisted that her sister Jamie Lynn Spears was given remixes of Britney’s songs, but “the person who owns the music is told no.” MEGA She went on to say that her family wasted so much of her time “only to embarrass and humiliate” her, which is why she has no interest in producing music anymore. “I’m scared of people and the business,” she added. However, Britney’s fans are still hoping that she will make her return to the music world soon, especially after she previously hinted at having a new song in the works. “Pssss new song in the works … I’m gonna let you know what I mean !!!!!” she cryptically concluded in an Instagram post, as OK! previously reported. View the full article

Published by Reuters By Kanishka Singh (Reuters) -Top U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci said there was still a danger of a surge in hospitalization due to a large number of coronavirus cases even as early data suggests the Omicron COVID-19 variant is less severe. “The only difficulty is that if you have so many cases, even if the rate of hospitalization is lower with Omicron than it is with Delta, there is still the danger that you will have a surging of hospitalizations that might stress the healthcare system,” Fauci said in an interview on Sunday with CNN. The Omicron variant was estimated to be 58.6% of the coronavirus variants circulating in the United States as of Dec. 25, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The sudden arrival of Omicron has brought record-setting case counts to countries around the world and dampened New Year festivities around the world.. “There will certainly be a lot more cases because this is a much more transmissible virus than Delta is,” Fauci said on CNN. However, “It looks, in fact, that it (Omicron) might be less severe, at least from data that we’ve gathered from South Africa, from the UK and even some from preliminary data from here in the United States,” Fauci said. Fauci added that the CDC will soon be coming out with a clarification on whether people with COVID-19 should test negative to leave isolation, after confusion last week over guidance that would let people leave after five days without symptoms. The CDC had reduced the recommended isolation period for people with asymptomatic COVID to five days, down from 10. The policy does not require testing to confirm that a person is no longer infectious before they go back to work or socialize, causing some experts to raise questions. “You’re right. There has been some concern about why we don’t ask people at that five-day period to get tested. That is something that is now under consideration”, Fauci told ABC News in a separate interview on Sunday. “I think we’re going to be hearing more about that in the next day or so from the CDC.” U.S. authorities registered at least 346,869 new coronavirus on Saturday, according to a Reuters tally. The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 rose by at least 377 to 828,562. (Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Mark Porter) View the full article

=Buck SlipJohn Travolta’s Love life and not a single pronoun in referring to the gender of the love he seeks? But why? In any case we’re pleased to hear he’s coming out of his grief. It’s hard to believe that neither the magazine nor his family and friends used a single pronoun or reference to someone of a specific gender in this entire post (other than in reference to all the women he’s rejected, an army of them.). They must have heard the rumors and seen the photos…but no matter if it’s the magazine or those close to him trying to set the stage for something to happen… we’re glad to hear it and hope he finds a special someone to love for a long time. –Editor Published by OK Magazine MEGA Aiming high! John Travolta is heading into the new year vowing to be the healthiest he’s ever been, but a friend says he’s got an even bigger resolution for 2022 — finding love again. Since losing his wife,Kelly Preston, to breast cancer in 2020, “John has had a hard time with his grief,” shares the pal, “but he’s finally coming around and is taking better care of himself.” MEGA According to the friend, the Pulp Fiction star, 67, has been working out daily with a team of trainers, mixing it up between martial arts, cardio, and yoga. He is also paying attention to his diet by swapping out steak and potatoes for fish and smoothies. “John’s determined to live a long and happy life for his kids,” Ella, 21, and Benjamin, 11. JOHN TRAVOLTA ‘DOING EVERYTHING HE CAN TO HONOR’ LATE WIFE KELLY PRESTON WHILE ‘TAKING IMPORTANT STEPS TOWARD MOVING ON’: SOURCE “He’s really going the extra mile because he’s finally ready for the right person to come into his life,” adds the pal. “Everyone has noticed the positive change in John, and they’re so relieved. They’re crossing their fingers that he’ll find true love again, because he deserves it!” MEGA As OK! previously reported, the Grease alum has become more open to the idea of dipping his toes back into the dating pool since initially being hesitant to date following the tragic loss of his wife. Even though he first “turned down an army of interested women” while still grieving Preston’s death, he “slowly but surely” came around to the idea of finding love again. “John is starting to warm up to the idea of sharing his life with someone special,” a source claimed at the time. “Of course, he’s not going to rush into anything serious so soon, but going on a few dates and sharing a meal and conversation sounds good to him for now.” MEGA ELLA TRAVOLTA ENCOURAGES DAD JOHN TRAVOLTA TO ‘START LIVING LIFE IN FULL AGAIN’ FOLLOWING KELLY PRESTON’S DEATH, CLAIMS INSIDER Another insider insisted that Travolta and Preston previously discussed the topic during one of their final conversations, adding that Preston “lovingly gave John approval to find someone else.” “She told him she didn’t want him to go through life alone. She knew the kids would always be there for him, but she wanted to have a companion and she trusted him to use his judgement.” Travolta was reportedly “touched” by his wife’s words, and a source claimed “they came from the heart. She loved John that much and wanted him to continue living his life.” John Travolta Wants True Love on Towleroad ‘Incredible’: Trump supporters recall Capitol siege More Jan. 6 committee ‘looking into’ subpoenas for U.S. Republican lawmakers – chairman More U.S. Chief Justice says judges need ‘rigorous’ training on stock-trading rules More Ghislaine Maxwell Helped Kill Vanity Fair Exposé Of Her Sex Crimes, Newly Resurfaced Interview Reveals More Betty White, working actress into her 90s, dies just shy of her 100th birthday More Violence against women insults God, pope says in New Year’s message More North Korea’s Kim talks food not nukes for 2022 More Omicron dampens global New Year celebrations, fewer watch ball drop in Times Square More Steve Martin pays tribute to Betty White before 100th birthday and recalls first time meeting legend More Load More View the full article

Published by AFP Thousands of Trump supporters gathered in Washington on January 6, 2021 Washington (AFP) – They descended upon Washington in the thousands, gathering to protest the result of a presidential election they still claim was “rigged.” The US Capitol came under attack, leaving the country wounded. One year after January 6, 2021, three participants recall the events of a day that shocked the world. ‘Euphoria’ “January 6 was incredible,” says Samson Racioppi, a 40-year-old Republican Party stalwart who rented several buses to drive people to Washington from his home state of Massachusetts. The day began with outgoing Republican president Donald Trump addressing a sea of supporters waving “Trump 2020” flags in the biting cold near the White House. Trump fired up the crowd with a defiant speech, repeating his false claims that he won the November election over Democrat Joe Biden. “I remember the actual feeling of that day of euphoria,” said Jim Wood, who came to Washington from New Hampshire. “Seeing all the people.” Before Trump finished speaking, Wood, who is in his 60s, headed towards the Capitol, where Congress was certifying Biden’s election victory. Thousands of others did the same and an enormous crowd quickly assembled around the brilliant white dome of the Capitol building. ‘Let’s go!’ “Then all of a sudden, you heard, I guess, from my remembrance, screams of, you know, ‘Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,'” said Glen Montfalcone, who also came to Washington from Massachusetts. “And then kind of anarchy started happening,” Montfalcone added. “People were pushing, pushing, pushing. ‘Go go, forge forward, forge forward,'” he said. “And so we all did, we all forged forward and just started entering into the area, and then up the stairs.” All three men insist they did not enter the Capitol itself. They could be risking prison if they admitted they did. Hundreds of people did swarm the building, however, including a tattooed, half-naked man wearing horns and a fur hat. One protestor was shot dead by police. The world watched live, aghast, as the citadel of American democracy came under assault. Wood said the televised images he saw broadcast the next day at breakfast were “demonizing” and that the vast majority of the protestors remained outside the Capitol. During the next few months, two competing narratives would arise. Trump supporters claim it was a peaceful protest against a “stolen” election. Police officers who fought with the mob, Democratic lawmakers and even some Republicans called it “terrorism.” FBI at the door In the wake of January 6, law enforcement launched a nationwide sweep for participants in the assault on the Capitol. Montfalcone has had FBI agents turn up at his door. Several friends have been arrested. At his law school, students unsuccessfully attempted to have Racioppi thrown out. In Washington, a House of Representatives committee is investigating what has been described as an insurrection or a coup attempt. The January 6 participants reject this characterization of the day. On the contrary, Racioppi says proudly, “this is something I’m going to tell my grandkids about.” He remains convinced, like many Republicans, that the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump, despite the absence of any credible evidence this occurred. The law student said January 6 was just a skirmish in an ongoing conflict. “We’re looking at it as if it’s a war, right?” Racioppi said. “And the war is the elections in November. “And leading up to that war, we’re going to create a series of battles,” he said. “We’re going to cause as much political damage to the left and the people who support tyranny as possible.” Would he do it again? “Of course I would do it again,” he said. View the full article

Published by Reuters By Jan Wolfe (Reuters) – The congressional committee investigating last year’s Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol is “looking into” issuing subpoenas to Republican members of Congress to force their cooperation, the panel’s chairman said on Sunday. Representative Bennie Thompson, a Democrat, said on NBC’s “Meet The Press” that the committee is examining whether it can lawfully issue subpoenas to sitting members of Congress. “I think there are some questions of whether we have the authority to do it,” Thompson said, according to an interview transcript. “We’re looking at it. If the authorities are there, there’ll be no reluctance on our part.” Thompson is chairman of the House of Representatives Select Committee on Jan. 6, which is expected to hold public hearings and issue reports in the coming months. The Select Committee is trying to establish then-President Donald Trump’s actions while thousands of his supporters attacked police, vandalized the Capitol and sent members of Congress and then-Vice President Mike Pence running for their lives. Congress had been meeting to count the electoral votes giving Democrat Joe Biden the victory in the November 2020 presidential election. Multiple people close to Trump, including conservative media TV hosts, urged him during the riot to make a televised speech telling his supporters to stop the attack. Trump waited hours before releasing a prerecorded message. The committee on Dec. 22 sent a letter to Representative Jim Jordan, a Republican and ardent Trump ally, asking for testimony about his telephone conversations with Trump on Jan. 6. Jordan said in a recent Fox News interview that he had “real concerns” about the committee’s credibility, but was reviewing its letter to him. The request comes two days after a similar letter to Republican Representative Scott Perry. The committee requested Perry’s testimony about Trump’s attempts to oust Jeffrey Rosen, who was acting head of the U.S. Justice Department during the closing weeks of his presidency, and replace him with Jeffrey Clark, an official at the time who tried to help Trump overturn his election defeat. Perry declined to cooperate, posting on Twitter that the committee “is illegitimate, and not duly constituted.” An appeals court ruled earlier in 2021 that the committee was legitimate and entitled to see White House records Trump has tried to shield from public view. (Reporting by Jan Wolfe in Boston; editing by Jonathan Oatis) View the full article

Published by Reuters By Jan Wolfe (Reuters) – U.S. federal judges need “more rigorous” ethics training to ensure they are not hearing disputes in which they have a financial interest, U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts said in a year-end report published on Friday, citing a recent Wall Street Journal investigation. The newspaper reported in September that 131 federal judges broke disqualification rules and the judicial ethics code by presiding over cases involving companies in which they or family members owned stock. In his annual report on the federal judiciary, Roberts said most judges scrupulously follow the rules, and the violations identified by the Wall Street Journal were mostly “isolated” and “unintentional” oversights caused by conflict-checking procedures failing to reveal a financial conflict. “But for those judges who had multiple violations, or professed ignorance of the ethics rule, there is a more serious problem of inadequate ethics training,” Roberts said in the report. Roberts said the federal judiciary’s policymaking body has already begun to enhance ethics training courses for judges to ensure they are aware of their obligations. “Collectively, our ethics training programs need to be more rigorous,” Roberts said. “That means more classtime, webinars, and consultations. But it also requires greater attention to promoting a culture of compliance, even when busy dockets keep judicial calendars full.” The House of Representatives on Dec. 1 voted 422-4 in favor of a bipartisan bill imposing more stringent public financial reporting requirements on federal district and appellate court judges. The Senate has not yet acted on a companion bill. The Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act, spurred by the Wall Street Journal’s investigation, would set a 45-day window for judges to report stock trades of more than $1,000 and also require the judiciary to post disclosure forms online. (Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Additional reporting by Nate Raymond; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien) View the full article

Published by Radar Online SOURCE: US DOJ/MEGA British socialite turned convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell reportedly helped kill a damning Vanity Fair exposé of her sex crimes, according to a newly revealed interview transcript from 2002. According to the newly released transcript, the 60-year-old former lover and confidante of late billionaire and fellow sex offender Jeffrey Epstein pressured a Vanity Fair reporter to kill a scheduled magazine exposé revealing her then-alleged sex crimes nearly 20 years ago. Besides persuading the reporter to kill the exposé, Maxwell also reportedly claimed that Epstein was “very, very good” to his accusers, according to the newly released transcript of the 2002 interview. SOURCE: US DOJ/MEGA Now, days after Maxwell was found guilty of five out of six charges of grooming and trafficking underage girls for her “partner in crime” Jeffrey Epstein in a Manhattan federal court, Vanity Fair reporter Vicky Ward is speaking out regarding both the planned exposé and her subsequent interview with Maxwell from 2002. “We never got to hear from Maxwell herself this whole trial. Her defense’s strategy was to undermine the credibility of the accusers, not to explain her narrative,” Ward says before sharing the 2002 interview transcript with Maxwell on her Substack, an online publishing platform for journalists. “So I went back and looked over the transcript of my 2002 interview with Maxwell about Maria and Annie Farmer, the latter who so bravely testified a couple of weeks ago. It was the one and only conversation I had with her on the topic of Annie and Maria Farmer,” Ward writes, regarding two of Maxwell’s victims who testified during the four-week trial. What follows in the transcript with Maxwell is nothing less than saddening, especially following what was revealed regarding Maxwell, Epstein, and Maria and Annie Farmer during the recent trial. In fact, Ward herself says it was her “eternal regret” that Vanity Fair did not run the 2002 accusations by the Farmer sisters, whose testimony was crucial to Maxwell’s guilty conviction on Thursday. SOURCE: US DOJ/MEGA “These are two girls that benefited greatly from Jeffrey’s generosity, and absolutely nothing untoward in any stretch of the imagination ever took place with them,” Maxwell told Ward during the interview. “You’re going to believe her over me? Is that what you’re saying to me?” Maxwell later asks Ward, according to the transcript as she tries her best to discredit not only the victims but the exposé itself. While the transcript of the interview goes on, perhaps the biggest bombshell Ward recently revealed was how both the exposé, and her interview with Maxwell, were ultimately cut from the magazine following a meeting between Epstein and her Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. “But Vanity Fair had other plans,” Ward writes. “Carter had said I didn’t have sufficient reporting. I disagree.” Now, nearly 20 years after Maxwell allegedly killed a story shining a bright light onto her sex crimes, she has been found guilty by a jury of her peers for the very things she claimed never even occurred. SOURCE: US DOJ/MEGA View the full article

Published by Reuters By Bill Trott (Reuters) -Comedic actress Betty White, who capped a career of more than 80 years by becoming America’s geriatric sweetheart after Emmy-winning roles on television sitcoms “The Golden Girls” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” died on Friday, less than three weeks shy of her 100th birthday. The agent, Jeff Witjas, told People magazine: “Even though Betty was about to be 100, I thought she would live forever.” No cause was cited. In a youth-driven entertainment industry where an actress over 40 faces career twilight, White was an anomaly who was a star in her 60s and a pop culture phenomenon in her 80s and 90s. Playing on her eminent likability, White was still starring in a TV sitcom, “Hot in Cleveland,” at age 92 until it was canceled in late 2014. White said her longevity was a result of good health, good fortune and loving her work. “It’s incredible that I’m still in this business and that you are still putting up with me,” White said in an appearance at the 2018 Emmy Awards ceremony, where she was honored for her long career. “It’s incredible that you can stay in a career this long and still have people put up with you. I wish they did that at home.” White was not afraid to mock herself and throw out a joke about her sex life or a snarky crack that one would not expect from a sweet-smiling, white-haired elderly woman. She was frequently asked if, after such a long career, there was anything she still wanted to do and the standard response was “Robert Redford.” “She was great at defying expectation. She managed to grow very old and somehow, not old enough. We’ll miss you, Betty,” former costar and friend Ryan Reynolds wrote in a Twitter post. “Old age hasn’t diminished her,” the New York Times wrote in 2013. “It has given her a second wind.” Minutes after news emerged of her death, U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters: “That’s a shame. She was a lovely lady.” His wife Jill Biden said: “Who didn’t love Betty White? We’re so sad about her death.” Betty Marion White was born on Jan. 17, 1922, in Oak Park, Illinois, and her family moved to Los Angeles during the Great Depression, where she attended Beverly Hills High School. A DEBUT IN THE 1930s White started her entertainment career in radio in the late 1930s and by 1939 had made her TV debut singing on an experimental channel in Los Angeles. After serving in the American Women’s Voluntary Service, which helped the U.S. effort during World War Two, she was a regular on “Hollywood on Television,” a daily five-hour live variety show, in 1949. A few years later she became a pioneering woman in television by co-founding a production company and serving as a co-creator, producer and star of the 1950s sitcom “Life with Elizabeth.” Through the 1960s and early ’70s White was seen regularly on television, hosting coverage of the annual Tournament of Rose Parade and appearing on game shows such as “Match Game” and “Password.” She married “Password” host Allen Ludden, her third and final husband, in 1963. White reached a new level of success on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” playing the host of a home-making television show, the snide, lusty Sue Ann Nivens, whose credo was “a woman who does a good job in the kitchen is sure to reap her rewards in other parts of the house.” White won best-supporting actress Emmys for the role in 1975 and 1976. She won another Emmy in 1986 for “The Golden Girls,” a sitcom about four older women living together in Miami that featured an age demographic rarely highlighted on American television. White also was nominated for an Emmy six other times for her portrayal of the widowed Rose Nylund, a sweet, naive and ditzy Midwesterner, on the show, which ran from 1985 to 1992 and was one of the top-rated series of its time. After a less successful sequel to “The Golden Girls” came a series of small movie parts, talk-show appearances and one-off television roles, including one that won her an Emmy for a guest appearance on “The John Larroquette Show.” By 2009 she was becoming ubiquitous with more frequent television appearances and a role in the Sandra Bullock film “The Proposal.” She starred in a popular Snickers candy commercial that aired during the Super Bowl, taking a brutal hit in a mud puddle in a football game. A young fan started a Facebook campaign to have White host “Saturday Night Live” and she ended up appearing in every sketch on the show and winning still another Emmy for it. The Associated Press voted her entertainer of the year in 2010 and a 2011 Reuters/Ipsos poll found that White, then 89, was the most popular and trusted celebrity in America with an 86% favorability rating. White’s witty and brassy demeanor came in handy as host of “Betty White’s Off Their Rockers,” a hidden-camera show in which elderly actors pulled pranks on younger people. “Who would ever dream that I would not only be this healthy, but still be invited to work?” White said in a 2015 interview with Oprah Winfrey. White, who had no children, worked for animal causes. She once turned down a role in the movie “As Good as It Gets” because of a scene in which a dog was thrown in a garbage chute. She looked forward to her milestone birthday, writing on Twitter just three days before her death, “My 100th birthday … I cannot believe it is coming up.” (Writing by Bill Trott; Additional reporting by Jarrett Renshaw and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Diane Craft, Howard Goller and Lisa Shumaker) View the full article

Published by Reuters By Philip Pullella VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -Pope Francis used his New Year’s message on Saturday to issue a clarion call for an end to violence against women, saying it was insulting to God. Francis, 85, celebrated a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica on the day the Roman Catholic Church marks both the solemnity of Holy Mary Mother of God as well as its annual World Day of Peace. Francis appeared to be in good form on Saturday following an unexplained incident on New Year’s Eve where he attended a service but at the last minute did not preside over it as he had been expected to. At the start of the Mass on Saturday, he walked the entire length of the central aisle of basilica, as opposed to Friday night, when he emerged from a side entrance close to the altar and watched from the sidelines. Francis suffers from a sciatica condition that causes pain in the legs, and sometimes a flare up prevents him from standing for long periods. Francis wove his New Year’s homily around the themes of motherhood and women – saying it was they who kept together the threads of life – and used it to make one of his strongest calls yet for an end to violence against them. “And since mothers bestow life, and women keep the world (together), let us all make greater efforts to promote mothers and to protect women,” Francis said. “How much violence is directed against women! Enough! To hurt a woman is to insult God, who from a woman took on our humanity – not through an angel, not directly, but through a woman,” he said, in a reference to Jesus’s mother Mary. During an Italian television programme last month, Francis told a woman who had been beaten by her ex-husband that men who commit violence against women engage in something that is “almost satanic”. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began nearly two years ago, Francis has several times spoken out against domestic violence, which has increased in many countries since lockdowns left many women trapped with their abusers. Public participation at the Mass was lower than in some past years because of COVID restrictions. Italy, which surrounds Vatican City, reported https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/italy-reports-record-144243-coronavirus-cases-155-deaths-2021-12-31 a record 144,243 coronavirus related cases on Friday and has recently imposed new measures such as an obligation to wear masks outdoors. In the text of his Message for the World Day of Peace, issued last month, Francis said nations should divert money spent on armaments to invest in education, and decried growing military costs at the expense of social services. The annual peace message is sent to heads of state and international organisations, and the pope gives a signed copy to leaders who make official visits to him at the Vatican during the upcoming year. (Reporting by Philip PullellaEditing by Peter Graff) View the full article

Published by Reuters By Josh Smith SEOUL (Reuters) -North Korean leader Kim Jong Un capped off his 10th year in power with a speech that made more mention of tractor factories and school uniforms than nuclear weapons or the United States, according to summaries by state media on Saturday. North Korea’s main goals for 2022 will be jump starting economic development and improving people’s lives as it faces a “great life-and-death struggle,” Kim said in a speech on Friday at the end of the 4th Plenary Meeting of the 8th Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), which began on Monday. The meetings coincided with the 10-year anniversary of Kim https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/nkorea-after-10-years-kim-jong-un-better-armed-more-isolated-than-ever-2021-12-15 effectively assuming leadership of the country after the death of his father in 2011. Kim has used previous speeches around the New Year to make major policy announcements, including launching significant diplomatic engagements with South Korea and the United States. But summaries of his speech published in North Korean state media made no specific mention of the United States, with only a passing reference to unspecified discussions of inter-Korean relations and “external affairs.” The domestic focus of the speech underscored the economic problems Kim faces at home, where self-imposed anti-pandemic border lockdowns have left North Korea more isolated than ever before, with international aid organisations warning of possible food shortages and a humanitarian crisis. “The main task facing our Party and people next year is to provide a sure guarantee for the implementation of the five-year plan and bring about a remarkable change in the state development and the people’s standard of living,” Kim was quoted as saying. Kim spent the majority of his speech detailing domestic issues from an ambitious plan for rural development to people’s diets, school uniforms and the need to crack down on “non-socialist practices.” The big focus on rural development is likely a populist strategy, said Chad O’Carroll, founder of NK News, a Seoul-based website that tracks North Korea. “Overall, Kim might be aware that revealing sophisticated military development plans while people are suffering food shortages and harsh conditions outside of Pyongyang might not be such a good idea this year,” he wrote on Twitter. Saturday’s state media report cited the development of “one ultra-modern weapon system after another” as a major achievement of the past year and said Kim called for bolstering the national defence to face an unstable international situation. A tractor factory he discussed in the speech was likely used to build launch vehicles for missiles, foreign analysts have said, and North Korea is believed to have expanded its arsenal despite the lockdowns. The reports of Kim’s speech did not mention the United States’ call for denuclearisation talks, or South Korea’s push for a declaration to formally end the 1950-1953 Korean War as a way to restart those negotiations. North Korea has previously said it is open to diplomacy, but that the American overtures appear hollow while “hostile acts” such as military drills and sanctions continue. (Reporting by Josh Smith; Editing by Chris Reese and Neil Fullick) View the full article

Published by Reuters By Daniel Trotta (Reuters) – The Omicron coronavirus variant dampened New Year festivities around much of the world, with Paris cancelling its fireworks show, London relegating its to television, and New York City scaling down its famous ball drop celebration in Times Square. The illuminated ball made of Waterford crystal panels slid down its pole at the midnight hour in Times Square, but only 15,000 spectators were allowed into the official viewing area instead of the usual 58,000. A year ago, the newly available vaccine offered hope that the COVID-19 pandemic may be under control by the start of 2022. Instead, the sudden arrival of Omicron has brought a surge in coronavirus cases across the globe. Worldwide infections hit a record high over the past seven-day period, with an average of just over a million cases detected a day between Dec. 24 and 30, up some 100,000 on the previous peak posted on Wednesday, according to Reuters data. Deaths, however, have not risen in kind, bringing hope the new variant is less lethal. New York City reported a record 44,000 cases on Wednesday and another 43,000 on Thursday, leading some critics to question whether the celebrations should go ahead at all. But officials decided an outdoor party of vaccinated, masked and socially distant revellers was safe, and a better option than the virtually vacant celebration that rung in 2021. “I would be lying if I said I’m not concerned,” said Sue Park, a Columbia University student who was one of the 15,000 allowed to watch in person. “Definitely I think it’s worth it to come and celebrate. It will just be more meaningful to be in the crowd.” Elsewhere around the globe, events were scaled back or cancelled outright, such as with the traditional fireworks over the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. Midnight passed in Paris without a planned fireworks display or DJ sets, as city officials cancelled events planned on the Champs-Elysees following the advice of a scientific panel that declared mass gatherings would be too risky. In the Netherlands, where outside groupings of more than four people are banned, police dispersed several thousand people who had defiantly gathered at Amsterdam’s central Dam Square, ANP news agency reported. But in London, where a fireworks display and light show had been cancelled in October, officials announced on Friday the spectacle would come to life on the television screen, as Big Ben rang in the New Year for the first time since 2017 following a restoration. BBC images of the fireworks showed very light vehicle traffic and virtually no in-person spectators. Earlier, Britain a study of a million cases that found those with Omicron were around a third as likely to need hospitalisation as those with the previously dominant Delta variant. The results were “in keeping with the encouraging signs we have already seen,” said Susan Hopkins, chief medical adviser at the UK Health Security Agency. In the wake of encouraging data, Cape Town abruptly lifted a curfew just in time for the New Year, after South Africa became the first country to declare its Omicron wave had crested – and with no huge surge in deaths. South Africa had first raised the alarm about the new fast-spreading coronavirus variant racing around the world. “I’m just hoping that Cape Town goes back to the old Cape Town that we all knew about,” said Michael Mchede, manager of a Hard Rock cafe by the white sands of Camps Bay Beach, who was thrilled to get the place ready to host an unexpected bash. Hours earlier, the Australian city of Sydney also feted the New Year with something like full swagger, as spectacular fireworks glittered in the harbour above the Opera House. People in Madrid queued for hours to get into the main Puerta del Sol square where celebrations went ahead with multiple security checkpoints, mandatory masks and capacity at 60% of normal levels. Saul Pedrero, a 34-year old clerk, made the trip from Barcelona, which has some of Spain’s strictest controls, including a 1 a.m. curfew. “It seems like another country. Here you can do everything and nobody says anything,” he said. A lavish firework display lit up the festivities, which Spaniards mark by stuffing 12 grapes into their mouths to accompany each chime of the clock striking midnight. In Asia, celebrations were mostly abridged or cancelled. In South Korea, a traditional midnight bell-ringing ceremony was cancelled for the second year, while festivities were banned in Tokyo’s glittering Shibuya entertainment district, and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida took to YouTube to urge people to wear masks and limit numbers at parties. China, where the coronavirus first emerged in late 2019, was on high alert, with the city of Xian under lockdown and New Year events in other cities cancelled. (This story was refiled to fix spelling of “pole” in second paragraph.) (Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by Nick Macfie, Rosalba O’Brien, Chris Reese and Neil Fullick) View the full article

Published by BANG Showbiz English Steve Martin was “elated” the first time he met Betty White. The ‘Only Murders in the Building’ actor – who first met the ‘Golden Girls’ legend almost 50 years ago – shared a sweet anecdote as he paid tribute in the run up to her 100th birthday on January 17th. The 76-year-old comedian wrote on Twitter: “In 1974, I was an obscure opening act for Linda Ronstadt at the Troubadour in Los Angeles. Passing through the lobby before the show, I saw Betty White and her husband Allen Ludden waiting in line.” In another tweet, the ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’ star gushed about how much he “loved” the iconic actress – who featured in the 1970s classic sitcom ‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ and her own programme ‘The Betty White Show’ – and how he was “elated” she and Allen had come to see him. He tweeted: “I loved Betty White, so I went up to them: ‘I’m so honored to meet you both.’ And then I said, ‘Isn’t Linda great?’ “She said, ‘We came to see you.’ I said, ‘Why?’ ‘Because we heard you were funny.’ I was elated.” He’s not the only celebrity to wish the ‘Hot in Cleveland’ actress – who has worked in Hollywood since the 1940s and was inducted to the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame in 1995 – an early birthday. Ryan Reynolds – who Betty collaborated with on the 2009 romantic comedy ‘The Proposal’ alongside Sandra Bullock – revealed he has been an admirer of her’s “for as long as I can remember” and opined about her comic timing. The 45-year-old actor added: “I heard that scripts for Golden Girls were only 35 pages, which makes sense because so many of the laughs come from Betty simply looking at her castmates.” Speaking to PEOPLE magazine, he joked Betty is “a typical Capricorn” as she “sleeps all day” and is “out all night boozing and snacking on men.” Responding to his words, she joked to the publication: “I’ve heard Ryan can’t get over his thing for me but Robert Redford is The One.” View the full article

Published by Reuters By Brad Brooks (Reuters) -Dana Fenner’s hands were full of New Year’s Eve hats and horns as she perused an aisle at a Party City store in Texas, not hesitating for a second when asked about her hopes for 2022. “Normalcy. I want everything to get back to normal,” Fenner said, as she shopped for the low-key, homespun festivities that she, her husband and three children planned on Friday. Pandemic-weary Americans shared Fenner’s desire as they prepared to send off 2021 amid a sharp increase in coronavirus cases as the Omicron variant rapidly spreads https://www.reuters.com/world/us/experts-warn-omicron-blizzard-disrupt-us-next-month-2021-12-30 and pushes the U.S. to record case levels. In some spots, including Los Angeles, the latest virus wave shattered official New Year’s Eve bash plans. But New York and several other cities say the party will go on, even if in a curtailed fashion. New York City’s bash – the biggest and most iconic in the United States – will once again be carried out in a scaled-down way https://www.reuters.com/world/us/new-york-city-scale-down-new-years-eve-celebrations-times-square-2021-12-23, city officials said. But it will be far larger than a year ago when only a few dozen people https://www.reuters.com/world/us/after-year-like-no-other-new-yorks-times-square-empties-out-new-years-eve-2020-12-31 were invited to watch the ball drop in Times Square. For decades, partygoers have filled the streets around Times Square on New Year’s Eve, standing for hours in the cold waiting to see a glittering crystal ball glide down a pole mounted atop a building in the year’s final seconds. When the ball reaches the bottom, the crowds erupt in hugs, kisses and good cheer. About 15,000 people who show proof of full vaccination will be allowed inside a fenced area to witness the ball drop this year – about a fourth of a pre-pandemic year. But it’s still a world away from where the city was a year ago, said Paul Warshaw, a co-founder of balldrop.com https://www.balldrop.com, who has spent two decades producing parties largely focused on New Year’s Eve celebrations. After having no events last year, Warshaw said that he’s producing about 40 events catering to upward of 25,000 people on Friday in New York. That’s in line with pre-pandemic levels. “There is a good amount of excitement, though people are proceeding with caution,” Warshaw said, stressing that all his indoor events would adhere to strict proof-of-vaccination and other safety policies. Top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci urged people to avoid large gatherings to celebrate the arrival of 2022. Speaking on CNN this week, Fauci told people to stay away from big parties, saying “there will be other years to do that, but not this year.” Fauci said family gatherings of people who are vaccinated and had received the booster shot were safe. Chris Beyrer, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said stubbornly low levels of vaccine coverage in the U.S., which stand at about 63% fully vaccinated, make this New Year’s Eve far more dangerous than it should have to be. “It’s one of the coldest times of the year, so that means the celebrations are happening inside,” he said. “And it’s those indoor celebrations that we worry about, especially those mixing generations.” Adding to the worry, Beyrer said, are the frustratingly inadequate levels of testing available for people who want to take one to ensure parties they host or attend are as safe as possible. Despite a livelier atmosphere this year as compared to a year ago, the realities of the Omicron wave of cases has hit some cities and high-level names hard. Los Angeles earlier this month reversed plans for an outdoor countdown party in Grand Park, opting to stream the celebration for the second year in a row. Rapper LL Cool J on Wednesday said he had tested positive for COVID-19 and had to step down as a headliner on ABC’s annual ball drop show, “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest.” And TMZ reported this week that Sean “Diddy” Combs had canceled his star-studded bash in Miami, telling 500 invitees that coronavirus made it an untenable party for the second straight year. (Reporting by Brad Brooks in Lubbock, TexasEditing by Diane Craft) View the full article

Published by BANG Showbiz English Billy Joel says Taylor Swift is “this generation’s Beatles”. The ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ legend compared the country-turned-pop singer to iconic ‘Hey Jude’ band as he weighed in on both the ‘Shake If Off’ star and ‘Easy On Me’ hitmaker. Adele. Asked for his opinion on current artists, he told USA Today: “Adele is a phenomenal singer, kind of a [Barbra] Streisand throwback. “Taylor [Swift] is also a very talented girl and she’s productive and keeps coming up with great concepts and songs and she’s huge. You have to give her high marks. She knows music and she knows how to write. She’s like that generation’s Beatles.” Meanwhile, the 73-year-old father of two – who has daughters Remy, four, and Della Rose, six, with wife Alexis Roderick – admitted while he doesn’t listen to much pop music nowadays, his kids keep him up to date and they love hearing contemporary stars referencing the ‘Piano Man’ legend. He added: “My kids listen to pop music – I really don’t too much – and I’ll be in the car with them when they make me turn (the radio) on and I might hear a reference to me. Della came home from school one day and said, “Daddy, everybody knows who you are!” And Billy explained that despite the younger generation knowing who he is, as a child he never listened to “his parents’ music”. He said: “When I was a kid, my generation didn’t take to my parents’ music. They liked classical but also Sinatra and probably Perry Como and those kinds of singers. We kind of left them in the past and moved on to the new stuff, the Elvis generation and the Beatles generation and disco and the ’80s. “We weren’t a back-looking generation and there are a lot of younger people now looking backward and they like their parents’ music, which is a strange phenomenon. I look out (in the crowd) and see so many young people. I’m grateful for it, especially because they make more noise. It’s a great mix.” View the full article

Published by Radar Online DOJ/MEGA The two guards who admitted to falsifying records and falling asleep the night Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide in his jail cell have reportedly had their case quietly dismissed by a Manhattan federal court. According to The Daily Mail, 33-year-old Tova Noel and 43-year-old Michael Thomas had their criminal charges dropped on Thursday after federal prosecutors asked a judge to dismiss the claims against the two guards responsible for watching Epstein the night he died. Following Epstein’s suicide on August 10, 2019, Noel and Thomas admitted to falsifying records, falling asleep and, browsing the internet when they should have been checking on the late financier every thirty minutes in the Metropolitan Correctional Center while he awaited his federal trial for sex trafficking. MEGA According to the court documents, the federal prosecutors filed their motion to dismiss the charges against the two guards on December 13 – but the documents did not become public until yesterday. The two were also reportedly scheduled for a public hearing regarding their case on December 16, but it was canceled at the last minute the day before. The prosecutors’ wanted the case dismissed for two reasons — Noel and Thomas complied with a six-month no-jail deal, and they also completed a court-ordered 100-hours of community service. The charges against the two guards were dropped only one day after Ghislaine Maxwell – Epstein’s former lover and confidante – was found guilty on five out of six charges in connection to grooming and trafficking underage girls for the late billionaire and convicted sex offender to sexually abuse. As Radar previously reported, Maxwell was found guilty on Wednesday by a Manhattan federal court of conspiracy to entice a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, conspiracy to transport a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, transporting a minor with the intent to engage in criminal sexual activity, conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors, and the sex trafficking of minors. Although there are reports that she will try for an appeal, it is expected that she will be spending the rest of her life in jail. Maxwell faces up to 65 years in prison. Her sentencing will come at a later date. DOJ/MEGA View the full article

Published by Reuters By Kanishka Singh (Reuters) -Thousands of flights within the United States and internationally were delayed or canceled on Friday, adding to the travel disruptions during the holiday week due to adverse weather and rising cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant https://www.reuters.com/world/us/experts-warn-omicron-blizzard-disrupt-us-next-month-2021-12-30. Over 2,800 flights were canceled globally as of Friday noon eastern time, including over 1,400 flights within the United States or entering or departing it, according to a running tally on flight-tracking website FlightAware.com. There were over 6,500 global flight delays in total. The Christmas holidays are typically a peak time for air travel, but the rapid spread of the highly transmissible Omicron variant has led to a sharp increase in COVID-19 infections, forcing airlines to cancel flights as pilots and crew need to be quarantined. The sudden arrival of Omicron has brought record-setting case counts to countries around the world. Transportation agencies across the United States are suspending or reducing service due to COVID-19 staff shortages as the Omicron variant surges nationwide. The number of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. has doubled in eight days to a record high of 329,000 a day on average, according to a Reuters tally https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps. Over that same period, the number of hospitalized COVID patients rose 32% and has hit a record high in Maryland, Ohio and Washington, D.C. On Thursday alone, 23 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. set pandemic records for new cases, according to the Reuters tally. The state of New York reported over 74,000 COVID-19 cases on Thursday from more than 336,000 tests at a 22% positivity rate, Governor Kathy Hochul said. New York said last week it will sharply limit the number of people it allows in Times Square for its New Year’s Eve celebration, where the evening culminates with the dropping of a giant crystal ball at midnight, signaling the start of the new year. “We reduced the density of the crowd. This is a safer way to proceed,” Tom Harris, the president of Times Square Alliance, told CNN on Friday. New York City Mayor-elect Eric Adams will be sworn in after the ball drop. Some critics, however, have raised concerns over the celebrations going ahead at all, given the high positivity rate. The rise in U.S. COVID-19 cases has caused some companies, particularly in the energy sector, to change course from earlier plans to increase the number of employees working from their offices starting next week. Chevron Corp was to start a full return to office from Jan. 3 but told employees this week it was postponing the plans to an unspecified date. U.S. airline cabin crew, pilots and support staff are reluctant to work overtime https://www.reuters.com/world/us/omicron-unruly-passengers-deter-us-airline-staff-holiday-overtime-2021-12-30 during the holiday travel season despite offers of hefty financial incentives. Many workers fear contracting COVID-19 and do not welcome the prospect of dealing with unruly passengers, some airline unions have said. In the months preceding the holidays, airlines were wooing employees to ensure solid staffing, after furloughing or laying off thousands over the last 18 months as the pandemic crippled the industry. (Reporting by Kanishka Singh in BengaluruAdditional reporting by Liz Hampton in Denver and Lisa Shumaker in ChicagoEditing by Matthew Lewis) View the full article

Published by AFP In school board meetings across the United States, parents have angrily protested decisions on Covid and racial equity Levittown (United States) (AFP) – As Joshua Waldorf was running for a third term on the Pennsbury school board in November, one particularly heated debate triggered a flood of vitriolic messages to his inbox — one of them urging him to shoot himself. In a shift mirrored in cities across America, his local council overseeing schools in the leafy suburbs of Philadelphia had unwittingly become a battleground in the politicized culture wars roiling the nation. The hateful messages aimed at Waldorf were just one example of the flow of anonymous slurs and threats directed at him and fellow members of the nine-seat board in past months — as their once studious meetings turned to angry shouting matches. “I’ve been pretty consistent in terms of my views,” Waldorf, a 58-year-old businessman, told AFP as the board prepared to meet in an elementary school gym in Fallsington, in a leafy neighborhood of family homes. “But I’m being vilified for those that I wasn’t 18 months ago.” In much of the United States, locally elected school boards are tasked with governing a community’s public schools — deciding who to hire as superintendent to manage day-to-day operations, which textbooks to buy, and what education policies to enact. But over the past year, with the country in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic and a historic reckoning over race relations, the boards have had to rule on far more charged issues — prompting intense backlash from parents often bitterly divided along political lines. For choosing to require all students and staff to wear masks, the Pennsbury School Board — all Democrats — were accused of “child abuse,” and seeking to “dehumanize” students. After hiring a specialist in “equity, diversity, and education” last year, the board came under fire from parents convinced they had “far left radical agenda to indoctrinate students.” Polarization School boards from coast to coast have had similar experiences, reflecting “a national polarization now seeping into other levels of government,” according to Dan Hopkins, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania. “By and large, school board politics in the United States tend to be relatively uneventful and relatively free of emotion,” Hopkins told AFP. But now, he says, “the really contentious questions that occupy national politics are finding their way” into the meetings. In Pennsbury, things took a turn for the worse after the board appointed Dr. Cherrissa Gibson — a local assistant principal — to a newly created role overseeing diversity and equity in the district’s 10 elementary schools, three middle schools, and one high school. Her first audit in April 2021 found “an underrepresentation of professional staff of color,” as well as a disproportionate level of discipline targeting Black students. Situated in the woodsy outer suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsbury has about 10,000 students, of whom 75 percent are white, seven percent are Black, eight percent are Asian, and four percent are Hispanic, according to the district’s website. For Thomas Smith, the district’s superintendent, the audit was a way to help “ensure that every student regardless of where they come from, regardless of their gender, or regardless of the color of their skin are treated equally.” But opponents, like 54-year-old Simon Campbell, believe such initiatives only sharpen divisions. “It is all about trying to stereotype people by race, by gender and separate them and then customize education based upon those separations,” said the former school board member and stock trader. “Basically kids are being taught that if you’re Black … you are impoverished and need help from the government,” he told AFP. “If you’re white, then you are an oppressor.” Campbell, who no longer has children in the school district, posts videos of his remarks at school board meetings to YouTube, where he now has more than 30,000 subscribers. Like other disgruntled parents, he has been invited to appear on conservative radio and television programs to discuss so-called “critical race theory.” The term, which refers to the study of persistent racism in social institutions, has been seized upon by Republicans to broadly attack Democrats’ racial equity policies in what has become a lightning rod for conservatives across the country. Misinformation Christine Toy Dragoni, the outgoing Pennsbury school board president, blames a national “campaign of misinformation” for the intensity of the backlash. “People are being gaslighted,” she told AFP. The 50-year-old psychotherapist said the deluge of emails began after videos of heated board meeting exchanges went viral online. Most of the emails wished bad things “happen” to the board members, versus direct threats, but “when they do it repeatedly, you start to worry,” said Dragoni. “Are they going to take the next step and, you know, take action on their words?” The risk of violence is real: many school districts have been forced to ramp up police presence at board meetings, to remove unruly attendees, as well as to escort members to and from their cars. Two months ago, US Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a memo directing the FBI and federal prosecutors to meet with local law enforcement to discuss strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff. Republicans and conservative media seized on the memo, accusing the Biden administration of weaponizing law enforcement to intimidate parents. “People are within silos,” said Waldorf, who won reelection in November, “we’ve lost the ability to compromise.” View the full article

Published by Reuters By Luc Cohen NEW YORK (Reuters) – A jury on Wednesday convicted British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell of recruiting and grooming four teenagers for the late financier Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse. [nL1N2TE1OS] Here are 10 key moments from the trial: – In her opening statement, prosecutor Lara Pomerantz called Maxwell a predator who manipulated girls and groomed them for abuse by Epstein, her employer and onetime boyfriend. Maxwell saw recruiting girls for Epstein to have sex with as a means to maintain a luxurious lifestyle, Pomerantz said. “They were exploiting kids,” Pomerantz said. “They were trafficking kids for sex.” – Maxwell defense lawyer Bobbi Sternheim began her opening statement by citing the biblical story of Adam and Eve to argue that Maxwell, like many women before her, was being blamed for a man’s bad behavior. Epstein killed himself in 2019 in a Manhattan jail cell. “Epstein’s death left a gaping hole in the pursuit of justice for many of these women,” Sternheim said. “She’s filling that hole, and filling that empty chair.” – A woman known by the pseudonym Jane testified that Epstein first abused her in 1994, when Jane was just 14. Maxwell sometimes took part in sexual encounters with Jane and Epstein, and acted as if it were normal, Jane testified. “It made me feel confused because that did not feel normal to me,” she said. “I’d never seen anything like this or felt anything like this.” – Under cross-examination by Maxwell attorney Laura Menninger, Jane acknowledged she did not initially tell the FBI everything about Maxwell’s involvement. She said later under further questioning by prosecutors that she was not comfortable sharing all the details. “I was sitting in a room full of strangers and telling them the most shameful, deepest secrets that I’d been carrying around with me my whole life,” she said. – Prosecutors displayed for the jury a green massage table that was seized from Epstein’s Palm Beach, Florida, estate in 2005. Three of the four accusers said they gave Epstein massages that escalated into sexual activity. Pomerantz called the word massage a “ruse designed to get young girls to touch Epstein.” – Prosecutors showed the jury images depicting Maxwell’s and Epstein’s intimate relationship during the 1990s. The never-before-seen digital photographs showed Maxwell kissing Epstein on the cheek or rubbing his bare foot. – A woman known by her first name, Carolyn, testified that Maxwell once touched Carolyn’s breasts and buttocks while Carolyn was nude and told her she had a “great body for Mr. Epstein and his friends.” “Money will not ever fix what that woman has done to me,” Carolyn said, sobbing on the stand. – Jeffrey Pagliuca, an attorney for Maxwell, asked Carolyn why she did not mention Maxwell in her initial discussions with law enforcement but implicated her later in a claim to a victim’s compensation fund run by Epstein’s estate. The questioning was part of Maxwell’s efforts to paint the accusers’ accounts as unreliable. “You know that if any information you submitted is false, you can be in criminal trouble?” Pagliuca said, referring to the fund. – Elizabeth Loftus, a prominent psychologist, testified for the defense that people can confidently recount events that did not happen. Her testimony was part of the defense’s effort to argue that the accusers’ memories had been manipulated over time. “When you have post-event suggestion or intervention, people get very confident about their wrong answers,” Loftus testified. – Minutes before the defense rested its case, Maxwell stood up, and with Sternheim’s arm around her lower back, told U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan that she was declining to testify in her own defense. “Your honor, the government has not proven the case beyond a reasonable doubt, and so there is no need for me to testify,” Maxwell said (Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Alistair Bell) View the full article

Published by Reuters By Carl O’Donnell and Ahmed Aboulenein NEW YORK (Reuters) – Within weeks, the Omicron variant has fueled thousands of new COVID-19 hospitalizations among U.S. children, raising new concerns about how the many unvaccinated Americans under the age of 18 will fare in the new surge. The seven-day-average number of daily hospitalizations for children between Dec. 21 and Dec. 27 is up more than 58% nationwide in the past week to 334, compared to around 19% for all age groups, data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show. Fewer than 25% of the 74 million Americans under 18 are vaccinated, according to the CDC. Omicron cases are expected to surge even faster across the United States as schools reopen next week after the winter holiday, experts cautioned. Doctors say it is too early to determine whether Omicron causes more severe illness in children than other variants of the coronavirus, but that its extremely high transmissibility is one key factor that is driving up hospitalizations. “It is going to infect more people and it is infecting more people. We’ve seen numbers go up, we’ve seen hospitalizations in kids go up,” said Dr. Jennifer Nayak, an infectious disease expert and pediatrician at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “What we are seeing is that children under five remain unvaccinated so there’s still a relatively large population of children who are naive, so they have no preexisting immunity to this virus,” said Nayak. Even in New York City, which has some of the highest vaccination rates in the United States, only around 40% of 5-to-17-year-olds are fully vaccinated compared with more than 80% of adults, city health data shows. There is no authorized vaccine for U.S. children under the age of 5. Hospitalizations in New York City of people aged 18 and younger increased from 22 the week starting Dec. 5 to 109 between Dec. 19 and Dec. 23. Children under the age of 5 represented almost half of the total cases. Hospitalizations of people 18 and under in the entire state were at 184 from Dec. 19 to Dec. 23, up from 70 from Dec. 5 to Dec. 11. Other parts of the United States are also seeing a spike in cases among children. Ohio has seen a 125% increase in hospitalizations among children 17 and under in the past four weeks, according to data from the Ohio Hospital Association. Florida, New Jersey and Illinois have witnessed an increase of at least double in the seven-day average daily hospitalization of underage patients with the coronavirus over the past week, CDC data shows. SLOW UPTAKE Young children have far lower vaccination rates than other age groups, with some families hesitating to introduce a new vaccine to their youngest members. Fewer than 15% of U.S. children aged 5-11 have been fully vaccinated since Pfizer Inc and BioNTech’s COVID-19 shot was authorized for that age group in late October, federal data shows. Doctors said the more severe COVID-19 symptoms they are seeing in hospitalized children this month include difficulty breathing, high fever, and dehydration. “They need help breathing, they need help getting oxygen, they need extra hydration. They are sick enough to end up in the hospital, and that’s scary for doctors, and it’s scary for parents,” said Rebecca Madan, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at New York University’s Langone Health hospital system. The surge in cases occurred as schools closed for the winter holidays. Before the vacation, more than a thousand classrooms have been either fully or partially quarantined due to outbreaks, according to New York City data. The city said it will open schools for about a million children as planned on Jan. 3, following the district’s winter recess. Research has shown that a substantial amount of COVID-19 transmission among children tends to happen outside of schools. But Madan and others expect a new spike in cases among children from holiday gatherings, which could disrupt classroom attendance. “The virus has just been able to outsmart, penetrate beyond, what it is the parents have done to shelter those children,” said William Schaffner, a leading infectious disease expert from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. (Reporting by Carl O’Donnell in New York and Ahmed Aboulenein in Washington D.C.; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Aurora Ellis) View the full article

Published by Radar Online Mega Ghislaine Maxwell— who is staring at 65 years in prison after being convicted late Wednesday — faces another investigation into her ties to Jeffrey Epsteinthat could have significant consequences for the high-profile names who escaped scrutiny in the federal trial, Radar can exclusively report. In court documents obtained by Radar, the U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General admitted Maxwell, 60, is being probed for her role in the world’s most heinous sex trafficking ring. Ghislaine Maxwell Verdict Reached: Jeffrey Epstein’s Former Lover Learns Outcome Of Grooming & Trafficking Charges The Virgin Islands prosecution could be a jarring examination of the sick lives of Maxwell and Epstein, unmasking some of the big names that were shielded by federal prosecutors in the Manhattan trial. “Ghislaine is the subject of a local investigation concerning her role in Epstein’s alleged criminal activity and that she has evaded attempts to serve her with a CICO subpoena,” read the recent 12-page filing. Mega Maxwell is accused of luring young girls to Epstein’s estate on Little St. James — also known as “Pedophile Island” — and participating with her one-time lover in the victims’ sexual abuse. Even though Maxwell was found guilty on five of the six charges for recruiting and grooming underage girls, Epstein madam’s fall from grace can be steeper elsewhere — with additional court cases in other jurisdictions. Bill Clinton Gets Shout-Out For Riding Jeffrey Epstein’s Alleged Pedophile ‘Lolita Express’ During Ghislaine Maxwell’s Sex Trafficking Trial The “Orgy Island” probe is particularly troubling for the cabal of Epstein co-conspirators, as it is said to have been ground zero for much of the late billionaire’s abuses and alleged criminal enterprise. Though much of what transpired on the island has remained the subject of rumor, it was Epstein’s main place of residence where he had a dedicated team of workers who trafficked girls as young as 12 to his clients. To get there, Epstein would fly the underage girls into St. Thomas, and then he would ferry them over to his private island via a boat named Lady Ghislaine, one former employee told Bloomberg in 2019. All eyes will be on the V.I. investigation as two of the biggest names in the scandal have been linked to 72-acre pleasure island. Prince Andrew was rumored to have taken part in an orgy with nine girls on the disgraced financier’s private island, his alleged victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who was pictured with the royal’s arm around her waist when she was around 17 years old, said in US court documents. He has denied any wrongdoing. Bill Clinton has been linked to Orgy Island, too. His former top aide, Doug Band, confirmed the ex-President of the United States visited Epstein on the dead pedophile’s private island in the Caribbean in January 2003. Mega While a Clinton spokesperson has denied he never visited the island, according to The Independent, Clinton flew on Epstein’s private jet to Little St. James on two further occasions between 2002 and 2005. According to another former employee, Victoria’s Secret models were among the guests he saw there, and Les Wexner visited the island at least once. Others have made jaunts to the $65 million island, including the late Stephen Hawking. Now that Maxwell has been found guilty of grooming and trafficking young girls for the late accused pedophile financier, the race for justice will now move to V.I. and elsewhere — which could have a devastating impact for some of the terrible twosome’s higher-profile pals. View the full article

Published by Reuters LONDON (Reuters) – Buckingham Palace received a personal appeal from the Dean of Westminster to allow singer Elton John perform at the funeral of Princess Diana, newly released government documents show. Wesley Carr, who himself helped conduct part of the funeral service for Diana at Westminster Abbey after her death in a Paris car crash in August 1997, urged a senior figure in the royal household to include a performance by John, a friend of the princess. “This is a crucial point in the service and we would urge boldness. It is where the unexpected happens and something of the modern world that the princess represented,” Carr wrote in the note released by the National Archives. “I respectfully suggest that anything classical or choral (even a popular classic such as something by [composer Andrew]Lloyd Webber) is inappropriate. Better would be the enclosed song by Elton John (known to millions and his music was enjoyed by the princess), which would be powerful.” Documents show John’s 1970 ballad “Your Song” was initially considered, but Carr noted that the singer’s 1973 ode to Marilyn Monroe “Candle In the Wind” was already “being widely played and sung throughout the nation”. Its performance would be “imaginative and generous to the millions who are feeling personally bereaved”. He added that if the words were “too sentimental” they did not need to be printed in the order of service. There is no detail of any response from the Palace, but John went on to perform the song, with revised lyrics dedicated to “England’s Rose”. It was one of the most poignant moments of the funeral, watched by as many as 2.5 billion people. The re-released version, lamenting a woman’s death at a young age in the pitiless glare of fame, went on to become the second-biggest selling physical single of all time. In 2019, John said he was so worried about getting the words wrong when performing at the funeral that he had a teleprompter installed by the piano. (Reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Peter Graff) View the full article