Washington (AFP) - US President Joe Biden said Friday he would make it "very, very difficult" for Russia to launch any invasion of Ukraine, which warned that a large-scale attack may be planned for next month.
Washington and Kiev say Moscow has massed troops near Ukraine's borders and accuse Russia of planning an invasion.
Biden and President Vladimir Putin are due to hold a video call shortly to discuss the rising tensions, both sides confirmed Friday.
Biden told reporters in Washington he was putting together "the most comprehensive and meaningful set of initiatives to make it very, very difficult for Mr Putin to go ahead and do what people are worried he may do."
Moscow seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and has since backed separatists fighting Kiev in the east of the country. The conflict has left more than 13,000 dead.
"The most likely time to reach readiness for escalation will be the end of January," Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov told parliament in Kiev on Friday.
A report in the Washington Post on Friday citing US officials and an intelligence document said Russia was planning a multi-front offensive involving up to 175,000 troops as soon as next year.
Reznikov said a "winter training period" had started in Russia and that Moscow had already launched exercises near Ukrainian territory.
He estimated that Russia had around 100,000 troops near Ukraine's border. Russia denies any military build-up.
On the frontline in eastern Ukraine, government troops said they were ready to repel any Russian assault.
"Our task is simple: not to let the enemy enter our country," a soldier named Andriy, 29, told AFP, smoking in a trench near the frontline town of Svitlodarsk.
"All our guys are ready to hold them back. This is our land, we will protect it until the end," another soldier, Yevgen, 24, added.
Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov told reporters a date had been agreed for the Putin-Biden video summit but would not be announced until final details of the talks have also been set.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the call was expected "in the very near future."
Asked if he had spoken to Putin on Friday morning, Biden shouted "no" as he left a press conference in Washington.
He gave no further details of his planned "initiatives" on Ukraine.
Putin has warned the West and Kiev against crossing the Kremlin's "red lines" over staging military exercises and building up weaponry in Ukraine.
When reporters asked Biden whether he would accept Putin's line, he responded, "I won't accept anybody's red line."
Despite increased contacts between the two rivals since Putin and Biden met for the first time at a summit in Geneva in June, tensions remain high.
As well as the Ukraine conflict, Russia and the United States continue to argue over cyberattacks and the staffing of their embassies, after several waves of diplomatic expulsions.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told AFP on Friday that it rejects any efforts to get it to scrap its plans to join NATO.
Moscow wants to see an end to NATO's eastward expansion, after much of Eastern Europe joined the alliance following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Agreeing to abandon its plans to join the alliance "is not an option," Kuleba said on the sidelines of an OSCE meeting in Stockholm.
"I reject this idea that we have to guarantee anything to Russia. I insist that it's Russia who has to guarantee that it will not continue its aggression against any country," he said.
NATO officially opened the door to Ukraine membership in 2008, though no progress has been made since.
The Omicron variant has been detected in 38 countries but no deaths have yet been reported, the WHO said on Friday, as authorities worldwide rushed to stem the heavily mutated Covid-19 strain's spread amid warnings that it could damage the global economic recovery.
The United States and Australia became the latest countries to confirm locally transmitted cases of the variant, as Omicron infections pushed South Africa's total cases past three million.
The World Health Organization has warned it could take weeks to determine how infectious the variant is, whether it causes more severe illness and how effective treatments and vaccines are against it.
"We're going to get the answers that everybody out there needs," WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan said.
The WHO said on Friday it had still not seen any reports of deaths related to Omicron, but the new variant's spread has led to warnings that it could cause more than half of Europe's Covid cases in the next few months.
The new variant could also slow global economic recovery, just as the Delta strain did, International Monetary Fund chief Kristalina Georgieva said on Friday.
"Even before the arrival of this new variant, we were concerned that the recovery, while it continues, is losing somewhat momentum," she said.
"A new variant that may spread very rapidly can dent confidence."
A preliminary study by researchers in South Africa, where the variant was first reported on November 24, suggests it is three times more likely to cause reinfections compared to the Delta or Beta strains.
The emergence of Omicron was the "ultimate evidence" of the danger of unequal global vaccination rates, Red Cross head Francesca Rocca said.
South African doctors said there had been a spike in children under five admitted to hospital since Omicron emerged, but stressed it was too early to know if young children were particularly susceptible.
"The incidence in those under-fives is now second-highest, and second only to the incidence in those over 60," said Wassila Jassat from the National Institute for Communicable Diseases.
In the US, two cases involved residents with no recent international travel history -- showing Omicron is already circulating inside the country.
"This is a case of community spread," the Hawaii Health Department said.
US President Joe Biden on Thursday unveiled his plans to battle Covid-19 during the winter, with new testing requirements for travellers and a surge in vaccination efforts.
All incoming travellers will need to test negative within a day of their flights, and rapid tests that cost $25 will be covered by insurance and distributed free to the uninsured.
Australia on Friday reported three students in Sydney had tested positive for the variant, despite a ban on non-citizens entering the country and restrictions on flights from southern Africa, with multiple countries rushing to limit travel from the region in the past week.
"It's quite a kick in the nuts," said Sabine Stam, who runs a South African tour company and whose customers are demanding refunds. "Everyone is too scared to set a new travel date," she said.
In Norway, officials said at least 13 people who contracted Covid-19 after an office Christmas party in Oslo last week had the Omicron variant -- though so far they have only had mild symptoms, city health official Tine Ravlo told AFP.
But the government ushered in restrictions in greater Oslo after fears of the cluster surfaced.
On Friday, Malaysia also reported a first Omicron infection in a foreign student arriving from South Africa on November 19. Sri Lanka also announced its first case, a citizen returning from South Africa.
Russia's federal statistics agency Rosstat, meanwhile, said that nearly 75,000 people died of coronavirus in the country in October, making it the deadliest month of the pandemic.
The new variant poses a major challenge to ending the pandemic.
Rising Delta cases had already forced European governments to reintroduce mandatory mask-wearing, social distancing, curfews or lockdowns, leaving businesses fearing another grim Christmas.
Belgian authorities said on Friday that primary schools would close a week early for the Christmas holidays.
Germany's regional leaders agreed new measures including a ban on fireworks at new year parties to discourage large gatherings.
Ireland said it will close nightclubs and reintroduce social distancing in some settings over Christmas and the New Year.
In the UK, ministers have been expressing divergent opinions, not only on the idea of hosting parties, but also on the kind of conduct deemed acceptable.
"For what it's worth, I don't think there should be much snogging under the mistletoe," said one minister, Therese Coffey.
Multiple news outlets revealed Friday that Apple notified at least 11 U.S. State Department officials that their iPhones were recently hacked by an unknown party or parties with spyware developed by the private Israeli firm NSO Group.
"A multi-agency investigation is immediately needed."
The "bombshell," first reported by Reuters, comes after Apple sued NSO Group last month in an effort to protect iPhone users from its Pegasus spyware, which the Israeli company claims to only sell to government law enforcement and intelligence agencies and was the focus of a major reporting project earlier this year.
Citing multiple unnamed sources, The Washington Post and Reuters explained that State Department employees based in Uganda or elsewhere in East Africa were targeted over several months, and the intrusions "represent the widest known hacks of U.S. officials through NSO technology."
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According to the Reuters:
A senior Biden administration official, speaking on condition he not be identified, said the threat to U.S. personnel abroad was one of the reasons the administration was cracking down on companies such as NSO and pursuing new global discussion about spying limits.
The official added that they have seen "systemic abuse" in multiple countries involving NSO's Pegasus spyware.
The National Security Council said in a statement reported by the Post that "we have been acutely concerned that commercial spyware like NSO Group's software poses a serious counterintelligence and security risk to U.S. personnel, which is one of the reasons why the Biden-Harris administration has placed several companies involved in the development and proliferation of these tools on the Department of Commerce's Entity List."
Spokespeople for Apple and the State Department declined to comment to Reuters, though the latter also noted that the Commerce Department recently added NSO Group to the Entity List "based on a determination that they developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used this tool to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers."
"This reporting shows—again—why we need to hold NSO accountable for their actions, and why governments need to support increased security online."
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While officials at the Ugandan Embassy in Washington, D.C. also did not comment, the Israeli Embassy in the U.S. capital gave a statement to Reuters addressing the fact that Israel's Ministry of Defense approves export licenses for the spyware company.
"Cyber products like the one mentioned are supervised and licensed to be exported to governments only for purposes related to counter-terrorism and severe crimes," an Israeli spokesperson said. "The licensing provisions are very clear and if these claims are true, it is a severe violation of these provisions."
An NSO Group spokesperson told the news agency that the relevant accounts were canceled and if an internal investigation finds that "these actions indeed happened with NSO's tools," the involved customers "will be terminated permanently and legal actions will take place." The representative added that the company will "cooperate with any relevant government authority and present the full information we will have."
Facebook sued NSO in 2019, claiming the Israeli firm's spyware was used on its messaging service WhatsApp.
"We've been calling NSO a national security threat for years," Will Cathcart, head of WhatsApp, tweeted Friday. "This reporting shows—again—why we need to hold NSO accountable for their actions, and why governments need to support increased security online."
John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, also responded to the revelations on Twitter, saying that NSO Group has been an "in-plain-sight national security threat for years" and it is "embarrassing that it took a private company to warn them."
"Are there victims not notified by Apple?" he asked. "How about the overseas-posted personnel using Androids? Does [the State Department] know now? A multi-agency investigation is immediately needed."
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) similarly told the Post that "companies that enable their customers to hack U.S. government employees are a threat to America's national security and should be treated as such by the government."
"I want to be sure the State Department and the rest of the federal government has the tools to detect hacks and respond to them quickly," added Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. "Federal agencies shouldn't have to rely on the generosity of private companies to know when their phones and devices are hacked."
Last month, Apple filed a lawsuit in a California-based U.S. district court accusing NSO Group of violating its terms and conditions as well as state and federal laws. Apple is seeking a permanent injunction to ban the firm from using its devices, services, or software.
That suit came after the Pegasus Project—an investigation into NSO's spyware published in July by more than 80 journalists from 17 media organizations in 10 countries. Coordinated by Forbidden Stories with the technical support of Amnesty International, the project focused on the leak of 50,000 phone numbers of potential surveillance targets, including activists, heads of state, and journalists around the world.
The Pegasus Project spurred worldwide calls for an immediate moratorium on the export, sale, transfer, and use of such spyware. Exiled American whistleblower Edward Snowden—whose leaked documents revealed that in 2007, Israel was flagged as a top espionage threat against the U.S. government—went further, saying in July that NSO Group's industry "should not exist."
Scott-Railton, in his series of tweets Friday, highlighted that some progress is being made, pointing to reporting that the White House plans to announce a new initiative related to the abuse of surveillance technology during President Joe Biden's democracy summit next week.
According to Bloomberg, an unknown group of countries "with shared concerns about foreign governments and private-sector actors—in China and elsewhere around the world—using digital surveillance and other technologies to enable human rights abuses and target members of ethnic and religious minority groups, journalists, and political dissidents" will commit to a nonbinding code of conduct.
US President Joe Biden said Friday he would make it "very, very difficult" for Russia to launch any invasion of Ukraine, which warned that a large-scale attack may be planned for next month.
Washington and Kiev say Moscow has massed troops near Ukraine's borders and accuse Russia of planning an invasion.
Biden and President Vladimir Putin are due to hold a video call shortly to discuss the rising tensions, both sides confirmed Friday.
Biden told reporters in Washington he was putting together "the most comprehensive and meaningful set of initiatives to make it very, very difficult for Mr Putin to go ahead and do what people are worried he may do."
Moscow seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and has since backed separatists fighting Kiev in the east of the country. The conflict has left more than 13,000 dead.
"The most likely time to reach readiness for escalation will be the end of January," Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksiy Reznikov told parliament in Kiev on Friday.
A report in the Washington Post on Friday citing US officials and an intelligence document said Russia was planning a multi-front offensive involving up to 175,000 troops as soon as next year.
Reznikov said a "winter training period" had started in Russia and that Moscow had already launched exercises near Ukrainian territory.
He estimated that Russia had around 100,000 troops near Ukraine's border. Russia denies any military build-up.
On the frontline in eastern Ukraine, government troops said they were ready to repel any Russian assault.
"Our task is simple: not to let the enemy enter our country," a soldier named Andriy, 29, told AFP, smoking in a trench near the frontline town of Svitlodarsk.
"All our guys are ready to hold them back. This is our land, we will protect it until the end," another soldier, Yevgen, 24, added.
Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov told reporters a date had been agreed for the Putin-Biden video summit but would not be announced until final details of the talks have also been set.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the call was expected "in the very near future."
Asked if he had spoken to Putin on Friday morning, Biden shouted "no" as he left a press conference in Washington.
He gave no further details of his planned "initiatives" on Ukraine.
Putin has warned the West and Kiev against crossing the Kremlin's "red lines" over staging military exercises and building up weaponry in Ukraine.
When reporters asked Biden whether he would accept Putin's line, he responded, "I won't accept anybody's red line."
Despite increased contacts between the two rivals since Putin and Biden met for the first time at a summit in Geneva in June, tensions remain high.
As well as the Ukraine conflict, Russia and the United States continue to argue over cyberattacks and the staffing of their embassies, after several waves of diplomatic expulsions.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told AFP on Friday that it rejects any efforts to get it to scrap its plans to join NATO.
Moscow wants to see an end to NATO's eastward expansion, after much of Eastern Europe joined the alliance following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Agreeing to abandon its plans to join the alliance "is not an option," Kuleba said on the sidelines of an OSCE meeting in Stockholm.
"I reject this idea that we have to guarantee anything to Russia. I insist that it's Russia who has to guarantee that it will not continue its aggression against any country," he said.
NATO officially opened the door to Ukraine membership in 2008, though no progress has been made since.
The Brazilian judiciary is to investigate President Jair Bolsonaro for making false statements about the coronavirus pandemic.
The move was ordered by a judge at the country's Supreme Court, according to a statement issued on Friday.
In a live broadcast on social media in October, Bolsonaro made a connection between the Covid-19 vaccination and AIDS.
Bolsonaro has played down the virus since the beginning of the pandemic and rejects protective measures and restrictions.
He also doubts the point of vaccinations. He is accused of having refused and delayed the purchase of vaccines.
According to official figures, more than 22 million people in Brazil have been infected with the coronavirus, and more than 615,000 patients have died in connection with Covid-19 - only the United States has more deaths.
French President Emmanuel Macron insisted he hadn't forgotten the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi on Friday as he defended his decision to visit Saudi Arabia during his Gulf tour.
On Saturday, Macron will become one of the first Western leaders to meet the kingdom's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, since Khashoggi was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.
Khashoggi's murder sparked international outrage that continues to reverberate. But Macron said it was impossible to engage with the region while ignoring the powerful Saudis.
"Who can think for one second that we can help Lebanon and preserve peace and stability in the Middle East if we say: 'We're not going to speak to Saudi Arabia, the most populated and most powerful country in the Gulf'?" he told media in Dubai, the first stop of his tour.
"It doesn't mean that I endorse anything, that I've forgotten, that we're not demanding partners," he said, adding that he was acting "for our country and in the interests of the region".
Macron will fly to the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah on Saturday after an overnight stay in Qatar, another resource-rich Gulf country where France will defend their World Cup football title next year.
On October 2, 2018, Khashoggi entered the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to file paperwork to marry his Turkish fiancee. According to US and Turkish officials, a waiting Saudi hit squad strangled him and dismembered his body, which has never been retrieved.
© 2021 AFP
By Natalia Zinets
KYIV (Reuters) -Russia has massed more than 94,000 troops near Ukraine's borders and may be gearing up for a large-scale military offensive at the end of January, Ukraine's defence minister told parliament on Friday, citing intelligence reports.
Oleksii Reznikov said Ukraine would not do anything to provoke the situation but was ready to fight back if Russia launched an attack. He said Ukraine was pressing ahead with the construction of two naval bases on its south coast.
"Our intelligence analyses all scenarios, including the worst," Reznikov said. "It notes that the likelihood of a large-scale escalation from Russia exists. The most likely time to reach readiness for an escalation will be the end of January."
Ukraine and its NATO allies have sounded the alarm about Russian troop movements near Ukraine's borders this year, sparking worries that a simmering conflict in eastern Ukraine could erupt into open war https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/qa-what-is-risk-war-between-russia-ukraine-2021-11-23.
Moscow has in turn accused Ukraine and the United States of destabilising behaviour and suggested that Kyiv might be preparing to launch its own offensive in eastern Ukraine, which the Ukrainian authorities strongly deny.
The deputy speaker of Russia's upper house of parliament denied Moscow was planning any offensive operation in eastern Ukraine and said Moscow would do all it could to prevent a major escalation in the region, the Interfax news agency reported.
Kremlin's foreign policy adviser Yury Ushakov was also dismissive. "It's nonsense, there is no any escalation. We have the rights to move the troops on our territory," he told reporters.
Ukraine has pressed its European Union and NATO allies this week to prepare a tough package of sanctions to ward off a Russia offensive.
Reznikov said Ukraine was pressing ahead with building the naval bases as part of a defence deal with Britain.
One base will be located in Ochakiv, to the west of the Crimea peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, and the other in Berdyansk to the east of Crimea.
"Among the priorities are the missile programme and the development of the fleet," Reznikov told parliament. "We are moving on to the practical stage of building two military bases - in Berdyansk and Ochakiv - and other contracts within the framework of agreements with the United Kingdom."
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Moscow on Thursday of the "severe costs" Russia would pay in case of an escalation, urging his Russian counterpart to seek a diplomatic exit from the crisis.
Blinken said it was likely that Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin would speak soon.
Work is under way to arrange a video call between them, the Kremlin said on Friday, a day after their top diplomats met to discuss Ukraine.
Ukraine's ties with Russia collapsed in 2014 after Moscow-backed forces seized territory in eastern Ukraine that Kyiv wants back. Kyiv says some 14,000 people have been killed in fighting since then.
Since the latest crisis started, Moscow has set out demands for legally binding security guarantees from the West that NATO will not admit Ukraine as a member or deploy missile systems there to target Russia.
Ukraine says Russia has no say over its ambitions to join the NATO alliance and dismissed any security guarantees as illegitimate.
"Escalation is a likely scenario, but not inevitable, and our task is to prevent it," Reznikov said. "We must make the price of escalation unacceptable for the aggressor."
(Additional reporting by Tom Balmforth and Vladimir Soldatkin in Moscow; Writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by John Stonestreet and Alison Williams)
(Reuters) - The Omicron variant of the coronavirus is very transmissible but people should not panic about it, the World Health Organization's chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan told the Reuters Next conference on Friday.
Swaminathan said the emergence of the variant was unwelcome but that the world was much better prepared to handle it given the development of vaccines since the start of the pandemic.To watch the Reuters Next conference please register here https://reutersevents.com/events/next
(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio, Stephanie Nebehay and Josephine Mason; Editing by Keith Weir)
While many countries around the world have eased restrictions on abortion, the United States is going in the other direction.
The conservative-dominated Supreme Court appears all but certain to uphold a 2018 Mississippi law that would ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
- China and North Korea -
In the absence of any federal laws, it is the US Supreme Court that has, since 1973, guaranteed a woman's right to an abortion until "viability," when the fetus can survive outside the womb, typically between 22 and 24 weeks of pregnancy.
But the nation's highest court appears poised, following oral arguments on Wednesday, to roll back abortion rights and uphold Mississippi's 15-week ban.
Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative, expressed concern that the United States shared its viability standard with the People's Republic of China and North Korea while the rest of the world is more restrictive.
Former vice president Mike Pence, speaking a day earlier, made the same comparison and said he hoped the court "can move America away from the radical fringe squarely back into the mainstream of Western thought."
The United States does, in fact, permit abortions later than many other countries but it is not alone with China and North Korea.
According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, 67 countries allow abortion on request, with most of them setting the limit at 12 weeks.
The United States is among a dozen nations that allow abortions to be carried out later along with China but also Britain (24 weeks), Canada (until term) and parts of Australia.
And the 12-weeks standard can be misleading because a number of countries permit legal access to abortion later for "social reasons, health reasons (and) socio-economic reasons," said attorney Julie Rikelman, arguing in favor of maintaining the status quo in front of the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
- Barriers -
Few countries present such a patchwork of differing access to abortion within their borders, and most do not have the "same barriers in place" as does the United States, Rikelman told the Supreme Court.
Conservative US states, mostly in the South, have erected a number of obstacles in recent years restricting access to abortion, forcing many clinics to close.
Six US states have only a single abortion clinic each, including Mississippi.
A Texas law banning abortions after six weeks, before many women even know they are pregnant, took effect on September 1 and the Supreme Court is yet to act on an emergency petition to stop it.
On the other hand, access to abortion is freely available in progressive states such as California and New York.
Nancy Northup, CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said the United States is an outlier "in terms of progression on abortion rights."
"The trend in the last 25 years has been liberalization of abortion laws," Northup said, citing recent developments in Mexico, Argentina and Benin.
Although the Supreme Court's decision in the Mississippi case will not be known until June, Northup said the United States is already in an "incredible regressive phase" with more than 100 abortion restrictions passed this year alone.
- Bitter debate -
The United States also sets itself apart from the rest of the world with the ferocity of the domestic debate over abortion.
Just 42 percent of Americans believe abortion should be permitted on demand compared with 75 percent in Sweden, 65 percent in Britain, 64 percent in France and 61 percent in Italy and Spain, according to a 2021 Ipsos poll.
In those other countries, the abortion debate has cooled since legalization.
Not so in the United States, where the Republican Party has used the emotional issue to mobilize voters, particularly those on the religious right.
Donald Trump, for example, was pro-choice in 1999 but ran for president in 2016 on a promise to nominate justices to the Supreme Court who were opposed to abortion.
He kept his pledge and the three justices nominated during his presidential term are expected to vote to roll back abortion rights.
Ghislaine Maxwell tightly regulated every detail in Jeffrey Epstein's Palm Beach mansion as "lady of the house," a former employee testified Thursday during the British heiress' sex trafficking trial.
Juan Alessi, who worked as a house manager for the multimillionaire Epstein for more than a decade in the 1990s, told jurors at the Manhattan trial that Maxwell ordered a "tremendous" number of rules, including warning to avoid eye contact with Epstein.
"'Never look at his eyes, look in another part of the room and answer him,'" Alessi, who worked at the Palm Beach, Florida estate, remembered Maxwell telling him.
"Remember that you see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing, except to answer a question directed at you," read a staff instruction manual exhibited in court.
The 58-page booklet was dated after Alessi's departure in 2002, but he remembered a prior version of it with similar content.
"NEVER disclose Mr. Epstein or Ms. Maxwell's activities or whereabouts to anyone," it read.
A lengthy checklist to review prior to Epstein's arrivals at the mansion included directions to be sure that a gun was placed in the drawer of a side table in the late financier's bedroom.
Wearing an all-black ensemble, the 59-year-old Maxwell watched Alessi's testimony during the proceedings in which she has pleaded not guilty to six counts of enticing and transporting minors for sex.
If convicted, she faces an effective life sentence.
Alessi also recalled seeing two girls that appeared underage -- 14 or 15, he said -- including one who testified earlier this week under the pseudonym "Jane."
Alessi said he first met Jane in 1994, when she visited the estate with her mother. He also recounted picking her up from school.
Those details appeared to corroborate testimony from Jane, who had recalled a "Latin American" man picking her up. Alessi is from Ecuador.
Alessi also recalled seeing Jane boarding a plane from Palm Beach with Epstein, Maxwell and the latter's Yorkie terrier, Max.
In hours of testimony over the course of two days, Jane, who is now an adult, told jurors in explicit detail that Epstein subjected her to sexual abuse for years, beginning at age 14. She said Maxwell was often present and sometimes participated in the sex acts.
The defense will begin cross-examining Alessi on Friday. Maxwell's lawyers insist she is a scapegoat for Epstein, whose 2019 death in prison while awaiting trial was ruled a suicide.
The Taliban issued a decree Friday in the name of their supreme leader instructing Afghan ministries "to take serious action" on women's rights, but failed to mention girls' access to schools.
The move comes after the Islamists seized power in mid-August and as they seek to restore Afghanistan's access to billions of dollars in assets and aid suspended when the previous, Western-backed regime collapsed in the final stages of a US military withdrawal.
"The Islamic Emirate's leadership directs all relevant organizations... to take serious action to enforce Women's Rights," the decree states, quoting elusive supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada.
The decree centers on marriage and widows' rights, stating "no one can force women to marry by coercion or pressure" and that a widow is entitled to an unspecified fixed share of her husband's inheritance.
It instructs the Ministry of Culture and Information to publish material on women's rights "to prevent... ongoing repression".
Respect for women's rights has repeatedly been cited by key global donors as a condition for restoring aid.
The decree crucially makes no mention of girls' secondary education -- which has been suspended for millions -- or the employment of women, who have been barred from returning to jobs in the public sector.
Women's rights were severely curtailed during the Taliban's previous stint in power, which lasted from 1996 to late 2001.
Women were forced to wear the all covering burqa, only allowed to leave the home with a male chaperone and banned from work and education.
Akhundzada has maintained a very low public profile since becoming supreme leader in 2016, after his predecessor was killed in a US drone strike.
The Taliban on 30 October released a 10-minute audio recording purported to be him addressing a madrassa in the southern city of Kandahar that day.
But some analysts believe he may have been killed one or more years ago.
© 2021 AFP
With coded references to "eating melons" and "that person", Chinese social media users are getting creative to discuss tennis star Peng Shuai online as censors race to scrub all mentions of her sexual assault allegations.
When Peng last month posted that former Chinese vice-premier Zhang Gaoli forced her to have sex, censors were quick to scrub the message and obvious discussion of Peng from social media.
The 35-year-old's allegations spread on Twitter -- which is blocked in China but accessible using special Virtual Private Networks -- and sparked an international outcry.
And many found ways to get around the censorship inside the Chinese firewall, initially using Peng Shuai's initials in English, "PS", to refer to the former world doubles number one online.
Messages including those initials were soon censored.
"Eddie Peng is too handsome," read one since-deleted post, according to screenshots -- in an apparent reference to the Taiwanese actor. The characters for the movie star's surname and "handsome" make up Peng Shuai's name in Chinese.
On pop culture review site Douban, some users turned to a mix of English and Chinese.
"Her WB id no le," one user wrote in a screenshot of a now-deleted Douban forum thread, referring to the disappearance of Peng's official Weibo account from the platform's search function.
"I hope her ping'an," another user said, wishing for the tennis player's safety.
Douban is considered a more liberal platform, often drawing discussion pushing the political boundaries of the Chinese internet.
Some took to the "Tennis" topic page on Weibo to post obliquely about a "big melon" that had exploded in the world of tennis overnight.
In Chinese internet slang, the phrase "eating melon" means to consume gossip.
"Even when I'm asleep I must wake up to eat melon," one Weibo user wrote in a now-deleted post, after Peng's allegations were posted late one evening, describing Zhang -- or the "person involved" -- as "too politically sensitive".
The authorities have been quick to catch up, swiftly identifying and deleting new coded posts related to Peng -- even blocking the Douban page for the Korean drama "Prime Minister & I", where users had retreated to discuss Peng's claims against Zhang.
But the sheer volume of comments means that some linger, especially those made on remote parts of social media unrelated to Peng Shuai.
"I support WTA" and "please respect every woman", commenters wrote on a Weibo post by the Women's Tennis Association listing 2021 tournament winners.
Some online users starred out some letters from "WTA" to avoid censors, with one asking on Weibo if the "*TA" move on Wednesday to cancel tournaments in China was "because of that person?"
© 2021 AFP
While many countries around the world have eased restrictions on abortion, the United States is going in the other direction.
The conservative-dominated Supreme Court appears all but certain to uphold a 2018 Mississippi law that would ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
In the absence of any federal laws, it is the US Supreme Court that has, since 1973, guaranteed a woman's right to an abortion until "viability," when the fetus can survive outside the womb, typically between 22 and 24 weeks of pregnancy.
But the nation's highest court appears poised, following oral arguments on Wednesday, to roll back abortion rights and uphold Mississippi's 15-week ban.
Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative, expressed concern that the United States shared its viability standard with the People's Republic of China and North Korea while the rest of the world is more restrictive.
Former vice president Mike Pence, speaking a day earlier, made the same comparison and said he hoped the court "can move America away from the radical fringe squarely back into the mainstream of Western thought."
The United States does, in fact, permit abortions later than many other countries but it is not alone with China and North Korea.
According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, 67 countries allow abortion on request, with most of them setting the limit at 12 weeks.
The United States is among a dozen nations that allow abortions to be carried out later along with China but also Britain (24 weeks), Canada (until term) and parts of Australia.
And the 12-weeks standard can be misleading because a number of countries permit legal access to abortion later for "social reasons, health reasons (and) socio-economic reasons," said attorney Julie Rikelman, arguing in favor of maintaining the status quo in front of the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
Few countries present such a patchwork of differing access to abortion within their borders, and most do not have the "same barriers in place" as does the United States, Rikelman told the Supreme Court.
Conservative US states, mostly in the South, have erected a number of obstacles in recent years restricting access to abortion, forcing many clinics to close.
Six US states have only a single abortion clinic each, including Mississippi.
A Texas law banning abortions after six weeks, before many women even know they are pregnant, took effect on September 1 and the Supreme Court is yet to act on an emergency petition to stop it.
On the other hand, access to abortion is freely available in progressive states such as California and New York.
Nancy Northup, CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said the United States is an outlier "in terms of progression on abortion rights."
"The trend in the last 25 years has been liberalization of abortion laws," Northup said, citing recent developments in Mexico, Argentina and Benin.
Although the Supreme Court's decision in the Mississippi case will not be known until June, Northup said the United States is already in an "incredible regressive phase" with more than 100 abortion restrictions passed this year alone.
The United States also sets itself apart from the rest of the world with the ferocity of the domestic debate over abortion.
Just 42 percent of Americans believe abortion should be permitted on demand compared with 75 percent in Sweden, 65 percent in Britain, 64 percent in France and 61 percent in Italy and Spain, according to a 2021 Ipsos poll.
In those other countries, the abortion debate has cooled since legalization.
Not so in the United States, where the Republican Party has used the emotional issue to mobilize voters, particularly those on the religious right.
Donald Trump, for example, was pro-choice in 1999 but ran for president in 2016 on a promise to nominate justices to the Supreme Court who were opposed to abortion.
He kept his pledge and the three justices nominated during his presidential term are expected to vote to roll back abortion rights.
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