Ghislaine Maxwell loses sixth bid for release from Brooklyn federal lockup
NEW YORK — A judge has denied Ghislaine Maxwell bail for a sixth time, rejecting arguments from the British socialite that compared her legal troubles to those of Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby and the character Hannibal Lecter of “The Silence of the Lambs.”
Manhattan Federal Court Judge Alison Nathan ruled that Maxwell should remain behind bars for the same reasons she stated in previous rulings. She’s written that Maxwell, who is accused of grooming underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse in the mid-1990s and early 2000s, has not been candid about her finances and is a flight risk. Maxwell had proposed a $28.5 million bail package in exchange for home confinement.
Maxwell has long complained that she can’t get a fair trial and that she’s treated worse than other notorious perverts.
“Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby were permitted to walk into the courthouse each day of their respective trials. Not until their verdicts were rendered, adjudging them guilty, were they detained,” lawyer Bobbi Sternheim wrote.
The jailed socialite will turn 60 behind bars on Christmas Day, which lawyers estimate will fall midway through her trial beginning Nov. 29.
—New York Daily News
Newsom explains canceled summit trip: His kids' ‘intervention’
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — After more than a week of silence, California Gov. Gavin Newsom finally revealed the reason he canceled his trip to Scotland for the United Nations climate conference: spending Halloween with his kids.
Newsom and his wife, first partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom, had planned to attend the conference from Nov. 1-3 in Glasgow, which would have forced them to miss Halloween.
That upset the four Newsom children — ages 5, 8, 10 and 12 — so they staged what Newsom called an “intervention” at dinner.
“Mom and Dad missing Halloween, for them that was worse than missing Christmas,” Newsom told his former economic adviser Lenny Mendonca at a “fireside chat” during the California Forward economic conference in Monterey on Tuesday.
Newsom said he explained to his kids why he and Siebel Newsom needed to go. But the next morning he woke with a knot in his stomach and decided he had to cancel.
Until Newsom told his dinner intervention story Tuesday, his office had refused to provide any details to reporters and residents who had been asking what “family obligations” had forced him to cancel his trip.
—The Sacramento Bee
Ex-Marine held in Russian prison starts hunger strike
WASHINGTON — Trevor Reed, the former U.S. Marine and Fort Worth, Texas, native serving a nine-year prison sentence in Russia, has been on a hunger strike for five days to protest his detention and the violation of his rights.
“We have received a report from an attorney that Trevor has begun a hunger strike to protest his arbitrary detention and Russian authorities’ numerous and flagrant violations of his basic human rights and his rights under Russian law,” Reed’s family said in a statement Monday. “While we are immensely proud of our son’s strength of character, we are also extremely worried about his health.”
This marks the latest in a series of demonstrations Reed, convicted of endangering Russian police and jailed in July 2020, and his family have made to draw attention to the case. U.S. officials have said both Reed and Paul Whelan, another former Marine imprisoned in Russia, are serving time for trumped-up charges, most likely pretexts for holding them as bargaining chips in hopes of trading for Russian spies.
Reed’s family has been unable to speak with him for 117 days as of Tuesday. They called on the Biden administration to produce a “strong response.”
Reed, 29, was arrested in Moscow in 2019 after he got drunk and allegedly grabbed the arm of an officer as he was being driven to a police station. Prosecutors said he caused the vehicle to swerve and endangered the lives of officers.
—The Dallas Morning News
COVID-19 surges in Minnesota as threat stays 'very high'
MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota's COVID-19 indicators continued to show a worsening pandemic Tuesday with more cases and hospitalizations, including a surge of newly reported infections over the weekend that exceeded the state's capacity for logging cases.
The latest data from the Minnesota Department of Health added 7,173 new cases to the state's pandemic totals, a figure that captures reporting for Saturday and Sunday and continued a trend of rising daily cases over the past two weeks.
Over the weekend, however, the high volume of new cases meant that staffing wasn't sufficient to process all the data, the Health Department said. The tally reported Tuesday is about 2,500 cases shy of the true count for Saturday and Sunday.
"We are taking steps to boost staff capacity, but we anticipate this backlog will impact new case data at least through Wednesday, Nov. 10," the Health Department said in a statement. "The marked increase in case growth is another reminder that the threat of COVID-19 remains very high in Minnesota."
The statewide tally for patients hospitalized with COVID-19 increased to 1,122, which is the highest figure thus far in 2021. The share of tests coming back positive is up to 9.1%, which is another record for 2021 and well beyond the state's 5% "caution" threshold.
The Health Department reported another 20 deaths connected with COVID-19 including a Ramsey County resident age 45-49. In general, people age 65 and older are at greatest risk for serious illness, but younger adults have made up a larger percentage of all deaths during the latest wave of COVID-19.
Tuesday's data release includes cases reported over a three-day period spanning 4 a.m. Friday through 4 a.m. Monday.
—Star Tribune
UN demands immediate release of workers held in Ethiopia
UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations has demanded that Ethiopia immediately release more than a dozen U.N. workers.
A total of 22 local employees of various U.N. agencies had been detained in the capital Addis Ababa without being given any reason, spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in New York on Tuesday. Of these, 16 are still in custody, he said.
"It is imperative that they be released," he said.
The conflict between Ethiopia's central government and rebels from the north of the country has coincided with rising tensions between the United Nations and Nobel Peace Prize winner Abiy Ahmed.
A few weeks ago, seven U.N. staff members were expelled in an unprecedented operation. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres accused Ethiopia of violating international law.
The conflict with the Tigray People's Liberation Front, which began about a year ago, has since spread to other parts of the country. Together with rebels of the Oromo Liberation Army, the TPLF is advancing on Addis Ababa.
—dpa
