She Had it Coming: British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty yesterday of procuring underage girls for the late sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein. The 60-year-old Maxwell was found guilty of sex trafficking and four other charges. She faces up to 40 years in prison.

   Four women who were teenagers at the time testified that Maxwell recruited them for Epstein’s pleasure between 1994 and 2004. Maxwell was acquitted of one count of enticing a minor to travel across state lines to engage in an illegal sexual act.

  Damian Williams, the US attorney in Manhattan, issued a statement describing Maxwell’s actions as “one of the worst crimes imaginable – facilitating and participating in the sexual abuse of children. “

  In a worrying development for prosecutors yesterday, the jury asked  to review the testimony of a psychologist who said that people can form “false memories” about events that never happened. But by the end of the day they found Maxwell guilty.

  Maxwell’s friend Epstein was a rich world-travelling financier who was found guilty of sex trafficking and died a suicide in prison in 2019.

  The very social Maxwell was once a fixture in the Manhattan scene with companions ranging from Prince Andrew to Chelsea Clinton. She was a regular at fundraisers, book launches, and society weddings. Ironically, she is the daughter of the late British tabloid press baron Robert Maxwell, who fell off his yacht and drowned and later was found to have bilked his company’s employee pension fund.

Viral News: A prominent Dutch economist who was a skeptic of the Covid-19 vaccine and a campaigner against protective lockdowns, has died of Covid at the age of 53. Robin Fransman was proud of not being vaccinated and when he contracted the disease he tweeted “Corona positive. It’s about time too.” 

  Here in the US, the country broke its one-day record for new cases of Covid-19; more than 488,000 just yesterday. New cases are up 153 percent over the past two weeks.

  Deaths are down seven percent, but that may change. So far, 823,000 Americans have died in the pandemic and the CDC projects that might jump to 860,000 to 866,000 by January 22^nd.

The China Press: One of the last pro-democracy news operations in Hong Kong has shut down after the offices were raided by 200 officers and seven members of the senior staff were arrested. 

  The arrested editors and board members of Stand News are three men and four women, ages between 34 to 73. They are accused of “conspiracy to publish seditious publications.”

  It’s all part of the mainland crackdown since taking over Hong Kong. Earlier this year authorities shut down the well-regarded Apple Daily, a vociferous critic of Chinese leadership.

  After the Stand News raid Chief Secretary for Administration John Lee said 

“Anybody who attempts to make use of media work as a tool to pursue their political purpose or other interests [and] contravenes the law, particularly offenses that endanger national security, they are the evil elements that damage press freedom.”

Off the Shelf: A critical ice shelf in the Antarctic, which holds back enough frozen water in the glacier behind it to raise sea levels by 10 feet, could be just a few years from total collapse, reports Alex Mazur for Rolling Stone. 

  Mazur has reported previously on the melting Thwaites ice shelf, and the Thwaites Glacier, which he has dubbed “The Doomsday Glacier.” He now says that just a few weeks ago a team of scientists reported “the discovery of cracks and fissures in the Thwaites eastern ice shelf, predicting that the ice shelf could fracture like a shattered car window in as little as five years.”

  Mazur writes that  “If Thwaites Glacier collapses, it opens the door for the rest of the West Antarctic ice sheet to slide into the sea. Globally, 250 million people live within three feet of high tide lines. Ten feet of sea level rise would be a world-bending catastrophe. It’s not only goodbye Miami, but goodbye to virtually every low-lying coastal city in the world.”

Ungerrymandered: With Republican legislatures around the country passing laws to limit and skew voting while drawing representative district lines to lock in their power, the voters in Michigan took matters into their own hands, passing a ballot initiative that put redistricting in the hands of an independent commission.

  That new commission composed of Republicans, Democrats, and independents approved new maps this week creating districts sufficiently balanced and  competitive to give Democrats a fighting chance to re-take the State Senate for the first time since 1984.

Rapper Real Estate: Rapper Kanye West paid $5.7 million for a house across the street in Los Angeles from his ex, Kim Kardashian, and their children, but he plans to tear it down, according to People magazine. He even paid $421,000 over asking price. The 44-year-old West recently paid $57.3 million for a house in Malibu, but the half-hour drive was too much for him.

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