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(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.2 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 780,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.

Just 59.4% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:

Dec 02, 9:33 am
Unvaccinated people will be barred from most businesses in Germany

Unvaccinated people in Germany will be barred from most businesses, except for grocery stores and pharmacies, officials announced Thursday.

In Germany, shops and restaurants check vaccination status at entrances.

Nearly 69% of Germans are fully vaccinated. The country has reported several cases of the omicron variant.

-ABC News’  Joe Simonetti

Dec 02, 8:33 am
Mask mandate on public transportation extended through March 18

Required masks on public transportation, including airplanes, rails and buses, will be extended through March 18, according to a new plan from the Biden administration.

Tighter requirements for travel into the U.S. will go into place early next week, the administration said. The rule calls for proof of a negative test within one day of travel to the U.S. for all passengers, regardless of their vaccination status or nationality.

President Joe Biden also announced a plan Thursday allowing for free rapid tests.

Senior administration officials say the more than 150 million Americans with private insurance will be able to submit for reimbursement to their insurance companies through the same rule that allows tests on site to be covered by insurance. To reach uninsured Americans and those on Medicare or Medicaid, the Biden administration will send 50 million at-home tests to 20,000 federal sites around the country to be handed out for free.

The Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Labor and Treasury Department will put out guidance by Jan. 15 to determine exactly how many tests will be covered and at what frequency, the plan said, and it will not retroactively cover tests already purchased.

-ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett, Justin Gomez

Dec 01, 5:32 pm
CDC orders airlines to share contact info for travelers from southern Africa

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is directing airlines to provide the agency with the names and contact information of passengers who have entered the United States since Nov. 29 and had been in southern Africa the prior two weeks. Airlines must turn the information over within 24 hours of the flight’s arrival into the U.S.

The directive, in effect indefinitely, applies to travelers from the Republic of Botswana, the Kingdom of Eswatini, the Kingdom of Lesotho, the Republic of Malawi, the Republic of Mozambique, the Republic of Namibia, the Republic of South Africa and the Republic of Zimbabwe.

The order, which does not mention the omicron variant specifically, is to “prevent the importation and spread of a communicable disease of public health importance.”

Delta and United are currently the only two carriers that offer flights between the U.S. and countries covered by the CDC order.

ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett, Sam Sweeney and Mina Kaji

Dec 01, 3:23 pm
California governor on omicron case: ‘This is not surprising’

Gov. Gavin Newsom said the first detected case of the omicron variant in the U.S. being found in California “is not surprising” due to the state’s “aggressive testing protocols” and genomic sequencing.

During a previously scheduled press briefing Wednesday afternoon, he shared a timeline on the San Francisco resident who tested positive for the case. The person left South Africa on Nov. 21 and landed in the U.S. on Nov. 22, developed symptoms a few days later around Nov. 25 and got tested on Nov. 28, he said. The test came back positive on Nov. 29, he said.

On Nov. 30, initial lab testing determined the sample could be omicron, and a full sequencing confirmed it was early Wednesday morning, San Francisco health officials said.

Newsom encouraged Californians to get vaccinated and receive a booster shot as the winter approaches.

Dec 01, 3:02 pm
California omicron case ‘not a cause for us to panic,’ health director says

The individual who tested positive for the first case of the omicron variant detected in the U.S. had received a full dose of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine but was not yet eligible for a booster dose, according to San Francisco Department of Public Health Director Dr. Grant Colfax.

The person developed symptoms upon returning from South Africa, got tested in San Francisco and has since recovered, Colfax told reporters during a briefing Wednesday.

“They did the right thing and got tested and reported their travel history,” he said.

Colfax said the case is “not a cause for us to panic,” and that San Francisco “is prepared” for this.

The health department has no plans at this time to change its current COVID-19 health orders, Colfax said.

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(ALBANY, N.Y.) — With mounting concerns over the potential threat of the newly discovered omicron variant, U.S. scientists are racing to try to determine whether there are any confirmed cases of the new variant circulating around the country.

Among those is the New York State Department of Health’s Wadsworth Center Labs in Albany, New York, where for months, scientists have been on the lookout for dangerous variants, while monitoring the genetic changes in the COVID-19 virus.

In order to track new variants, the team sequences the virus’s genetic material to identify its lineage, strain and mutations, as well as to see how the virus is evolving, and which viruses are entering the state of New York.

The lab has been on high alert since the discovery of the omicron variant, analyzing positive COVID-19 samples from across the state to see if the variant is already present within the community.

On Wednesday, scientists in California confirmed the first known case of omicron in the U.S.

It is “absolutely, entirely possible,” that the omicron variant is already circulating in many other communities across the country, Dr. Kirsten St. George, director of virology and chief of the Laboratory of Viral Diseases at the Wadsworth Center, told ABC News on Tuesday.

“We only sequence a subset of samples in New York and elsewhere in the country. We’re not sequencing 100% of positive specimens. It is entirely possible that it is already here, and we have yet to sequence the specimen that it’s in,” St. George said on Tuesday, prior to the news of the U.S.’ first confirmed case.

St. George said she was taken aback when she first saw a 3D image, shared by South Africa, of omicron’s mutations.

“You could see the individual mutations marked on that protein, and it was really pretty jaw dropping, because it had so many more mutations than anything we’ve ever seen. It was a fairly startling thing to look at,” St. George said, adding that “the evolutionary change on that protein was more extensive than anything we had seen.”

Omicron is concerning because it has mutations not seen before, and scientists still do not know how it will clinically affect those it infects, St. George said, adding that “there are mutations that we unfortunately know can be associated with reduced efficacy of immunity.”

The lab has been sequencing over 800 COVID-19 samples per week, researchers explained, a number that has been greatly enhanced with the establishment of a sequencing consortium, which comprises four other sequencing laboratories around the state, and also by collaboration with other labs across the state.

“These are known positive COVID samples that have been collected from throughout New York state and they’re sent to us and we’re preparing them for whole genome sequencing,” Alexis Russell, a research scientist for the lab, told ABC News.

With multiple labs, throughout the country, sequencing different percentages of the positive specimens, and sharing data as soon as it is available, “we will know immediately when we see it, when it comes through the pipeline,” St. George said

Following the discovery of the omicron variant, South Africa, one of the first countries where the newest variant was first discovered, has begun to experience an uptick in coronavirus infections. According to St. George, it is possible that omicron is behind South Africa’s latest surge.

“The correlation of the emergence of that variant in South Africa, combined with the rapid increase in positivity and increase in case count, is quite suspicious,” St. George said. “I think it’s quite possible that it correlates with that variant and that it is probably a rapidly transmissible variant.”

However, it is “very unlikely” that the increase in COVID-19 cases seen in the U.S., in recent weeks, is the result of the omicron. St. George said, “I think if that were the case, we would have seen it already in our sequencing pipeline.”

It is still too early to know whether omicron will turn out to be more transmissible than delta, St. George said, though some of the existing PCR tests just happen to pick up an omicron marker, making it easier to detect than delta.

Positive samples for omicron have shown a phenomenon called “S-gene-dropout,” which means that a target gene, linked to COVID-19 variants, appears to be missing from the new variant, allowing it to be distinguished easily from the dominant delta variant.

“It is a very suspicious indicator when you see it, a convenient indicator,” St. George explained, making it potentially easier to detect omicron as compared to delta.

The discovery of new variants is not unexpected, St. George said, but it becomes particularly worrisome when it replicates at high numbers, increasing the chances of a mutation emerging.

“The more virus that it’s producing, the more chance it has of producing a virus with a mutant. And then the more people who are infected, the higher the risk again, the higher the chance of producing it,” St. George added.

It is possible that omicron could prove to be stronger than the delta variant, which has been shown to be far more transmissible than prior variants.

“The competition against delta is quite dramatic. It certainly looks as if it’s got a very good fitness advantage against it, at this point,” St. George said.

However, researchers cautioned that there are also times when viruses do develop mutations that seem to give them fitness advantages over dominant variants, but they ultimately “sort of burn out,” and subside.

The protective measures that should be taken against omicron remain the same as with the other variants, wear masks, especially inside, and in crowds, wash your hands and get vaccinated.

“Even though we know that this virus has mutations that can be associated with evading immunity, be it prior infection, immunity or vaccine associated immunity. You have a better chance of not getting sick and having a decreased amount of viral replication in your system if your immune system is already primed with a vaccine,” St. George said.

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(NEW YORK) — The family of Daunte Wright is spending their first holiday season without him.

“On Thanksgiving, we sat there and we watched so many videos of my nephew,” Wright’s aunt Naisha Wright said tearfully in an interview with ABC News. “It was just such a beautiful thing, because everybody had a memory of him either cracking jokes or trying to dance — because he could not dance, but he tried.”

The 20-year-old Black man was fatally shot in Minnesota during a traffic stop in April by then-police officer Kim Potter.

Potter, who resigned from the Brooklyn Center Police Department two days later, is now headed to trial. She is charged with first-degree and second-degree manslaughter. She has pleaded not guilty to both charges.

Officers initially pulled Wright over for an expired registration tag on his car but determined that he had an outstanding warrant for a gross misdemeanor weapons charge and tried to detain him, according to former Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon, who also resigned after the incident.

As officers tried to arrest him, Wright freed himself and tried to get back in his vehicle.

During the struggle, the defense says Potter accidentally grabbed her firearm instead of her stun gun when she shot him. After he was shot, he drove off and crashed the car a few blocks away.

Wright’s mother, Katie Wright, told ABC News in an interview two days after the shooting that her son had called her during the traffic stop.

“I know my son was scared. He’s afraid of the police, and I just seen and heard the fear in his voice,” his mother said. “But I don’t know why, and it should have never escalated the way it did.”

She described her son as “an amazing, loving kid” who “had a big heart,” “bright” smile and “loved basketball.”

Naisha Wright said she wants the world to remember her nephew as a popular young man with a knack for humor — earning himself a large group of close friends and being coined as an “honorary nephew” to those who knew the family. She also said he had a bright outlook toward a future of taking care of his family, particularly his 2-year-old son.

“He had a 2-year-old son that’s not going to be able to play basketball with him. He had sisters and brothers that he loved so much,” his mother said in April. “He just had his whole life taken away from him. We had our hearts pulled out of our chests. He was my baby.”

“I’m just remembering that smile on that boy’s face,” his aunt said. “The memory of this young man trying to live his life … trying to be a father, becoming a father at a young age and trying to do something for his son.”

Naisha Wright said he had hoped to “take care of his son, giving and doing whatever it was that he needed to do for his son.”

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump has been retained by the family and has slammed the defense’s argument that Wright may still be alive if he had not tried to escape police custody.

“We must look past the shameless victim blaming that has been and will be directed toward Daunte,” Crump said. “Daunte Wright should not have been stopped or shot. He should be here with us, hugging his parents, siblings and young son during this holiday season.”

ABC News’ Stephanie Wash and Sabina Ghebremedhin contributed to this report.

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(OXFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich.) — A fourth student has died following Tuesday afternoon’s shooting at a Michigan high school.

Justin Shilling, 17, died at about 10:45 a.m. Wednesday in the wake of the shooting at Oxford High School in Oxford Township, sheriff’s officials said. Three other students, ages 14 to 17, died Tuesday. Seven people, including a teacher, were injured.

The suspected gunman, 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley, was taken into custody and is being charged as an adult, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said at a news conference Wednesday.

There’s no indication that the victims were specifically targeted, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said Wednesday.

McDonald said she is confident prosecutors can prove the shooting was premeditated “well before the incident.”

A law enforcement official told ABC News that investigators are actively pursuing information that, Monday night, an undetermined number of students appeared to see a Snapchat video warning of a shooting on Tuesday. Some students who saw the video stayed home from school, though no calls were placed to police regarding the video, the official said.

According to the sheriff’s office, “the suspect had been involved in a meeting over behavior issues the prior day and the day of the shooting.”

“Nothing of concern was noted in his school file prior to the first meeting,” the sheriff’s office said. “There are also no documented cases of bullying of the suspect with the school.”

Crumbley has been charged with one count of terrorism causing death; four counts of first-degree murder; seven counts of assault with intent to murder; and 11 counts of possession of a firearm in commission of a felony, she said. Additional charges are possible, McDonald said.

A judge entered a not guilty plea for Crumbley in his first court appearance Wednesday afternoon. He will be moved to Oakland County Jail and held in isolation with bond, the judge said. His next court appearance is scheduled for Dec. 13.

The teen allegedly took his father’s semiautomatic handgun, a 9 mm Sig Sauer pistol, with him to school, officials said.

The teen allegedly came out of a bathroom and began shooting. He never went into a classroom and was apprehended in a hallway, Bouchard said.

Thirty spent shell casings have been recovered, the sheriff said. The suspect had 18 live rounds left, he said.

The suspect’s father purchased the weapon on Black Friday and officials are looking into how the family stored its guns and how much access the teen had to them, according to a source briefed on the investigation. The suspect had apparently used the gun prior to the school shooting, the source said.

McDonald said prosecutors are considering charges against both of the suspect’s parents.

The first three students killed in the Tuesday shooting were Madisyn Baldwin, 17, Tate Myre, 16, and Hana St. Juliana, 14.

Four of the seven injured victims remained in the hospital on Wednesday, the sheriff said. Among those in the hospital is a 17-year-old girl who is in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the chest, he said.

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(BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.) — The wife of a famed music executive was killed during a possible home invasion in Beverly Hills.

Officers from the Beverly Hills Police Department responded to the 1100 block of Maytor Place just before 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, where they found a victim with a gunshot wound to the head, according to the department. The suspects were no longer on the scene, police said.

The victim was identified by a source close to the family as Jacqueline Avant, the wife of music executive and film producer Clarence Avant. Jacqueline Avant was transported to the hospital, where she later died, police said.

Jacqueline Avant, 81, may have been killed as the result of a home invasion, the source told ABC News. A back sliding glass door was shattered, Beverly Hills Police Chief Mark Stainbrook told ABC News.

It is unclear if anything was taken from the home, Stainbrook said. It is unclear who broke into the home, how the events unfolded and how long the suspects were there.

Clarence Avant, who is featured in the 2019 Netflix documentary “The Black Godfather,” was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in October. Clarence Avant, 90, was popular among A-list celebrities such as Oprah, Jay-Z and even former President Barack Obama.

Police read a statement from the Avant family Wednesday afternoon during a press conference, which described Jacqueline Avant as “an amazing woman, wife, mother, philanthropist, and a 55-year resident of Beverly Hills.”

Beverly Hills Police detectives will use all available investigative methods to follow up on leads, Stainbrook said.

Additional information surrounding the incident were not immediately available.

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(OXFORD TOWNSHIP, Mich.) — The teenager who allegedly gunned down three classmates and injured eight others took his father’s gun with him to his Michigan high school, officials said.

The suspected gunman, a 15-year-old boy, was taken into custody after the Tuesday afternoon shooting at Oxford High School in Oxford Township. The semiautomatic handgun, a 9mm Sig Sauer pistol, was confiscated, officials said.

Three students ages 14 to 17 were killed and eight others, including a teacher, were injured.

The suspect’s father purchased the weapon on Black Friday and officials are looking into how the family stored its guns and how much access the teen had to them, according to a source briefed on the investigation. The suspect had apparently used the gun prior to the school shooting, the source said.

Detectives are also examining the suspect’s writings and devices, the source said.

It has not yet been announced if the 15-year-old will be charged as an adult.

Out of the eight injured, three were in critical condition Tuesday night: a 15-year-old boy shot in the head; a 14-year-old girl shot in the chest; and a 17-year-old girl shot in the chest, Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard said.

A 14-year-old boy was in serious condition with jaw and head wounds.

Three students were in stable condition: two 17-year-old girls and a 15-year-old boy. The teacher, a 47-year-old woman, was treated and released from the hospital with a graze wound to the shoulder, Bouchard said.

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(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.2 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 780,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.

Just 59.4% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:

Dec 01, 8:57 am
South Korea confirms 1st cases of omicron variant

South Korea on Wednesday confirmed its first cases of the omicron variant.

The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said the new variant was initially detected among three people — a couple who arrived from Nigeria on Nov. 24 and their friend who drove them home from the airport. Since then, the variant was found in two other people who also traveled to Nigeria and returned to South Korea on Nov. 23, bringing the total of confirmed cases to five.

Health authorities are conducting genetic sequencing tests on the couple’s child and relatives of the friend who drove them home to determine if they were also infected, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency.

In an effort to fend off the omicron variant, which was first identified in southern Africa last week, South Korea has banned foreign short-term travelers from eight southern African nations. South Korean citizens arriving from those countries must quarantine for at least 10 days, regardless of their vaccination status.

South Korea’s daily tally of newly diagnosed COVID-19 infections exceeded 5,000 on Wednesday for the first time since the start of the pandemic. The surge, which officials attributed to the highly contagious delta variant, has pushed COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths in the country to record highs.

The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said most of the 5,123 new cases were reported in the capital, Seoul, and its surrounding metropolitan region, where officials said earlier that more than 80% of intensive care units designated for COVID-19 patients were already filled.

-ABC News’ Joohee Cho

Dec 01, 8:07 am
Nigeria confirms 1st cases of omicron variant

Nigeria confirmed on Wednesday its first cases of the omicron variant.

The new variant was detected among three people with a recent history of travel to South Africa who tested positive for COVID-19 after arriving in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, according to the Nigeria Center for Disease Control.

“These cases were recent arrivals in the country in the past week,” Dr. Ifedayo Adetifa, director-general of the Nigeria Center for Disease Control, said in a statement Wednesday. “Follow up to ensure isolation, linkage to clinical care, contact tracing and other relevant response activities have commenced. Arrangements are also being made to notify the country where travel originated according to the provisions of the International Health Regulations.”

Following confirmation of the variant on Nigerian soil, the national travel advisory was revised and now requires all inbound travellers to present proof of pre-booked day 2 and day 7 COVID-19 tests as well as a a negative test result that was taken no more than 48 hours before departure. All outbound passengers, regardless of the requirements of the destination countries, are expected to present evidence of full COVID-19 vaccination or a negative test result done no later than 48 hours before departure.

“The NCDC assumes Omicron is widespread globally given the increasing number of countries reporting this variant,” Adetifa said. “Therefore, it is a matter of when, not if, we will identify more cases.”

The cases of omicron in Nigeria are also the first to be confirmed in West Africa.

-ABC News’ James Bwala

Nov 30, 9:41 pm
CDC working to modify international travel testing guidelines

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday it is working to change its international travel guidelines to require COVID-19 testing one day before departure to the U.S. in light of the omicron variant.

“CDC is working to modify the current Global Testing Order for travel as we learn more about the Omicron variant; a revised order would shorten the timeline for required testing for all international air travelers to one day before departure to the United States,” the CDC said in a statement. “This strengthens already robust protocols in place for international travel, including requirements for foreign travelers to be fully vaccinated.”

The CDC continues to recommend that all travelers get a COVID-19 viral test three to five days after arrival in the U.S. and that unvaccinated travelers quarantine for seven days even if they test negative.

-ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett

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(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.2 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 779,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.

Just 59.4% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Latest headlines:
-Variant-specific vaccine could be completed in about 3 months: White House
-Greece to mandate vaccines for people 60 and older
-Global case count of omicron variant tops 200
-Omicron variant was in the Netherlands earlier than thought

Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern.

Nov 30, 5:50 pm
Merck pill now awaiting FDA authorization after adviser endorsement

Advisers from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have narrowly approved an endorsement of the Merck COVID-19 pill, voting 13 to 10 in favor of the authorization.

If authorized, it would be the first easy-to-take antiviral pill for COVID-19. Pfizer is also working on a COVID-19 pill, which it hopes will be authorized early next year. The FDA typically takes the advice of its advisers but will make its own final decision.

During Tuesday’s meeting, advisers spoke positively on Merck’s pill, even though it was not found to be quite as effective in the final analysis as it was in an early, preliminary analysis.

However, the advisers expressed doubt about whether it would be safe for pregnant people to use Merck’s pill because of the potential risk of harm to the fetus as well as its use in children due to lack of data and similar concerns as in pregnancy.

ABC News’ Sony Salzman

Nov 30, 2:45 pm
Variant-specific vaccine could be completed in about 3 months: White House

If a variant-specific vaccine is needed, the process, including FDA and CDC authorization, would take about three months, White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said at Tuesday’s White House briefing.

The omicron variant has still not been detected in the U.S. Delta “remains the predominant circulating string representing 99.9% of all sequences sampled,” CDC director Rochelle Walensky said.

Walensky said the CDC is also working on expanding a surveillance program through JFK International Airport, San Francisco International Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport that would conduct more tests on international arrivals.

Walensky added, “To be crystal clear, we have far more tools to fight the variant today than we had at this time last year.”

ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett

Nov 30, 2:13 pm
Blanket travel bans won’t prevent international spread of omicron: WHO

The World Health Organization praised South Africa and Botswana on Tuesday for the “speed and transparency” in which they reported on the new omicron variant.

The WHO stressed that “blanket travel bans will not prevent the international spread, and they place a heavy burden on lives and livelihoods.”

“In addition, they can adversely impact global health efforts during a pandemic by disincentivizing countries to report and share epidemiological and sequencing data,” the WHO said.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, while on a plane to Nigeria, told reporters Tuesday that South Africa should not be “punished” with travel bans for being transparent.

“These bans must be removed,” he said.

“We have advanced in the world to a point where we now know when people travel, they should be tested, like I was tested last night and I’m happy to be tested when I arrive again,” he said.

“And for us, the tourism industry is one of the key industries. … This is discriminatory against us, and they are imposing a very unfair punishment,” he said.

ABC News’ Christine Theodorou

Nov 30, 1:35 pm
80 million eligible Americans remain unvaccinated

About 100 million Americans remain completely unvaccinated, according to federal data. Nearly 80 million of those people are over the age of 5 and therefore eligible to get the shot.

Since the beginning of November, hospital admissions have jumped by 20%, while emergency department visits have increased by 27%, according to federal data.

Minnesota and Michigan currently hold the country’s highest case rate, followed by Wisconsin, North Dakota, New Hampshire, Arizona, New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Puerto Rico, Florida and Louisiana currently have the nation’s lowest infection rate, according to federal data.

ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos

 

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(NEW YORK) — Ghislaine Maxwell, a longtime associate of serial sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, came face to face with her first accuser in a Manhattan federal court on Tuesday.

A woman prosecutors have referred to as “Jane,” one of the three alleged minor victims whose allegations against Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell are detailed in a federal indictment, testified on the second day of her trial, telling her story publicly for the first time.

She told the jury that she met Maxwell and Epstein while attending summer camp at the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan, the beginning of what prosecutors earlier called “a nightmare that would last for years.”

After returning home to Palm Beach, Florida, “Jane” said, she began visiting Epstein at his seaside mansion, where she testified that she had her first sexual encounter with Epstein in 1994 when she was just 14. According to “Jane,” Epstein abruptly took her to his pool house, pulled down his pants and “proceeded to masturbate on me” while she remained “frozen in fear.”

The abuse escalated to include explicit massages, “Jane” said, during subsequent visits to Epstein’s house, and she identified Maxwell as the person (other than Epstein) most often in the room. Maxwell contributed, she alleged, by “leading me to a massage table and showing me how Jeffrey likes to be massaged.”

Maxwell faces a six-count indictment for allegedly conspiring with and aiding Epstein in his sexual abuse of underage girls between 1994 and 2004. She has been held without bail since her arrest in July 2020 and has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Over the next several years, “Jane” said, she travelled with Epstein and Maxwell “maybe 10 times,” sometimes on Epstein’s private plane and sometimes on commercial flights. She visited both Epstein’s New York residence and his New Mexico ranch, she said, where she suffered further sexual abuse by Epstein. It was Maxwell, she said, who typically arranged for her travel.

Earlier in the day, Epstein’s former pilot, Larry Visoski, testified that he met “Jane” in the cockpit of Epstein’s plane, though he later acknowledged he did not know how old she was at the time and could not recall whether she had actually taken a flight.

“Jane” also described frequent orgies with Epstein and other women, the details of which, she said, are “hard to remember,” because they started to “seem the same” and she became “numb to it.”

She never told anyone about her experience, she said, until many years later.

“How do you tell or describe any of this,” she asked, “when all you feel is shame and disgust and confusion and you don’t know how you ended up here?”

It’s unclear whether Maxwell will take the stand during her trial, which is expected to last six weeks. If convicted, she could spend decades in prison.

 

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