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Plus Omicron cracks U.S records and readers pick the best book in the past 125 years View in browser | nytimes.com Continue reading the main story December 29, 2021 By Amelia Nierenberg Writer, Briefings Good evening. Here's the latest at the end of Wednesday. Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty of aiding in Jeffrey Epstein's abuse. Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan, via Getty Images 1. Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of helping to recruit , groom and sexually abuse underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein and his associates. A federal jury in Manhattan found Maxwell, a 60-year-old British socialite, guilty of sex trafficking of a minor — on which she faces a maximum sentence of 40 years — and four other charges against her. She was acquitted of one count of enticing a minor to travel across state lines to engage in an illegal sexual act. Here are live updates . The trial was widely seen as the courtroom reckoning that Epstein never had, because he was found dead in a Manh...

Plus Chile rewrites its constitution and teenagers take over Tetris championships. View in browser | nytimes.com Continue reading the main story December 28, 2021 (Want to get this newsletter in your inbox? Here's the sign-up .) By Amelia Nierenberg Writer, Briefings Good evening. Here's the latest at the end of Tuesday. Long lines at a drive-thru testing site in California. Bing Guan/Reuters 1. Omicron now accounts for about 59 percent of U.S. Covid cases , the C.D.C. said, a significant decrease from the agency's previous estimate. The agency revised its estimate for the week ending Dec. 18, to about 23 percent from 73 percent. The update showed how hard it is to track the fast-spreading variant in real time and how poorly the agency has communicated its uncertainty, experts said. Omicron is still spreading extremely fast, but it does appear milder than earlier variants. Covid-19 deaths have declined since vaccines became widely available, but unvaccinated peo...