Russia is planning a military offensive against Ukraine, which could begin as soon as early 2022, according to United States intelligence officials.
The finding estimates that Moscow is planning to use 175,000 troops and almost half of them are already deployed along various points near Ukraine's border, according to an anonymous official in Joe Biden's administration.
The official added that plans call for the movement of 100 battalion tactical groups along with armour, artillery and equipment.
It comes as Mr Biden pledged on Friday to make it "very, very difficult" for Vladimir Putin to take military action in Ukraine.
"We've been aware of Russia's actions for a long time and my expectation is we're gonna have a long discussion with Putin," Mr Biden said.
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"I don't accept anyone's red line."
US intelligence officials have also observed an uptick in Russian propaganda through the use of proxies and media outlets to denigrate Ukraine and NATO ahead of a potential invasion, the White House official said.
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Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials also warned that Russia could invade in the new year.
Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov said on Friday that the number of Russian troops near Ukraine and in Russia-annexed Crimea is estimated at 94,300, warning that a "large-scale escalation" is possible in January.
The Kremlin has previously dismissed accusations from Washington that it is preparing for an invasion, while the US has threatened to hit Russia with the harshest sanctions yet if it takes military action against Ukraine.
Russia has also picked up its demands on Mr Biden to guarantee that Ukraine will not be allowed to join NATO and has warned the US it will respond if Ukraine is drawn into any "geopolitical games".
Prosecutors have charged the parents of a suspect in a deadly Michigan school shooting with involuntary manslaughter.
They allege James and Jennifer Crumbley ignored warning signs and called some of their actions prior to the shooting "egregious".
Ethan Crumbley is accused of using his father's gun during a rampage in Oxford, about 35 miles (60 km) north of Detroit, this week.
He has pleaded not guilty on multiple charges including terrorism.
James and Jennifer Crumbley are facing four counts each.
Authorities in Oakland County have told US media they are currently searching for the pair after the Crumbleys' lawyers were unable to reach them by phone.
But, in a joint statement via text message to the BBC, lawyers Shannon Smith and Mariell Lehman said the Crumbleys "are not fleeing from law enforcement" and had left town on the night of the shooting "for their own safety".
They added the pair would return for their arraignment, which was expected to be take place later on Friday.
Four people were killed and seven injured in the shooting on Tuesday. The victims have been named as Tate Myre, 16, Madisyn Baldwin, 17, Hana St Juliana, 14, and Justin Shilling, 17.
Why have the parents been charged?
On Friday, Oakland County lead prosecutor Karen McDonald acknowledged that charging parents in a child's alleged crime was highly unusual.
According to her office's investigation, the boy was with his father last Friday when Mr Crumbley bought the firearm believed to have been used in the shooting.
A post on his social media later that day showed off his dad's new weapon as "my new beauty", Ms McDonald said.
Just one day before the shooting, a teacher said she saw Ethan searching online for ammunition, which prompted a meeting with school officials, Ms McDonald said. After being informed of the incident, Ms Crumbley texted her son: "LOL I'm not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught."
And on Tuesday morning - hours before the rampage - Mr and Mrs Crumbley were called into the school for an urgent meeting after teachers found a note by their son, including several drawings of guns and bloodied people alongside captions like "the thoughts won't stop" and "blood everywhere". School officials told the pair they would have to seek counselling for his son.
Ethan's parents did not want their son to be removed from school that day, Ms McDonald said, did not ask him whether he had the gun with him or search the backpack he brought with him to school.
Ms McDonald said the charges are meant to hold the Crumbleys accountable as well as to send a message about responsible gun ownership.
"The notion that a parent could read those words and also know that their son had access to a deadly weapon that they gave him is unconscionable, and it's criminal," she said.
The prosecutor had previously noted that, although the gun had been purchased legally, it "seems to have just been freely available" for the child's use. According to her, the suspect took the gun from an unlocked drawer in his parents' bedroom and brought it to school.
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Neither federal nor state law requires gun owners to keep their weapons locked away from their children.
In a video message posted to YouTube on Thursday, the school's superintendent Tim Throne said that - while the boy and his parents had been called to the office - "no discipline was warranted" at the time.
He added that the school looked like a "war zone" and would not be ready to operate again for weeks.
Ms McDonald alleged on Friday that, when James Crumbley heard about the shooting, he "drove straight to his home to look for his gun" before calling authorities to say he suspected his son was the perpetrator.
"I'm angry as a mother. I'm angry as a prosecutor. I'm angry as a person that lives in this county," she said. "There were a lot of things that could have been so simple to prevent."
On Wednesday, prosecutors charged 15-year-old Ethan as an adult. He now face charges of terrorism and first-degree murder.
Announcing the charges, Ms McDonald said her office had "a mountain of digital evidence" to show the suspect had planned the attack "well before the incident".
There was a moment of seeming levity this week in Ghislaine Maxwell’s otherwise grim trial on sex trafficking charges. It came as her defence lawyer was recounting all the roles one of Maxwell’s accusers had played in her career as a soap opera actress: car crash victim, cancer patient, prostitute and someone stalked by a serial killer, among others.
“I forgot about that one,” the woman, now in her early 40s and identified pseudonymously as “Jane”, quipped.
Then the attorney, Laura Menninger, got to the point: Jane was, she said, essentially a trained liar. Her testimony about the sexual abuse she suffered, beginning at age 14, had been a performance. “You are an actor who convincingly portrays someone else for a living,” the lawyer stated. “You are able to cry on command.”
The exchange revealed the ugly contours of the Maxwell trial: in order to prevail, the British socialite’s lawyers will have to destroy the credibility of Jane and three other victims who are expected to also testify that Maxwell lured them into Jeffrey Epstein’s clutches and sometimes participated in his sexual abuse of them. Maxwell has denied any wrongdoing.
Attacking an accuser’s credibility in such a case is hardly a novel legal strategy. What may be changing is how it plays in a MeToo era in which much of society is revising ideas about how to receive and respond to women’s complaints of abuse. An aggressive defence that might have once swayed jurors, say lawyers, might now be viewed by some as victim-shaming.
“It’s certainly a risky strategy,” said Elie Honig, a former prosecutor who has handled sexual abuse cases. “It’s also probably the only strategy Ghislaine Maxwell has. If the jury credits and believes these women, she’s cooked.”
Maxwell is one of two high-profile women who is this week on trial in a case that touches on issues of gender and justice. In San Jose, California, Elizabeth Holmes, the once-vaunted founder of failed blood-testing company Theranos, attempted to fend off fraud charges by telling jurors she had, in fact, been under the control of a domineering boyfriend and business partner. “He impacted everything about who I was and I don’t fully understand that,” she said on Monday.
In Manhattan, another of Maxwell’s lawyers, Bobbi Sternheim, also cast her client as a victim, arguing in a biblical opening statement that Maxwell was being made the scapegoat for Epstein’s sins. “Ever since Eve was accused of tempting Adam with the apple, women have been blamed for the bad behaviour of men, and women are often vilified and punished more than men are,” Sternheim declared.
To an extraordinary degree, the Maxwell trial is a contest of accomplished women. The formidable Menninger and Sternheim are leading the defence against an equally distinguished prosecution team that features Alison Moe, Lara Pomerantz and Maurene Comey. The presiding judge is the no-nonsense Alison Nathan, nominated last month by President Joe Biden to the federal appeals court. Then there is Maxwell, herself.
The Oxford-educated daughter of the late British press baron and embezzler Robert Maxwell sliced through the Manhattan social scene when she arrived in the early 1990s. She became Epstein’s close confidante and the manager of his luxury properties, including New York’s largest private residence and a Caribbean island. She was arrested in 2020, a year after he was found hanged in a Manhattan prison cell awaiting trial on charges that he abused dozens of underage girls.
Prosecutors claim she was instrumental in Epstein’s scheme because she enabled him to win the trust of vulnerable young women such as Jane, who recounted to jurors this week how the pair struck up a conversation with her while she was eating ice cream on a picnic bench at a summer arts camp in Michigan in 1994. She was 14. “I just assumed they were married,” Jane said.
Her father had died of cancer months earlier and the family had lost their house, Jane recalled. Weeks after that first encounter, Epstein sent a chauffeur-driven car to bring her and her mother to his Palm Beach estate for tea where, he explained, he liked to support young artists, she recounted.
She began to return by herself about every other week, Jane testified. There was fun by the pool with Ghislaine, who seemed to her like “an older sister”, and trips to the movies and shopping. Then one day Epstein led her into his pool house and assaulted her, Jane said. Later, she testified, Maxwell showed her how to perform sexualised massages on Epstein that sometimes turned into orgies.
“They moved me over to the bed and took their clothes off,” she said, recalling how the first such episode began.
By testifying, Jane said, she was hoping for closure: “This is something I’ve been running from my entire life.”
But first she had to endure a cross-examination by Menninger, who spent most of a day attacking every part of Jane’s story. The witness, she claimed, had exaggerated her family’s hardship, was motivated by money (she won a $5m financial settlement from an Epstein victims fund that apparently became $2.9m after lawyers’ fees), and should have come forward years earlier. She also flagged up apparent inconsistencies between Jane’s testimony and authorities’ records of various interviews they had conducted with her.
“You have come up with that memory in the last two years?” Menninger demanded at one point, after confronting Jane with a document from a 2019 meeting stating she had “no specific memory” of her first sexualised massage with Maxwell. Jane was also peppered with embarrassing questions about her recollection of performing oral sex on Epstein, nipple squeezing, masturbation and the use of vibrators.
To Barry Salzman, a Florida attorney who specialises in sexual abuse cases and has represented Epstein victims, it was standard fare. “So many years have passed that the defence has a lot to play with in terms of faulty memory,” Salzman said. More broadly, he observed: “In this country, usually — but not always — victims of sexual abuse sort of become the villains in these cases by the defence attorneys.”
Salzman does not expect Maxwell’s lawyers to pull their punches when the other women take the stand. “They’re going to just throw everything they can at this. She’s facing 70 years [in prison],” he said, asking: “Who would put themselves through this?”
THIS YEAR the drivers of Formula 1 (F1) made a change: instead of celebrating after a race by spraying each other with champagne, they switched to sparkling wine. Not to be frugal—F1 is not that kind of sport—but because of a new sponsorship deal. Officials in Saudi Arabia face a harder decision. The kingdom, which will host a race on December 5th, bans alcohol. Some, though, think it may loosen up for the event. “Champagne is part of the ceremony,” says a royal adviser. “Jeddah [the host city] will have seen nothing like it.”
Saudi-watchers predict boozy parties on yachts and, perhaps, at select venues on land. That would be in keeping with the reforms of Muhammad bin Salman, the crown prince, who has ignored puritanical clerics and curbed the morality police, while breaking taboos by opening up cinemas and letting women drive. Concerts were largely prohibited not long ago; now female DJs jive in public. The F1 race could mark the lifting of the alcohol ban, says a senior official.
The kingdom is reconsidering alcohol as it tries to lure tourists away from destinations like the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which has long allowed foreigners to partake and legalised drinking for everyone last year. Prince Muhammad has invested in cruise ships that serve alcohol offshore and carved out vast royal preserves with their own (non-Islamic) bylaws. He hosts a Red Sea festival where spirits flow. Luxury hotels are going up on the coast and near tourist sites inland. A launch party for one in October featured illicit sangría laced with whisky (which deserves to be banned for bad taste alone) and a rave on the sand.
Some of Prince Muhammad’s advisers want him to enlist liberal clerics to help explain to Saudis why what was once haram (forbidden) may soon be halal (permitted). “The sin [of drinking wine] is greater than the benefit,” says the Koran rather mildly. It does not prescribe a punishment for the act, though Saudi judges have been known to sentence offenders to 80 or more lashes. For centuries the early caliphs hosted parties with alcohol and let jurists argue over whether Islam banned all booze or just that from fermented grapes.
“We’re opening our country up to the world,” says Khalid al-Faisal, a royal overseeing the race in Jeddah. Still, there are reasons to think that the podium, at least, will be dry. Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE have all hosted car races—and used blander fizzy drinks, such as sparkling rose water, on the winner’s stand. Years ago an F1 team sponsored by Saudi Arabia’s state airline celebrated (in public) with orange juice. It got their clothes just as wet as champagne would have done.
This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline "Drinking and driving"
It was a sudden rise in coronavirus infections in Gauteng province, South Africa, from mid-November that first alerted the country’s scientists to the emergence of a worrying new variant — now identified as Omicron.
Health experts credit the quick work of South Africa’s scientific community, internationally recognised for its strong record in managing the HIV and tuberculosis epidemics, for identifying the new variant and taking measures to alert the world.
But gaps in the global effort to track mutations, a process known as genomic sequencing, make it difficult to not only monitor early cases of Omicron — but also to identify future variants.
The tools needed to sequence genomes are concentrated in richer countries, which means that large parts of the globe are not being properly tracked. More than 80 per cent of the more than 5m Sars-Cov-2 genomes uploaded to the Gisaid genomics database, which promotes the rapid sharing of data about coronaviruses, have come from two continents: North America and Europe.
“We’re flying blind in vast swaths of the world, many of which happen to be under-vaccinated,” said Peter Bogner, the founder of Gisaid. “It’s most important in areas that we’re currently flying blind to make sure we have better vision.”
Until recently, genome sequencing was a niche area of research used primarily by academics and infectious disease experts.
The pandemic changed that. The World Health Organization, which designated Omicron a variant of concern a week ago, has identified genomic sequencing as a key weapon in the fight against a virus that has killed more than 5m people worldwide.
“The public health benefits of rapid and widely available genome sequences of Sars-Cov-2 to track viral evolution and emergence of variants has become explicitly clear,” Soumya Swaminathan, the global health body’s chief scientist, said.
Fortunately, a genomic quirk in the shape of a missing gene means Omicron can be detected through PCR testing. And in sequencing, experts say, quality matters more than quantity.
“It’s not about numbers, it’s about understanding the epidemic, what it means,” said Tulio de Oliveira, a bioinformatics professor at Stellenbosch university whose team was the first to analyse the highly mutated genomes detected in Gauteng.
South Africa, he said, was helped by a collaborative network of laboratories and scientists as well as strong government support. Crucially, while it only sequences a small proportion of samples, it does so strategically, he added.
“For example, Brazil, UK and India have as much as 10,000 times more sequencing than we have. But in South Africa we identified both variants [the earlier Beta and Omicron] more quickly,” he said. “If we find something spreading everywhere, in places hundreds of kilometres away from one another, one can make strong conclusions such as a potential new variant increasing prevalence.”
But experts admit that even if the rest of the world sought to ramp up its genomic sequencing capabilities accordingly, a lack of the raw material required, notably the reagents that are needed to carry out the process, would make it very hard for them to do so.
Bogner said western nations had failed to learn the lesson of the Alpha variant, which ripped through southern England before spreading around the world last year.
“After Alpha, lots of noise was made about the need for countries to improve their genome sequencing efforts,” said Bogner. “Countries like the US and Germany, which at the end of 2020 showed a dismal performance, may have turned things around. But they’ve neglected the urgent need for low-and-middle-income countries to get their hands on reagents needed to generate data.”
Reagents, chemicals he described as “the fuel” for genomic sequencing technology, have been “hoarded” by a small number of western countries since the pandemic began.
De Oliveira said on Thursday that South Africa was running perilously short of reagents, and had enough for the next three days. The shortage, just as the world was looking to South Africa for answers, was being exacerbated by the blanket travel bans imposed in the wake of Omicron’s discovery.
“It’s difficult because these reagents have a cold chain. When they’re stuck in an airport for days you ruin the cold chain,” De Oliveira said, likening the mentality that underpinned the flight bans imposed by western nations to the vaccine hoarding that left southern Africa’s scantly vaccinated population open to new variants.
Even before Omicron, it was already “really difficult to get reagents”, according to De Oliveira. He said wealthier countries were “almost boasting” about the volume of sequencing tests they were conducting.
Francine Ntoumi, founder of the Congolese Foundation for Medical Research in Congo-Brazzaville, agreed.
She said genomic surveillance was most needed in countries with low vaccination rates. Nations where chronically ill patients cannot get access to jabs, were “always most likely to speed up the virus’ adaptation and evolution”.
Before Omicron arrived, Ntoumi’s laboratory, which has sequenced around 300 Sars-Cov-2 genomes in total, was the first to discover a variant, dubbed B.1.640, which also possessed a series of unusual spike mutations.
“B.1.640 should have been a warning sign of what was to come with Omicron,” she said.
“In my lab, we have two sequencers but they are not well utilised,” said Ntoumi. “We can do three times more sequences than we do and with that we would be able to do reliable genomic surveillance for the whole of Congo-Brazzaville.”
Bogner said he witnessed the inequality of genomic surveillance first-hand from the data hub in the California headquarters of Gisaid.
“There’s a room we have that’s a visual triage area, where data pours in,” he said. “When a dozen genome sequences are received from countries that have in the past reported very little, our curators celebrate. When they see 20,000 genomes generated by a big US government contractor, their response is not the same.”
The Omicron variant has been linked to a substantial rise in coronavirus reinfections in South Africa compared with previous waves, according to the first detailed study into the heavily mutated strain that has sparked global alarm.
“Analysis of routine surveillance data from South Africa suggests that, in contrast to the Beta and Delta [variants], the Omicron variant of Sars-Cov-2 demonstrates substantial population-level evidence for evasion of immunity from prior infection,” South African epidemiologists concluded in the study published late on Thursday.
Higher reinfections detected recently were “consistent with the timing of the emergence of the Omicron variant in South Africa”, they added.
The study did not examine Omicron’s effects on vaccine-induced immunity or examine whether the reinfected cases were more likely to become severely ill.
The findings by South Africa’s National Institute For Communicable Diseases, the public health body, will alarm global health experts who have been watching the surge in cases linked to Omicron, amid fears that its unusual genetic make-up could allow it to evade immune protection from prior infection or vaccination.
Based on analysis of test results recorded up to November 27, the study — yet to be peer-reviewed — looked at people who were first infected at least three months earlier. It compared the risk of reinfection during the first wave of the pandemic with subsequent waves of different variants.
While either the Beta or Delta waves were not associated with an elevated risk of reinfection, the risk of reinfection from Omicron was 2.4 times higher, the scientists concluded. Prior infection was previously estimated to provide at least an 80 per cent reduction in infection risk.
This suggested Omicron’s “selection advantage is at least partially driven by an increased ability to infect previously infected individuals,” they added.
South Africa, which has recorded a jump in cases of the Omicron strain first detected last month, confirmed more than 11,500 new cases on Thursday, with more than one in five tests coming back positive. This is a sharp increase from the hundreds of daily infections being recorded just weeks ago.
The surge has concerned scientists because South Africa is believed to have high rates of prior infection from previous waves. But South Africa has a relatively low rate of vaccinations, with about a quarter of the population fully jabbed after a sluggish rollout in recent months.
“Urgent questions remain regarding whether Omicron is also able to evade vaccine-induced immunity and the potential implications of reduced immunity to infection on protection against severe disease and death,” the study said.
Hospital admissions have also begun to rise in Gauteng province, the centre of the outbreak. Some 788 people were admitted to hospital in the week to November 28, which is more than double the figure recorded a week earlier.
The World Health Organization, which designated Omicron a “variant of concern” late last week, has said it would take at least two weeks to understand the effects of the variant on vaccines.
While nations around the world have imposed strict travel bans to and from southern Africa in an attempt to slow the spread of Omicron, cases of the new variant have been detected in dozens of countries.
Additional reporting by John Burn-Murdoch in London
Jeffrey Epstein's former housekeeper drove two underage girls to the disgraced financier's house under Ghislaine Maxwell's orders, a New York court has heard.
Ms Giuffre visited "very often", said Mr Alessi, 72.
Mr Alessi said he drove Jane, who he described as "strikingly beautiful", to an airport and watched her board a plane with Epstein, Maxwell and her dog, a Yorkshire terrier named Max.
He also testified that he saw Jane's contact details in Epstein's telephone directory, listed under "masseuses".
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Key points of the trial so far:
• Trial in New York, expected to last six weeks, enters day four
• Maxwell introduced herself to Mr Alessi as the "lady of the house" and told him not to make eye contact with Epstein
• Epstein's home in Palm Beach, Florida, was visited by "many, many women" "hundreds of times", witness testifies
• Maxwell targeted young girls before "serving them up for sexual abuse", jury has heard
• Maxwell's defence claims she has been "scapegoated" for Epstein's crimes
• British socialite, 59, denies the allegations and could face life behind bars if she is convicted.
Analysis by Joe Pike, news correspondent in New York
The prosecution will be delighted with the fourth day of evidence in Ghislaine Maxwell's sex-trafficking trial.
Juan Alessi, the housekeeper of Jeffrey Epstein's Palm Beach mansion, has corroborated some of the claims made by Ms Maxwell's first alleged victim, known by the pseudonym 'Jane'.
Mr Alessi told the court he remembers seeing two girls at the residence: 'Jane', and Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Prince Andrew's accuser.
Ms Roberts Giuffre is understood not to be one of the prosecution's four alleged victims in this trial, but has been mentioned numerous times in proceedings.
Unlike other witnesses, Mr Alessi told the court Ghislaine Maxwell was at the heart of Jeffrey Epstein's lavish and depraved life, describing her as the "lady of the house" who "told" and "instructed" him to carry out tasks.
A staff handbook for Mr Epstein's employees explained they should "remember that you see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing".
Mr Alessi said: "I was supposed to be blind, deaf and dumb and to say nothing of their lives."
Grooming expert Dr Lisa Rocchio was called by the prosecution, seemingly in an attempt to add credibility to the testimony of 'Jane'.
Dr Rocchio said there were common strategies used in grooming, and it was "very common" for victims of child sexual abuse to wait a long time before telling others.
'Jane' reported her alleged abuse to police 20 years after she says she escaped Jeffrey Epstein.
Cross-examination of Juan Alessi is due to begin on Friday morning.
Image:Maxwell told housekeeper Juan Alessi not to look Epstein in the eye, jurors heard on Thursday Pic: Sky UK
Taking to the witness box, Mr Alessi said "many, many, many females", most appearing in their 20s, visited the house while he was working there.
He said he saw women at the house "hundreds of times", adding that they were topless "75% of the time".
The British socialite, 59, is accused of crimes including luring girls as young as 14 to be sexually abused by Epstein at his properties in New York City, Florida and New Mexico, as well as her own London residence, between 1994 and 1997.
Maxwell denies the charges against her, with her defence team suggesting she has been used as a "scapegoat" for Epstein's crimes.
Image:Virginia Giuffre was taken to Epstein's mansion on Maxwell's orders, a witness testified
'Lady of the house'
Maxwell introduced herself as the "lady of the house" when she met Mr Alessi and instructed him to run Epstein's Palm Beach mansion like a five-star hotel, jurors were told.
She also ordered him not to look the disgraced financier in the eye and issued a 58-page document of "degrading" rules, Mr Alessi said on Thursday.
The ex-staff member worked for Epstein between 1990 and 2002 and claims that Ms Maxwell arrived on the scene in 1991 - changing the dynamic of the house from "cordial" to "just professional".
Image:Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell pictured in New York City in 1995 Pic: Patrick McMullan 1995/Sky UK
"Ghislaine was Mr Epstein's girlfriend but she introduced herself as the 'lady of the house', and said she managed many of his other properties," Mr Alessi, 71, told the court.
"She gave many, many instructions to me.
"When she arrived the conversation between me and Mr Epstein became less and less.
"Ms Maxwell said to me that Mr Epstein doesn't like to be looked in the eyes, she told me to just look at another part of the room and answer him."
Image:An artist's impression of Ghislaine Maxwell in court
The housekeeper was also ordered "only to speak to Mr Epstein when he asked questions", he told the court.
'Many, many house rules'
Mr Alessi told how there was a "tremendous amount" of "many, many rules" covering "the way we should dress", "cleanliness", "shopping" and "the way we should address Mr Epstein".
Mr Alessi said he would often work from 5am until 10pm to complete his "responsibilities" - prompting him to ask his wife to help.
"It was enough work for 10 people, not one and a half," he recalled.
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4:58
Maxwell 'unlikely' to testify
"I wasn't hired to do that kind of work."
He said he refused to do all the tasks - but could not remember Maxwell's response.
Epstein stayed at his Palm Beach property most weekends and bank holidays, when Maxwell would deliver "elaborate" instructions to get the house ready for his return, Mr Alessi said.
The billionaire and Maxwell were "together 95% of the time" and shared a bedroom, he told the court.
Image:An image of Jeffrey Epstein shown to the jury in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial
"There would be extensive preparation," Mr Alessi told the court.
"Ghislaine would tell us to change his sheets, to change all sheets in the guest rooms, to make sure hundred dollar bills were in every car, she would tell us to run the house like a five star hotel."
Mr Alessi gave evidence on the fourth day of Maxwell's trial, which is expected to last six weeks.
The woman identified as "Jane" gave evidence on Wednesday, telling jurors how she had repeated sexual contact with Epstein when she was 14 - and that Maxwell was there when it happened.
Maxwell faces a total of eight charges - including six counts of enticing minors and sex trafficking over a 10-year period.
The charges involve four alleged underage victims and multiple locations between 1994 and 2004. The youngest alleged victim was 14 years old at the time.
Maxwell also faces two counts of perjury which will be tried separately.
She denies all the charges and has pleaded not guilty.
Maxwell could be sentenced to 80 years in prison if found guilty of all counts.
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6:11
Maxwell is the ninth daughter of the former media mogul and Labour MP, Robert Maxwell
Who are the accusers?
Unlike the UK, alleged victims of sexual abuse in the US are not entitled to life-long anonymity. However the judge presiding over the Maxwell trial has ruled all four alleged victims can use a pseudonym or just their first name.
Alleged Victim 1 - (1994-1997)- New York and Palm Beach, Florida
Maxwell is said to have met the woman when she was 14 before grooming her by taking her on trips to the cinema and shopping. She is also said to have been present and involved in some of Epstein's abuse.
Alleged Victim 2 - (1996) - New Mexico
Maxwell groomed the alleged victim, then 18, after Epstein invited her to his New Mexico ranch, prosecutors claim.
Alleged Victim 3 - (1994-1995) - London
Maxwell is said to have befriended the girl in London before introducing her to Epstein and encouraging her to give him massages, knowing this would lead to sexual abuse.
The location of the alleged abuse is not in the United States, but under US law crimes committed outside the country can be charged within it if the victim or victims are American citizens. Therefore, it is presumed the third alleged victim is an American citizen.
Alleged Victim 4 - (2001-2004) - Palm Beach, Florida
The accuser, then 14, claims she was recruited to give Epstein sexualised massages in exchange for money at his Palm Beach mansion.
Maxwell, said to have been present when the teenager was in the financier's massage room, allegedly normalised the abuse by discussing sexual topics.
