US news | The Guardian

When my mum was dying a few years ago, optimism was all I had. As Covid spreads, I need to feel everything is going to be OK again

The Democrats won the White House but performed poorly elsewhere, and AOC is leading the critique of how the party needs to changeThe sense of relief Democrats felt with Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election was not the same as a feeling of victory.The party’s loss of congressional seats and failure to take control of state legislatures, not to mention the US Senate, indicated an alarming slippage for a party that had thought it was growing as Trump was supposedly torching the Republican brand. Continue reading...

Twelve-year-old boy was killed when a white police officer shot him in a playground in 2014The US justice department has closed its civil rights investigation into the fatal 2014 shooting by Cleveland police of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old Black youth, and said that no federal criminal charges would be brought in the case.The announcement came five years after an Ohio grand jury cleared two Cleveland officers, Timothy Loehmann and Frank Garmback, of state charges of wrongdoing in the death of Rice, who was shot in a playground while holding a toy gun capable of shooting pellets. Continue reading...

Investigation finds officer violated procedures for preparation of search warrant that led detectives to Taylor’s apartmentLouisville police have taken steps that could result in the firing of an officer who sought the no-knock search warrant that led detectives to the apartment where Breonna Taylor was fatally shot.Detective Joshua Jaynes has received a pre-termination letter, media outlets reported Tuesday. It came after a professional standards unit investigation found he had violated department procedures for preparation of a search warrant and truthfulness, his attorney said. Continue reading...

US President-elect Joe Biden has criticised the Trump administration's promise of a swift coronavirus vaccine rollout, saying it has 'fallen far behind' expectations. Biden, speaking in Wilmington, Delaware, said some 2 million people have been vaccinated, well short of the 20 million Trump had promised by the end of the year. Biden said the vaccine rollout is the 'greatest operational challenges we've ever faced as a nation' and outlined his plan for ramping up vaccinations, including the use of the Defense Production Act Continue reading...

The two runoffs on 5 January will decide whether the Republicans continue to control the Senate, with profound implications for Joe Biden’s presidencyOn 5 January the US state of Georgia will vote, again, on who to send to the Senate.The control of the Senate is up for grabs, and thus the prospects for the Biden administration – at least for the next two years. Continue reading...

Growing number of Republicans back Trump’s demand to increase relief payments as party plunges into chaos and conflictA growing number of Republicans on Tuesday backed Donald Trump’s demand to increase coronavirus relief payments to US citizens from $600 to $2,000, though the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, blocked Democrats’ effort to quickly pass the measure.Related: Coronavirus sharpens America's already stark economic inequalities Continue reading...

US consumer protection agency received reports of blades flying into people and causing property damageMore than 190,000 ceiling fans sold at Home Depot are being recalled after reports that the blades fell off while spinning, hitting people and causing property damage.The Hampton Bay Mara indoor and outdoor ceiling fans were sold this year between April and October at Home Depot stores and its website. About 182,000 of them were sold in the US and 8,800 were sold in Canada. They cost about $150. Continue reading...

The US vice-president-elect received her first injected dose of the coronavirus vaccine live on television, one week after Joe Biden received his. Describing the process as 'relatively painless', Harris urged all Americans to get vaccinated. 'It's about saving your life, the life of your family members, and the life of your community,' she said

The combination of Boris Johnson, Covid and Brexit is creating a constitutional crash that is waiting to happen in 2021The Covid year has intensified potentially terminal strains within the UK’s four-nation union. When Boris Johnson began to grapple with the seriousness of the outbreak, the impact on the union was probably low on his list of concerns. But, as 2021 beckons, Mr Johnson’s approach to Covid has become a catalyst of the possible breakup of the United Kingdom. Covid’s most lasting political legacy in these islands may be that, in its aftermath, the UK will no longer exist.When the pandemic began, Mr Johnson seemed to assume that he was acting for the whole of the UK. He gradually discovered that, as far as Covid was concerned, this was untrue. In practice, he was the prime minister only of England. Health policy had been devolved since 1919 in Scotland, and has been under the control of devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland since Tony Blair’s era. And since all three devolved nations and most English cities were led by non-Conservative politicians with their own views of how to deal with Covid in their areas, and with no love for Mr Johnson’s politics in most cases, coronavirus decision-making has struggled to reach a consensus, to the general detriment. Continue reading...

Counties appeared to have improperly relied on unverified change-of-address information to invalidate voter registrationsTwo Georgia counties must reverse their decision to purge thousands from voter rolls in advance of the state’s 5 January runoff elections that will determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the US Senate.Georgia federal judge Leslie Abrams Gardner said in an order filed late on Monday that these two counties appeared to have improperly relied on unverified change-of-address information to invalidate voter registrations, Reuters reported. Continue reading...

Bernie Sanders vows to block Senate override until McConnell schedules vote on $2,000 stimulus paymentsDonald Trump suffered fresh humiliation on Monday when more than a hundred Republicans joined Democrats in the House of Representatives to override his veto of a $741bn defence bill.If, as expected, the Senate follows suit later this week, it will be Congress’s first such rebuke of his presidency, which has only three weeks left to run. Continue reading...

Reports that we are quieter than this time last year are simply not true, and sap what morale NHS staff have left

In a devastating year for the restaurant industry, some creative owners found ways to survive. ‘In the end, you have to eat’Eric See started the summer unemployed and adrift. He was among the thousands of restaurant owners across the country who shuttered their businesses as Covid restrictions kept customers home. Depressed and guilt-ridden over laying off his employees, See grabbed his dog, loaded his car and headed home to New Mexico.“Driving through America and being back home helped me understand that no one was alone in the struggle”, he said. He reconnected with his family, and their cooking – his mother’s breakfast burritos and tacos, fried to perfection. Continue reading...

Joe Biden says his team has been met with obstruction from leaders at the Pentagon as they prepare for inauguration. Plus, Trump is humiliated after Republicans join Democrats to override his veto

‘Witch-hunt’,’ ‘black swan’ and ‘exponential’ entered wide use but were often applied incorrectlyDonald Trump and the Covid-19 pandemic dominated the news headlines in 2020. Three terms in particular came to symbolise the year: “witch-hunt,” “black swan” and “exponential”.Trump has tweeted the phrase “witch-hunt” approximately once every three days on average during his presidency and not only in connection with his impeachment trial. He continued to use it later in the year to describe accusations that he mismanaged America’s Covid-19 response, inquiries into his tax returns, an investigation into alleged criminal conduct at the Trump Organization and other controversies. Continue reading...

Analysts predict a holiday retail boom even as unemployment hits shocking levels, particularly for Black and brown workersWalter Almendarez doubts there will be any presents beneath his artificial Christmas tree – not for his daughter, his nephews or anyone else. Continue reading...

Those who believe in the invincibility of Trump’s personality cult hold a view of American democracy that is at once too cynical and too naïveDonald Trump’s refusal to concede the election has fueled intense speculation about his post-presidency: will he start a new conservative cable network? Will he act as a kingmaker in the Republican party? Will he run for president again in 2024?Underlying all of these rumors is the assumption that Trump will continue to hold sway over a significant voter base. But this is by no means assured. It seems just as likely that, over time, Trump’s trajectory will land him closer to associates like Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani – hosting a middling podcast and hawking branded merchandise while trying to fend off prosecution. Continue reading...

More than 32,000 people in the overcrowded system have tested positive for the virus since the pandemic beganNine months since the emergence of the coronavirus, every one of California’s 35 state prisons is battling cases, a grim milestone in the state’s epidemic.California’s prison system has seen a system-wide rise in Covid-19 infections in past weeks, paralleling the intense recent surge in coronavirus cases across the state. Almost 9,500 people in the state’s prisons have Covid-19, with most of the state’s facilities facing over 100 infections. Continue reading...

Artist Leo Carson calls damage ‘act of racist aggression aimed at suppressing fight for black freedom’Police are investigating what appears to be an act of vandalism after a statue of Breonna Taylor, erected to honour her memory, was smashed in Oakland, California.The Oakland police department said late on Monday it was looking into the incident, although it had not identified any suspects or motives. The statue was found smashed on Saturday, about two weeks after it was installed. Continue reading...

Returning home, I found a broken city. Yet solidarity persists, under the most stringent conditions and amid palpable fear“Check out that security guard,” Alex said, nodding to my left.Alex (not his real name) is a protester in his early 20s, and I was meeting him for coffee at the only “yellow” pro-democracy cafe in New Town Plaza, Hong Kong, a once quiet shopping mall in my home district that last year became a battleground in massive anti-government protests. I turned to look: sure enough, there was a guard standing to the side of the main square, staring out into the crowd. I hadn’t noticed him before. Now I can’t help but catch him in the corner of my eye every time I pass through. Continue reading...

A gruesome injury couldn’t stop basketball’s most dominant force from adding to her trophy cabinet, but it was her allyship in the memory of Breonna Taylor that made a bigger impactThere’s a special joy in watching Breanna Stewart go about her work. The 26-year-old archetype-busting star forward of the Seattle Storm stands 6ft 4in with a 7ft 1in wingspan that’s longer than LeBron’s, blending the size and strength of a top-drawer post player with the agility and coordination of an elite wing. When she’s not using her length and physicality to pick her teeth with muscle-bound defenders in the paint, you can find her on the perimeter, calmly sinking three-pointers or roasting opponents off the dribble to create chances for herself and her teammates.Related: The most notable US athletes of 2020: No 7 – Maya Moore Continue reading...

The 77-year-old Republican former House speaker says Trump will ‘remain a dominant figure for a fairly long period of time’Some blame Donald Trump. Others blame social media. And those with longer memories blame Newt Gingrich for carving up America into blue states and red states racked by mutual fear, suspicion and alienation.As speaker of the House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999, the Republican arguably did more anyone else to sow the seeds of division in Washington. “Newt Gingrich turned partisan battles into bloodsport, wrecked Congress, and paved the way for Trump’s rise,” reflected the Atlantic magazine in 2018. Continue reading...

California was the first state to lock down and avoided overwhelming its hospitals. Nine months later, its leaders are struggling as conditions worsenAt the San Joaquin hospital in California’s Central Valley, nurses cover infectious Covid-19 patients with clear, tent-like barriers – or, when those aren’t available, white sheets – as they’re wheeled through the ICU.“It’s for everybody’s protection,” said Jessica Vasquez, an ICU nurse at the hospital – the sheets ensure that infection doesn’t spread to other patients and medical staff. But like so many of the protocols that the hospital has implemented since the coronavirus pandemic struck, it feels uncanny. Continue reading...

President-elect’s formative years of going toe-to-toe with the USSR on arms control hint at how he may deal with PutinIt was 1988, near the end of the cold war, when then-senator Joe Biden made yet another visit to the Soviet Union for talks on arms control. By that time, he felt comfortable enough in Moscow to bring a guest into the room: his teenage son.“Would you mind my son, Hunter Biden, sitting in and listening? The gentleman is interested in international affairs and diplomacy,” he said, according to Victor Prokofiev, the Soviet foreign ministry interpreter at the meeting. Continue reading...

New York attorney investigates incident in which black teenager was accused of trying to steal a white woman’s phone in a hotel lobbyA confrontation in which the jazz trumpeter Keyon Harrold said a woman tackled his 14-year-old son in a New York hotel lobby as she falsely accused the teen of stealing her phone is under investigation, prosecutors said.Harrold posted a widely viewed video of the confrontation that took place at the Arlo hotel on Saturday. He alleged the unidentified woman scratched him and tackled and grabbed his son, Keyon Harrold Jr, who is black, at the lower Manhattan hotel where the pair were staying. Continue reading...

Authorities call killing ‘a tragedy’ after Hill, 47, was shot while holding a cellphone and then denied aidA white Ohio police officer was fired Monday after bodycam footage showed him fatally shooting Andre Hill, a Black man who was holding a cellphone, then refusing to aid him for several minutes.Columbus police officer Adam Coy was fired hours after a hearing. His firing was announced in a statement from Ned Pettus Jr, the director of Columbus public safety. Continue reading...

President-elect Joe Biden accused the outgoing Trump administration of failing to provide sufficient information to his transition team. ‘Right now, we just aren’t getting all the information that we need from the outgoing administration in key national security areas,’ said US president-elect Joe Biden. ‘It’s nothing short, in my view, of irresponsibility.’ Biden also said that the Trump administration had caused serious damage to many government agencies. ‘Many of them have been hollowed out in personnel, capacity and in morale,' he said. ‘In the policy processes that have atrophied or have been sidelined. In the despair of our alliances and the disrepair of those alliances.’

President-elect says his advisers encountered roadblocks from the defence department and the office of management and budgetJoe Biden, the US president-elect, complained on Monday that his national security team has run into “obstruction” and “roadblocks” from political leadership at the Pentagon.The criticism came after the defence department earlier this month suddenly suspended briefings with the Biden transition team, and with Donald Trump still seeking to overturn his election defeat. Continue reading...

Businesses advertising indoor events to ring in 2021 are drawing sharp criticism as hospitals in the area are overloadedNews of planned New Year’s Eve parties in Los Angeles is sparking outrage as the region faces a catastrophic Covid crisis, record deaths and a crushed healthcare system.In the lead up to the new year, LA has become the new center of America’s out-of-control pandemic, with one Covid death now happening every ten minutes and hospitals faced with unthinkable choices as they run out of intensive care unit (ICU) beds. But doctors’ warnings of “apocalyptic” scenes at hospitals have not stopped some businesses from planning in-person events to ring in 2021, drawing sharp criticism from health officials. Continue reading...

Markets around the world show strong gains, with Germany’s Dax climbing to highest ever levelStock markets around the world enjoyed strong gains after President Donald Trump backed away from his threat to block a $2.3tn (£1.7bn) government spending and coronavirus relief package.On the first day of trading since Christmas – and the UK’s Brexit deal 24 hours earlier – relieved investors helped to drive US stock indices to intra-day peaks, while Germany’s Dax climbed to its highest ever level. Continue reading...

She served a two-month sentence as her husband, Mossimo Giannulli, is serving five months and is scheduled to be released 17 AprilThe actor Lori Loughlin was released from prison on Monday after spending two months behind bars for paying half a million dollars in bribes to get her two daughters into college.Loughlin was released from the federal lockup in Dublin, California, where she had been serving her sentence for her role in the college admissions bribery scheme, the federal Bureau of Prisons said. Her husband, the fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, is serving his five-month sentence at a prison in Lompoc near Santa Barbara, California. Continue reading...

A surge in outdoor activity in the UK has exposed how vital it is to balance human needs with those of the natural worldIt has been a year of extremes for nature. Under the first lockdown in spring, wildlife was suddenly left to its own devices. There were wild goats in the streets of Llandudno, peacocks in Bangor, sheep cavorting on playground roundabouts in Raglan in Monmouthshire. With verges left unmown by councils, roadsides erupted with wildflowers. There was respite for the estimated 100,000 hedgehogs, 50,000 deer, 50,000 badgers and 100,000 foxes that end up as roadkill every year. With no boats, jetskis, people or dogs, a friend living on the cliffs above Seaford Head Nature Reserve, in East Sussex – a popular walking destination and normally home to just five occasional curlews – showed me from her balcony on Zoom a flock of 36 curlews, hundreds of oystercatchers, ducks, merlins and peregrines. Everyone seemed to notice the birdsong. Without planes competing overhead, the dawn chorus of songbirds at Knepp, our 1,400-hectares (3,500-acres) rewilding project in West Sussex, was cacophonous and, after dusk, nightingales and woodlarks took centre stage. In May, in the crowns of our oak trees, white storks hatched their chicks for the first time in Britain since 1416.During lockdown, with life on pause and in need of solace, we tuned in to nature as never before. The Wildlife Trusts told me its website recorded a 2,000% increase in live webcam views. Unsurprisingly, when restrictions on travel were relaxed in mid-May, people flocked to the countryside like birds let out of a cage. At Knepp, we received 30,000 visitors in three months, a 10-fold increase compared with the same period in 2019. The atmosphere was of unadulterated relief as families spilled into the sunshine to soak up the pleasures of walking and relaxing in nature. Continue reading...

Our political leaders ought to support us in a time of unprecedented disaster. But they didn’t, so we had only ourselves to rely onWhile politicians debate whether sending a thousand bucks to people who have lost jobs, homes, loved ones, and health insurance to an economic crisis and a still very active pandemic counts as a “handout” to freeloaders, the people themselves have decided to share their resources with those who need it. This year, Americans, many of us having no idea if we were next to lose our jobs or what changes the future might hold, gave generously to help feed, bail out of jail, and heal strangers across the country.Related: 'This year has brought us closer together': how Covid changed dating Continue reading...

Police camera captured the moment of the explosion in downtown Nashville on Christmas Day that injured three people and damaged dozens of buildings.Authorities in Tennessee on Sunday named a 63-year-old Nashville resident as the perpetrator of the Christmas morning bombing

This was the year that certainty evaporated, but amid so much loss from Covid-19 I found small wonders to be thankful forBefore this year, I thought that you could be either “pregnant” or “not pregnant”. As it happens, it’s not always that simple. Last August, two weeks after an embryo was transferred to my uterus in the basement of a Harley Street fertility clinic, I held a pregnancy test up to the strong sunlight at my bedroom window. The control line, which indicated whether or not the test was working, was clear and dark pink. The test line, which indicated whether or not I was pregnant, was faint, like a shadow. In some light it was impossible to discern in some light – but standing at the window, there it was: hope.

The 22-year-old won her maiden grand slam title in Melbourne, eclipsed Serena as the American No 1 and backed it all up with deep runs in New York and Paris. The best is yet to comeThis time last year Sofia Kenin was coming off a season that saw her win three titles at lower-level tournaments, spring a headline-grabbing upset of Serena Williams at the French Open, scale more than 40 places in the world rankings and take home the WTA’s most improved player award.But as one of eight players aged 22 or younger to finish in the year-end top 25, she’d yet to meaningfully separate herself from the brigade of talent-rich youngsters threatening to kick in the door of women’s tennis. Certainly not when Naomi Osaka and Bianca Andreescu were out here winning majors. Even domestically, Kenin’s emergence was almost entirely dwarfed by the breathless ESPN-driven hype surrounding Coco Gauff’s meteoric rise and Serena’s comeback from childbirth and dogged pursuit of Margaret Court’s record. Continue reading...

Vote of confidence for Joe Biden during the Democratic primary set the stage for a comeback worthy of LazarusJuan Williams, an author and analyst, calls James Clyburn the politician of the year. Jon Meacham, a presidential historian, says he was the most important person of 2020. “Without Jim Clyburn endorsing Joe Biden, Donald Trump would be president for real – not just in his own mind,” Meacham told Real Time with Bill Maher on the HBO channel.The Black congressman’s vote of confidence for Biden during the Democratic primary set the stage for a comeback worthy of Lazarus. It was a transformative moment in a transformative year in which the flame of American democracy looked as fragile as a candle at the altar of St John Baptist Church in Hopkins, South Carolina, which is where the story begins. Continue reading...

Rather than run things back with the average Mitchell Trubisky under center, the Bears are in a great position to take a risk and move on. History suggests they will play it safe

His rally speeches and manic Twitter feed conjured new slogans and insults or revived incendiary wordsDonald Trump not only changed much about campaigning, governing and the ways of Washington, even the language of American politics has altered during the Republican’s tenure. Trump’s rollicking rally speeches and manic Twitter feed conjured new slogans and insults or revived incendiary words with long histories; his allies, opponents and chroniclers searched for new phrases to describe the indescribable. Here is a glossary of some of them from the past five years:alternative facts Continue reading...

Duke Webb charged with three counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder in shooting at Don Carter Lanes in RockfordA US army sergeant has been charged in the deaths of three people and the wounding of three more in a shooting at an Illinois bowling alley, authorities said Sunday.Winnebago county state’s attorney J Hanley said Duke Webb, 37, an army special forces sergeant based in Florida, has been charged with three counts of murder and three counts of first-degree attempted murder in the shooting at Don Carter Lanes, in Rockford, Illinois, late Saturday. Continue reading...