US news | The Guardian

GSA recognises Biden’s win, allowing presidential transition to go ahead, as Trump says he will leave White House if electoral college votes for Biden Continue reading...

Whatever the guild of royal experts says, Peter Morgan’s series can’t match the truth of its unlovely subjectsWhich, below, did the Prince of Wales not say?a) “I am the Prince of Wales and I will be King!” Continue reading...

The president-elect has brought in a mix of experience and diversity – but more telling is who Biden hasn’t appointedSo far, Joe Biden has avoided one of the biggest potential pitfalls of the transition process that will end with him moving into the White House: infuriating the left wing of the Democratic party.Related: Here's something to give thanks for this Thanksgiving: our democracy survived | Art Cullen Continue reading...

Footballing genius aside, his greatness lay in transcending his all too human flawsI can still remember where I was when, in 1986, Diego Maradona scored with the “hand of God”. In a flat on the Coventry Cross estate, in east London. An Asian family lived there, one of a handful on the estate, who had faced vicious racist attacks. An England-Argentina game, just four years after the Falklands conflict, was a threatening proposition. I was part of a group that organised support for besieged black families. So, there I was, with half an eye on what might be happening outside, watching Maradona destroy England, first with his left hand and then, four minutes later, by slaloming through the England team, finding space where none should have been, scoring possibly the most audacious goal in World Cup history.Amid the praise heaped upon Maradona over the past week, it’s easy to forget how despised he was in Britain in those days. Or why many, like me, took to him because he was so despised. He was to football as Muhammad Ali had been to boxing. Continue reading...

Fatigued by the coronavirus and Trump, the idea of going back to normal is seductive – we must guard against it“Life is going to return to normal,” Joe Biden promised on Thursday in a Thanksgiving address to the nation. He was talking about life after Covid-19, but you could be forgiven if you thought he was also making a promise about life after Trump.It is almost impossible to separate the two. To the extent voters gave Biden a mandate, it was to end both scourges and make America normal again. Continue reading...

Judge says plaintiff ‘failed to allege that even a single mail-in ballot was fraudulently cast or counted’Pennsylvania’s highest court has thrown out a lower court’s order that was preventing the state from certifying dozens of contests from the 3 November election.In the latest Republican lawsuit attempting to thwart president-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the battleground state, the state supreme court unanimously threw out the three-day-old order, saying the underlying lawsuit was filed months after the law allowed for challenges to Pennsylvania’s year-old mail-in voting law. Continue reading...

Businessman Fredric Eshelman sues pro-Trump ‘election ethics’ group citing ‘disappointing results’ of effort to expose cheatingA Donald Trump supporter who donated $2.5m to help expose and prosecute claims of fraud in the presidential election wants his money back after what he says are “disappointing results”.Fredric Eshelman, a businessman from North Carolina, said he gave the money to True the Vote, a pro-Trump “election ethics” group in Texas that promised to file lawsuits in seven swing states as part of its push to “investigate, litigate, and expose suspected illegal balloting and fraud in the 2020 general election”. Continue reading...

The Illinois-born entrepreneur, who helped revitalize downtown Las Vegas, died ‘peacefully’ after being injured in a house fireTony Hsieh, the “visionary” developer of online shoe retailer Zappos who spearheaded the transformation of downtown Las Vegas in recent years, has died at the age of 46.According to his lawyer Puoy Premsrirut, Hsieh was injured in a house fire in Connecticut while visiting relatives over Thanksgiving. He died on Friday “peacefully and surrounded by family”, according to a statement from DTP Companies, the organization he founded in 2012 as an umbrella for the revitalization program. Continue reading...

Our remote lifestyles make us all just one click away from cringe-inducing catastropheTen million or so people watched a director talk about the Euphoria actor Lukas Gage on Zoom, as if he could not be heard, while Gage, waiting to audition, listens in. “These poor people live in these tiny apartments,” says the director, as Gage adjusts his hair, and the realisation that he is one of the “poor people” dawns on him. “I’m looking at his background and he’s got his TV…”The actor makes a simple noise, an “ooh” with a sharp exhale, for which he should now probably win an Emmy. “Yeah, unmuted,” says Gage, with a polite but pointed wince. Posting the excruciating and mercifully brief exchange online, he wrote: “psa if youre a shit talking director make sure to mute ur shit on zoom mtgings.” Continue reading...

The president-elect is uniting dog-lovers and cat people by bringing a ‘first cat’ to join his two german shepherdsUniting Democrats and Republicans is one thing, but Joe Biden will reportedly embrace a far more formidable challenge when he inherits the White House early next year: bridging the chasm between the nation’s cat people and dog lovers.The new first family is already set to include two german shepherds, Champ and Major, who will accompany the 46th US president and his wife Dr Jill Biden to Washington DC upon his 20 January inauguration. Continue reading...

The bad news for progressives is that there has not yet been a single person announced for an official post that the left can be enthusiastic aboutJoe Biden has now announced his transition team and a number of his cabinet appointees, giving us some idea of how he can be expected to govern. It’s very much true that “personnel is policy” and that the records of the people he chooses for key roles can indicate what kind of president he intends to be.How are the picks so far? Well, the bad news for progressives is that there has not yet been a single person announced that the left can be enthusiastic about. The best that can be said of the nominees is that they are generally “not as bad as we might have feared”. Some of the choices are deeply concerning. Others border on the unobjectionable. Most are relatively predictable, as Biden is making it clear he intends to hew as closely as possible to the Democratic politics of the Obama years. Here are a few worthy of note. Continue reading...

Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, has said the country will respond to the killing of one of the country’s most senior scientists, who was identified by Israel as having headed a secret nuclear weapons programme.Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the architect of Tehran’s nuclear strategy, was killed on Friday on a highway near the capital in a carefully planned assassination that has led to a serious escalation of tensions in the Middle East.

Trump’s legal team vows to appeal to supreme court after yet another defeat, as judge says claims ‘have no merit’A federal appeals court in Pennsylvania has delivered a strongly worded repudiation of Donald Trump’s latest attempt to overturn his presidential election defeat, dismissing his challenge to the state’s results as without merit, and backing a district judge who likened the president’s evidence-free and error-strewn lawsuit to “Frankenstein’s monster”.On Friday, a three-member panel confirmed unanimously a lower court’s decision last week to rebuff the arguments made by Trump’s legal team, led by the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, that voting in Pennsylvania was marred by widespread fraud. Continue reading...

Honestie, who was handcuffed at age 11, died from Covid. Her story isn’t an aberration – it’s part of a tragic trend Continue reading...

The assassination of the country’s top nuclear expert raises fears that the outgoing US president is determined to take further actionThe assassination on Friday of Iran’s leading nuclear scientist has heightened suspicions t hat Donald Trump, in cahoots with hardline Israeli and Saudi allies, may be trying to lure the Tehran regime into an all-out confrontation in the dying days of his presidency. Trump’s four-year-long Iranian vendetta is approaching a climax – and he still has the power and the means to inflict lasting damage.Speculation that Trump might soon initiate or support some kind of attack on Iran, overt or covert, kinetic or cyber, had swirled across the Middle East in the wake of last weekend’s unprecedented meeting in Saudi Arabia between Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. Continue reading...

Proud, defiant, political. To the world’s neglected and marginalised, he was a figure of hopeFor a nation prone to frequent lamentation over its missed opportunities, crashing from the world’s 10th wealthiest economy per capita in 1913 to a constant teetering at the edge of economic and social collapse for the better part of the past century, Argentina has produced an astonishing array of instantly recognisable global icons.

GSA recognises Biden’s win, allowing presidential transition to go ahead, as Trump says he will leave White House if electoral college votes for Biden Continue reading...

Back in the spring we were astonished by pictures of deserted tourist sites. But they didn’t tell the full storyI have been looking lately at the photos taken in mid-March of the world emptying out. Many of these images were taken from above or at wide angles, revealing vast swaths of space where people used to be. Major tourist sites were suddenly vacant: Times Square stopped bustling; only pigeons frequented the plazas near the Eiffel Tower; the view from the Spanish Steps revealed an unpeopled slice of Rome. Railway platforms, airport terminals, sports stadiums, concert halls and shopping centre car parks looked suddenly and strangely blank. Even beaches, seen from above, looked scrubbed of human life.I find these photos perversely beautiful. They are evidence of something truly terrible: the pandemic, and also of the sudden suspension of social and communal life in public that began in March. And yet perhaps I harbour the germ of a twisted visual fantasy that involves being the last person on Earth, achieving a kind of apocalyptic solitude, and experiencing the beauty of the manmade and natural world in lonely ecstasy. This, after all, is why normally so many of us go to museums at off-peak times and travel in off-season: to get away from others and to be almost alone in beautiful spaces. On a basic level, I think the visual appeal of these eerie photos comes from a place of latent alienation, a dark desire to hoard the world’s beauty for ourselves. Continue reading...

Ashley Allison, the Biden-Harris campaign’s national coalitions director, describes how innovative approach helped reach key groups during pandemicAlthough the dust is still settling on the 2020 US presidential election it is clear this cycle was one of significant breakthroughs for Democrats. With historic voter turnout for recent times, Joe Biden’s team secured a Democratic win in Georgia, something that hadn’t happened since 1992, and there was record turnout among young people and Black Americans.Related: Joe Biden: Black Lives Matter activists helped you win Wisconsin. Don't forget us | Justin Blake Continue reading...

The impulse to vent about others is hard to resist. The trick is to do it without hurting anyoneSome friends of mine, a couple working from home together, have reacted to the boredom of lockdown by turning their hairless cat into a workplace antagonist, muttering darkly about his behaviour from the other side of the room. The impulse to invent enemies runs deep. And now that our entire social lives have been reduced to the domestic and online spheres, there’s a lot of dark energy going around. And it has to find an outlet somewhere.Related: Saying what you want without fear of offence sounds good... until you do it | Andrew Hankinson Continue reading...

Moving away from a white- and male-dominated party is the only way for it to survive, pollster saysKat Cammack was raised on a cattle ranch by a working class single mother. She was the third generation of her family to go into business as a sand blaster. And at 32, she is about to become the youngest Republican woman in the US Congress.“I think a lifetime of experiences has shaped me to be a Republican and a conservative,” said Cammack, elected to an open seat in Florida. “There has been a stereotype about the Republican party, that it was the Grand Old Party, that it was your grandfather’s political party of choice. The election in 2020 has definitely helped push back on that narrative.” Continue reading...

Janet Yellen will likely be the US’s first female treasury secretary – but as Covid shutdowns loom, she will have to win Republican votes for any major initiativesTeresa Marez has never heard of Janet Yellen, likely to be the next treasury secretary of the United States. But she and millions of other Americans have a lot riding on the decisions Yellen will make if and when she is confirmed next year.The coronavirus has upended Marez’s life. Her savings are almost exhausted and she is worried about her unemployment benefits, which run out next week. “It’s so hard. It’s just such a mess,” said the mother of two in San Antonio, Texas. “We just need Congress to make a decision,” Marez said. “As long as they are in limbo, we are in limbo.” Continue reading...

Mike Tyson and Roy Jones Jr – both in their 50s – meet in Los Angeles in an unsanctioned exhibition boutNobody in the history of paid fighting has used the language of violence with as much undiluted enthusiasm as Mike Tyson. Iron Mike gave credible voice to the expression “bad intentions” and, from 1985 until 2005, he scared the pants off 50 lesser mortals until he began to rust and they started beating him up.Yet, on his return to the ring at 54 in the Staples Center in Los Angeles on Saturday night, the man who once threatened to ram an opponent’s nose bone into his brain and said he would eat Lennox Lewis’s babies (he didn’t), is being asked to collude with fellow 50-plus retired pugilist Roy Jones Jr in the biggest public love-in California has seen since hippies hugged in Haight-Ashbury in the 60s. Continue reading...

Milwaukee recount, which cost Trump campaign $3m, boosts Democratic president-elect days before state must certify resultA recount in Wisconsin’s largest county demanded by President Donald Trump’s election campaign ended on Friday with the president-elect, Joe Biden, gaining votes.After the recount in Milwaukee county, Biden made a net gain of 132 votes, out of nearly 460,000 cast. Overall, the Democrat gained 257 votes to Trump’s 125. Continue reading...

I am 75 and taking part in the Novavax trial but the success of the Oxford jab has given me a dilemmaMy third appointment with researchers this week, as a participant in Covid-19 vaccine trials, was overshadowed by the news that the Oxford vaccine will probably be available to older folk like me in the early part of next year – maybe as early as January or February.The vaccine I am trialling – the Novavax one – will have test results in January, and probably be available in the summer. So what happens to us guinea pigs when the Oxford vaccine is available, I wanted to know. As a reasonably healthy 75-year-old, I’m likely to be – in the doctor’s words – “at the back of the front of the queue” for it. I have signed up to be in the Novavax study for a year. But if I have the Oxford vaccine, do I cease to be any use? Continue reading...

Two days after a helicopter pilot revealed its existence, people began sharing their own shots of the unexplained pieceSome intrepid visitors have been flocking to a remote part of southern Utah in a bid to be among the first to see the mystery metal monolith.The structure in the Red Rock desert was first discovered last week from the air by a helicopter pilot and wildlife officers who were carrying out an annual count of bighorn sheep. Continue reading...

As Trump suffers another post-election court defeat, some Republicans worry he could depress turnout in crucial Georgia runoffsDespite giving his strongest hints yet that he is coming to accept his loss of the White House to challenger Joe Biden, Donald Trump’s continuing reluctance to leave office and baseless claims about electoral fraud are increasingly worrying his own party.In particular, Republicans are concerned that the chaos caused by Trump’s stance and his false comments on the conduct of the election in the key swing state of Georgia, which Biden won for the Democrats, could hinder his party’s efforts to retain control of the Senate. Continue reading...

The prime minister needs to look beyond 31 December and start repairing relations with Britain’s neighboursBoris Johnson has said that Britain will “prosper mightily” in the event that no trade deal is agreed with the EU before the end of the year. That hypothesis is coming dangerously close to being tested.Brexit talks continue in London this weekend, with signals that a free trade deal is achievable by the end of the year, but far from certain. The areas where differences remain are mainly fishing, state subsidies, and the mechanism for enforcing whatever is agreed. Those are not minor issues. Continue reading...

Former parent company Reckitt Benckiser sues firm over marketing of its Suboxone Film drugShares in Indivior plunged on Friday after the pharmaceuticals firm revealed it had been hit by the beginnings of a £1bn opioid legal claim, which is worth more than the entire value of the drugmaker.The move, brought to the high court by Indivior’s former parent company Reckitt Benckiser (RB), relates to the smaller company’s marketing of its Suboxone Film drug, which became embroiled last year in the US opioid crisis when a string of companies were accused of aggressive sales tactics which led to addiction and death. Continue reading...

It is a kind of madness that a thin deal or no deal is government policy. Labour has a choice to make, and fastEnvy is an unworthy emotion, and yet I feel it. It first struck on Monday, as Joe Biden announced his top tier of cabinet appointments, naming a team of calm, competent, deeply experienced lieutenants that will contrast sharply with Britain’s cabinet of all the talentless. The green-eyed demon struck again on Thursday as I watched Biden issue a series of Thanksgiving messages with a warmth and humanity alien to the man he will succeed. It’s clearer every day that in electing Biden and rejecting Donald Trump, Americans are moving to undo the great error they made in 2016. I envy that – because we are still stuck with ours.Of course Trumpism will live on in some form, but in January 2021 Americans will formally conclude the chapter that opened with Trump’s victory four years ago. In the same month, we will start our Brexit story in earnest, leaving the European Union not just in name but in practice. As America’s encounter with the reality of 2016-vintage populist nationalism ends, so ours will begin. Continue reading...

Legislators from Taiwan's main opposition Kuomintang (KMT) party threw pig guts and exchanged punches with other lawmakers in parliament on Friday as they tried to stop the premier, Su Tseng-chang, from taking questions, in a bitter dispute over easing US pork imports.President Tsai Ing-wen announced in August that the government would, from 1 January, allow imports of US pork containing ractopamine, an additive that enhances leanness but is banned in the EU and China, as well as US beef more than 30 months old

The hunt for a coronavirus vaccine is showing promise but it is premature to say the end of the pandemic is nigh. Several rich countries have signed a 'frenzy of deals' that could prevent many poor nations from getting access to immunisation until at least 2024. Also, many drug firms are potentially refusing to waive patents and other intellectual property rights in order to secure exclusive rights to any cure.Michael Safi, the Guardian's international correspondent, explains why 'vaccine nationalisation' could scupper global efforts to kill the virus and examines what is being done to tackle the issue

Few realize Milk and San Francisco mayor George Moscone were killed in part due to their opposition to police violence and abuseLike millions around the world, last May the image of the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin killing George Floyd sickened and angered me and drove me to the streets to demonstrate in support of Black Lives Matter. It also reminded me of events that occurred in my hometown of San Francisco 42 years ago on Friday.Many people know who Harvey Milk was, are familiar with his contributions to the LGBTQ+ civil rights movement and remember that he was assassinated on 27 November 1978 after being in office for less than a year. Fewer people are aware that one of the proximate reasons why Milk and San Francisco’s progressive mayor George Moscone were killed was because of their opposition to police violence and abuse. Continue reading...

Employers given broad discretion on whether to report worker deaths to Osha – and many have simply chosen not toAs Walter Veal cared for residents at the Ludeman developmental center in suburban Chicago, he saw the potential future of his grandson, who has autism.So he took it on himself not just to bathe and feed the residents, which was part of the job, but also to cut their hair and barbecue for them on holidays. Continue reading...

What does Biden lose from the president’s refusal to acknowledge defeat? Crucial time needed to fill positions and prevent serious national security risksHaving lost the election, as well as dozens of post-election challenges, Donald Trump’s ongoing refusal to admit defeat is still doing damage Joe Biden’s transition to power.Related: ‘Mini desk. Tiny hands. Small soul’: Trump mocked for giving speech at little table Continue reading...

#DiaperDon trends on Twitter after outgoing president’s furniture steals limelightFor a US president obsessed by size – his hands, his wealth, his crowds – Donald Trump made something of a bold U-turn on Thursday night by addressing the country from a desk seemingly designed for a leprechaun.Trump said on Thursday he would leave the White House if the electoral college votes for the Democratic president-elect, Joe Biden – the closest he has come to admitting defeat – but his furniture stole the limelight. Continue reading...

GSA recognises Biden’s win, allowing presidential transition to go ahead, as Trump says he will leave White House if electoral college votes for Biden Continue reading...

The Kansas City Chiefs are tipped to retain their title. But there are teams on the outside who could still mount a challengeThe playoffs are swiftly coming into view and the favourites to lift the Lombardi Trophy are clear but let’s not be too hasty in crowning Kansas City, Pittsburgh or New Orleans just yet. The postseason’s expansion to 14 teams increases the pack of outsiders and the chance of an outtsider fighting all the way to February. Here are the best of the underdogs (plus a team from the NFC East) who can cap a season defined by Covid-19 with a more uplifting conclusion. Continue reading...

Jeff Bezos’s company has made vast profits, but at a huge cost to workers and the planet. #MakeAmazonPay says: enough

This year has been horrible in so many ways, but adjusting to normal life again may not be as straightforward as we thinkMost of us can, at any one time, hold conflicting thoughts in our heads; it’s the basic condition of getting anything done. Faced with even the most trivial task, my first response is almost always I don’t want to do it, followed by I do very much want it to be done. To move from one state to the other requires the kind of internal workout – think how good it will feel to be on the other side of this bump; imagine what will happen if I simply stopped doing things; what kind of person can’t deal with the dishes etc – that kicked in particularly viciously last week, with news of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine. Three oppositional thoughts flew to mind: the end of the pandemic is finally in sight; infection rates will, between now and then, continue to rise and many people will die; and, most confoundingly, I’m not sure I’m ready to go back to the world.There is, almost certainly, a compound word in German for the anticipation of future nostalgia. One feels it keenly with children. I look at mine, now, hitting first milestones, and experience a spasm of what feels like loss: the certainty that, at some unspecified time in the future, this period will occupy enormous parts of my hard drive. I will feel sad for what has come and gone. The intensity of this period, so much of which flies by in the scramble just to hang on without falling, will, I know, look different at 10 or 20 years’ distance. Continue reading...

This year’s spending bonanza means potentially worsening labor and health safety conditions for hundreds of thousands of workersUS retailers have rolled out their traditional Black Friday and Christmas sales and shoppers look eager to make big savings, but this year’s spending bonanza means potentially worsening labor and health safety conditions for hundreds of thousands of workers in the warehouses that supply all the consumer goods.Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, essential workers in grocery, retail and warehouses that handle online orders have struggled with coronavirus outbreaks in the workplace, increased workloads, and revoked hazard pay for months. Continue reading...

President’s comments are the closest he has come to admitting defeat in election and set stage for college vote on 14 DecemberDonald Trump has said that he will leave the White House when the electoral college votes for Democratic president-elect Joe Biden in the closest the outgoing president has come to conceding defeat.Biden won the presidential election with 306 electoral college votes – many more than the 270 required – to Trump’s 232. Biden also leads Trump by more than 6 million in the popular vote tally. Continue reading...

Passengers will have to test negative for coronavirus three times, says US airline

Michael Hancock urged people on Twitter to ‘avoid travel’, then flew to MississippiThe mayor of Denver was forced to apologise after flying to Mississippi to spend Thanksgiving with his family – shortly after urging residents to follow official advice and remain at home because of the coronavirus.Related: US Covid cases, hospitalisations and deaths rise amid Thanksgiving rush Continue reading...

Rick Gates, Trump’s 2016 deputy campaign chair, says president ‘knows how much those of us who worked for him have suffered’