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We’ve watched the best shows, we’re bored of binge-watching and productions have been put on hold. But there is still hopeIt is no great surprise that during the first lockdown people spent more time stuck to their screens. Last year, Ofcom reported that in April we were watching around a third more television and online video than we had been a year before that, and that was when the weather was good. Netflix and Amazon Prime have both recently reported record numbers of subscribers signing up over the past 12 months, with newcomers such as Disney+ attracting big audiences, too.During that first lockdown, I was lucky enough to be able to work from home, and I set myself some TV goals. I would rewatch The Sopranos, because I had not seen it for at least 10 years, and I wanted to know if it still stood up as the best show in TV history. It does, and plenty of people had the same idea: it was one of the breakout hits of 2020. I would catch up with Schitt’s Creek. I would use documentaries to educate myself, probably starting with Ken Burns, and I would make sure at least some of what I watched was not in English, because it’s easier not to be on your phone when you’re watching something Icelandic. (One Instagram scroll equals several crucial plot-points missed.) I thought there would be a new season of Succession soon enough. I had it covered. Continue reading...

Its institutions were designed to keep the people out. The new president could have blamed the founding fathers

A factory with more than 800 plants has been discovered in a building beside the Bank of England – and the news had an unexpected effect on me

Police chief describes killings at home as targeted and a ‘different kind of evil’Five people, including a pregnant woman, have been found shot dead inside at a home in Indianapolis in an apparent targeted attack, the city’s police chief said, describing the killings as “mass murder” and a “different kind of evil”.The fatal shootings were discovered on Sunday by police who found a juvenile male with gunshot wounds before being called about 4am to investigate reports of a person shot on the city’s north-east side, said Sergeant Shane Foley from the Indianapolis metropolitan police. Continue reading...

Florida senator finds familiar discomfort in unfamiliar surrounds of Fox News Sunday as former first daughter circles

The new president needs to be fearlessly radical – it’s the only way to rebalance the economy and tackle the causes of division

Some hopeful vice-president could forward the fight for voting rights of the more than 4 million American citizens living in US territories who can’t voteAs she watched America’s inauguration ceremony last week, Aziza Jones switched back and forth between her social media and her television, hoping the extra energy use didn’t generate a power outage – a setback she said can be common in St Croix, US Virgin Islands.Related: Kamala Harris's Indian uncle plans US visit amid global celebrations for VP Continue reading...

The Democrat has kicked off his presidency with a blitz of executive orders and measures – here are the key themes

Women of colour included in press corps that seeks to rebalance the traditionally male preserveUS media organisations are taking steps to mirror Joe Biden’s gender-balanced cabinet appointments, with at least six major news networks assigning women to lead White House coverage.Since Biden’s inauguration last week, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, the public television station PBS and the Washington Post have assigned chief reporting duties to women. Continue reading...

Abiy Ahmed should hand back his Nobel peace prize over his actions in the breakaway region that have raised the spectre of famine againSeyoum Mesfin, Ethiopia’s long-serving former foreign minister, was one of the foremost African diplomats of his generation. He was gunned down this month in Tigray by the armed forces of a lesser man – Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister and Nobel peace prize winner. Some suggest it was the Eritrean military, Abiy’s allies, who killed Seyoum, although their presence in Tigray is officially denied. The circumstances of his death remain murky.As with much of the unreported, unchallenged murder and mayhem currently occurring in northern Ethiopia, murky is what Abiy prefers. When he ordered the army’s assault on the breakaway Tigray region in November, he blocked the internet, shut out aid agencies and banned journalists. It’s a conflict he claims to have won – but the emerging reality is very different. It’s a war fought in the shadows, with the outside world kept in the dark. Continue reading...

The video of the Russian leader’s $1bn secret palace reveals his terrible taste as well as his corruptionHero of the week, at the front of an exceptionally competitive field – the 22-year-old inauguration poet Amanda Gorman, the health workers who have been heroes for almost a year – has to be the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Not only did he voluntarily return to the country where he was almost killed by poisoning, but he marked his immediate arrest by getting his team to release the most politically devastating home makeover show of all time.The unwilling recipient of his Kevin McCloud treatment was President Vladimir Putin, the man who conceivably had something to do with Navalny’s poisoning and imprisonment, who will be riled beyond measure by the film. It states that money skimmed from the purchase of medical equipment (among other sources) paid for a $1bn, 18,000 sq metre Italianate secret palace on a clifftop Black Sea estate several times the size of Monaco. Through the detailed use of satellite and drone footage, snaps by building workers and architectural drawings, the film brings to your screen the complex’s tsarist eagles, its underground ice-hockey rink, its purple pole-dancing venue, its private theatre, its room for toy car racing, its £40,000 side table with a built-in bar. As Lanfranco Cirillo, the palace’s hitherto obscure architect, has rightly said: “There is a big difference between an expensive home and a classy, elegant home.” Continue reading...

The myth of the ‘stolen election’ – simple and endlessly repeated – is likely to be a rallying call for far-right terroristsWhen the back wheels of Air Force One finally lifted off the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday bound for Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s White House-in-exile in West Palm Beach, cheers erupted in millions of households across America and around the globe. Continue reading...

CEOs only acted after the Capitol attack because Democrats took power. Their political dominance must be reducedThe sudden lurch from Trump to Biden is generating vertigo all over Washington, including the so-called fourth branch of government – chief executives and their army of lobbyists.Related: Chaos of Trump's last days in office reverberates with fresh 'plot' report Continue reading...

Politicians’ decisions must be based on evidence that infection rates are low enough, vaccines work and hospitals can copeThroughout the pandemic, NHS trust leaders have argued for appropriate restrictions on social contact to bring Covid-19 under control. It is they and their teams who have to deal, in a distressing and direct way, with the daily death and harm that this dreadful virus brings. They know that, until we can vaccinate our population, restrictions on social contact are the only way to prevent unnecessary deaths, reduce patient harm and give the NHS the best chance to treat all the patients it needs to.So it should be no surprise that, as discussions start on loosening the current round of restrictions, trust leaders remain deeply cautious. There can be no simple, blanket approach to decision-making here. Each phase of the pandemic has its own characteristics and dynamics. Any relaxation will need to be evidence-based and take account of significant local variations in infection rates. And trust leaders have always been clear that these must be decisions for elected politicians as only they can balance the complex and difficult trade-offs required using the evidence and advice they receive. But trust leaders believe there are a number of reasons to be very cautious at this point. Continue reading...

The 46th US president and the UK prime minister also discussed Nato, climate change and human rightsBoris Johnson has had his first call with Joe Biden since the new US president entered the White House on Wednesday. Downing Street said Johnson congratulated Biden on his inauguration and that the two leaders looked forward to “deepening the close alliance” between their nations.After the call, the prime minister tweeted: “Great to speak to President Joe Biden this evening. I look forward to deepening the longstanding alliance between our two countries as we drive a green and sustainable recovery from Covid-19.” Continue reading...

Ex-president, whose Senate trial will start in two weeks, reportedly planned to oust acting attorney general in bid to overturn election

Pennsylvania representative Jeff Pyle says he ‘had no idea’ post mocking Rachel Levine would be ‘received as poorly as it was’A Pennsylvania legislator has apologised for sharing an image mocking the appearance of the recently departed state health secretary, Dr Rachel Levine, a transgender woman nominated to serve in the Biden administration.State representative Jeff Pyle, a Republican from Armstrong and Indiana counties in western Pennsylvania, said on Facebook he “had no idea” the post mocking Levine “would be … received as poorly as it was”, and said “tens of thousands of heated emails assured me it was”. Continue reading...

When they had power they failed to use it. But their revenge is still sweet to watchTread carefully, gentlemen, some women are at their most dangerous when they feel they have nothing to lose. In the US, that’s Melania Trump, freshly released from her role as First Grifter, who sashayed off a plane in Florida wearing a flowing patterned maxi-dress and comfy flats. It doesn’t matter that the dress was Gucci, retailing at thousands of dollars, you just know Donald would have hated it. Maybe they even squabbled about it on the plane (“That dress is a loser!”), but Melania wore it anyway. During Trump’s presidency, Melania got a reputation for “speaking her truth” via her clothing and that dress screamed “I’m outta here!”, as did the nuclear-strength stink eye she shot at her husband and the assembled media as she swanned past, refusing to engage.Over here, Theresa May took another of her now-characteristic swings at Boris Johnson, with an article berating his government for “abandoning global moral leadership”. Here was May Unleashed, a different creature altogether from when she was stumbling through her own premiership on grey-faced “Brexit means Brexit” autopilot. May also criticised Trump’s role in the attack on the Capitol. That’s Trump, whose little paw she once so tenderly held when she was the first world leader to meet him in the White House in 2017. May terms this the “hand of friendship”, but, back then, it looked less like a meeting of equals and more like a video reconstruction of when Tinder goes horribly wrong for silver surfers (“Be safe out there!”). Continue reading...

After the 6 January riot, the Capitol isn’t just a hostile working environment – it’s a disaster waiting to happen Continue reading...

The former first lady Melania Trump apparently spurned the conventions of her role by leaving Donald Trump alone in front of the cameras at Palm Beach airport after the couple left the White House for the final time ahead of Joe Biden's inauguration.Trump himself paused to wave at photographers, but his wife continued walking until she was firmly offscreen, leaving her husband alone and triggering speculation about the state of her marriage to the now former president

Looking back over the past four years, there wasn’t just rightwing repression. Movements flourished – and won important battles

The region’s funeral industry is collapsing amid the pandemic. It’s taking an unfathomable toll on grieving familiesJohanna Matamoros’s father and mother died one month apart in December and January. But with Los Angeles funeral homes pushed to the brink due to the Covid-19 catastrophe, she may have to wait two to three months to bury them.“I’m not able to grieve. It is so painful,” she told the Guardian. Continue reading...

Many of Biden’s new team have worked together before, and get on well – in sharp contrast to Trump’s ‘team of rivals’At the core of the administration Joe Biden is building is a trusted circle of officials, who are bound together by many years of working together in a close-knit team in the Obama administration, by a shared faith, or, in some cases, by a tie with Biden’s late son, Beau.It is the very opposite approach to the one taken by Donald Trump, who assembled a sharp-elbowed “team of rivals” – powerful men from different walks of life, who he had never met but thought looked the part. Biden treasures familiarity and nice-guy collegiality, and warned new appointees on Wednesday that if they don’t treat each other with respect, “I will fire you on the spot.” Continue reading...

Apart from Joe Biden we had Kamala, Lady Gaga, Bernie’s mittens – and Trump suddenly seeming an irrelevanceIt started on Tuesday with nerves in the playground: why weren’t they holding it indoors? No one with sense, we agreed, had an appetite for spectacle, and our systems couldn’t take any more. Donald Trump was going, good riddance, but let’s not tempt fate; besides, on Wednesday morning we all had things to do. After a year of rolling crises, even New Yorkers were feeling meek and defeated. Let’s get this thing over with and try to move on.The most surprising thing about the inauguration this week – apart from the reminder that, when it comes to its national ceremonies, America is if anything even more camp than Britain – was the sheer, irrepressible joy of it. From the first minute to the last there was no containing this thing and nothing – not pragmatism, superstition, trauma fatigue or work – would get in the way of the feeling. “Bye bye Trump, that dummy,” said one of my daughters on Wednesday morning. And so it began. Continue reading...

The studio’s new movie Soul, starring an ‘annoying’ Tina Fey, has just updated them for a new generationIt’s always weird when a good film suddenly lets you down – like meeting someone at a party who you think might become a proper friend, and then they turn around, bend over and fart. Like, really? I expected better of you, man.For me this happened (almost literally) with Bridesmaids, a terrifically smart comedy about female friendship, aside from the scene in which all the women develop chronic – and public – diarrhoea. And it happened with Booksmart, which zings with subtle truths about dorky teenage girls, aside from the pointless running joke about a female teacher sleeping with a student. Dontcha love movies that celebrate women, but also gratuitously humiliate them? Continue reading...

Called to act after violence in Charlottesville, Cameron Webb ran for Congress. He lost, but is still headed to Washington

Carter campaigned for human rights, Bush painted … but Trump faces several criminal investigations and a mountain of debtEach US president has charted a unique course after leaving the White House, taking up vocations from philanthropy to human rights to oil painting.Donald Trump’s post-presidency appears likely to be taken up by meetings with lawyers and creditors, possible sworn depositions about tax practices or sexual assault allegations and, in some long-tail scenarios, fines, criminal charges, bankruptcy or other legal sanction. Continue reading...

Texas case offers baseless mix of allegations of electoral fraud but cites the imaginary kingdom of Gondor as evidenceDonald Trump’s diehard supporters are often accused of living in fantasyland, but one court case recently launched to try to reinstall him as president has surprised even the most hardened observers of Trumpian strangeness by citing as evidence a mythological realm from The Lord of the Rings.Related: Pittsburgh official goes viral by rebuking Ted Cruz – and looking like Jeff Daniels Continue reading...

In phone call, US and Canadian leaders discuss collaboration on vaccines and plan to meet next month