Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
The Morning Joe host, author of a new book on Harry S Truman, sees parallels in the two presidents’ efforts to rebuild
Joe Scarborough had been discussing Joe Biden’s cabinet, Donald Trump’s delusions and America’s battered claim to be the indispensable nation when the conversation took an unexpected turn.
“I knew yesterday morning it was Mika’s and my anniversary and she said nothing and about five o’clock in the afternoon I walked in and I said, ‘Is today a special day for you?’” Scarborough shared with his TV guests last Wednesday. “She goes, ‘Yeah, I guess, whatever.’”
The president-elect has brought in a mix of experience and diversity – but more telling is who Biden hasn’t appointed
So 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.
If you’re getting tested for Covid-19 before gathering with family and friends during the holidays season, even if your result was negative, you may not actually be in the clear.
Given that a negative Covid-19 test has become a ticket to skipping quarantine when traveling across many state lines, it is easy to believe that a negative test means you are risk-free of carrying the virus.
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.
Businessman Fredric Eshelman sues pro-Trump ‘election ethics’ group citing ‘disappointing results’ of effort to expose cheating
A 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”.
The Illinois-born entrepreneur, who helped revitalize downtown Las Vegas, died ‘peacefully’ after being injured in a house fire
Tony 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.
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.
Moving away from a white- and male-dominated party is the only way for it to survive, pollster says
Kat 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.”
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 initiatives
Teresa 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.”
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.
Milwaukee recount, which cost Trump campaign $3m, boosts Democratic president-elect days before state must certify result
A 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.
Carrie Lam says she is paid in cash and calls US sanctions imposed over security crackdown ‘unjustifiable’
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam has said she keeps “piles of cash” at home because she has no bank account after the United States imposed sanctions on her in response to the crackdown on free speech and political freedoms in the city.
Analysis: shooting of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh will do more harm to diplomacy than it does to Iran’s nuclear programme
The assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh may not much have impact on the Iranian nuclear programme he helped build, but it will certainly make it harder to salvage the deal intended to restrict that programme, and that is – so far - the most plausible motive.
Israel is widely agreed to be the most likely perpetrator. Mossad is reported to have been behind a string of assassinations of other Iranian nuclear scientists – reports Israeli officials have occasionally hinted were true.
As Trump suffers another post-election court defeat, some Republicans worry he could depress turnout in crucial Georgia runoffs
Despite 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.
The Resolute desk at the White House is made of timbers taken from a Royal Navy ship. It projects pure power. Is that why the defeated US president has switched to an occasional table?
Has Donald Trump conceded the presidency by design? Is his choice of furniture betraying a subconscious admission of defeat? When the outgoing US president gave a speech this week saying he would depart if the electoral college voted for Joe Biden, his words came as less of a shock than the desk he chose to sit at. It was tiny. It sent out a clear signal. And that signal was “loser”.
Jokes about the shrunken size of Trump’s desk – one photograph, taken from low down, captures his legs barely fitting beneath it – are easy. So let’s not. You want to see a real ruler’s desk? The Resolute desk in the Oval Office is the definition of one: a massive fortress of a working space, like an aircraft carrier with legs, sporting the US eagle at the heart of its heavy Victorian carvings. Its timbers are British in origin: they come from a Royal Navy sailing ship, HMS Resolute, that once braved the icy waters of the north pole. And in a final addition of defensive machismo, Franklin D Roosevelt had the front bulwarked so no one could see his leg braces and discover he was disabled.
Russia will ship some doses of its Sputnik V trial vaccine to Hungary next week, after a visit by a team of Hungarian doctors to see the manufacturing process, Reuters reports, citing a statement by the Russian health minister, Mikhail Murashko.
Hungary’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, said talks were also underway on how the Russian vaccine could be potentially produced in Hungary.
Concerns around the efficacy of the Oxford University/AstraZeneca coronavirus jab in older people could lead to different age groups being given different vaccines, writes Nicola Davis, the Guardian’s science correspondent.
The partners announced last week that the vaccine had a 70% efficacy overall. For most trial participants – given two full doses, spaced a month apart – the efficacy was 62%, but for 3,000 participants mistakenly given half a dose for their first jab, the efficacy was 90%. No participants, regardless of dosing, developed severe Covid or were hospitalised with the disease.
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