Tristram Shapeero pens public apology to Lukas Gage after commenting on Gage’s ‘tiny apartment’ without realizing actor could hear him
A director who forgot to mute his microphone during a Zoom audition as he criticised an actor’s apartment has apologised and claimed he was just sympathising with the plight of arts workers in the coronavirus pandemic.
Related: Actor calls out director for criticizing his 'tiny' apartment during Zoom audition
Continue reading...A mysterious monolith has been discovered in a remote part of Utah after being spotted by state employees counting sheep from a helicopter. The structure, estimated to be 3 metres high, appears to be made from metal. The helicopter pilot, Bret Hutchings, told the local news channel KSLTV: 'That’s been about the strangest thing that I’ve come across out there in all my years of flying'
Continue reading...State employee spotted mysterious metal structure amid red rocks while counting bighorn sheep
A mysterious monolith has been discovered in a remote part of Utah, after being spotted by state employees counting sheep from a helicopter.
The structure, estimated at between 10ft and 12ft high (about 3 metres), appeared to be planted in the ground. It was made from some sort of metal, its shine in sharp contrast to the enormous red rocks which surrounded it.
Continue reading...French president says lockdown to ease; Italy reports most daily deaths since late March; Spain’s daily deaths highest of second wave
Scientists have warned the UK’s Christmas coronavirus plans, which will allow up to three households form a “bubble” to meet over the festive period, will cause the virus to spread and lead to further deaths.
Martin McKee, the professor of European public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: “We know that the virus spreads easiest where people mix together, close to each other, for long periods of time indoors. These are exactly the conditions the government seems to be encouraging.”
Brazil registered a further 31,100 confirmed Covid-19 cases over the last 24 hours and 630 deaths, the health ministry said.
The South American nation has now registered 6,118,708 cases since the pandemic began and the official death toll has risen to 170,115, according to ministry data.
Continue reading...President says he will continue to fight results as General Services Administration clears way for handover
The General Services Administration has declared president-elect Joe Biden the apparent winner of the US election, clearing the way for the formal transition from Donald Trump’s administration to begin after weeks of delay.
The GSA said on Monday that it had determined that Biden was the winner of the 3 November race after weeks of Trump refusing to concede and violating the traditions of the transition of power at the White House.
Continue reading...New York governor had planned to spend holiday with mother and daughters, despite urging constituents to limit gatherings due to pandemic
Andrew Cuomo won’t be having Thanksgiving with his mother after all.
The New York governor had announced on Monday that he would be spending Thanksgiving with his 89-year-old mother and two daughters in Albany, New York, despite urging his constituents to refrain from gathering for the American holiday amid a rise in coronavirus cases.
Continue reading...Board of state canvassers confirms 154,000-vote victory in 3-0 vote with one abstention
Michigan election officials on Monday certified Joe Biden’s 154,000-vote victory in the state amid president Donald Trump’s brazen attempts to subvert the results of the election.
The board of state canvassers, which has two Republicans and two Democrats, confirmed the results on a 3-0 vote with one abstention. Allies of Trump and the losing Republican Senate candidate John James had urged the panel to delay voting for two weeks to audit votes in heavily Democratic Wayne county, home to Detroit.
Continue reading...Barack Obama said the Trump administration's foreign relations had inflicted 'damage' upon America, and that it would take time for the country's reputation to be restored. Obama expressed confidence in a new Biden administration, but cautioned change would not happen immediately
Continue reading...Foreign ministers hope US will lift sanctions in effort to revive 2015 agreement with Tehran
European foreign ministers from Germany, France and the UK have met to discuss a joint approach with the incoming Joe Biden administration on reviving the Iranian nuclear deal.
The three nations, whose ministers met in Berlin, are hoping Tehran can reach an agreement under which the US would lift its crippling sanctions in return for Iran ending its non-compliance with the 2015 agreement constraining its nuclear activities.
Continue reading...The veteran Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein has publicly named 21 Republican senators he says have “repeatedly expressed extreme contempt for [Donald] Trump and his fitness” for office.
As Trump continued to try to subvert the results of a presidential election he clearly lost to Joe Biden, Bernstein said on Twitter he was “not violating any pledge of journalistic confidentially [sic]”.
Continue reading...John Kerry, the former US secretary of state and Democratic presidential nominee, has been named as a special envoy on the climate crisis under Joe Biden’s incoming administration.
Continue reading...The Palestinians are hoping a Biden presidency will slow the growing rapport between Saudi Arabia and Israel
During the last year of Donald Trump’s presidency, the question of whether Saudi Arabia would make peace with Israel had come down to a question of when.
The terms of such a deal were more or less agreed during Trump’s tumultuous term, thrashed out between his envoy and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and the kingdom’s effective ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, who held a very different view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from other Saudi leaders.
Their outlook centred on Iran rather than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict being the centre of the region’s dysfunction. And Israel, they agreed, could help, not hinder, progress on that score. Prince Mohammed eschewed his father and uncles’ views that a return to 1967 lines was a starting point for peace, in favour of the Kushner line that Palestinian leaders had caused talks to stagnate.
Ties warmed quickly, especially from May 2017, when Saudi Arabia received Trump as a conquering hero after he overturned the nuclear deal with Tehran and reorientated Washington’s focus to Riyadh.
The secret channels used to communicate between the kingdom and Israel were discarded. So was the need for mediators, as Saudi officials made regular visits to Tel Aviv and vice versa. Denials of such trips were replaced by hints that they had taken place. Then came peace deals with Saudi allies, the UAE and Bahrain, and now a visit by Benjamin Netanyahu to Prince Mohammed on Saudi soil that Israel didn’t bother to disguise.
Despite a flight path visible on flight tracking sites, which showed the arrival of Netanyahu’s preferred charter jet on the shores of the Red Sea city of Neom, Riyadh responded with a pro forma denial.
There to meet the Israeli prime minister on the shores of the Red Sea was outgoing US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, on a mission to finalise as much as he can before he loses his job in eight weeks. Securing a peace pact is something Pompeo, Kushner and Trump have desperately pushed for and such a deal would indeed be seismic in the Middle East, where many are nervously awaiting its impact.
Move is latest chapter in deteriorating relationship with Beijing and improvement under Joe Biden is unlikely
Donald Trump has banned US investment in a further 89 Chinese companies, and reportedly sent a navy admiral to Taiwan, as he seeks to secure a tough-on-China foreign policy legacy.
Multiple media outlets have reported plans by the Trump administration for a series of confrontations with China before Biden’s inauguration on 20 January, and the moves were largely expected. Foreign policy and political analysts believe Trump wants to leave a legacy of being tough on China, while simultaneously conducting a “scorched earth” policy on his way out of the White House.
Continue reading...A man in Florida rescued his puppy from the jaws of an alligator, diving under the water and wrestling the reptile all without dropping the cigar from his mouth.
Richard Wilbanks, 74, was walking his Cavalier King Charles spaniel, Gunner, around the pond near his retirement home when the alligator raced up from the water and grabbed the dog. Cameras set up by the Florida Wildlife Federation and the fStop Foundation captured the encounter.
Gunner suffered a small puncture wound to his stomach, while Wilbanks told CNN that his hands were 'chewed up'. He doesn’t want the alligator removed, he said. 'They’re part of nature and part of our lives'
Continue reading...Vaccine from Oxford University and AstraZeneca; US suffers one Covid death every minute
AstraZeneca will have 200m doses of its candidate vaccine developed by the University of Oxford by the end of 2020, with 700m ready globally by the end of the first quarter of 2021, operations executive Pam Cheng has said.
Cheng told a briefing that there would be 20m doses in the UK by the end of the year, with 70m more for the UK by the end of March that year.
Pope Francis can relate to people in intensive care units who fear dying from coronavirus because of his own experience when part of his lung was removed 63 years ago, he has been quoted as saying.
The comments are included in excerpts of a new book “Let Us Dream: The Path to A Better Future”, which are carried in Italian newspapers on Monday ahead of publication of the full work next month.
I know from experience the feeling of those who are sick with coronavirus, struggling to breathe as they are attached to a ventilator.
They took about a litre and a half of water out of one lung and I was hanging between life and death.
[The experience] changed my bearings. For months, I didn’t know who I was, if I would live or die, even the doctors didn’t know. I remember hugging my mother one day and asking her if I was about to die.
Thanks to her regular contact with sick people, she knew what patients needed better than the doctor and had the courage to put that experience to work.
Continue reading...The president refuses to acknowledge Biden’s win, but experts say there is no constitutional path forward for him to remain in the White House
Joe Biden won the presidential election, a fact that Donald Trump and other Republicans refuse to acknowledge.
There are worries the president and other Republicans will make every effort to stay in power. “There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration,” Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, said last week. William Barr, the attorney general, has also authorized federal prosecutors to begin to investigate election irregularities, a move that prompted the head of the justice department’s election crimes unit to step down from his position and move to another role. On Tuesday, Trump fired Christopher Krebs, the director of the federal agency that vouched for the reliability of the 2020 election and had pushed back on the president’s baseless claims of voter fraud.
Continue reading...Israeli PM is said to have flown to Saudi Arabia to meet Mohammed bin Salman and Mike Pompeo
Benjamin Netanyahu has made an unannounced trip to Saudi Arabia to meet the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, according to media reports in Israel.
The Sunday night trip, if confirmed, would mark an extremely rare high-level meeting between the long-time foes, one that Israel has been pushing for in its efforts for regional acceptance. Hebrew-language reports, citing unnamed Israeli officials, said Netanyahu was accompanied by Yossi Cohen, head of the country’s Mossad spy agency.
Continue reading...Israeli PM flew to Saudi Arabia to meet Mohammed bin Salman and the US’s Mike Pompeo
Benjamin Netanyahu made an unannounced trip to Saudi Arabia over the weekend to meet the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, and the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, according to an Israeli cabinet member.
The Sunday night visit would mark the first reported meeting between leaders of the long-time foes, one that Israel has been pushing for in its efforts for regional acceptance despite previously being considered a far-fetched ambition.
Continue reading...The Biden transition team is facing pressure not to hire people with fossil fuel ties, like Obama’s energy secretary Ernest Moniz
It was a deceptively low-key occasion on Capitol Hill: an older man in a dark suit, talking into a TV camera about an energy report.
According to his firm’s 362-page analysis, the fastest path to California’s climate goals included continuing to rely on fossil fuels. The analysis was funded by gas companies and groups related to them, but he wasn’t a lobbyist or industry consultant. Quite the opposite, he was the Obama administration’s well-respected energy secretary, Ernest Moniz.
Continue reading...A born internationalist, Blinken will seek to soothe the frayed nerves of western allies
After reports first emerged on Sunday night that Antony Blinken would be secretary of state in the Biden administration, one interview from his past began circulating on social media.
It was a September 2016 conversation with Grover, a character from Sesame Street, on the subject of refugees, directed at American children who might have new classmates from faraway countries. “We all have something to learn and gain from one another even when it doesn’t seem at first like we have much in common,” Blinken told the fuzzy blue puppet.
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