The president’s baseless claims have pleased some in the party but turned off others, which does not bode well for the runoff results
Donald Trump has been marking the final days of his presidency by creating new fissures within the Republican party, at a time when the GOP needs to unify if it is to win two races in Georgia, which will decide control of the Senate.
Related: Trump's Republicans have dumped Lincoln – they're the Confederacy now | Lloyd Green
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The Guardian’s Stephanie Kirchgaessner reports:
David Perdue, the Georgia Republican facing a Senate runoff election on Tuesday, has twice bought a significant number of shares in a US bank shortly after meeting with financial policy makers, raising more questions about his prolific stock trading while in office.
Related: Revealed: David Perdue bought bank stocks after meeting financial officials
DC mayor Muriel Bowser urged residents to avoid downtown in the next couple of days, as the city prepares for pro-Trump demonstrations in connection to Congress’ electoral vote count on Wednesday.
The Democratic mayor said at a press conference today, “We will not allow people to incite violence, intimidate our residents or cause destruction in our city.”
[Bowser] urged calm Monday as some 340 National Guard troops were being activated while the city prepared for potentially violent protests surrounding Congress’ expected vote to affirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.
According to a U.S. defense official, [Bowser] put in a request on New Year’s Eve to have Guard members on the streets from Jan. 5-7th, to help with the protests. The official said the D.C. National Guard members will be used for traffic control and other assistance but they will not be armed or wearing body armor. ...
Continue reading...Outage disrupts service in the US, Germany, India, the UK, Japan and elsewhere
Slack, the messaging service used by millions of people for work and school, has suffered a global outage on Monday, the first day back for most people returning from the New Year’s holiday.
It was the latest tech glitch to show how disruptive technical difficulties can be when millions of people are depending on just a few services to work and go to school from home during the pandemic.
Continue reading...Move comes as Iran resumes enriching uranium to up to 20% purity in significant breach of 2015 nuclear accord
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have seized a South Korean vessel “for polluting the Persian Gulf with chemicals” amid rising tensions between Iran and the US during the final days of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Iranian news agencies published photos showing Revolutionary Guards speedboats escorting the tanker MT Hankuk Chemi and said the vessel’s crewmembers, including nationals of South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam and Myanmar, had been detained. The tanker is being held at Iran’s Bandar Abbas port city.
Continue reading...US hospitalizations from Covid-19 were at a record high on Sunday, at 125,544, as hospitals struggled to cope and providers made plans to ration care.
Related: Covid vaccine: Oxford man, 82, first in world to get Oxford/AstraZeneca jab
Continue reading...Businesses lose total of £3.4m in 2019 despite first signs of profitability at his flagship Turnberry resort
Donald Trump’s Scottish golf courses have again reported significant losses, totalling £3.4m, despite the first signs of profitability at his flagship Turnberry resort.
The annual accounts for Trump Turnberry’s parent company, Golf Recreation Scotland, show the luxury hotel and golf resort in Ayrshire lost £2.3m in 2019 after ploughing more money into upgrading its facilities.
Continue reading...Conversation between president and Georgia’s secretary of state laid bare Trump’s determination to cling on to power
Donald Trump has been recorded pressuring Georgia’s secretary of state to overturn US president-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the state, in a tape obtained by the Washington Post.
The conversation is mainly between Trump and Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, but Trump allies including Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, and attorney Cleta Mitchell were also present, as was Ryan Germany, Raffensperger’s general counsel. Here are the main points:
Continue reading...First two cases of new variant recorded in São Paulo; meeting to discuss Moderna vaccine ends without decision
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has not yet been able to reach a decision on the approval of Moderna’s vaccine, the Dutch national medicines authority has said.
Its human medicines committee (CHMP) had called an unscheduled meeting Monday afternoon to discuss Moderna’s vaccine, two days ahead of its originally planned meeting on Wednesday.
This is how it goes, of course we had hoped for more, but we knew it could be impossible to answer all questions in detail in one meeting. I hope there will be a decision on Wednesday. But I don’t know.
Brazil has confirmed its first two cases of the new coronavirus variant that has also been seen in the UK, São Paulo state’s health secretariat has said.
One of the people infected was a 25-year-old woman from the city of São Paulo in contact with travellers who had been to Britain, according to the state government. The other patient was another São Paulo resident, a 34-year-old man who had contact with her.
Continue reading...Former army major was UN’s second staff member after its founding in 1945 and worked as principal adviser to five secretaries general
Sir Brian Urquhart, the British diplomat who played a role in the establishment of the United Nations, has died aged 101.
Urquhart was the second staff member hired by the UN following its founding in 1945 and worked as a principal adviser to five UN secretaries general in his 41-year career.
Continue reading...Unprecedented letter calls on voted-out president to accept Joe Biden’s election victory amid growing fears over his behaviour
All 10 former US defence secretaries still living, including two who worked for Donald Trump, have called for the president and his supporters to accept he lost the election and warned against attempts to involve the military in his increasingly desperate efforts to overturn the result.
In an unprecedented joint letter published in the Washington Post, the defence secretaries addressed the worst fears of what could happen in 17 days of Trump’s administration remaining before Joe Biden’s inauguration: an attempt by Trump to foment a crises with the aim of triggering a military intervention in his last-ditch struggle to hold on power.
Continue reading...In an hour-long phone call on Saturday, Donald Trump pressed Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger to overturn Joe Biden’s victory there in the election the president refuses to concede.
Related: Healthcare to the electoral college: seven ways 2020 left America exposed | Robert Reich
Continue reading...Dr Anthony Fauci has called out Donald Trump, who claimed on Twitter on Sunday morning that case numbers were being exaggerated. 'Go into the trenches,' Fauci told NBC’s Meet the Press. 'Go into the hospitals, go into the intensive care units and see what is happening. Those are real numbers, real people and real deaths.'
Continue reading...US experts warn against plan to give different second jab if supplies run low
The UK is setting the pace around the world in the approval and use of Covid vaccines but, while other countries watch intently, not all are yet prepared to embrace what looks like public health pragmatism rather than strict adherence to evidence.
Britain is the first country in the world to approve and use the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, just as it was first with Pfizer/BioNTech’s. In a further trailblazing decision, it is giving everyone a first shot of either of those vaccines, with the second shot delayed to 12 weeks afterwards instead of the three- or four-week interval in the trials.
Continue reading...All 12 Republican senators who have pledged not to ratify the electoral college results on Wednesday, and thereby refuse to confirm Joe Biden’s resounding victory over Donald Trump in the presidential election, declined to defend their move on television, a CNN host said on Sunday.
Related: Ted Cruz and other Republican senators oppose certifying election results
Continue reading...The pedestrian pace of Covid-19 vaccinations in the US came under new scrutiny on Sunday, as the pandemic death toll passed 350,000 and experts warned of another surge in infections and deaths arising from gatherings at Christmas and New Year.
Related: Larry King, TV chatshow veteran, in hospital with coronavirus – reports
Continue reading...As Uber parks its plans for robotaxis, experts admit the autonomous vehicle challenge is bigger than anticipated
By 2021, according to various Silicon Valley luminaries, bandwagoning politicians and leading cab firms in recent years, self-driving cars would have long been crossing the US, started filing along Britain’s motorways and be all set to provide robotaxis in London.
1 January has not, however, brought a driverless revolution. Indeed in the last weeks of 2020 Uber, one of the biggest players and supposed beneficiaries, decided to park its plans for self-driving taxis, selling off its autonomous division to Aurora in a deal worth about $4bn (£3bn) – roughly half what it was valued at in 2019.
Continue reading...Stella Moris speaks out on eve of ruling on whether WikiLeaks founder can be sent for trial in US
Julian Assange’s partner has said a decision to extradite the WikiLeaks co-founder to the US would be “politically and legally disastrous for the UK”, on the eve of the judge’s ruling.
Assange, 49, faces an 18-count indictment, alleging a plot to hack computers and a conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information in a case critics have decried as a dangerous attack on press freedom.
Continue reading...Donald Trump’s departure will alter the face of geopolitics. The climate crisis and Covid response will affect all nations – while others face very particular challenges. Observer correspondents examine the 12 months ahead
A potent mix of hope and fear accompanies the start of 2021 in most of the world. Scientists have created several vaccines for a disease that didn’t even have a name this time last year. But many countries, including the UK and the US, are still stumbling through the deadliest period of the pandemic.
The shadow of Covid will not begin to lift, even in richer countries, for months. Britain was the first to approve a vaccine and has secured extensive supplies, yet Boris Johnson’s suggestion that life might be returning to normal by Easter is widely seen as optimistic. Other countries, particularly in the south, face a long wait to get vaccines, and help paying for them. The rebuilding of economies shattered by Covid everywhere will be slow; even countries that managed to contain it have taken a hit, from Vietnam to New Zealand.
Continue reading...Harris says her model will be Biden’s role as veep to Obama but the president-elect’s age means speculation about an eventual elevation to the Oval Office is intense
American vice-presidents occupy what can be one of the most powerful positions in all of the federal US government and yet it can also be one of the least powerful. Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris is going to soon find out where her tenure will land.
Continue reading...As Tehran moves on uranium enrichment, Washington braces for retaliation a year after the Quds Force commander’s assassination
Iran has announced plans to enrich uranium up to 20% purity, just a step away from weapons-grade levels, as tensions with the US ratchet up during the final days of Donald Trump’s presidency.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed it had been notified of Iran’s decision to increase enrichment at the Fordow facility, buried in a mountainside to protect it from military strikes, although Tehran did not say when the process would begin.
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