President-elect Joe Biden will travel to Georgia on Tuesday to campaign for two Democratic U.S. Senate candidates whose Jan. 5 runoff elections could make or break his domestic policy agenda.
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The president retweeted a message posted by attorney Lin Wood suggesting that he will soon prosecute Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — both Republicans — for refusing to cave to his baseless claims of widespread voter fraud.
Despite widespread hesitancy, there are new signs of hope that vaccine uptake will reach the threshold required to decisively slow transmission and end the pandemic in 2021.
The grisly incident happened in the Central Mexican state of Guanajuato.
"I have not seen anything where you have a virus that in 40% of the people has no symptoms, and those who have symptoms, 80% of them have very mild to moderate symptoms that don't require any significant medical intervention. And then you have 20-25% of people who are devastated," Fauci told The Center for Strategic and International Studies' (CSIS) Senior Vice President Stephen Morrison on Monday. "There's something very strange about a virus that in most people barely bothers them, and in others it kills them. We still don't know why that's the case right now. We need to find that out," he added. Fauci's remarks came after some of the first U.S. healthcare workers received doses of the coronavirus vaccine and as the death toll in the U.S. crossed 300,000.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo found out what happens when you send out 900 invitations to an indoor holiday party during a pandemic that has killed at least 300,000 Americans: not that many people show up.The Tuesday event for the families of diplomats in high-risk locations was hosted by Pompeo and his wife, Susan, in Washington, D.C. As of Monday night, only about 70 people had accepted their invitations, and even fewer showed up, two U.S. officials with knowledge of the matter told The Washington Post. Pompeo had been scheduled to speak, but canceled his address and had someone else deliver a message in his place, the Post reports.Government health officials have urged people not to attend indoor gatherings amid the pandemic, and several lawmakers and the American Foreign Service Association, a nonpartisan union representing diplomats, asked Pompeo to cancel the party over concerns it would be a super-spreader event. The State Department had said masks would be required and social distancing enforced; photos obtained by the Post show a masked Santa greeting children, with maskless people sitting down to eat around him.One woman, the wife of a diplomat now overseas, told the Post she RSVPed no on her invitation over worries that if she became sick, there wouldn't be anyone to take care of her children. "It was a completely irresponsible party to throw," she said.More stories from theweek.com Joe Biden still doesn't get it Trump's Mar-a-Lago neighbors don't want him to move there. They may be able to stop him, too. Late night hosts debate whose Biden congratulation is worse for Trump: Putin or McConnell?
The office of the International Criminal Court's (ICC) prosecutor said there is a "reasonable basis" to believe that crimes against humanity were committed during Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's war on drugs. Since taking office in 2016, Duterte launched a bloody anti-narcotics crackdown in which thousands have been killed, sparking global outrage and criticism from rights groups. Duterte has at times lashed out at what he said were international efforts to paint him as a "ruthless and heartless violator of human rights" and unilaterally withdrew the Philippines from the ICC's founding treaty in 2018.
Pakistan's military said Tuesday that two soldiers were killed by Indian fire in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. In a statement, the military blamed India for violating a cease-fire in the village of Bagsar along the borderline that separates Kashmir between Pakistan and India. It said Pakistan returned fire and claimed there were troop casualties on the Indian side.
A farmer from a rural part of India's Madhya Pradesh became rich overnight after finding a 14.98 carat diamond in his leased land. Lakhan Yadav, 45, of Krishna-Kalyanpur village in Madhya Pradesh sold the diamond for £61,330 at auction on Tuesday. Mr Yadav found the diamond in his land nearly 20 km away from his village. “It’s sheer luck. You get it once in life. Everybody doesn’t get it,” Mr Yadav told Daily Telegraph. Mr Yadav found the fortune in the 625 square feet of land that he had taken on lease from the government. The farmer owns two hectares bought with the compensation money, two buffaloes, and now a motorcycle that he bought with the first payment he was given after depositing the diamond with the district administrion. During the nationwide Covid lockdown his school-aged children would tend to the buffaloes at home and he went to dig land. Mr Yadav, who is illiterate, now wants to spend the money to educate his children. “With this money, anything is possible. I will build a new house and spend money on the education of my children,” he said. Mr Yadav said he would put the rest of his money into a bank account so that he can live on the interest from it in his old age. “I am not capable of investing this money because I am illiterate. I want my children to study well and then spend the money wisely,” he said. However, striking it lucky once was not enough and Mr Yadav wants to continue his search for more diamonds. “A person is never satisfied with money and life. No one wants an end to his life and no one wants that he should not get more money,” he said. Madhya Pradesh is richly endowed with mineral wealth. It is the sole producer of diamond in India.
All federal employees will be excused from duty on 24 December
While looking at Florida's COVID-19 death tally, the South Florida Sun Sentinel found a pattern suggesting the state "manipulated a backlog of unrecorded fatalities" so the daily death numbers were artificially low ahead of the November presidential election, the newspaper reported Tuesday.There is a lag between the date a person dies of COVID-19 in Florida and the date the state reports the death as part of the public count. The Sun Sentinel found that with just a few exceptions, starting on Oct. 24, Florida stopped including deaths that occurred more than a month earlier in daily counts. It wasn't until Nov. 17, two weeks after the election, that these backlogged deaths were consistently included in the daily tally.These deaths have "long formed a significant part of the daily totals in Florida" because it can take some time for death reports to make it from a doctor's office to the health department, the Sun Sentinel reports. For example, from Sept. 23 to Oct. 20, the state included in its daily tallies 1,128 deaths that took place at least one month earlier. This accounted for 44 percent of the deaths that were announced over those four weeks.On Oct. 21, the state said it would start conducting additional reviews of each suspected COVID-19 death in Florida before adding it to the official count. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), a supporter of President Trump, has a history of downplaying the coronavirus pandemic, and the Sun Sentinel reports he has also speculated that the death statistics in the state were inflated. The Sun Sentinel said it asked several state officials about the data patterns, including the spokesman for the Florida Department of Health, and no one would comment.Scott David Herr, a Florida computer scientist who tracks the state's daily COVID-19 data, told the Sun Sentinel "it's hard to know if there was a limitation around election time or random other things were happening. The Department of Health hasn't explained why lags have been inconsistent. When they keep changing whatever is going on behind the scenes, when the lags keep changing, that is where it gets confusing." Read more at the Sun Sentinel.More stories from theweek.com Report: Of the hundreds of people invited to Mike Pompeo's indoor holiday party, a few dozen showed up Joe Biden still doesn't get it Trump's Mar-a-Lago neighbors don't want him to move there. They may be able to stop him, too.
New Zealand's new foreign minister said on Tuesday the country would be willing to help negotiate a truce between neighbouring Australia and regional heavyweight China, who are caught in an escalating trade and diplomatic spat. Nanaia Mahuta, 50, said hosting the high profile Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit next year presented an opportunity for New Zealand to bring both parties to the table. "And I think hosting APEC might well be the opportunity... but both parties will have to be willing to come together and concede in some areas where they are currently not seeing eye to eye," Mahuta said.
Israel's Defense Ministry said Tuesday it conducted a series of successful live fire drills with its multi-range missile-defense system, providing protection against threats posed by arch-enemy Iran and its proxies along Israel's northern and southern borders. Defense officials said it was the first time they have conducted an integrated test bringing together the various components of the country's “multilayer” missile defense. Moshe Patel, head of Israel’s Middle Defense Organization, said the drill “demonstrated a multi-layered approach to dealing with threats” that incorporates all three systems.
Officials say inaugural ‘footprint will be extremely limited’ and the traditional parade ‘reimagined’ due to Covid-19
President Trump may be refusing to concede that he's leaving the White House in January, but first lady Melania Trump and the Secret Service are reportedly busy preparing for his post-presidency life at Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Palm Beach, Florida. There may be a hitch in that plan, though: the neighbors. And thanks to legal agreements Trump signed in the 1990s, they may be able to stop him from making Mar-a-Lago his next home, The Washington Post reports.Trump's Mar-a-Lago neighbors sent a letter to the town of Palm Beach and the Secret Service on Tuesday demanding that the town notify Trump he can't reside at Mar-a-Lago because he signed away that right in 1993, the Post reports. Telling Trump he can't use Mar-a-Lago as his residence now will "avoid an embarrassing situation" in which the former president is ordered to leave after he moves in, the letter said.Trump converted Mar-a-Lago into a private club in 1993 because he needed the money and the estate was expensive to maintain, the Post reports, but in order to get approval for the transformation, Palm Beach made him sign an agreement that no club member could stay at Mar-a-Lago more than 21 days a year or seven consecutive days, among other restrictions. His attorney promised at the time that Trump would not live at Mar-a-Lago."There's absolutely no legal theory under which he can use that property as both a residence and a club," Glenn Zeitz, a nearby Palm Beach homeowner, told the Post. "Basically he's playing a dead hand." Along with the 1993 agreement, the Post reports, Trump deeded development rights to the nonprofit National Trust for Historic Preservation, pledging to "forever" give up his right to develop Mar-a-Lago or use it for "any purpose other than club use."Palm Beach has enforced the agreement sporadically, giving Trump special leeway while he served as president and frequently visited the property, but the 1993 deal could cause a special headache for the Secret Service, which strives to comply with all state and local laws in carrying out its protective duties. A Trump Organization spokesman told the Post "there is no document or agreement in place that prohibits President Trump from using Mar-a-Lago as his residence." Read more at The Washington Post.More stories from theweek.com Report: Of the hundreds of people invited to Mike Pompeo's indoor holiday party, a few dozen showed up Joe Biden still doesn't get it Late night hosts debate whose Biden congratulation is worse for Trump: Putin or McConnell?
The Canadian fashion mogul Peter Nygard was charged on Tuesday with sex trafficking, racketeering and other crimes targeting dozens of women and underage girls over a quarter century in three countries, U.S. authorities said. Canadian police arrested Nygard in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on Monday at the U.S. government's request under the countries' extradition treaty. Acting U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss in Manhattan said Nygard, 79, had since 1995 used his influence and businesses to "recruit and maintain" victims in the United States, Canada and the Bahamas to sexually gratify himself and his associates.
The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus topped 300,000 Monday just as the country began dispensing COVID-19 shots in a monumental campaign to conquer the outbreak. It is more than five times the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam War. "The numbers are staggering -- the most impactful respiratory pandemic that we have experienced in over 102 years, since the iconic 1918 Spanish flu,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious-disease expert, said days before the milestone.
An in-depth investigation claiming to have identified and linked an elite Russian intelligence unit to the nearly fatal poisoning of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, was met with deafening silence by top Russian officials more than 24 hours after the publication. Monday’s investigation by Bellingcat and several media outlets revealed that FSB agents trailed opposition leader Mr Navalny for days before he was poisoned with a deadly nerve agent in Siberia in August, which left him in a coma for several weeks. Several European laboratories independently confirmed that Mr Navalny’s blood had traces of the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok, which was also used in the 2018 Salisbury poisoning of former Soviet spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter. The 44-year-old politician, who is still in Germany where he was taken to for treatment, has backed the findings and blamed President Vladimir Putin for the attempt on his life. More than a day after the investigation, which purports to be based on a trove of phone records and travel data, came out, neither the Kremlin, nor any top Russian officials have uttered a single word of comment. Dmitry Peskov, Mr Putin’s spokesman who typically talks to Russian media every morning, has canceled his briefing on Tuesday, citing preparations for the president’s annual press conference on Thursday. In another unusual sign, most of the top Russian state TV presenters and media managers including RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan who are always happy to heap scorn on the Russian opposition in their broadcasts or on social media have been dead silent about the allegations. “24 hours means 1,440 minutes of silence from Putin, Peskov, Lavrov, Simonyan and others, and every minute of it is like a verdict,” Leonid Volkov, Mr Navalny’s close ally, tweeted on Tuesday afternoon 24 hours after the investigation was published. Mr Navalny’s YouTube video laying out the details of the alleged operation to kill him has already garnered nearly 7 million views. Meanwhile, the leader of the Russian opposition in a radio interview on Tuesday reiterated his promise to return to Moscow as soon as German doctors decide that he is fit enough: “I’m coming back to Russia because it’s my country where I enjoy a rather significant support and I’m grateful to people who are backing me. I have things to do in my country.” He said that Bellingcat’s findings left him with no choice but to conclude that he was the victim of a “full-fledged operation that the FSB was carrying out as a mission of the state.” “Without any exaggeration, this is a genuine terrorist attack,” he told Ekho Moskvy. “They would never had done it without Putin’s orders.”
President-elect Biden blamed his throat clearing and coughing on a little cold
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger would like Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler to re-evaluate their priorities.On Monday, the two senators facing re-election runoffs in January tried once again to discourage confidence in the upcoming election, demanding an updated list of registered voters before early voting began. But as Raffensperger, a Republican, pointed out in a Tuesday press release, Loeffler and Perdue already had the information they were looking for."Though I've told the Republican Party to stop focusing on me and instead direct their energies to winning the Senate runoffs, clearly they haven't listened," Raffensperger said in the release. He went on to call it "embarrassing" that Perdue and Loeffler not only don't know the information they want is publicly available, but also that it's in the hands of their campaigns as well. A National Republican Senatorial Committee representative confirmed the campaigns have the lists.> Early voting has already started but it’s not too late for them to call their offices and get their campaigns in order.> > — GA Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (@GaSecofState) December 15, 2020Raffensperger has refused to play into President Trump and other Republicans' false claims of widespread voter fraud and election manipulation amid the 2020 election, instead affirming President-elect Joe Biden's win there and receiving threats for doing so.More stories from theweek.com Report: Of the hundreds of people invited to Mike Pompeo's indoor holiday party, a few dozen showed up Joe Biden still doesn't get it Trump's Mar-a-Lago neighbors don't want him to move there. They may be able to stop him, too.
For Nabil al-Kurd, being forced out of the East Jerusalem home he has lived in since the 1950s would be a fate worse than death. But the 76-year-old and his wife and children are among dozens of Palestinians under threat of eviction from two districts of the disputed city, after an Israeli court ruled their properties are built on land belonging to Jewish settlers. The ownership claims against him and others in Sheikh Jarrah and a second neighbourhood, Batan al-Hawa, are a focal point of settler development plans in East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in a war in 1967.
