U.S.Yahoo NewsBlack Americans react to the pro-Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol
On the morning of Jan. 6, many Black Americans celebrated the news that the Rev. Raphael Warnock had defeated Sen. Kelly Loeffler in a runoff election to become the first African American U.S. senator from the state of Georgia. A Democrat and the senior pastor at Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, Warnock talked in his victory speech about his rise from poverty. “My mother, who as a teenager in Waycross, Ga., used to pick somebody else's cotton,” Warnock said.
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12 Pakistani police fired for not protecting Hindu temple
Pakistani authorities sacked a local police chief and 11 other policemen for failing to protect a Hindu temple that was set on fire and demolished last month by a mob led by hundreds of supporters of a radical Islamist party, police said Friday. The punishments come amid government assurances to the Hindu community that the temple in Karak, a town in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, would be rebuilt. The attack took place after members of the Hindu community received permission from local authorities to renovate the temple.
PoliticsThe IndependentNikki Haley launches push to support conservative candidates ahead of rumoured 2024 presidential bid
Former US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Hale, has launched a political action committee (PAC) to support conservative candidates, amid speculation that she will run for president in 2024. The committee, named the Stand for America PAC, has been formed to help conservative candidates get elected to Congress in the 2022 midterm elections. In an email to supporters, Ms Haley, 48, said the PAC is “laser-focused on the 2022 midterms and electing a conservative force to the House of Representatives and US Senate to serve as a bulwark against the liberal agendas of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi”.
U.S.Associated PressAmid cacophony since Capitol siege, key officer stays silent
Yet amid all the noise, a Capitol Police officer hailed as a hero for confronting the insurrectionists and leading them away from Senate chambers has remained silent. Officer Eugene Goodman isn't saying whether he thinks he saved the Senate, as many of the millions who've viewed the video believe. In fact, Goodman isn't saying anything at all publicly — not to reporters, not on social media.
WorldReutersTurkey's Erdogan receives COVID-19 vaccine
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan received his COVID-19 vaccine in front of TV cameras on Thursday, a move which a spokesman for his AK Party said aimed to alleviate any public doubts about the effectiveness of the shot. Turkey began administering the shots developed by China's Sinovac to health workers on Thursday, rolling out a nationwide vaccination programme against a disease that has killed more than 23,000 people in the country. Erdogan received his first dose of the vaccine at the Ankara City Hospital.
PoliticsThe WeekCapitol rioters intended to 'capture and assassinate elected officials,' prosecutors say
Federal prosecutors in a new court filing reportedly point to "strong evidence" that rioters who stormed the Capitol building last week aimed to "capture and assassinate elected officials." The prosecutors included this assessment while asking a judge to detain Jacob Chansley, one of the men who was arrested and charged following the deadly Capitol riot, Reuters reports. "Strong evidence, including Chansley's own words and actions at the Capitol, supports that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States government," the prosecutors wrote.
PoliticsThe Daily BeastPeyote-Loving ‘QAnon Shaman’ Vowed to Attend Inauguration, Left Chilling Note for Pence: Docs
The so-called QAnon Shaman who stormed the U.S. Capitol last week in Viking garb before sitting in Vice President Mike Pence's chair on the Senate dais admitted to federal agents he intended to return to D.C. to “protest” President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration. “I'll still go, you better believe it,” Jacob Chansley bragged in an interview with FBI agents the day after the violent insurrection. The admission by Chansley, also known as Jake Angeli, is one of several that prosecutors detailed in an 18-page detention memo arguing for the 33-year-old Arizona man to be held before trial.
EntertainmentArchitectural DigestMore Inside Artist Jorge Pardo's Transformed Bushwick Carriage House
When it came to the lighting in his home, Pardo drew inspiration from the insides of fruits, nuts, and seeds, as well as sea creatures and machine parts. Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
PoliticsReutersBiden chooses former FDA chief Kessler to help lead U.S. vaccine drive
U.S. President-elect Joe Biden has chosen David Kessler, the ex-head of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), for a senior role in the new administration's efforts to boost the availability of COVID-19 vaccines, his transition team said on Friday. The news came as Biden's own team predicted the United States would mark some 500,000 deaths from the pandemic by next month and as the president-elect was due to outline plans to ramp up vaccinations. Kessler, a pediatrician and lawyer who headed the FDA under presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, will be Chief Science Officer of the administration's COVID-19 Response.
PoliticsThe WeekTrump is reportedly stiffing Rudy Giuliani for his legal work to overturn the election
An "increasingly isolated, sullen, and vengeful" President Trump is serving his final few days in office in an emptying White House, taking out his anger on his shrinking inner circle, The Washington Post reports. "Trump has never been more isolated than this week," The New York Times confirms, "and the White House Counsel's Office is not preparing to defend him in the Senate trial" after he was impeached Wednesday for incitement of insurrection. Trump is specifically furious at Vice President Mike Pence, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), both newspapers report, but he's also angry that his allies in conservative media and politics aren't forcefully defending him after a mob of his supporters laid siege to the Capitol last week.
ScienceAssociated PressRIP: Mars digger bites the dust after 2 years on red planet
NASA declared the Mars digger dead Thursday after failing to burrow deep into the red planet to take its temperature. "We've given it everything we've got, but Mars and our heroic mole remain incompatible,” said the German Space Agency's Tilman Spohn, the lead scientist for the experiment. Astronauts one day may need to dig into Mars, according to NASA, in search of frozen water for drinking or making fuel, or signs of past microscopic life.
WorldAssociated PressAbbas decrees first Palestinian elections in 15 years
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday decreed parliamentary and presidential elections for later this year in what would be the first vote of its kind since 2006, when the Islamic militant group Hamas won a landslide victory. Elections would pose a major risk for Abbas' Fatah party and also for Hamas, which welcomed the decree. Fatah and Hamas have been publicly calling for elections for more than a decade but have never been able to mend their rift or agree on a process for holding them, and despite Friday's decree, it remained far from clear whether the voting would actually be held.
WorldReutersU.S. commission says China possibly committed 'genocide' against Xinjiang Muslims
China has possibly committed "genocide" in its treatment of Uighurs and other minority Muslims in its western region of Xinjiang, a bipartisan commission of the U.S. Congress said in a report on Thursday. The Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) said new evidence had emerged in the past year that "crimes against humanity - and possibly genocide - are occurring" in Xinjiang. It also accused China of harassing Uighurs in the United States.
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Indonesia earthquake kills at least 35
A 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck Indonesia's Sulawesi island on Friday killing dozens of people, and injuring hundreds more. The chief of the disaster agency in West Sulawesi told Reuters more deaths are likely to be confirmed as workers fan out across the region rescuing residents trapped under rubble. Authorities say the string of earthquakes caused three landslides, damaged bridges to regional hubs, and tore down more than 60 homes, two hotels and the provincial governor's office.
WorldAssociated PressSpain rejects virus confinement as most of Europe stays home
While most of Europe kicked off 2021 with earlier curfews or stay-at-home orders, authorities in Spain insist the new coronavirus variant causing havoc elsewhere is not to blame for a sharp resurgence of cases and that the country can avoid a full lockdown even as its hospitals fill up. The government has been tirelessly fending off drastic home confinement like the one that paralyzed the economy for nearly three months in the spring of 2020, the last time Spain could claim victory over the stubborn rising curve of cases. Infection rates ebbed in October but never completely flattened the surge from summer.
PoliticsThe IndependentWhat is impeachment and what does it mean for Trump?
On Wednesday afternoon the House of Representatives voted on a single article of impeachment on with the goal of removing Donald Trump from office in the last week of his presidency. Democratic Congressmen David Cicilline of Rhode Island, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, and Ted Lieu of California — all members of the House Judiciary Committee — entered their single-article impeachment resolution into the record when the House convened on Monday. The president was charged with "incitement of insurrection", accusing Mr Trump of encouraging the violent storming of the Capitol on 6 January in which five people died.
PoliticsBusiness InsiderThe US government will spend $500,000 deep-cleaning the White House before Biden's inauguration
The White House will get a $500,000 deep-clean before President-elect Joe Biden moves in, CNN reported. "There's always been a deep clean between administrations, but we've never seen anything like this," presidential historian Kate Brower Andersen told ABC. The US government will spend almost $500,000 on a deep clean of the White House before President-elect Joe Biden takes office on January 20, CNN reported, citing government contracts it had viewed.
WorldAssociated PressChina builds new quarantine center as virus cases rise
A city in northern China is building a 3,000-unit quarantine facility to deal with an anticipated overflow of patients as COVID-19 cases rise ahead of the annual Lunar New Year travel rush. State media on Friday showed crews leveling earth, pouring concrete and assembling prefabricated rooms in farmland in an outlying part of Shijiazhuang, the provincial capital of Hebei province, which has seen the bulk of the new cases. That recalled scenes from last year, when China rapidly built field hospitals and turned gymnasiums into isolation centers to cope with a then-spiraling outbreak in Wuhan, where the virus was first detected in late 2019.
WorldAssociated PressN.Korea holds huge military parade as Kim vows nuclear might
North Korea displayed new submarine-launched ballistic missiles under development and other military hardware in a parade that underlined leader Kim Jong Un's defiant calls to expand the country's nuclear weapons program. State media said Kim took center stage in Thursday night's parade celebrating a major ruling party meeting in which he vowed maximum efforts to bolster the nuclear and missile program that threatens Asian rivals and the American homeland to counter what he described as U.S. hostility. During an eight-day Workers' Party congress that ended Tuesday, Kim also revealed plans to salvage the nation's economy, hit by U.S.-led sanctions over his nuclear ambitions, pandemic-related border closures and natural disasters that wiped out crops.
PoliticsMiami HeraldMiami-Dade members of Congress voted to defend party and Trump, not uphold democracy | Opinion
The final vote, 232-197, was a bipartisan rebuke of Trump and his presidency, but Miami's congressional representatives chose to pour cement on the divide among us and cause more damage to the fabric of this community, as if four years of Machiavellian Trump hadn't been enough. Remember this defining moment, Miami-Dade voters. Instead of leading the way out of this nightmarish time in American history like other Republicans are trying to do, Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart, a veteran legislator, chameleon Carlos Gimenez (who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 when it was convenient for his mayoral run), plus freshman Maria Elvira Salazar — who missed the vote to certify Electoral College results, but voted against impeachment on Wednesday — gave credence to false conspiracy theories with their votes.
U.S.INSIDERA Florida teacher was filmed falsely telling students 'Antifa' was behind the Capitol riots
A Florida teacher was filmed falsely telling students "Antifa" was responsible for the January 6 Capitol riots. The substitute teacher is "no longer with" Edward W. Bok Academy South or Lake Wales Charter Schools (LWCS), the HR director at LWCS confirmed to Insider. There's no evidence "Antifa" was responsible for violence during the Capitol riots; about 100 pro-Trump supporters have been charged so far.
U.S.USA TODAYSister of Black woman killed by Capitol Police hopes riot will shed light on troubling case
In October 2013, Miriam Carey was shot to death after what police described as a brief high-speed car chase from the White House to near the U.S. Capitol that was captured in part on video. Law enforcement has said that she was mentally unstable and that there was not enough evidence to prove the officer's use of deadly force was excessive. Her older sister, Valarie Carey Reaves-Bey, doesn't believe that.
WorldAssociated PressPfizer temporarily reduces European deliveries of vaccine
U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer confirmed Friday it will temporarily reduce deliveries to Europe of its COVID-19 vaccine while it upgrades production capacity to 2 billion doses per year. “This temporary reduction will affect all European countries,” a spokeswoman for Pfizer Denmark said in a statement to The Associated Press. Line Fedders said that to meet the new 2 billion dose target, Pfizer is upscaling production at its plant in Puurs, Belgium, which “presupposes adaptation of facilities and processes at the factory which requires new quality tests and approvals from the authorities.”
PoliticsAssociated PressFate of Biden agenda rests with Schumer in 50-50 Senate
Chuck Schumer is used to drinking from a firehose. But the incoming Senate majority leader has never taken on such a torrent of challenges, with the opening days of both the Biden administration and Democratic control of the Senate coming at the very moment an impeachment trial gets underway. A 38-year veteran of Congress who first came to the Senate during President Bill Clinton's impeachment, Schumer is a 70-year-old bundle of energy with one overriding mandate: Help Joe Biden become a successful president.
WorldBBCEU blames UK after outcry over end to visa-free touring for musicians
The EU has insisted it was the UK government's choice to end visa-free touring for musicians on the continent, following an outcry from performers. Officials in Brussels told the BBC that the UK "refused" a plan that would have let musicians tour without visas. The response came after Downing Street re-affirmed that its own "ambitious" proposals had been rejected by the EU.
“If you’re looking to win elections, it is probably best not to urge your supporters not to vote.”
“Warnock’s portrayal of himself as a dog lover, a means of overcoming white suspicions of Black men, smacked of pure genius.”
“Trump has done damage to the Republican brand among suburban voters that goes well beyond just races where he is on the ballot.”
“Once more, Democrats must profusely thank activist Stacey Abrams.”
“Overall, demographic trends show that the state’s electorate is becoming younger and more diverse each year.”