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    Peer is asked to investigate the activities of extreme right and left

    The government has reportedly ordered an investigation into the extreme fringes on both ends of the political spectrum, with a peer tasked with offering recommendations to the prime minister and home secretary.The review will be led by John Woodcock, the former Labour MP who now sits in the upper chamber as Lord Walney and was appointed as the government’s independent adviser on political violence and disruption last November.Announcing the review in an interview with the Telegraph, the unaffiliated peer cautioned that the UK must take notice of the rise of far-right groups in the US following the storming of the Capitol building last month.Woodcock stressed that there was “not an equivalence of threat between the far-left and the far-right” in the UK, with the latter a far bigger issue.In September, Home Office data showed that right-wing extremists now make up almost a fifth of terrorists in jail, rising from 33 in 2018/19 to 45 in the year to 30 June 2020 in England and Wales.Furthermore, last year’s annual figures for the government’s controversial Prevent scheme showed that the largest number of referrals related to far-right extremism.James Brokenshire, the security minister, warned that far-right terror posed “a growing threat”, which had been accelerated by the amplification of conspiracy theories online during the pandemic. Of the cases ultimately referred to the government’s Channel programme for specialist support, 302 (43%) were referred for rightwing radicalisation.Walney told the Telegraph that there had also been isolated incidents of some leftwing causes “overstepping the mark into antisocial behaviour”, and the activities of these groups would also be investigated.He said: “There have been a number of, at the moment isolated, examples of climate change activist groups, particularly Extinction Rebellion, overstepping the mark into antisocial behaviour. I think there’s been a recognition that, even among that movement, they have at times risked undermining their own cause.“I’m coming at this with an open mind, but with an understanding that there is clearly a potential for groups to develop into increasingly problematic areas.”The home secretary, Priti Patel, has previously claimed Extinction Rebellion activists are “so-called eco-crusaders turned criminals” who threaten key planks of national life.In a speech to the annual conference of the Police Superintendents’ Association last September, Patel said XR was “attempting to thwart the media’s right to publish without fear nor favour”, and claimed their campaign of civil disobedience was “a shameful attack on our way of life, our economy and the livelihoods of the hard-working majority”. More

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    'Racism is in the bones of our nation': Will Joe Biden answer the 'cry' for racial justice?

    Activists are hopeful but cautious as president acknowledges ground shifted in the US after the police killing of George FloydIn his first few minutes as America’s new president, Joe Biden made a promise so sweeping that it almost seemed to deny history. “We can deliver racial justice,” Biden pledged to his factious nation. It wasn’t a commitment presented in any detail as he moved on to asserting that America would again be the leading force for good in the world, a claim that draws its own scrutiny.But Biden acknowledged that the ground has shifted over demands for racial justice in the US following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis last May and the violent white nationalism of Donald Trump.“A cry for racial justice some 400 years in the making moves us. The dream of justice for all will be deferred no longer,” said Biden. “And now, a rise in political extremism, white supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat.” Continue reading… More

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    The Guardian view on the storming of the US Capitol: democracy in danger | Editorial

    What took so long? “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time,” Maya Angelou counselled. Donald Trump’s keenest supporters believed him. But too many others, even among those who reviled him, nonetheless assumed that there were limits. They can no longer be complacent. The American carnage of Wednesday night – the storming of the Capitol by an armed and violent mob, incited by the president, in an attempt to terrorise Congress and stop the peaceful transfer of power – marked an extraordinary moment in US history. “If the post-American era has a start date, it is almost certainly today,” wrote Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations.Yet this was merely the ultimate and undeniable proof of what was always evident: that this man is not only unfit for his office, he is also a danger to democracy while he retains it. He built his political success on lies, contempt for democratic standards, the stoking of divisions – most of all racial – and the glamorising of force. They were evident when he campaigned for the presidency, and more blatant when he talked of “very fine people” among the white supremacists of Charlottesville. When the House impeached him for abusing power for electoral purposes. When he lied that the election would be stolen, and then lied that it had been. When he called supporters to Washington. When he told them that they would “never take back our country with weakness” and urged them on to the Capitol.The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and others deserve no credit for belated pieties about the state of the Republic. All those who helped or “humoured” Mr Trump’s election-stealing attempts are culpable. Already expert in more genteel endeavours, such as voter suppression and gerrymandering, the Republican elites have enabled and encouraged Trumpism: standing at his side, acquitting him when impeached, staying silent, or amplifying his lies. Having invited in an arsonist and supplied him with accelerant, they offer a cup of water to douse the inferno.The urgent issue is how to deal with Mr Trump. No faith can be put in his last-minute promise of an orderly transition when he continues to foment rage. The Democratic leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, has called for his immediate removal. Cabinet members are reportedly now discussing the use of the 25th amendment, which allows the replacement of an “unfit” president. But this is not about mere failings or incapacity: a better choice would be to begin impeachment proceedings. Action must be taken against Mr Trump, as it must against those he incited, to prevent him from running again and send a clear message to anyone tempted to follow.For the truly important issue is how to salvage democracy in America. While Wednesday may prove a wake-up call for some Trump voters, many are already explaining away events, or excusing them through false equivalences with the Black Lives Matter movement. Divisions run deep through American society and even its institutions. A full investigation is needed of the failure to protect the Capitol when extremists had openly talked of such a plan – in stark contrast to the intense security and aggressive treatment that greeted peaceful BLM protesters. Tens of millions of Americans now believe that the election was stolen: one report suggests that only a quarter of Republicans trust the result. Rightwing media have fostered lies, and social media allowed people to dwell in alternative political universes. Though Facebook has finally suspended the president’s account, the stable door is shutting long after disinformation galloped off into the distance. None of this will end when Joe Biden is inaugurated on 20 January.Democracy exists not in the provisions written down on paper, but so long as it is practised, which is to say, defended. The remarkable twin victories in the Georgia runoffs on Wednesday, giving the Democrats control of the Senate via the vice-president’s casting vote, were a welcome testimony to what is possible. But their importance is dwarfed by the threat looming over the system itself. The struggle is only just beginning. America has shown its people what it is. They should believe it – and act accordingly. More

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    In Georgia, Pro Teams Dive Into Senate Races With Different Playbooks

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    Georgia Runoff

    Full Results

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    ‘Year of the Reveal’: Runoffs Follow Pandemic, Protests and a Test of Atlanta’s Promise

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    Electoral College Results

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    10 Powerful ‘Daily’ Episodes From 2020

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Latest Vaccine InformationU.S. Deaths Surpass 300,000F.A.Q.Protesters marched in New York in June as anger spread across the country.Credit…Demetrius Freeman for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site index10 Powerful ‘Daily’ Episodes From 2020In a year defined by a pandemic, protests and politics, “The Daily” sought out personal stories. Here’s a holiday playlist of the episodes that Michael Barbaro and our team can’t forget.Protesters marched in New York in June as anger spread across the country.Credit…Demetrius Freeman for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyDec. 18, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETListen and subscribe to The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherMichael Barbaro, host of “The Daily.”Credit…The New York TimesIn moments of crisis, the journalistic urge to chronicle and memorialize becomes a kind of civic duty. That’s what 2020 was for “The Daily.” A rolling catastrophe that summoned us — to track down the most memorable characters, the most searing sounds, the most unforgettable scenes.That’s what we tried to do, day after day, for the past 12 months. What follows is a list of what we think are our best shows of the year:The pandemicThe pandemic is a story of unrelenting awfulness: lockdowns, infections and death. But it was also a story of resilience, and, in rare cases, joy. These episodes tell both stories — making them worth revisiting, even months later.Around the world, people spent far more time at home this year than usual. In São Paulo, Brazil, residents gathered at their windows in March to protest the government’s pandemic response.Credit…Victor Moriyama for The New York Times1. Finding the voice that could calm amid crisisGenie Chance and the Great Alaska EarthquakeThis is the story of the biggest earthquake ever recorded in North America — and the voice that held Anchorage together in the aftermath.This was an unusual episode for us. The central event occurred half a century ago. But the parallels between the life-altering catastrophe that befell Anchorage in 1964 and the pandemic felt unmistakable, a connection captured in the opening words of “This is Chance!,” the book by Jon Mooallem that inspired the episode:“There are moments when the world we take for granted instantaneously changes; when reality is abruptly upended and the unimaginable overwhelms real life. We don’t walk around thinking about that instability, but we know it’s always there: at random, and without warning, a kind of terrible magic can switch on and scramble our lives.”Genie Chance’s voice steadied Alaska after an earthquake, and, for a moment, it steadied us too.— Michael Barbaro, host of “The Daily”Learn more about the episode.2. Going to the heart of the crisis in Italy‘It’s Like a War’We spoke to a doctor triaging care at the heart of the coronavirus crisis in Italy. His intimate telling of the crisis in Bergamo is a time capsule for what this year sounded like.I remember exactly when I realized that the coronavirus was about to change all of our lives: The morning of Feb. 27, 2020, when Donald G. McNeil Jr. came on “The Daily” and said that this thing was serious — that it had most likely spread further than we know and that it was something we needed to start preparing for right now.Just a few weeks later, as new travel restrictions and forced business closures began spreading through the United States, and with more and more Americans concerned we might be overreacting, we interviewed a doctor in Italy trying to care for the overwhelming number of coronavirus patients that he was seeing every day. There was no way for me to hear his account and remain confused as to why we all needed to protect the most vulnerable. — Andy Mills, a producerLearn more about the episode.Early in the year, the virus hit Western Europe harder than any other place in the world. In March, a coronavirus patient was examined at his home in Cenate Sotto, Italy.Credit…Fabio Bucciarelli for The New York Times3. Offering a bit of reliefThe Long Distance ChorusHow the elementary school students of Staten Island’s P.S. 22 Chorus are harmonizing from afar.Gregg Breinberg and the chorus of Public School 22 on Staten Island reminded me that we can still find meaningful ways to connect in the midst of Covid. After listening to Mr. Breinberg inspire his students, and lead them through a pandemic, I was left only wishing I had him as my teacher. I still think about this episode from time to time. — Laura Kim, an editorial managerLearn more about the episode.4. Honoring the lives of those we’ve lostOne Hundred Thousand LivesA dictionary collector. A wind chaser. A disco dancer. They are just a few of the more than 100,000 lost to the coronavirus in the U.S.Barbara Krupke won the lottery. Fred Walter Gray enjoyed his bacon and hash browns crispy. Orlando Moncada crawled through a hole in a fence to reach the United States. John Prine chronicled the human condition. Cornelia Ann Hunt left the world with gratitude.“We made this episode after we lost 100,000 people to coronavirus in the United States. In doing so, we broke form, took a chance and made something entirely different than we’ve ever made before. Months later, this audio portrait is still a powerful vigil honoring — and celebrating — these lives.” — Lynsea Garrison, a producerLearn more about the episode.Protests against racial inequityHow do you cover the effects of centuries of systemic racism? By listening closely to those affected by it. This summer, we captured the sounds of the Black Lives Matter movement, unprecedented in scale, by traveling to the protests’ front lines. Then, we spoke with Black police officers and union leaders at the center of the debate over defunding.The killing of George Floyd in May inspired mass demonstrations against police brutality across the country. In Minneapolis, officers confronted protesters on May 31.Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York Times5. Recording protesters on the front linesWhy They’re Protesting“Hate killed Mr. Floyd,” one protester said. “This kind of conduct has been allowed for far too long against people of color. And enough is enough.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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    Thousands of Photographs, and a Year Like No Other

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesThe Latest Vaccine InformationVaccine TrackerFAQAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTimes InsiderThousands of Photographs, and a Year Like No OtherThe Year in Pictures project is an annual celebration of photojournalism. In 2020, photographers were living what they captured.Eliana Marcela Rendon and her husband, Edilson Valencia, witnessed Ms. Rendon’s grandmother, Carmen Evelia Toro, die from COVID-19 at North Shore University Hospital in New York.Credit…Victor J. Blue for The New York TimesDec. 12, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ETTimes Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.The first photo that appears in The Year in Pictures, The New York Times’s annual celebration and review of photography, was taken on Jan 1. Just seconds into 2020, in the heart of Times Square, the photographer Calla Kessler captured what was likely the first New Year’s photo of a same-sex couple kissing to be printed on the front page of The Times.Nearly every editor and writer who worked on The Year in Pictures had the same reaction to the celebratory scene in the frame: “These people had no idea what was coming.”Julian Sanders and Jay Morales, center, started off 2020 with a New Year’s kiss in Times Square.Credit…Calla Kessler/The New York TimesWe had no idea what was coming.The year began with a mysterious respiratory ailment in Wuhan, China, and President Trump’s impeachment trial. Late in the spring, the death of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter protests and civil unrest gripped the nation. Wildfires and hurricanes devastated parts of the United States. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died and Amy Coney Barrett joined the Supreme Court. Joseph R. Biden Jr. became the first candidate to defeat an incumbent president in an election since 1992, and Kamala Harris is the first woman elected to serve as vice president. Along the way, Kobe Bryant and John Lewis died. The coronavirus continues unabated in the United States.“I don’t think there’s been a bigger news year since 1968,” Dean Baquet, The Times’s executive editor, said in a planning meeting.The Year in Pictures was published online this week and appears in Sunday’s newspaper. Even in an ordinary year, the project is a huge undertaking that calls on talent from across the newsroom. Dozens of printed proofs would have lined the floors and walls in the office while a group of designers and editors hovered, moving photos and pages around.With the majority of the newsroom working remotely this year, however, designers and editors debated these details over videocalls, squinting at layouts on screens and 8.5-by-11-inch pages from household printers.“Sometimes our sessions were three hours long,” said Mary Jane Callister, an art director, who designed the print section with her design colleague Carrie Mifsud. “It was a real challenge to tell the story in 36 pages,” she said.The Year in Pictures was published this week and appears in newspapers on Sunday.Credit…The New York TimesPerhaps no two people were as close to this Year in Pictures than Jeffrey Henson Scales and David Furst, the lead photo editors of the Opinion and the International desks, respectively. In recent months, Mr. Furst and Mr. Henson Scales, who helped lead the project, reviewed around half a million published and unpublished photographs. (By Nov. 1, Mr. Henson Scales had reviewed at least 16,410 photographs by Doug Mills, a staff photographer in the Washington bureau, alone.)“The areas that The Times covered, it covered them really strongly,” Mr. Henson Scales said. On an average day, Times photographers file 1,000 to 1,500 photographs.“I don’t know that I have ever come across a body of work that’s as complicated as this one,” Mr. Furst said.Protesters marched against racism in cities and towns around the country after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25.Credit…Michael A. McCoy for The New York TimesIn addition to an introduction written by Mr. Baquet, the project includes pictures woven with firsthand accounts from photographers, who provide behind-the-camera context. That feature was first used in 2019. This year, it was especially important to read what went into the work, Mr. Furst said. There are always photographers around the world living the story they cover — under oppressive governments, or in residential neighborhoods that turn into battlefields of war — but in 2020, everyone lived it.Readers hear from Mr. Mills, who worried about taking the virus from White House events home to his family, and Sara Krulwich, a culture photographer for The Times, who had to navigate months with no live performances to shoot. Tyler Hicks spent weeks in the Brazilian Amazon documenting the toll of the virus there.Outside their St. Louis home, Patricia and Mark McCloskey met Black Lives Matters protesters with guns.Credit…Lawrence Bryant/ReutersLawrence Bryant, a photographer for Reuters, shared his experience photographing Patricia and Mark McCloskey, who wielded guns at Black Lives Matter protesters in front of their house in St. Louis.“He talks about his fear of this woman pointing a gun at him and trying to figure out where he could be safe from that,” Mr. Henson Scales said.When asked what he wants readers to feel, Mr. Henson Scales responded: “It was a long year, filled with heroics. And thus far, we’ve made it through. Be glad of that.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Looking back at 2020: a year like no other – podcast

    A look back at how the Guardian covered a year that began with the outbreak of a pandemic, witnessed global anti-racism protests after the killing of George Floyd, and ended with the voting out of President Donald Trump

    How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

    As we entered a new decade back in January, newspapers were full of stories about Australian bushfires, tensions between the US and Iran, and the British Conservatives were revelling in their 80-seat majority. But the World Health Organization was already dealing with news of a ‘novel coronavirus’ in Wuhan, China, a disease that was going to dramatically change the way we lived our lives. Covid-19 swept through Asia and into Europe and beyond, killing almost 2 million people and bringing the world’s economies to their knees. The Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, joins Anushka Asthana to look back on a year in which reporters covered some huge breaking stories, including the killing of George Floyd and the global anti-racism movement Black Lives Matter. There was the US election in which the American people voted to remove Donald Trump. And there was the biggest story of all: the continuing climate crisis which, despite a pandemic-induced reduction in travel, only resulted in a 7% drop in global emissions. And all the while Britain hurtled inexorably towards an end-of-year Brexit. More