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WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Republican former US president George W. Bush will attend the inauguration of Democrats Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in Washington on January 20, his chief of staff said Tuesday. “President and Mrs. Bush look forward to returning to the Capitol for the swearing in of President Biden and Vice President Harris,” Freddy Ford tweeted. “Witnessing the peaceful transfer of power is a hallmark of our democracy that never gets old,” […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — US President Donald Trump has confirmed he will address a rally of his supporters Wednesday in Washington, called in protest at the certification by Congress of Joe Biden’s election victory. “I will be speaking at the SAVE AMERICA RALLY tomorrow on the Ellipse at 11AM Eastern (1600 GMT),” tweeted the Republican, who refuses to concede defeat two months after the November vote. “Arrive early,” Trump urged — promising “BIG CROWDS!” […]
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AFP) — Mexico on Monday authorized the coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford for emergency use in the country, which has one of the world’s highest Covid-19 death tolls. Deputy health minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell announced on Twitter that Mexican regulators had approved the vaccine, which has also been authorized by Britain, India and Argentina. Lopez-Gastell said the vaccine could be available in March. “It depends on the private […]
NEW YORK, United States (AFP) — An array of prominent US business executives on Monday called for Congress to certify Joe Biden as the new US president, writing in a joint letter that it is time “to move forward.” The letter, signed by more than 170 executives in industries ranging from finance and sports to technology and media, condemned any attempt to thwart the certification process as “counter to the essential tenets of our […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Nancy Pelosi, the only woman to serve as US Speaker of the House, was narrowly re-elected to the position Sunday in a deeply divided new Congress that convened in the final weeks of Donald Trump’s presidency. Pelosi, 80, faced a scare when five fellow Democrats defected and voted “present” or for someone else during the floor vote. But the woman who is third in line to the presidency secured […]
MONTREAL, Canada (AFP) — Canada surpassed the grim milestone of 600,000 coronavirus cases Sunday, two weeks after passing half a million, underscoring the pandemic’s persistence in the country during the end-of-year holiday period. On Sunday afternoon, Canada recorded 601,314 Covid-19 infections since the start of the pandemic and 15,860 deaths, according to data from provinces and territories reported by the public television station CBC. Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, recorded 2,964 new cases in 24 […]
by Chris Stein and Heather Scott WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Despite a drop in weekly jobless claims, the US economy is far from healed after a year in which tens of millions of people lost their jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic, many of whom remain out of work. New filings for unemployment benefits last week dropped below 800,000 for the first time in a month, the Labor Department reported Thursday, but experts say […]
by Ben Sheppard WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — The United States has recorded more than 20 million cases of Covid-19, Johns Hopkins University said Friday in its real-time tally, as the New Year brought another grim milestone underlining the country’s struggle to quell the virus. The US has so far registered 20,007,149 cases and 346,408 deaths in the pandemic, the Baltimore-based university said, making it the country with by far the highest official number of […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — More than 3,900 people died of Covid-19 in the US Wednesday, according to a count released by Johns Hopkins University, a new daily record for fatalities from the virus. The Baltimore-based university said 3,927 people had died of the coronavirus in the 24 hours before 8.30 pm (0130 GMT Thursday) in the US, the worst-hit country in the world, while 189,671 new cases had been recorded. That brought the […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — Jobless Americans who risked not receiving unemployment aid this week due to President Donald Trump’s delay in signing off on it will indeed receive the money, the Labor Department said on Tuesday. Congress in March expanded the US unemployment safety net as the coronavirus pandemic struck, creating the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) for freelancers and Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) for the long-term unemployed but only funding them until […]
by Shaun Tandon with James Pheby in London and AFP bureaus Agence France Presse WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — A worrying new variant of Covid-19 was detected for the first time Tuesday in the United States and Latin America as President-elect Joe Biden vowed he will significantly ramp up a fledging vaccination drive. The new strain, which first emerged in the UK, pushed Britain to a new daily record of coronavirus infections and led […]
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — The US state of Colorado has recorded what is reportedly America’s first case of the particularly infectious coronavirus variant that emerged recently in Britain, the governor said Tuesday. “Today we discovered Colorado’s first case of the COVID-19 variant B.1.1.7, the same variant discovered in the UK,” state governor Jared Polis tweeted. He attached an official statement from his office and state health officials that said the individual is a “male […]
