Kamala Harris on Saturday made history as the first woman and the first woman of colour ever to be elected Vice President of America.
In her victory speech, Harris paid tribute to the women, particularly Black women, whose shoulders she stands on as she shatters barriers that have kept mostly white men entrenched at the highest levels of American politics for more than two centuries.
"Tonight I reflect on their struggle, their determination and the strength of their vision to see what can be unburdened by what has been," Harris said, wearing a white suit in tribute to women's suffrage. She called it a testament to President-elect Joe Biden's character that "he had the audacity to break one of the most substantial barriers that exists in our country, and select a woman as his vice president"
Joe Biden, the US president-elect, has cast himself as a moderate with the experience and empathy required to offset Donald Trump’s disruptive presidency. Having battled adversity throughout a career scarred by personal tragedy, he says he feels the pain of a nation unnerved by economic crisis, civil unrest and a deadly pandemic.
Slovak officials said the team included two Downing Street advisers and two people responsible for arranging the UK’s large-scale testing programme in Liverpool.
“They are interested in our lessons and in the details and results,” said Slovakia’s deputy defence minister, Marian Majer, who added that Slovakia has offered to send a planning team to London to help with UK preparations if required.
A No 10 spokesperson declined to comment on the visit except to say that “we are constantly seeking to evolve our testing system in order to control the spread of the virus and bring the R rate down”.
Among 302 such adults, 16 (5.3%) had antibodies, likely generated during infections with “common cold” coronaviruses, that reacted to a specific region of the spike protein on the new virus called the S2 subunit. Among 48 children and adolescents, 21 (43.8%) had these antibodies. In test tube experiments, blood serum from both older and younger uninfected individuals with cross-reactive antibodies could neutralise the new coronavirus. That was not the case with serum from study participants who lacked these antibodies.
“Together, these findings may help explain higher Covid-19 susceptibility in older people and provide insight into whether pre-established immunity to seasonal coronaviruses offers protection against SARS-CoV-2,” the publishers of the journal said in a statement. The findings also suggest that targeting the S2 subunit on the coronavirus spike protein might be the basis for a drug or vaccine that works on multiple types of coronavirus.
The woman worked election day as an election judge supervisor at Memorial Hall in Blanchette Park in the St Louis suburb of St Charles. Officials don’t yet know if the virus was the cause of death. County officials didn’t release her name, citing privacy laws.
Lost confidence
Good evening from London. I’m Lucy Campbell, I’ll be bringing you all the latest global developments on the coronavirus pandemic for the next few hours. Please feel free to get in touch with me as I work if you have a story or tips to share! Your thoughts are always welcome.
Kamala Devi Harris, the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, is to become the highest-ranking woman in the 244-year existence of the United States. She's been welcomed by women, by black activists and by a chorus of liberal voices – but she comes to the job after having publicly savaged Joe Biden in the first Democrat TV debate, and with a confused reputation from her time as California attorney general.
Kamala Harris was among the gang of Democratic contenders who slugged it out in the first of the party's televised debates, back in June, 2019. In the course of that frequently stormy discussion, Harris accused Biden of having sided with racial segregationists in the 1970s by opposing legislation on "bussing", the controversial use of federal transport to bring black kids to white schools.
Biden, when he was a Delaware Senator in 1975, did indeed describe bussing as "asinine". In the 2019 debate, Harris told the man who will become her boss next January that he had been wrong to oppose the system that gave her the start of an education that had made her career possible. "I was the girl on the bus," she said. Biden ran out of time before he could answer.
Worldwide, there have been 1,235,148 Covid-19-related deaths. The United States is the hardest hit country with 234,944 fatalities, followed by Brazil with 161,736, India 124,985, Mexico 93,772 and the UK 48,120.
The US has also recorded more than 120,000 new daily infections - breaking a record set the day before.
Europe’s number of coronavirus-linked deaths has surged past 300,000 and its number of infections surpassed 12 million, according to an AFP tally from official sources.
The region’s 300,688 recorded deaths is second only to the 408,841 in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The New York Times described Harris's assault on Biden as "perhaps the toughest attack he faced throughout the primary campaign".
That was then. Harris dropped out of contention before the first of the party's selection votes, running out of money.
When Joe Biden secured the Democrat nomination, he took the woman who had savaged him as his running-mate, and Kamala Harris was rocketing towards the glass ceiling with a clenched fist.
A long career of being first
Harris was born 56 years ago in Oakland, California, across the Bay from San Francisco.
In an interview last year with The New Yorker magazine, she summed up her career quite simply: “Here’s the thing: every office I’ve run for I was the first to win. First person of colour. First woman. First woman of colour. Every time.”
She has been, successively, San Francisco district attorney in 2003, attorney general of California in 2010, senator in 2016, vice-president-elect in 2020, seconding the oldest man ever elected to the White House.
She has played several crucial roles in the Biden campaign, becoming a forceful voice for racial justice, meeting black activists nationwide and showing up at Black Lives Matter protests. She also clearly helped to boost voter participation by black women in places like Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia.
Harris often framed her candidacy as part of the legacy of pioneering Black women who came before her, including educator Mary McLeod Bethune, civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer and Rep. Shirley Chisholm, the first Black candidate to seek a major party's presidential nomination, in 1972.
She paid tribute to Black women “who are too often overlooked but so often prove they are the backbone of our democracy”.
Despite the excitement surrounding Harris, she and Biden face steep challenges, including a pandemic that has taken a disproportionate toll on people of colour, and a series of police killings of Black Americans that have deepened racial tensions. Harris's past work as a prosecutor has prompted scepticism among progressives and young voters who are looking to her to back sweeping institutional change over incremental reforms in policing, drug policy and more.
president on Friday declared a state of health emergency that will come into force next week to allow the government to impose further coronavirus restrictions.
In a televised appearance, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said he had just signed a decree “relating to a second state of emergency” since the start of the pandemic that will last at least two weeks.
It will be “very limited and largely preventative” but “paves the way for new measures such as restricting traffic to certain times and certain days, in highest risk municipalities,” he said.
The government will hold an extraordinary cabinet meeting on Saturday to decide what type of measures to introduce.
These could include a nighttime curfew similar to what has been implemented in other European nations, or taking people’s temperature at some locations.
During the first wave of the pandemic in the spring, Portuguese authorities decreed a six-week state of emergency.
Some 7.1 million people are currently living under new restrictions and have been asked to stay home and work remotely as far as possible.
But unlike the first spring lockdown, schools remain open, along with shops and restaurants, though they have to close earlier.
Since the start of the pandemic, Portugal has reported close to 167,000 cases and more than 2,700 deaths.
Harris’s mother, Shyamala Gopalan, the Brahman daughter of a diplomat from Chennai, India, graduated from the University of Delhi at age 19, avoided an arranged marriage, and went to the University of California at Berkeley to study nutrition and endocrinology.
“She was one of the very few women of colour in science,” Harris told The New Yorker about her mother. “When I decided to run, she said, ‘Honey, you watch out for what’s going to happen, because there are still certain myths about what women can do and cannot do, in spite of the fact of what women actually do in life.’
"And she said, ‘Two of those myths are that women can do certain things but not necessarily be in charge of your security or your money.’ In spite of the fact that, who is the lioness protecting those cubs at all costs? Who is it who is invariably sitting at that kitchen table in the middle of the night trying to figure out how to get those bills paid?”
A huge weight of hope
Kamala Harris has already left a few myths in smithereens. She knows she carries a huge weight of hope for a better, more united, less racist America. But she won't be alone.
“She brought the names of black women in history to the stage when she accepted her nomination,” says Glynda Carr, co-founder of the advocacy group Higher Heights, which recruits and supports black women in politics.
“Maya Angelou used to say, ‘I come as one, but stand as 10,000’. That is what Kamala Harris is going to do when she steps into the Oval Office with Joe Biden.”
Donald Trump may not have conceded defeat yet, but messages of congratulations and warm wishes were on Saturday pouring in for President-Elect Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris.
French President Emmanuel Macron was among the first to react to the pair's historic election victory.
"We have a lot to do to overcome today's challenges. Let's work together!," Macron tweeted after major US media networks announced the Democrats had won Pennsylvania and therefore the White House.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, meanwhile, congratulated Biden on his "election to the presidency" and on Harris for her "historic achievement".
"The US is our most important ally and I look forward to working closely together on our shared priorities, from climate change to trade and security," Johnson tweeted.
As she congratulated Biden, Germany's Angela Merkel said that trans-Atlantic ties were "irreplaceable".
And Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a statement: "I look forward to working with President-Elect Biden, Vice President-Elect Harris, their administration, and the United States Congress as we tackle the world's greatest challenges together."
Trudeau has had a frequently stormy relationship with Trump, who once tweeted the Canadian leader was "very dishonest and weak" during a dispute on US tariffs.
Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump to claim the White House
Michael D. Higgins, the president of Ireland also tweeted a statement congratulating the new president and vice president, saying: "On behalf of the people of Ireland, I wish President-Elect Biden and Vice President-Elect Harris every success in the years ahead."
France, Portugal, Russia, Italy, and Sweden were among the countries to register record daily totals of new Covid-19 infections on Friday. It comes as Europe continues to experience a second wave of the pandemic, and as many countries opt for new national lockdowns.
Russia recorded nearly 10,000 coronavirus-linked deaths in September. Data from the state statistics service, Rosstat, shows that 9,798 deaths in the country were linked to suspected or confirmed cases of the virus in September, while deaths from all causes were up 23% from the same month last year.
Aspirin is to to be evaluated as a possible treatment for Covid-19 in one of the UK’s biggest trials. Patients infected by the novel coronavirus are at a higher risk of blood clots because of hyper-reactive platelets, the cell fragments that help stop bleeding. Aspirin is an antiplatelet agent and can reduce the risk of clots, the Recovery trial’s website said.
The World Health Organisation is looking into biosecurity in countries that have mink farms after Denmark ordered a nationwide cull of the animals. Maria van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead for Covid-19, said the transmission of the virus between animals and humans was “a concern”.
Since June, Denmark has recorded more than 200 cases of mink-related Covid. The State Serum Institute, which deals with infectious diseases, has found 214 people infected with mink-related versions of coronavirus since June. It is one strain of the mutated coronavirus which has prompted Denmark to cull its entire herd of mink. That strain has, however, been found in only 12 people and on five mink farms so far.
A former vice-president under Barack Obama, Biden is the first candidate to notch more than 70 million votes nationwide in a presidential contest, ultimately securing a clear path to victory after days of nail-biting suspense.
An affable figure with several decades of Washington experience, Biden has vowed to restore dignity to the presidential office after four uniquely turbulent years under President Donald Trump, a former real-estate tycoon and reality-TV host.
Democratic candidate Joe Biden has defeated President Donald Trump to become the 46th president of the United States, according to the Associated Press and other US media projections. Follow the reactions to his win on our live blog below.
