Breakthrough: UK and
EU reach post-Brexit
trade agreement
BRUSSELS — Just a week before the deadline, Britain and the European Union struck a free-trade deal Thursday that should avert economic chaos on New Year’s and bring a measure of certainty for businesses after years of Brexit turmoil.
Once ratified by both sides, the agreement will ensure Britain and the 27-nation bloc can continue to trade in goods without tariffs or quotas after the U.K. breaks fully free of the EU on Jan. 1.
Relief was palpable all around that nine months of tense and often testy negotiations had finally produced a positive result.
The Christmas Eve breakthrough was doubly welcome amid a coronavirus pandemic that has left some 70,000 people in Britain dead and led the country’s neighbors to shut their borders to the U.K. over a new and seemingly more contagious variant of the virus circulating in England.
“We have taken back control of our laws and our destiny,” declared British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who posted a picture of himself on social media, beaming with thumbs up.
Democrats face a
turnout test in
Georgia’s Senate runoffs
ATLANTA — In the first week of early voting for Georgia’s Senate runoff election, Casie Yoder parked at a polling location in Cobb County and loaded miniature hand sanitizer bottles, knitted hats, hand warmers and face masks into a collapsible wagon cart.
Her goal: to help voters stay in line in frigid temperatures and cast their ballots in a pair of high-stakes runoff contests that will determine which political party controls the Senate next year. The runoffs will also test whether Democrats can again pull together the diverse coalition that propelled President-elect Joe Biden to victory in Georgia in November and cemented the state’s status as a political battleground.
“We’ve never had an election happen like this in December,” said Yoder, the Georgia state captain for the Frontline, a nonpartisan electoral justice project of the Movement for Black Lives and other partner organizations.
For Democrats to win control of the Senate, Georgia’s Black communities, as well as the state’s smaller Hispanic and Asian communities, likely need to vote in the Jan. 5 runoff election by history-making margins. There is hope that the candidacy of the Rev. Raphael Warnock, the Black senior pastor of the church where Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, might help spur Black votes for both him and fellow Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff over the Republican incumbents, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
An Associated Press VoteCast survey of Georgia voters in November found that 22% of white voters chose Warnock and 28% chose Ossoff, compared to the 90% of Black voters who chose Ossoff and 73% who chose Warnock. Democrats also have an opportunity to capture the 15% of Black voters who chose Matt Lieberman, another Democratic candidate who competed against Warnock in last month’s race.
From wire sources
US military confirms pandemic won’t sideline Santa Claus
DENVER — The U.S. military is tracking an elderly man with a white beard and a large belly who goes by the name of Saint Nicholas.
There’s no reason for alarm though, Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck said.
In fact, this is a Christmas tradition going on its 65th year. The North American Aerospace Defense Command, a joint U.S.-Canadian operation that protects the skies over both countries, has tracked the fabled jolly old man since a child mistakenly called the base in 1955, asking to speak to Santa.
The base in Colorado Springs, Colorado, used to monitor for signs of a nuclear attack. But this year, officers at the base are making sure the coronavirus pandemic won’t sideline Santa Claus and his reindeer from, as the storybooks say, delivering gifts to children around the world.
While the Santa tracking operations center usually has around 1,500 volunteers fielding calls from around the world, this year they have scaled back because of COVID-19 concerns with few people in the center and many taking calls remotely. With the smaller operation, they have also added a voicemail for callers who don’t reach an operator.
‘We are struggling’: A bleak Christmas for America’s jobless
NEW YORK — Last Christmas, Shanita Matthews cooked up a feast for her family of three: Roast chicken, barbecue spareribs, spinach, macaroni and cheese.
This year? They’ll stick with tuna fish and crackers, among the few items she can afford at the supermarket.
“We’re not really doing Christmas — I guess you can say it that way,” said Matthews, who lives in Suwanee, Georgia. “We are struggling. We are tired, and all I have is my faith.”
Like nearly 10 million other Americans, Matthews has been jobless since the viral pandemic ripped through the U.S. economy in March, triggering a devastating recession and widespread unemployment. Now, many months later, they face a holiday season they hardly could have foreseen a year ago: Too little money to buy gifts, cook large festive meals or pay all their bills.
Nearly 8 million people have sunk into poverty since June after having spent $1,200 checks that the government gave most Americans in the spring and a $600-a-week supplemental jobless benefit expired in July, according to research by Bruce Meyer at the University of Chicago and two other colleagues. And finding a job is getting even harder: Hiring in November slowed for a fifth straight month, with U.S. employers adding the fewest jobs since April.
