In 2020, China advanced its aspirations by simply emerging with its growth intact from a brutal year when a pandemic shook the world economy.

On Monday, Beijing said its gross domestic product rose 2.3% last year. While that is the weakest annual rate of growth since the Mao era, it was enough to make China the only major world economy to gain any ground at all last year, and accelerated its likely overtaking of the U.S. economy, economists say.

The World Bank projects the global economy to have pulled back by 4.3% last year, dragged down by a 7.4% contraction in the eurozone. The U.S., the world’s largest economy, is expected to have shrunk by 3.6%

In the two weeks since a raging mob stormed the Capitol, President Trump has shown no sign that he believes he shares responsibility for the worst incursion on the halls of Congress in more than two centuries. Shielding him further, his loyalists have started shifting blame for the attack to an array of distracting bogeymen: far-left anti-fascists, Black Lives Matter activists, even vague conspiracies of a setup involving Vice President Mike Pence.

“Does our president bear responsibility?” the lawyer, Al Watkins, told The New York Times. “Hell, yes, he does.”

the accounts they give about Mr. Trump could end up not only as fodder in criminal proceedings but also at an impeachment trial to bolster charges that the president incited the assault.

Christopher C. Miller, the acting defense secretary, gave Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, the spy agency’s director, until 6 p.m. on Saturday to install Michael Ellis as its general counsel.

Although General Nakasone was not pleased that Mr. Ellis was chosen over career officials at the National Security Agency, he did not actively block or slow the process of installing Mr. Ellis, according to two people familiar with the matter. He did, however, insist that all procedures were followed and all approvals were put in writing.

So Mr. Miller ordered the agency to swear Mr. Ellis in, a move The Washington Post reported on Saturday

The path to beating the coronavirus was clear, but Kelley Vollmar had never felt so helpless.

As the top health official in Missouri’s Jefferson County, Ms. Vollmar knew a mandate requiring people to wear masks could help save lives. She pressed the governor’s office to issue a statewide order, and hospital leaders were making a similar push.

For nearly the entire pandemic, political polarization and a rejection of science have stymied the United States’ ability to control the coronavirus. That has been clearest and most damaging at the federal level, where Mr. Trump claimed that the virus would “disappear,” clashed with his top scientists and, in a pivotal failure, abdicated responsibility for a pandemic that required a national effort to defeat it, handing key decisions over to states under the assumption that they would take on the fight and get the country back to business.

In the meantime, faculty, staff, and students at George Washington University (where I teach) have been told to stockpile medicine and food “as you normally would for a hurricane or a snowstorm."

The most likely disruption would come a close election or Trump lead. That risk is heightened after Democratic leaders like House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C. declared on Sunday that the only way Democrat Joe Biden could lose the election would be "for voter suppression to be successful."

The country remains sharply divided with even the best Biden polls still showing a solid 45 percent for Trump. Yet, Democratic members like Clyburn are already stating that either Biden wins or the election is stolen.

There is something un-American about mobs going into neighborhoods and restaurants and intimidating innocent citizens. 

“While, on the other hand, good men, men who love tranquility, who desire to abide by the laws, and enjoy their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country; seeing their property destroyed; their families insulted, and their lives endangered; their persons injured; and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better; become tired of, and disgusted with, a Government that offers them no protection; and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose.

In 1850, Lincoln wrote a “Fragment on Government,” which connected the protection of people and property from lawlessness with the government’s central existence. He stated: “The legitimate object of government is 'to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, for themselves.'

izza to the Polls wants no voter to go hungry, having delivered over 38,804 pizzas to 1,684 polling places in 46 states this year. The nonprofit, nonpartisan group believes that “democracy is delicious”

In another patriotic pitch, the group has partnered with Uber Eats to operate a fleet of food trucks in 29 cities to celebrate civic engagement and deliver free eats from Oct. 29 to Nov. 3, the spokesperson said

Pizza to the Polls has proudly served up slices since 2016, but the organization feels its mission is more important than ever as voter enthusiasm surges across the country and polling sites adjust operations to heed coronavirus safety protocols this year.

More than 64 million absentee ballots have been cast as of Tuesday out of more than 100 million total votes in the U.S., and more than 27 absentee ballots are outstanding, according to the U.S. Elections Project, leading some voters to wonder if they can check the status of their mail-in ballots

U.S. Mail may take up to two weeks to show up as ‘Received’ in the Track My Ballot tool.”

Google will present links directing users more information on how to check a voter’s mail-in ballot register status, how to register to vote, how to check a voter’s registration status and request an absentee ballot.

Cunningham, who is married, admitted to exchanging romantic texts with California woman Arlene Guzman Todd after the messages leaked. Guzman Todd later told The Associated Press that they had a physical affair.

“Clearly, our Senate race is the big one. For a while in the summer, it looked like Cunningham might be running away with this thing,” e

1. He is a lawyer and businessman

Six North Carolina voting precincts will remain open later than intended on Election Day after each polling site experienced "interruptions in voting," the North Carolina State Board of Elections announced Tuesday evening. 

More than 4.5 million people in North Carolina had already voted prior to Election Day -- including 3.6 million people who early voted and an additional 929,000 who voted absentee, the Charlotte Observer reported.

As of early Tuesday morning, just over 62% of the state’s 7.3 million registered voters had cast their ballots, according to the state elections board -- including 1.7 million Democrats, almost 1.5 million Republicans and nearly 1.4 million unaffiliated people.

"Don't vote," the graffiti stated. "Fight for revolution!"

The symbol most commonly refers to communism, first adopted in the Russian Revolution.

The museum is a polling place for the general election on Tuesday. Polling places across the Kansas City area reported long lines Tuesday morning, including at the museum.

Lack of transportation is an oft-cited reason for people not turning out to vote on Election Day, and that was before the coronavirus pandemic added a major hitch to the mass transit option for many.

Uber is listing polling station locations in its app and offering 50% off rides to and from them, up to a $7 discount each way.

Lyft users can also get a 50% discount on one ride to a polling station or ballot dropbox with a $10 limit using the code 2020VOTE.

The cost of this year's federal elections will hit close to $14 billion, shattering records and doubling the amount of money spent to influence presidential and congressional contests four years ago, according to an estimate released Wednesday.

And the 2020 election also has seen a dramatic reversal in the financial fortunes of the two men vying for the White House

Donations to the Biden campaign alone through mid-October -- the most recent public filings -- already have topped $930 million.

More than 91.6 million Americans have voted so far, as a majority of states are reporting record early voting turnout in the 2020 election.

These votes represent about 43% of registered voters nationwide, according to a survey of election officials in all 50 states and Washington, DC, by CNN, Edison Research, and Catalist.   

Thirty-five states and Washington, DC, have crossed their halfway marks for total 2016 ballots cast, including 13 of CNN's 16 most competitively ranked states — Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Nevada, Florida, Arizona, Colorado, Wisconsin, Maine, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota and Nebraska

The 2020 election is down to the home stretch. And like most of the year, former Vice President Joe Biden continues to lead President Donald Trump nationally and in the swing states that matter. There are some who dismiss the polls because of their perceived inaccuracies in 2016.

Let's start with the basic idea of where the polls stand at this hour in the key swing states. Biden leads in all the states Hillary Clinton won in 2016 by more than 5 points. He is also ahead in a bunch of contests that Trump won in 2016.

he'd accumulate 357 electoral votes.

On Sunday, for the first time since 1972, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette endorsed a Republican for president. And not just any Republican: Donald J. Trump.

Like I said, we could have a loooooooong debate about whether Trump's accomplishments in office warrant a second term.

Again, this would NOT have guaranteed a win for Trump. His policy record is VERY much an open question.

A prominent group of experts that monitors violence around the world has issued an unprecedented warning ahead of Tuesday's presidential election in the United States.

"I've never seen anything like it," said the source, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter. "We're doing everything we can to be prepared to protect the city, and not get ourselves hurt, and not become the story," the source said.

In its report, ICG lists several remedies that could help ensure the integrity of the 2020 US election and potentially prevent ensuing conflict.

o report voter intimidation and suppression, contact the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, your state or territorial election office, or fill out the Election Complaint Report online form.

In this election, with partisan emotions running high, election scholars are concerned that unaccredited, self-styled poll watchers could disrupt voting. They say that some of President Trump’s comments are adding to the tensions.

Some 80 prosecutors and detectives will be detailed to the task force on Election Day.

TV news networks have honed a playbook for election-night coverage over the years. Anchors analyze what each side needs to do to win. Experts zoom in on touch-screen maps to show how votes are coming in. Everyone is cautious for a few hours until a winner is declared.

NBC News and CNN said they would fact-check statements about the voting results or allegations of election fraud.

A “red mirage,” a potentially misleading lead for President Trump, could occur in states that count in-person Election Day votes first, while a “blue mirage” would be a potentially misleading lead for Democratic candidate Joe Biden in states that started counting mail-in ballots before Election Day.

From an outdoor stage at an Omaha airport hangar, he looked across thousands of people packed shoulder to shoulder, wearing red MAGA hats and waving signs. They had waited hours in bitter fall weather but lit up with the arrival of Air Force One, chanting “four more years.”

He did 16 in 10 states from last Saturday through Friday, including Tuesday night in Nebraska, at times defying state and local coronavirus guidelines on big gatherings. His supporters are delighting in provocative rhetoric, catchphrases like “drain the swamp” and an earsplitting soundtrack handpicked by the president.

He never stopped after his 2016 victory and has held hundreds in gyms, fairgrounds, airports, arenas and stadiums around the country