New Year’s revelries muted by virus as curtain draws on 2020

This New Year’s Eve is being celebrated like no other in most of the world, with many bidding farewell to a year they’d prefer to forget.

From the South Pacific to New York City, pandemic restrictions on open air gatherings saw people turning to made-for-TV fireworks displays or packing it in early since they could not toast the end of 2020 in the presence of friends or carousing strangers.

As midnight rolled from Asia to the Middle East, Europe, Africa and the Americas, the New Year’s experience mirrored national responses to the virus itself. Some countries and cities cancelled or scaled back their festivities, while others without active outbreaks carried on like any other year.

Australia was among the first to ring in 2021. In past years, 1 million people crowded Sydney’s harbour to watch fireworks. This time, most watched on television as authorities urged residents to stay home to see the seven minutes of pyrotechnics that lit up the Sydney Harbor Bridge and its surroundings.

In New York’s Times Square, the ball was set to drop like always, but police fenced off the site synonymous with New Year’s Eve to prevent crowds of any size from gathering.

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Britain ends long Brexit journey with economic break from EU

LONDON (AP) — Britain’s long and sometimes acrimonious divorce from the European Union ended Thursday with an economic split that leaves the EU smaller and the U.K. freer but more isolated in a turbulent world.

Britain left the European bloc’s vast single market for people, goods and services at 11 p.m. London time, midnight in Brussels, completing the biggest single economic change the country has experienced since World War II. A different U.K.-EU trade deal will bring new restrictions and red tape, but for British Brexit supporters, it means reclaiming national independence from the EU and its web of rules.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, whose support for Brexit helped push the country out of the EU, called it “an amazing moment for this country.”

“We have our freedom in our hands, and it is up to us to make the most of it,” he said in a New Year’s video message.

The break comes 11 months after a political Brexit that left the two sides in the limbo of a “transition period” — like a separated couple still living together, wrangling and wondering whether they can remain friends. Now the U.K. has finally moved out.

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Bomb-sniffing dogs? Check. Times Square crowd? Not this year

NEW YORK (AP) — Gone were the revelry and shoulder-to-shoulder crowds that typify Times Square on New Year’s Eve, replaced by empty streets and an eerie quiet as the final hours of 2020 ticked away.

This was New Year’s Eve in the age of COVID-19.

Crowd control gave way to crowd prevention, as police closed the Crossroads of the World to vehicles and onlookers hoping to catch a glimpse of the glittering, crystal ball that will still descend down a flagpole to mark the stroke of midnight. Would-be partygoers were urged to watch the ball drop on television.

Preparing for the worst, the New York Police Department deployed its bomb-sniffing dogs and sand-filled sanitation trucks intended to guard against explosions. But the department’s playbook included an unusual mandate this year: preventing crowds of any size from gathering in Times Square.

“It makes me a little bit sad,” said Cole Zieser, who recently moved to New York City. “It’s just not going to be what we wanted, what everyone dreams about in New York.”

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Trump returns to White House early, offers year-end message

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump delivered a year-end video message Thursday after returning early from vacation, highlighting his administration’s work to rapidly develop a vaccine against COVID-19 and rebuild the economy.

As the end of his presidency neared, Trump cut short his stay at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida and got back to the White House a day ahead of schedule.

Upon his return, Trump released a video message over Twitter to underscore his administration’s work on the vaccine, economic stimulus checks and America’s “grit, strength and tenacity” in the face of challenges.

He called the vaccine, which is rolling out nationwide, a “truly unprecedented medical miracle” and said it would be available to every American early this coming year. “We have to be remembered for what’s been done,” Trump said in the nearly five-minute message.

The White House didn’t give a reason for Trump’s early return, and the schedule change means Trump will miss the glitzy New Year’s Eve party held annually at his Palm Beach club.

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Chief: Police didn’t show care for Andre Hill after shooting

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — In the minutes that ticked by after a police officer shot Andre Hill inside his friend’s garage, officers scoured the driveway for shell casings, strung crime scene tape around the house and blocked off the street.

At one point, two Columbus officers rolled Hill over and put handcuffs on him before leaving him alone again. None of them, according to body camera footage released Thursday, offered any first aid even though Hill, a 47-year-old Black man, was barely moving, groaning and bleeding while laying on the garage floor.

Roughly 10 minutes passed before a police supervisor showed up and asked, “Anybody doing anything for him?” It wasn’t until then that an officer began pumping the chest of Hill, who later was pronounced dead at a hospital on Dec. 22.

While Officer Adam Coy, who is white, was fired this week over accusations of incompetence and gross neglect of duty in the fatal shooting, the officers who failed to treat Hill also are under investigation for failing to follow department policy.

Police Chief Thomas Quinlan said he was horrified by the lack of compassion shown in the bodycam videos.

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Race to vaccinate millions in US off to slow, messy start

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Terry Beth Hadler was so eager to get a lifesaving COVID-19 vaccination that the 69-year-old piano teacher stood in line overnight in a parking lot with hundreds of other senior citizens.

She wouldn’t do it again.

Hadler said she waited 14 hours and that a brawl nearly erupted before dawn on Tuesday when people cut in line outside the library in Bonita Springs, Florida, where officials were offering shots on a first-come, first-served basis to those 65 or older.

“I’m afraid that the event was a super-spreader,” she said. “I was petrified.”

The race to vaccinate millions of Americans is off to a slower, messier start than public health officials and leaders of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed had expected.

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Shutdown, impeachment, virus: Chaotic Congress winds down

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress is ending a chaotic session, a two-year political firestorm that started with the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history, was riven by impeachment and a pandemic, and now closes with a rare rebuff by Republicans of President Donald Trump.

In the few days remaining, GOP senators are ignoring Trump’s demand to increase COVID-19 aid checks to $2,000 and are poised to override his veto of a major defence bill, asserting traditional Republican spending and security priorities in defiance of a president who has marched the party in a different direction.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a top Trump ally, tried to bridge the divide Thursday, saying Congress could try again to approve Trump’s push for bigger COVID aid checks in the new session, which opens Sunday.

“I am with President Trump on this,” Graham said on Fox News.

“Our economy is really hurting here,” he said. “There’s no way to get a vote by Jan. 3. The new Congress begins noon Jan. 3. So the new Congress, you could get a vote.’’

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Wisconsin hospital worker arrested for spoiled vaccine doses

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Authorities arrested a suburban Milwaukee pharmacist Thursday suspected of deliberately ruining hundreds of doses of coronavirus vaccine by removing them from refrigeration for two nights.

The arrest marks another setback in what has been a slower, messier start to vaccinate Americans than public health officials had expected. Leaders in Wisconsin and other states have been begging the Trump administration for more doses as health care workers and senior citizens line up for the lifesaving vaccine.

Police in Grafton, about 20 miles (32 kilometres) north of Milwaukee, said the Advocate Aurora Health pharmacist was arrested on suspicion of reckless endangerment, adulterating a prescription drug and criminal damage to property, all felonies. The pharmacist has been fired and police said in a news release that he was in jail. Police did not identify the pharmacist, saying he has not yet been formally charged.

His motive remains unclear. Police said that detectives believe he knew the spoiled doses would be useless and people who received them would mistakenly think they’d been vaccinated when they hadn’t.

Advocate Aurora Health Care Chief Medical Group Officer Jeff Bahr told reporters during a teleconference Thursday afternoon that the pharmacist deliberately removed 57 vials that held hundreds of doses of the Moderna vaccine from refrigeration at a Grafton medical centre overnight on Dec. 24 into Dec. 25, returned them, then left them out again on the night of Dec. 25 into Saturday. The vials contained enough doses to inoculate 570 people.

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California passes 25,000 deaths, finds 3 more variant cases

LOS ANGELES (AP) — California surpassed 25,000 coronavirus deaths since the start of the pandemic and officials disclosed Thursday that three more cases involving a mutant variant of the virus have been confirmed in San Diego County.

The grim developments came as an ongoing surge swamps hospitals and pushes nurses and doctors to the breaking point as they brace for another likely increase after the holidays.

“We’re exhausted and it’s the calm before the storm,” said Jahmaal Willis, a nurse and emergency room leader at Providence St. Mary Medical Center in Apple Valley. “It’s like we’re fighting a war, a never-ending war, and we’re running out of ammo. We have to get it together before the next fight.”

Public health officials continued to plead with residents just hours before the start of 2021 not to gather for New Year’s Eve celebrations.

In Los Angeles County, where an average of six people die every hour from COVID-19, the Department of Public Health tweeted out snippets every 10 minutes on lives that have been lost.

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Last of singing McGuire Sisters dies in Vegas; Phyllis, 89

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Phyllis McGuire, the last surviving member of the three singing McGuire Sisters who topped the charts with several hits in the 1950s, has died. She was 89.

The lead singer and younger sister of Dorothy and Christine McGuire died on Tuesday in Las Vegas, the Palm Eastern Mortuary and Cemetery confirmed on Thursday. A cause of death was not provided.

Known for their sweet harmonies and identical outfits and hairdos, the McGuire Sisters earned six gold records for hits including 1954’s “Sincerely” and 1957’s “Sugartime.”

The group performed for five presidents and Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain. They were inducted into the National Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2001.

The Las Vegas Sun reported Phyllis McGuire died at her mansion she called “the Beverly Hills of Las Vegas” in the Rancho Circle estates near downtown Las Vegas. The 26,000-square-foot (2,415-square-meter) home includes a 45-foot (14-meter) version of the Eiffel Tower.