AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EST

Quiet New Year gives breathing room after UK-EU Brexit split

LONDON (AP) — A steady trickle of trucks rolled off ferries and trains on either side of the English Channel on Friday, a quiet New Year’s Day after a seismic overnight shift in relations between the European Union and Britain.

The busy goods route between southeast England and northwest France is on the front line of changes now that the U.K. has fully left the economic embrace of the 27-nation bloc, the final stage of Brexit.

“For the majority of trucks they won’t even notice the difference,” said John Keefe, spokesman for Eurotunnel, the railway tunnel that carries vehicles under the Channel. “There was always the risk that if this happened at a busy time then we could run into some difficulties, but it’s happening overnight on a bank holiday and a long weekend.”

Britain left the European bloc’s vast single market for people, goods and services at 11 p.m. London time, midnight in Brussels, on Thursday, in the biggest single economic change the country has experienced since World War II. A new 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.”

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Israel’s virus surveillance tool tests its democratic norms

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — In the early days of the pandemic, a panicked Israel began using a mass surveillance tool on its civilians, tracking people’s cellphones in hopes of stopping the spread of the coronavirus.

The government touted the technology, normally used to catch wanted Palestinian militants, as a breakthrough against the virus. But months later, the tool’s effectiveness is being called into question and critics say its use has come at an immeasurable cost to the country’s democratic principles.

“The idea of a government watching its own citizens this closely should ring the alarm,” said Maya Fried, a spokeswoman for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which has repeatedly challenged the use of the tool in court. “This is against the foundations of democracy. You can’t just give up on democracy during a crisis.”

Little is known about the technology. According to the Yediot Ahronot daily, the Shin Bet internal security service has used the tool for two decades, sweeping up metadata from anyone who uses telecom services in Israel. Information collected includes the cellular device’s location, web browsing history and calls and texts received and made, but not their content. That has reportedly helped the agency track militants and halt attacks, although it’s unclear what happens to all of the data.

Israel first brought the Shin Bet into its virus outbreak battle in March. By tracking the movements of people infected with the coronavirus, it could determine who had come into contact with them and was at risk of infection, and order them into quarantine.

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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 dropped 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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EU avoided chaos, explored new paths in turbulent 2020 year

BRUSSELS (AP) — Between the spectre of Brexit, the coronavirus pandemic and a new leadership team facing a budget battle, the European Union looked set to remember 2020 as an “annus horribilis.”

Instead, a last-minute trade deal with the United Kingdom coupled with the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in the final days of the year produced a sense of success for the 27-nation bloc and brought glimmers of hope to the EU’s 450 million residents.

After months of chaotic negotiations, the EU also will head into 2021 with both a long-term budget and a coronavirus recovery fund worth 1.83 trillion euros ($2.3 trillion) that could help the EU’s member nations bounce back from Europe’s most brutal economic crisis since World War II.

“The European Union managed to do what was necessary,” Fabian Zuleeg, chief executive of the European Policy Centre, an independent think-tank , said. “In the end, the European Union is resilient because it delivers benefits to its member, that the members will not want to give up.”

Ursula von der Leyen, a veteran member of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Cabinet, pledged to put the fight against climate change at the top of her agenda when she took over as president of the EU’s powerful executive arm on Dec. 1, 2019. But the pandemic quickly relegated environmental concerns to the background.

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‘Our children die in our hands’: Floods ravage South Sudan

OLD FANGAK, South Sudan (AP) — On a scrap of land surrounded by flooding in South Sudan, families drink and bathe from the waters that swept away latrines and continue to rise.

Some 1 million people in the country have been displaced or isolated for months by the worst flooding in memory, with the intense rainy season a sign of climate change. The waters began rising in June, washing away crops, swamping roads and worsening hunger and disease in the young nation struggling to recover from civil war. Now famine is a threat.

On a recent visit by The Associated Press to the Old Fangak area in hard-hit Jonglei state, parents spoke of walking for hours in chest-deep water to find food and health care as malaria and diarrheal diseases spread.

Regina Nyakol Piny, a mother of nine, now lives in a primary school in the village of Wangchot after their home was swamped.

“We don’t have food here, we rely only on U.N. humanitarian agencies or by collecting firewood and selling it,” she said. “My children get sick because of the floodwaters, and there is no medical service in this place.”

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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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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.

The Associated Press