A 15-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of murder after a boy of the same age was stabbed outside a north-west London school as his fellow students looked on.

Even the heavens wept. As Donald Trump stepped forward to become America’s 45th president the cold shower that broke over Washington offered no end of metaphors. His address, however, was literal to a fault. There was no higher calling, no sense of a greater purpose, no florid imagery or impassioned idealism. This was as crude and unapologetic an appeal to nationalism as one might expect from a man incapable of rising to an occasion without first refracting it through his ego.

In his 2014 grand jury testimony over the shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson described Brown less like a human being than a possessed animal. “He looked up at me and had the most intense aggressive face. The only way I can describe it, it looks like a demon, that’s how angry he looked.”

To celebrate its 225th anniversary, the US Mint and Treasury last week unveiled plans to issue a 24-carat commemorative coin depicting Lady Liberty as an African-American woman. With full lips and braided hair tied back in a bun, her gold-embossed profile is framed by the words “LIBERTY” above and “In God We Trust” below. “As we as a nation continue to evolve,” said Elisa Basnight, the Mint’s chief of staff, “so does Liberty’s representation.”

Shortly before the end of the year, the president-elect was asked for his response to a fellow Republican’s insistence that sanctions should be applied against Russia because of its alleged participation in hacking during the election. He said: