COVID-19 in Virginia: 5,200+ new cases reported Thursday, Jan. 14
COVID-19 in Virginia: 5,200+ new cases reported Thursday, Jan. 14
A fifth member of Congress has tested positive for COVID-19 following last week’s lockdown at the Capitol — a surge of cases that had been predicted as a result of the Jan. 6 occupation.
A federal judge in Washington on Friday night halted a plan to release and put on house arrest the Arkansas man photographed sitting at a desk in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office during last week's riot at the U.S. Capitol. Richard Barnett will instead be brought to Washington, D.C., immediately for proceedings in his case, Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ordered Friday night, staying a decision by another judge to confine Barnett to his home in Gravette, Arkansas, until his trial. Howell's ruling came hours after U.S. Magistrate Judge Erin Wiedemann in Arkansas set a $5,000 bond for Barnett and ordered that a GPS monitor track his location.
Jennifer Ryan faces charges of disorderly conduct and knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful entry.
FBI Director Christopher Wray, in his first public comments since the Jan. 6 violent siege of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of President Trump, said Thursday that law enforcement has arrested more than 100 people in connection with the assault and is aware of "an extensive amount of concerning online chatter" ahead of President-elect Joe Biden's Jan. 20 inauguration.Most of those arrested so far have been far-right militants, off-duty police, retired military personnel, GOP officials, QAnon adherents, and white supremacists. For example, the man photographed carrying a Confederate battle flag through the Capitol, Kevin Seefried, and his son, Hunter Seefried, surrendered to the FBI in Delaware on Thursday, the Justice Department said.Embed from Getty ImagesAuthorities also arrested "liberal activist" John Sullivan on Thursday, making him, Politico says, "the first person to be charged who appears to have been active in liberal causes." Sullivan, who filmed the siege, claims he was just following the rioters as a "journalist," but the FBI said his own video showed him to be a booster of the lawlessness and even an active participant.Trump supporters, including Rudy Giuliani, and conservative media outlets pointed to Sullivan's arrest to bolster their counterfactual claim that "antifa" or Black Lives Matter were actually behind the assault on the Capitol. But "even before his arrest, left wing activists had described concerns in that community, going back some time, that Sullivan was a provocateur working with others, including his brother James, who has ties to the Proud Boys and runs a pro-Trump organization," Marcy Wheeler notes at EmptyWheel.> pic.twitter.com/oRri9hyHGv> > — New York City Antifa (@NYCAntifa) January 7, 2021"Sullivan's presence in the Capitol, and his previous record of anti-Trump activism, has been the focus of frenzied attention in the right-wing media," Robert Mackey reports at The Intercept, while "left-wing organizers have been keen to stress that they ejected Sullivan from their ranks months ago." Since adopting the nom de guerre "Activist John" last summer, Mackey notes, Sullivan has been blacklisted by "left-wing organizers associated with Black Lives Matter and antifascism in Utah, California, and the Pacific Northwest" who say he's "either a right-wing infiltrator or a dangerously naive amateur."More stories from theweek.com Trump's vaccine delay is getting suspicious The worst-case scenario for America's immediate future 5 scathing cartoons about Trump's second impeachment
A rehearsal for Joe Biden's inauguration scheduled for Sunday has been postponed because of security concerns, according to a report in the US. Mr Biden is due to be sworn in as president on Wednesday, January 20, and the rehearsal has now been pushed back to Monday, Politico reported on Thursday. It reflects the seriousness with which Mr Biden's transition team are taking security threats after supporters of Donald Trump broke into the US Capitol last week in a riot that left five people dead. Security officials have locked down the Capitol grounds and the National Guard is set to post more than 20,000 troops in the area. The FBI on Thursday warned of "an extensive amount of concerning online chatter" about potentially violent threats to the inauguration and the agency has also said it expects armed protests in all 50 states. Earlier this week Mr Biden's team cancelled a train trip planned for Monday from Wilmington, Delaware to Washington due to security concerns.
Pakistani authorities sacked a local police chief and 11 other policemen for failing to protect a Hindu temple that was set on fire and demolished last month by a mob led by hundreds of supporters of a radical Islamist party, police said Friday. The 12 policemen were fired over “acts of cowardice" and “negligence" for not trying to stop the mob when it attacked the temple, with some having fled the scene. Another 48 policemen were given various punishments following a probe into the attack, the police statement said.
In his remaining days as Senate leader, Democrats pressure lawmakers to reach swift vote
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau urged nations around the world to maintain a unified front against Chinese detentions of foreign citizens, saying every country was vulnerable. Trudeau made his remarks as China offered more consular access to two Canadian men it arrested in December 2018 and charged with spying. Canada has repeatedly called on its partners to press Beijing for their release.
Vice President Mike Pence called Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on Thursday to congratulate her and offer assistance in the transition, the New York Times first reported.Why it matters: The belated conversation came six days before the inauguration after a contentious post-election stretch. President Trump has neither spoken with President-elect Joe Biden, nor explicitly conceded the 2020 election.Be smart: sign up FREE for the most influential newsletter in America. * The call is the first known occasion that Pence and Harris have communicated since their vice presidential debate last fall. * "It also represents the only one-on-one interaction between the dueling 2020 presidential tickets..." the Times writes.The big picture: The vice president and his wife Karen Pence plan to attend Biden's inauguration on Wednesday, according to multiple reports. * Trump has said he will not attend the inauguration and is expected to leave the White House the same morning, per the New York Times. * "The final flouting of norms came when he refused to appear at the swearing-in, a national rite of reconciliation, becoming the first outgoing president to snub an inauguration since the 1860s," the Times reports.Get smarter, faster with the news CEOs, entrepreneurs and top politicians read. Sign up for Axios Newsletters here.
A white military veteran shot and wounded a 15-year-old girl when he fired his gun into a car carrying four Black teens during a tense confrontation at a Trump rally near the Iowa Capitol last month.
When it came to the lighting in his home, Pardo drew inspiration from the insides of fruits, nuts, and seeds, as well as sea creatures and machine parts.Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
A Florida waitress who noticed bruises on an 11-year-old boy flashed him a handwritten note asking him if he needed help, and when he nodded yes, she called the police, authorities said. Orlando police credited Flaviane Carvalho, a waitress at Mrs. Potato Restaurant, with coming to the boy's aid on New Year's Eve when the child’s parents weren’t looking. Police took the boy to a hospital where doctors found bruises on his face, earlobes and arms.
Lauren Boebert is under fire for sharing details about the location of the House speaker during the Capitol riots
A January shipment of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to the Gulf state of Bahrain will not arrive on time, the ministry of health said on Saturday, but second doses of the jab already scheduled will not be affected. The small island state of Bahrain has the third highest rate of vaccinations per capita in the world so far, according to the Our World in Data website, which is run by an Oxford University research programme. "The delay ... will not affect citizens and residents receiving the second dose of the vaccine over the upcoming period, according to current scheduled dates and the availability of the needed quantity for them," the health ministry said in a statement carried by state news agency BNA.
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow criticized President Trump’s response to last week's U.S. Capitol siege and his treatment of Vice President Mike Pence in the aftermath of the 2020 election, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Friday. The big picture: Trump has lost support from a number of top aides and allies since a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol building on Jan. 6, resulting in five deaths. Kudlow is the latest to publicly speak out against the president.Get smarter, faster with the news CEOs, entrepreneurs and top politicians read. Sign up for Axios Newsletters here.What he’s saying: “I was hoping that he would come out quickly and make statements calling everybody back and stopping the violence," he said. * The White House National Economic Council director praised the video that Trump released the day of the riot, but said he wished Trump put out a statement sooner. * Kudlow said he considered resigning after the Capitol violence, but spoke with other senior White House officials and decided that “we needed to do the work of the country in the last 10 days or so.” * Kudlow was also “very disappointed” with Trump’s public criticism of Pence. The president turned on his VP after Pence said he would certify Biden’s win. “[V]irtually, except for a few extremists, the entire legal profession agreed with Pence,” Kudlow said. * “Once the electoral college declared Mr. Biden to be president-elect, we would have been better advised to acknowledge that and to pivot toward talking about our positive achievements and the policies that generated those policy achievements.”What to watch: Trump plans to leave the White House the morning of Inauguration Day, according to multiple reports. He will then face his second impeachment trial in the Senate.Be smart: sign up FREE for the most influential newsletter in America.
A 16-year-old boy has admitted fatally shooting his newborn daughter and leaving her body inside a fallen tree in the woods in southern Wisconsin, according to prosecutors. Logan Kruckenburg-Anderson, of Albany, is charged as an adult with first-degree intentional homicide and hiding a corpse. According to a criminal complaint, the teen took the infant shortly after she was born Jan. 5 to a wooded area in Albany, about 80 miles (129 kilometers) southwest of Milwaukee, placed her inside a fallen tree and shot her twice in the head.
Former South Carolina governor is tipped to be run for president at next election
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan received his COVID-19 vaccine in front of TV cameras on Thursday, a move which a spokesman for his AK Party said aimed to alleviate any public doubts about the effectiveness of the shot. Turkey began administering the shots developed by China's Sinovac to health workers on Thursday, rolling out a nationwide vaccination programme against a disease that has killed more than 23,000 people in the country. It has so far vaccinated more than 250,000 health workers.
When George H. Bush handed over to his Democratic successor, Bill Clinton, he wrote a heartfelt letter wishing President 42 luck and “great happiness”. George W. Bush offered Barack Obama friendly advice as he was leaving office to “ignore the critics” and that he was "pulling" for him. Since George Washington gave the keys to the White House over to John Adams in 1797, the transfer of power between presidents has largely been peaceful, if on occasion spiteful. This year all norms, however, have been broken. For starters, Donald Trump only conceded last week - at the urging of White House lawyers - after his supporters stormed the US Capitol. The formal process finally began this week, with White House staff pictured removing its current occupants’ belongings - everything from paintings to a taxidermy pheasant.
The man accused of throwing a fire extinguisher during the Washington, D.C. riots last week has been arrested. Robert Sanford, a retired Chester Fire Department firefighter, was arrested on Thursday and charged with assault on a police officer, among other offenses. Attorney Enrique Latoison argues Sanford went on a free bus to the rally for Trump at the Capitol, but he did not enter the government building.