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Forbes– Preparing for the worst after this month’s deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol, states across the country which had been warned of potential violence outside their capitol buildings on Inauguration Day saw little—if any—protest activity on Wednesday.

In the end, the 25,000 troops moved into Washington DC to confront possible trouble, had little to do except direct traffic and check press passes.

KEY FACTS

At least 10 states activated National Guard troops to protect their Capitol buildings after the FBI warned of plans for “armed protests” at all 50 state capitols and in Washington, D.C.

However, large groups of protesters and militias were nowhere to be seen in D.C., where the downtown area was mostly locked down and swarmed with thousands of National Guardsmen, as President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were sworn in.

Meanwhile, the states that had activated the National Guard—including California, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Washington and Kentucky—witnessed just handfuls of pro-Trump protesters.

Local reporters at Capitol buildings in at least five other states similarly struggled to find more than a couple of protesters.

“I’m outside the Texas Capitol building in downtown Austin,” wrote Austin American-Statesman reporter Kelsey Bradshaw on Twitter, “I’m counting more journalists than Trump or Biden supporters out here.”

CRUCIAL QUOTE

“We have one lone demonstrator at the Montana State Capitol so far,” Thom Bridge, the multimedia editor for the Helena Independent Record, wrote on Twitter around midday. “He’s the only one who has showed up all day,” Bridge later told Forbes.

KEY BACKGROUND

Statehouses across the country saw a similar lack of activity over the weekend, though there appeared to be a greater show of armed protesters than there has been so far on Inauguration Day. Online, supporters of President Trump who subscribe to the bizarre QAnon conspiracy theory appeared defeated and desperate as their belief that Trump would finally bring down the “deep state” and its cannibalistic child sex trafficking ring never came to fruition.

 

 

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Off-spinner Mehidy Hasan claimed a career best four wickets for 25 as Bangladesh bowled out the West Indies for 148 in their second one-day international on Friday.

The hosts, who won Wednesday’s opening match by six wickets, took early wickets before Rovman Powell hit 41 off 65 balls to boost the West Indies innings.

Debutant opener Kjorn Ottley (24) and Nkrumah Bonner (20) were other notable scorers for West Indies.

After West Indies skipper Jason Mohammed chose to bat, left-arm pacer Mustafizur Rahman claimed the first breakthrough by removing Sunil Ambris for six hitting a catch to Mehidy.

West Indies kept losing more wickets after Bangladesh introduced spin.

Mehidy removed Ottley and Joshua Da Silva (5) in the same over while Shakib Al Hasan bowled Andre McCarthy for only three.

Kyle Mayers, the highest scorer in the previous match, was run out for zero before Shakib trapped skipper Mohammed leg-before for 11 to leave the West Indies struggling at 67-6.

Powell and Alzarri Joseph put on 32 for the ninth wicket to help West Indies past 100 runs.

Mustafizur, who gave away just two runs in his opening four overs, returned to end West Indies’ resistance by removing Joseph for 17.

Mehidy stumped Powell to wrap-up the innings in 43.4 overs.

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New Delhi, India (CNN) A fire that broke out at a facility of the world’s biggest vaccine maker that killed five people would not affect vaccine production, the head of the company said Thursday.

The blaze at the Serum Institute of India (SII) in the western city of Pune was brought under control on Thursday though the cause is still under investigation, according to Murlidhar Mohol, the city’s mayor.

Four people were rescued from the six-floor building but five others died, Mohol said. They are believed to have been construction workers as the building was still under construction at the time of the fire.

Videos and images showed black smoke billowing out of the building at the company’s complex. Fifteen units of the municipal corporation and fire department worked to douse the fire, Mohol said.

Preliminary investigations suggest that “during the building’s construction, some welding work could have led to the fire,” he added.

Pune’s fire brigade chief Prashant Ranpise said Friday that the fire started on the second floor. As firefighters worked to put out the flames, the blaze reigned in another spot. The second fire was extinguished at 4:15 p.m. local time by 50 firefighters and personnel. Ranpise said they are still investigating the cause of the fire.

“We have learnt that there has unfortunately been some loss of life at the incident. We are deeply saddened and offer our deepest condolences to the family members of the departed,” SII CEO Adar Poonawalla tweeted Thursday.

SII, the world’s biggest vaccine maker, is in partnership with Oxford University and AstraZeneca to produce the Covishield vaccine. In December, the company said it was producing 50 to 60 million doses of Covishield per month, with production to be scaled up to 100 million doses in January or February.

A family business started by Poonawalla’s father 50 years ago to bring cheaper vaccines to the masses, the Serum Institute of India is aiming to produce hundreds of millions of coronavirus vaccines for not only India, but also other developing countries.

In a tweet, Poonawalla said that despite a “few floors being destroyed,” production of the Covishield vaccine would not be affected.

“I would like to reassure all governments and the public that there would be no loss of COVISHIELD production due to multiple production buildings that I had kept in reserve to deal with such contingencies,” he said.

Cyrus S. Poonawalla, SII’s chairman and managing director, said in a statement that the fire broke out at a facility that was under constriction in the Special Economic Zone at Manjri. He said it was an “extremely sorrowful day” and the company would offer INR 2.5 million ($34,000) to each of the victims’ families.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted his condolences Thursday: “Anguished by the loss of lives due to an unfortunate fire … In this sad hour, my thoughts are with the families of those who lost their lives. I pray that those injured recover at the earliest.”

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US Senator Mitch McConnell (L) and new Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer

The leaders in the Senate are switching places amid questions over whether their tepid relationship will change as Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) becomes majority leader and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) becomes minority leader.

The two have as icy a relationship as there is in Washington, and few observers would predict a warming trend. Asked about the relationship, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Wednesday it has nowhere to go but up.

“It will go up,” he quipped.

Other senators are expressing hope that the Senate will become more functional under President Biden, who served 36 years in the upper chamber before becoming Barack Obama’s vice president.

“Everything is possible. You know, we have, we have administrations come and go, sometimes every four years, sometimes every eight years, and we can work with Democratic administrations and vice versa,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), a key centrist, said Wednesday.

McConnell regularly shut Schumer out of planning the Senate agenda in recent years. Most notably, he declined to negotiate a bipartisan organizing resolution for former President Trump’s first impeachment trial in the first months of 2020, a striking difference from the bipartisan resolution that passed unanimously before President Clinton’s 1999 impeachment trial.

For months last year, McConnell refused to meet with Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), when Democrats were pushing for a multitrillion-dollar COVID-19 relief bill.

Broadly speaking, both men are villains for one of the  political parties. Democrats are angry at McConnell for blocking Obama’s final nominee to the Supreme Court in 2016 for months, only to quickly confirm President Trump’s nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death in the fall.

McConnell and Schumer have served in the Senate together since 1999, when Schumer came to the upper chamber from the House.

A low point in their relationship came in 2008 when Schumer, who was then the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), used McConnell’s support for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which critics dubbed a Wall Street bailout, against him in his 2008 reelection race.

McConnell felt Schumer, who represents New York’s financial services industry, acted in bad faith by asking for Republican support to keep banks solvent and then allowing the DSCC to blast McConnell for his vote.

The first order of business for Schumer and McConnell is to negotiate an organizing resolution to set the ratio of seats on Senate committees and divide committee resources, something likely to be difficult given the relationship between the two men.

Schumer can’t add new Democratic members to committees without such an agreement, and on some panels Republicans would continue to have more members than Democrats.

For example, there are 12 Republicans and only nine Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee after Kamala Harris was sworn in as vice president on Wednesday. Those numbers were set by the organizing resolution of the last Congress.

Durbin, the incoming chairman of the Judiciary panel, said Wednesday it’s not clear if he could advance Merrick Garland, Biden’s nominee for attorney general, without a new resolution. Garland is also the man Obama nominated to the Supreme Court who was blocked by McConnell and the Senate GOP.

A Republican aide said nominees can be moved through committee right now by obtaining unanimous consent from a panel’s entire membership. But that higher bar could slow the processing of Biden’s picks significantly.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a potential candidate for the White House in 2024, announced Tuesday he would put a hold on Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s choice to head the Homeland Security Department.

McConnell this week raised the stakes of the organizing resolution by telling GOP colleagues that he would insist it include a deal to protect the legislative filibuster, which some Democrats want to eliminate to make it easier to pass Biden’s agenda.

“I believe we need to also address the threats to the legislative filibuster,” McConnell wrote in a note to GOP senators.

“Having an equally divided Senate means that we have to work together to get anything done and the spirit of true bipartisan compromise is possible only when each side realizes they must come to the table together,” he wrote.

That demand will likely delay a deal on the organizing resolution until next week, according to Senate aides.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), another key centrist, said Wednesday she supports McConnell’s effort to settle questions about keeping the legislative filibuster as part of the organizing resolution.

She noted that 61 senators, including Harris, signed a letter in April 2017 pledging support for preserving “the ability of members to engage in extended debate when bills are on the Senate floor.”

Schumer and McConnell also need to negotiate an agreement laying out the schedule and procedures for Trump’s second impeachment trial. Democrats hope to conduct the trial swiftly so that it doesn’t hold up Biden’s agenda and nominees. But limiting the amount of floor time sucked up by a trial will depend on GOP cooperation.

Republicans would need to agree unanimously to allow nominees to receive votes before the trial convenes each day at noon.

Schumer could try to pass a partisan impeachment resolution solely with 50 Democratic votes and Harris casting the tie-breaker — but he criticized McConnell harshly last year for passing an organizing resolution for Trump’s first trial without Democratic support.

He slammed McConnell’s resolution as “completely partisan” and complained “it was kept secret until the very eve of the trial” because it was “designed by President Trump for President Trump” and asked “the Senate to rush through as fast as possible

Schumer acknowledged Tuesday he will need substantial cooperation from McConnell and other GOP senators to get through a mountain of work in the next few weeks.

“Rarely — rarely — has so much piled up for the Senate as during this particular transition,” he said.

A new ingredient in the relationship is McConnell’s signals that he might vote to convict Trump in an impeachment trial. The GOP leader hasn’t ruled out a vote to convict, and if he did so it would carry heavy weight with his conference.

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BASSETERRE, St. Kitts — St. Kitts and Nevis’ Chief Medical Officer Dr. Hazel Laws has called on residents to be vigilant in eliminating any possible sources of water that can facilitate mosquito breeding.

“The call is made even more urgent at this time,” said Dr. Laws. “Several neighbouring islands have reported rising cases of dengue fever among the population. Some have recorded multiple fatalities from the tropical disease.

“We have a very robust vector control programme,” said Dr. Laws during the January 20 National Emergency Operations Centre COVID-19 Briefing. “We have done well in staving off a dengue outbreak last year. When a number of neighbouring islands had outbreaks, we were free of dengue, even at present. Our borders have been opened since October 31, 2020, and we have not had any dengue cases.”

Dr. Laws said vector control officers employed by the government will remain active in communities throughout the Federation. They continue to ensure that potential breeding areas are identified and eliminated.

“The responsibility is on each and every one of us,” Dr. Laws added. “It’s not the Ministry of Health alone. We all have a responsibility to walk around our houses on the inside, our verandas, porches, our space. Make sure there aren’t any containers with water breeding mosquitoes. You need to empty all of those containers. Make sure that they are clean and that action alone will prevent an outbreak here in the Federation.”

Mosquitoes lay their eggs directly into stagnant water or near bodies of water. Common items around the household and workplace that can facilitate mosquito breeding include plastic containers, vases, flowerpot plates, buckets, uncovered garbage bins, drums/barrels, and car tyres.

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CHARLESTOWN, Nevis — Hotels, restaurants and supermarkets are being urged by Hon. Mark Brantley, Premier of Nevis, to purchase food from local farmers and producers.

During his address at the Nevis Ministry of Agriculture’s annual planning symposium, Agenda 2021, Hon. Brantley recognized Hotelier Richard Lupinacci, proprietor of The Hermitage Inn in Nevis as a friend of local agriculture, commending his business for utilizing local products on their menu. The Premier called on other businesses to emulate this practice.

“We need a renaissance in terms of our thinking, and our approach to ensure that our people support our local farmers,” said Brantley. “This will ensure that farmers do not have the problem that they have complained about of producing and then having their food rot because they have no market.

“My government is very serious about talking to our hotels, restaurants, and supermarkets and saying to them that if product is available locally, that must get first preference.

“I think it’s a very simple thing that the big hotels must follow the example of The Hermitage Inn,” he said. “People coming to visit us and vacation with us would like to taste what we have available on the island – local product; because it is superior in quality.”

Brantley stressed the need for these businesses and the general public to buy local food to support local growers and producers and help keep the economy afloat.

“Our farming community and our farmers are looking to farming as a livelihood,” said Brantley. “They need to feed their families and send their children to school. The only way they can do that is if we as a people buy their produce, and it irks me, I confess, when I see substandard produce in supermarkets being sold ahead of our locally produced fruits and vegetables.”

Brantley said he hopes that in his lifetime the people of Nevis get to a point where they would substitute most of the food items being imported and start buying and eating local produce.

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