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UPDATED:Chris Liddell has confirmed he has pulled out of the race to be the next Secretary-General of the OECD.”It was an honour to take part in the selection process, and I wish the remaining candidates, and the OECD itself,…

His presidency over, Donald Trump has said farewell to Washington but also hinted about a comeback despite a legacy of chaos, tumult and bitter divisions in the country he led for four years.

“So just a goodbye. We love you," Trump told supporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland where he walked across a red carpet and boarded Air Force One to head to Florida. "We will be back in some form.”

Trump departed office as the only president ever impeached twice, and with millions more out of work than when he was sworn in and 400,000 dead from the coronavirus. Under his watch, Republicans lost the presidency and both chambers of Congress. He will be forever remembered for inciting an insurrection, two weeks before Democrat Joe Biden moved into the White House, at the Capitol that left five dead, including a Capitol Police officer, and horrified the nation. It was on Trump's Inauguration Day, January 20, 2017, that he had painted a dire picture of “American carnage."

READ MORE: Trump says 'we'll be back' as he leaves White House

READ MORE: Trump's final pardon rampage on last day as president

The first president in modern history to boycott his successor’s inauguration, Trump is still stewing about his loss and maintains that the election won by Biden was stolen from him. Republican officials in several critical states, members of his own administration and a wide swath of judges, including those appointed by Trump, have rejected those arguments.

Trump refused to participate in any of the symbolic passing-of-the-torch traditions surrounding the peaceful transition of power, including inviting Joe and Jill Biden to the White House for a get-to-know-you visit.

He did follow at least one tradition: The White House said Trump left behind a note for Biden. A Trump spokesman, Judd Deere, declined to say what Trump wrote or characterise the sentiment in the note, citing privacy for communication between presidents.

Members of Trump’s family gathered for the send-off on the military base along with the president’s loyalists, who chanted “We love you!” “Thank you, Trump” and “U.S.A.” Four Army cannons fired a 21-gun salute.

Speaking without notes, Trump said his presidency was an “incredible four years.” He told the crowd that he and first lady Melania Trump loved them and praised his family for its hard work, saying they could have chosen to have an easier life.

“It’s been something very special. We’ve accomplished a lot,” Trump said, citing the installation of conservative judges, creation of the space force, development of coronavirus vaccines and management of a robust pre-pandemic economy. “I hope they don’t raise your taxes, but if they do, I told you so,” he said of the Biden administration.

He acknowledged his was not a “regular administration” and told his backers that he would be returning in some form. He said the Trump campaign had worked so hard: “We’ve left it all on the field," he said.

Without mentioning Biden's name, Trump wished the new administration great luck and success, which he said would be made easier because he had laid “a foundation.”

“I will always fight for you," he told the crowd. “I will be watching. I will be listening.”

Before arriving at the airport, Trump told reporters on the South Lawn of the White House that being president had been the honour of his lifetime.

“We love the American people, and again, it has been something very special," he said over the sound of the Marine One helicopter. "And I just want to say goodbye, but hopefully it’s not a long-term goodbye. We’ll see each other again.”

Trump and first lady Melania Trump landed in Florida more than an hour before Biden was sworn in as the 46th US President. Air Force One flew low along the Florida coast as Biden's inauguration ceremony flashed across televisions on board. A loud cheer went up from the crowd awaiting his arrival when the plane made a low approach to Palm Beach International Airport as the “Star-Spangled Banner” played over loudspeakers.

Several hundred supporters lined his route to Trump's Mar-a-Lago club. It had a party atmosphere. Trump and American flags waved, with many supporters wearing red, white and blue clothing.

Shari Ackerly parked her three-wheeled motorcycle along the road, painted with red, white and blue stripes and “Trump – Make America Great.” A Trump-Pence campaign sign laid against the headrest, the vice president’s name crossed out.

Ackerly said she wanted to show her support for Trump, saying she supported him since he gave Sen. Ted Cruz the nickname “Lyin’ Ted” in the 2016 Republican debates. “He told it like it is,” she said.

The crowd of supporters grew as Trump got closer to his club. His vehicle slowed to a crawl and he saw signs proclaiming: “THANK YOU” and “TRUMP WON!”

As supporters chanted “We love you!” Trump mouthed “I love back” and raised his fist.

In Florida, he will face an uncertain future.

Aides had urged Trump to spend his final days in office trying to salvage his legacy by highlighting his administration’s achievements — tax cuts, scaled-back federal regulations, normalising relations in the Middle East. But Trump largely refused, taking a single trip to the Texas border and releasing a video in which he pledged to his supporters that “the movement we started is only just beginning.”

In his final hours, Trump issued pardons for more than 140 people, including his former strategist, rap performers, ex-members of Congress and other allies of him and his family. Then, just as Biden made his entrance at the Capitol but before he took the oath of office, Trump announced that he was pardoning Al Pirro, the ex-husband of Fox News Channel host and Trump ally Jeanine Pirro. Al Pirro was convicted of conspiracy and tax evasion charges and sentenced to more than two years in prison in 2000.

Trump will be in Florida with a small group of former White House aides as he charts a political future that looks very different now from just two weeks ago.

Before the Capitol riot, Trump had been expected to remain his party’s de facto leader, wielding enormous power as he served as a kingmaker and mulled a 2024 presidential run. But now he appears more powerless than ever — shunned by so many in his party, impeached twice, denied the Twitter bullhorn he had intended to use as his weapon and even facing the prospect that, if he is convicted in his Senate trial, he could be barred from seeking a second term.

For now, Trump remains angry and embarrassed, consumed with rage and grievance. He spent the week after the election sinking deeper and deeper into a world of conspiracy, and those who have spoken with him say he continues to believe he won in November. He has lashed out at Republicans for perceived disloyalty and has threatened, both publicly and privately, to spend the coming years backing primary challenges against those he feel betrayed him.

Some expect him to eventually turn completely on the Republican Party, perhaps by flirting with a run as a third-party candidate as an act of revenge.

For all the chaos and drama and bending the world to his will, Trump ended his term as he began it: largely alone. The Republican Party he co-opted finally appeared to have had enough after Trump’s supporters violently stormed the Capitol, hunting for lawmakers who refused to go along with Trump’s unconstitutional efforts to overturn the results of a democratic election.

White House cleaning crews worked overnight Wednesday and were still going as the sun rose to get the building cleaned and ready for its new occupants. Most walls were stripped down to the hooks that once held photographs, and offices were devoid of the clutter and trinkets that gave them life.

While Trump has left the White House, he retains his grip on the Republican base, with the support of millions of loyal voters, along with allies still helming the Republican National Committee and many state party organisations.

The city he leaves will not miss him. Trump rarely left the confines of the White House, except to visit his own hotel. He and his wife never once ate dinner at any other local restaurant and never ventured out to shop in its stores or see the sites. When he did leave, it was almost always to one of his properties: his golf course in Virginia, his golf course in New Jersey, his private club and nearby golf course in Palm Beach, Florida.

The city overwhelmingly supported Biden, with 93 percent of the vote. Trump received just 5.4 percent of the vote — or fewer than 18,600 ballots — not enough to fill the Washington Capitals hockey arena.

Vice President Kamala Harris broke the barrier Wednesday that has kept men at the top ranks of American power for more than two centuries when she took the oath to hold the nation's second-highest office.

Harris was sworn in as the nation's first female vice president — and the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to hold the role — in front of the US Capitol by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

The moment was steeped in history and significance in more ways than one. She was escorted to the podium by Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman, the officer who single-handedly took on a mob of Trump supporters as they tried to breach the Senate floor during the Capitol insurrection that sought to overturn the election results. Harris was wearing clothes from two young, emerging Black designers — a deep purple dress and coat.

LIVE COVERAGE: Inauguration Day 2021

After taking the oath of office, a beaming Harris hugged her husband, Douglas Emhoff, and gave President-elect Joe Biden a first bump.

Her rise is historic in any context, another moment when a stubborn boundary will fall away, expanding the idea of what's possible in American politics. But it's particularly meaningful because Harris will be taking office at a moment of deep consequence, with Americans grappling over the role of institutional racism and confronting a pandemic that has disproportionately devastated Black and brown communities.

Those close to Harris say she'll bring an important — and often missing — perspective in the debates on how to overcome the many hurdles facing the incoming administration.

"In many folks' lifetimes, we experienced a segregated United States," said Lateefah Simon, a civil rights advocate and longtime Harris friend and mentee. "You will now have a Black woman who will walk into the White House not as a guest but as a second in command of the free world."

Harris — the child of immigrants, a stepmother of two and the wife of a Jewish man — "carries an intersectional story of so many Americans who are never seen and heard."

Harris, 56, moves into the vice presidency just four years after she first went to Washington as a senator from California, where she'd previously served as attorney general and as San Francisco's district attorney. She had expected to work with a White House run by Hillary Clinton, but President Donald Trump's victory quickly scrambled the nation's capital and set the stage for the rise of a new class of Democratic stars.

After Harris' own presidential bid fizzled, her rise continued when Joe Biden chose her as his running mate last August. Harris had been a close friend of Beau Biden, the elder son of Joe Biden and a former Delaware attorney general who died in 2015 of cancer.

The inauguration activities included nods to her history-making role and her personal story.

Harris used two Bibles to take the oath, one that belonged to Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the late civil rights icon whom Harris often cites as inspiration, and Regina Shelton, who helped raise Harris during her childhood in the San Francisco Bay Area. The drumline from Harris' alma mater, Howard University, joined the presidential escort.

To mark the occasion, the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, the nation's oldest sorority for Black women that Harris joined at Howard University declared Wednesday as Soror Kamala D. Harris Day.

"This event will certainly be a momentous occasion that will go down in the annals of our archives as one of the greatest days the founders' of Alpha Kappa Alpha could have envisioned," said Dr. Glenda Glover, the sorority's international president and chief executive office.

She'll address the nation later in front of the Lincoln Memorial, a symbolic choice as the nation endures one of its most divided stretches since the Civil War.

Harris has often reflected on her rise through politics by recalling the lessons of her mother, who taught her to take on a larger cause and push through adversity.

"I was raised to not hear 'no.' Let me be clear about it. So it wasn't like, "Oh, the possibilities are immense. Whatever you want to do, you can do,'" she recalled during a "CBS Sunday Morning" interview that aired Sunday. "No, I was raised to understand many people will tell you, 'It is impossible,' but don't listen.'"

Harris' swearing-in holds more symbolic weight than that of any vice president in modern times.

She will expand the definition of who gets to hold power in American politics, said Martha S. Jones, a professor of history at Johns Hopkins University and the author of "Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All."

People who want to understand Harris and connect with her will have to learn about what it means to graduate from a historically Black college and university rather than an Ivy League school. They will have to understand Harris' traditions, like the Hindu celebration of Diwali, Jones said.

"Folks are going to have to adapt to her rather than her adapting to them," Jones said.

Her election to the vice presidency should be just the beginning of putting Black women in leadership positions, Jones said, particularly after the role Black women played in organising and turning out voters in the November election.

"We will all learn what happens to the kind of capacities and insights of Black women in politics when those capacities and insights are permitted to lead," Jones said.

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At the moment Joe Biden is sworn in as the next president of the United States, another transition of power will take place on social media.

On Wednesday, Biden and his team will gain access to a long list of official government accounts across the major social media platforms, including the @POTUS account on Twitter. With the tap of a button, the Biden administration will inherit a digital megaphone with the potential to make news and shape the public image of the US government.

The transfer of these official accounts, which include not just those representing Biden and the White House but nearly every arm of government, has emerged as an important aspect of the broader transition of power, especially after Twitter became the favoured online platform of President Donald Trump.

READ MORE: 'We will not be SILENCED!' Trump defiant after permanent Twitter ban

"It certainly has a big symbolic value," said David Lazer, a political science and computer sciences professor at Northeastern University. "The centrality of Twitter to Trump's brand and identity has made the moment a lot more significant."

The president used his personal Twitter account, @realdonaldtrump, to make major policy announcements, fire staffers, attack critics and spread misinformation. His account was permanently suspended earlier this month following the deadly insurrection at the Capitol.

In addition to the @POTUS account, which was created during the Obama administration, Twitter will transfer @WhiteHouse, @VP, @FLOTUS, and @PressSec to the new administration. Twitter also created a new account, @SecondGentleman, for Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris' husband Doug Emhoff.

It marks only the second such transition between US presidential administrations for Twitter, which launched in 2006. But unlike the transition four years ago, the Biden administration will not inherit the tens of millions of followers on each account. Instead, people on Twitter who previously followed official White House Twitter accounts or who currently follow "relevant" Biden or Harris Twitter accounts, will receive in-app alerts and other notifications about the archival process and the option to follow the new accounts, the company said in a blog post.

The decision prompted criticism from the Biden camp, which said it "unnecessarily politicises what otherwise should be a routine transfer of communication from one administration to the next." As of Tuesday night, the @POTUS account had about 33 million followers, while the @FLOTUS and @VP accounts had 16 million and 10 million, respectively.

Twitter's approach stands in contrast to other social networks such as Snapchat and YouTube, which said the Biden administration would keep the current followers on the respective White House accounts.

Facebook and its subsidiary Instagram will transfer accounts on both platforms, such as the POTUS and FLOTUS Facebook pages and the White House Instagram account, to Biden's team. These platforms will also duplicate the followers on Joe Biden's Facebook page and Instagram account to the official POTUS page and account.

While the Biden team may not inherit all of the Twitter followers, it won't be starting totally from scratch.

Biden's @Transition46 account on Twitter will become @WhiteHouse, the @PresElectBiden account will become @POTUS, @SenKamalaHarris will become @VP, @FLOTUSBiden will become @FLOTUS, and @PressSecPsaki will become @PressSec.

A loud explosion partially destroyed a small building flanked by a school and a nursing home in the centre of Spain's capital of Madrid on Wednesday. It was not clear what caused the blast.

Images and footage shared on social media showed a tower of smoke coming out from the six-story building and rubble scattered in Toledo Street, near the city centre.

Emergency crews could be seen aiding several people on the ground in video aired by Spanish public broadcaster. There were no immediate reports of deaths.

The school nearby was empty, according to TVE, because classes had not resumed yet following a record snowfall in the Spanish capital on January 9.

In a tweet, the Madrid regional emergency service said that rescue teams, firefighters and police were working in a central area of the Spanish capital following the explosion.

Leire Reparaz, an area resident, told The Associated Press that she heard a loud explosion some minutes before 3pm local when she was heading to her home near the Puerta de Toledo, a local landmark.

"We didn't know where the sound came from. We all thought it was from the school. We went up the stairs to the top of our building and we could see the structure of the building and lots of grey smoke," the 24-year-old Madrid resident said.

More to come…

People in a tiny Indian village surrounded by rice paddies flocked to a Hindu temple, burst crackers and uttered prayers on Wednesday hours before its descendant, Kamala Harris, takes her oath of office to become the US vice president.

Groups of women in bright saris and men wearing white dhotis thronged the temple with sweets and flowers, offering special prayers for Harris' success.

READ MORE: On Day One, Biden to undo Trump policies on climate and coronavirus

"We are feeling very proud that an Indian is being elected as the vice president of America," Anukampa Madhavasimhan, a local teacher, said.

The ceremony in Thulasendrapuram, where Harris' maternal grandfather was born about 350 kilometres from the southern coastal city of Chennai, saw the idol of Hindu deity Ayyanar, a form of Lord Shiva, washed with milk and decked with flowers by the priest.

Shortly after, the village reverberated with a boom of firecrackers as people held up posters of Harris and clapped their hands.

Harris is set to make history as the first woman, first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to hold the vice presidency.

What makes her achievement special in this village is her Indian heritage.

Harris' grandfather was born in Thulasendrapuram more than 100 years ago.

Many decades later, he moved to Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu state.

Harris' late mother was also born in India, before moving to the US to study at the University of California.

She married a Jamaican man, and they named their daughter Kamala, a Sanskrit word for "lotus flower."

In several speeches, Harris has often spoken about her roots and how she was guided by the values of her Indian-born grandfather and mother.

So when Joe Biden and Harris triumphed in the US election last November, Thulasendrapuram became the centre of attention in India.

Indian politicians flocked to the village and young children carrying placards with photos of Harris ran along the dusty roads.

Then and now, villagers set off firecrackers and distributed sweets and flowers as a religious offering.

Posters and banners of Harris from November still adorn walls in the village and many hope she ascends to the presidency in 2024.

Biden has skirted questions about whether he will seek re-election or retire.

"For the next four years, if she supports India, she will be the president," G Manikandan said, who has followed Harris politically and whose shop proudly displays a wall calendar with pictures of Biden and Harris.

On Tuesday, an organisation that promotes vegetarianism sent food packets for the village children as gifts to celebrate Harris' success.

In the capital New Delhi, there has been both excitement — and some concern — over Harris' ascend to the vice presidency.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had invested in President Donald Trump, who visited India in February last year.

Mr Modi's many Hindu nationalist supporters also were upset with Harris when she expressed concern about Kashmir, the disputed Muslim-majority region whose statehood India's government revoked last year.