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In a video released one day after rioters stormed the US Capitol, President Donald Trump condemned their actions and acknowledged for the first time that the Biden administration will take over on January 20th, promising a “smooth, orderly, and seamless transition of power”. A US Capitol police officer has died from injuries sustained in the attack as top Democrats have called for the president to be removed for “inciting” the riot.
A radical cleric linked to the Bali bombings has been released from an Indonesian prison. Abu Bakar Bashir, 82, is the former head of Jemaah Islamiyah – an al Qaeda-linked group responsible for the 2002 attack on the popular holiday island. Two bomb blasts killed 202 people – many of them foreign tourists. Bashir denied all links to the incident, and Indonesian authorities struggled to prove his involvement.
Boeing has been fined $2.5bn by the US justice department after being charged with fraud and conspiracy in connection with two fatal crashes of its 737 Max airliner. The Max was grounded worldwide in March 2019 after crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia that killed 346 people. A March 2020 congressional investigation concluded that Boeing promoted a “culture of concealment” and was “grossly inefficient” in its oversight of the Max’s development.
The European Union reached a deal with Pfizer and BioNTech for 300 million additional doses of their COVID-19 vaccine, the head of the European Commission said on Friday, in a move that would give the EU nearly half of the firms’ global output for 2021. Pfizer has said it can produce up to 1.3 billion doses around the world this year.
Elon Musk just became the richest person in the world, with a net worth of more than $185 billion. Thursday’s increase in Tesla’s share price pushed Musk past Jeff Bezos, who had been the richest person since 2017 and is currently worth about $184 billion. Musk’s wealth surge over the past year marks the fastest rise to the top of the rich list in history.