Biden’s immediate priorities - Migrant caravan surge - Unique rocket launch success

The day he takes office, Biden is planning to return the United States to the Paris climate accords and repeal the ban on U.S. entry for citizens of some majority-Muslim countries. He will sign an order extending nationwide restrictions on evictions and foreclosures and implement a mask mandate on federal property.
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Those moves will launch a 10-day governing sprint that will include executive actions to help schools reopen, expand coronavirus testing and establish clearer public health standards. In his first days in office, Biden also intends to send to Congress several pieces of legislation including a sweeping immigration bill. In remarks last week, he began outlining legislation that he views as most urgent — a $1.9 trillion plan aimed at stabilizing the economy.
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Former Senate majority leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) warned that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been adept at stalling Democratic priorities in the past, and Reid urged Biden to take a muscular approach to working around Republicans. “I believe the filibuster is on its way out. It’s not a question of if; it’s a question of when it’s going to go,” Reid said.

Law enforcement agencies have been taking measures in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and over fears of violence leading into Biden’s swearing-in. “In securing the facilities, the hope is that this prudent measure is for a short period and that operations will be restored to their prior status as soon as practical,” the [Bureau of Prisons] said.
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The Bureau of Prisons statement goes on to say that inmates would still be provided with access to email and telephones but that communication with families would be limited. The agency also says that no specific information led to the lockdown nor was it in response to any ’’significant” event occurring within a federal prison.
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Prior to Saturday’s announcement, federal prisons had been under modified operations to contain the spread of COVID-19. More than 38,000 inmates and 3,500 staff in federal prisons have had COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, and 190 inmates and three staff members have died of the disease.

Police detained prominent Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny on arrival in Moscow on Sunday after he flew home to Russia from Germany for the first time since he was poisoned last summer, triggering a political clash with the West. The move, which could see Navalny jailed for 3.5 years for allegedly flouting the terms of a suspended prison sentence, may reignite political pressure on the West to tighten sanctions on Russia, especially against an $11.6 billion project to build a natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany.
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Navalny recovered in Germany and after he said last week he planned to return home, the Moscow prison service (FSIN) said it would do everything to arrest him once he returned, accusing him of flouting the terms of a suspended prison sentence for embezzlement, a 2014 case he says was trumped up.
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Navalny’s supporters have said incarcerating one of President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent domestic critics could turn him into a Nelson Mandela-like figure and an increasingly popular symbol of resistance to the Kremlin. Putin allies point to opinion polls that show the Russian leader is far more popular than Navalny, whom they call a blogger rather than a politician.

Soldiers and police officers blockaded a road between the Honduran border and the city of Chiquimula in southeastern Guatemala to stop the caravan, which by some estimates included as many as 7,000 people. Many are fleeing poverty and violence made worse by the pandemic and two major hurricanes that pummeled the region late last year.
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In 2019, Mr. Trump put further pressure on Mexico, as well as Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, to crack down on illegal northbound migration, freezing American aid and threatening tariffs. Pressure on Mexico led to the deployment of thousands of Mexican security forces to help detain undocumented migrants as they traveled north.
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While poverty, violence and government corruption appear to be the main drivers of the latest caravan, the change in American leadership this week may also be a factor. Last month, Mr. Biden, in an effort to avert a rush of migrants to the border, cautioned that changes to immigration policy could not be put in place immediately.

On Sunday, Virgin Orbit became the third privately funded American rocket company to reach orbit—and the only one to accomplish the feat from mid-air. The company’s liquid-fueled rocket, called LauncherOne, was released from beneath the wing of Cosmic Girl, Virgin Orbit’s customized Boeing 747, off the coast of California. Once it reached orbit, the rocket released its payload of 10 cubesats built by researchers from NASA and several American universities before it fell back to Earth.
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The first orbital air-launched rocket, known as Pegasus, was sent to orbit in early 1990 by Orbital Sciences Corporation, which has since been folded into Northrop Grumman. Pegasus is still around, but its launch cost has ballooned over the past few decades. In the 1990s, NASA paid $16 million for a Pegasus launch. Today it costs closer to $60 million.
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The commercial small satellite industry has exploded in the past few years, and now there are hundreds of companies looking for a cheap ride to space. Virgin Orbit is targeting a launch price of around $12 million. Since Virgin Orbit’s rocket is launched from a plane, it can take off from any airport in the world that will allow it [as opposed to one of only a few spaceports in the world], and can tailor the launch location to the customer’s orbital needs.