FBI vets National Guard - Vaccine allergy warning - Biden to cancel pipeline

Some 25,000 [National Guard] members – more than double the number at previous inaugurations – are pouring into Washington from across the country, at short notice. There are concerns that some of the very people assigned to protect the city could present a threat to the incoming president and other dignitaries, the Associated Press reported.
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Their names will be fed through an FBI database for any evidence of connections to investigations or terrorism or other red flags. At least two active-duty service members or national guard members have been arrested in connection with the Capitol assault. The Pentagon received 143 notifications of extremism-related investigation last year from the FBI, 68 of which were related to current and former service members, the Washington Post reported.
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The national guard played down fears of extremism in its ranks. Maj Gen William Walker, commanding general of the DC national guard, told MSNBC: “I don’t have any concerns because it’s a layered scrub. The FBI is scrubbing, the Secret Service gives out the credentials and then we have other agencies helping with the scrub as well. We really are pretty sure we know who is out here supporting us.”

TC Energy first proposed the $8 billion pipeline in 2008, saying the 1,200-mile project was crucial to deliver crude from Western Canada to refineries in the Midwest. The Obama administration in 2015 denied a cross-border permit for the pipeline, however, saying the oil it would deliver would exacerbate climate change.
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Rescinding Keystone XL would negate one of President Donald Trump's own first actions in office and kill a project that had become a political totem in the fight between climate activists and the oil industry. Despite many analysts saying the boom in U.S. shale oil made new sources of Canadian crude less important, TC Energy has fought years of legal challenges against it obtaining the needed state permits that would all it to build the pipeline.
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Keystone XL was one of the few issues on which Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau agreed. "The Government of Canada continues to support the Keystone XL project," [Canada's U.S. ambassador] said in a statement to POLITICO on Sunday evening. "Keystone XL fits within Canada’s climate plan. It will also contribute to U.S. energy security and economic competitiveness."

Delays with vaccine shipments and testing results have held up vaccinations in the country, once a global leader in mass immunizations and now a regional laggard after countries such as Chile and Mexico started giving shots last month. [President Bolsonaro’s] government aims to kick off a national immunization program this week but is waiting on shipments of the AstraZeneca vaccine at the center of its plans.
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Sao Paulo Governor Joao Doria, who oversees the Butantan biomedical center that is partnered with Sinovac in Brazil, said [Brazilian health regulator Anvisa’s] decision was a triumph for science as he gave the go-ahead for the first vaccination in his state. Bolsonaro, for whom Doria is a potential center-right rival to his 2022 re-election efforts, has taunted the governor over CoronaVac’s disappointing 50% efficacy in Brazilian trials.
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Health Minister Eduardo Pazuello told a news conference that the rush to start vaccinating immediately was an illegal “marketing ploy” and the government would start distributing the vaccines to states on Monday, with the nationwide immunization plan beginning on Wednesday. Brazil could eventually vaccinate 1 million people a day, he said.

Gary Gensler, who led the Commodity Futures Trading Commission during the Obama administration from 2009 to 2014, will be President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s nominee to lead the Securities and Exchange Commission. Also, Rohit Chopra, the former assistant director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has been chosen to run that agency.
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Mr. Gensler is a veteran regulator who played a central role in bringing the big banks to heel in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, giving new teeth to a watchdog agency. Lately, as an academic, he has been schooling himself on digital currencies like Bitcoin that have become an important part of the S.E.C.’s regulatory mandate.
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While at the consumer bureau through 2015, Mr. Chopra served as the agency’s first “student loan ombudsman” pushing for more protections for borrowers. Student loans are expected to be a key focus for Mr. Chopra, along with payday loan protection and debt collection regulations. For the past three years, Mr. Chopra has served as a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, often offering a dissenting voice against the Republican majority.

On average, California has seen about 500 deaths and 40,000 new cases daily for the past two weeks. So far, the state has vaccinated fewer than 2,500 people per 100,000 residents, a rate that falls well below the national average, according to federal data. Only about 1.4 million of those doses, or around 40% [of the state's supply of 3.2 million doses], have been administered.
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On Sunday, Dr. Erica S. Pan, the state epidemiologist, urged that providers stop using one lot of a Moderna vaccine because some people needed medical treatment for possible severe allergic reactions. More than 330,000 doses from lot 41L20A arrived in California between Jan. 5 and Jan. 12 and were distributed to 287 providers, she said.
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Fewer than 10 people, who all received the vaccine at the same community site, needed medical attention over a 24-hour period, Pan said. No other similar clusters were found. The CDC has said COVID-19 vaccines can cause side effects for a few days that include fever, chills, headache, swelling or tiredness, “which are normal signs that your body is building protection.”