President Biden is set to issue 10 executive orders on Thursday to fight the coronavirus pandemic. In his inauguration speech, Biden said that the U.S. has entered the "toughest and deadliest period of the virus" and urged Americans to set politics aside and fight "as one nation" against the pandemic.

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• Biden will order people to wear masks at airports, on airplanes, ships, intercity buses, and trains, as well as while riding public transportation.
• Airlines already require passengers to wear masks, but the order will make that requirement compulsory.
• Travelers will have to present a negative COVID-19 test before boarding a U.S.-bound flight and quarantine upon arrival.
• Some of the executive orders aim to accelerate the distribution of vaccines and increase testing.
• Biden will order the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to set up 100 vaccination centers in a month.
• He will also use FEMA funds to help states and Native American tribes buy supplies and to cover costs associated with school reopenings. 
• He will order the departments of Education and Health and Human Services to produce concrete guidelines to reopen schools. 
• Some of the funding for these initiatives is included in a $1.9T stimulus package that Biden plans to send to Congress.

Researchers are working on nearly 240 potential coronavirus vaccines. So far, two vaccines have received regulatory approval in the U.S. and the EU — those developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna. In addition to those two, the U.K. has approved a vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca. But experts have long argued that more vaccines will be needed to curb the spread of the virus. Danny Altmann, an immunologist at Imperial College London, said that coronavirus will go through more mutations "and the vaccines we have approved right now are just not going to be as effective as we think they are." 

Here are some of the most promising vaccines under development:

• Imperial College London is developing a vaccine that uses genetic material from the virus to trigger a protective immune response in the body. This vaccine could be produced at very little cost and would be effective for a long period of time. 
• Novavax is developing a vaccine that relies on a protein that covers the surface of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Once injected, this protein tricks the body into producing antibodies that protect against coronavirus.
• Researchers at the University of Washington are developing a vaccine that also relies on proteins from SARS-CoV-2. But unlike Novavax's, which uses the entire spike protein, the UoW's features only a portion of the protein.

Twitter has blocked the account of the Chinese embassy in the U.S. over a tweet that promoted repressive policies against Muslim Uighurs. The tweet sent on Jan. 7 said that Uighur women in Xinjiang were being "emancipated" and were "no longer baby-making machines." Twitter said that the post violated its policies "against dehumanization." The tweet has been removed.

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• The Trump administration last week accused China of committing genocide against Muslim Uighurs in the western Xinjiang region. The Biden administration has agreed with this accusation.
• Human rights organizations have long documented the "horrific" verbal and physical abuses that Uighurs suffer inside indoctrination camps in Xinjiang.
• The Chinese government claims that the camps are job training facilities.
• According to a report published by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, China uses forced sterilization and mandatory abortions to suppress birthrates among Uighurs.
• China denies the allegations.

GOOD NEWS: Last weekend, magicians worldwide celebrated the 100th year anniversary of one of the most iconic magic tricks ever: cutting a person in half. An English magician named P.T. Selbit was the first illusionist to perform the landmark trick at London’s Finsbury Park Empire on Jan. 17, 1921. That day, Selbit captivated his audience by sawing through a wooden box that contained a woman, but since then, magicians have come up with their own versions of the trick. Some of them cut the person and separate the two halves of the box, and others perform the trick in vertical displays. Celebrity magician David Copperfield used a giant rotary blade to slice himself in two. "I got cut a few times by the blade because the blade was a little bit off, you know, stages are different every theatre you have," Copperfield told Reuters.

Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny claims that Putin has built himself a $1.4B palace. Putin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov denied the allegations. "There is no palace, he is not an owner of any palace," Peskov told CNN.

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• According to a report by Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF), the 17,691-square-meter castle features 11 bedrooms, a casino, two spas, a movie theater, and several dining halls. 
• The castle has marble floors and luxurious decorations that resemble St. Petersburg royal palaces, as well as pieces of furniture that are worth tens of thousands of dollars.
• It sits on a 68-hectare property that features a hockey rink, a church, an amphitheater, a huge greenhouse, and a vineyard. 
• The property is inside a bigger plot of land that is owned by the Federal Security Service.
• The report claims that to pay for the palace, Putin asked Russian oligarchs to wire funds to an investment firm and then diverted some of that money to a Swiss bank account registered by a Belize-based company.
• The report is based on documents and photos provided by construction workers as well as drone footage.
• In addition to the report, ACF released a two-hour documentary that has been viewed more than 45 million times on YouTube.
• Navalny was arrested upon returning to Russia on Sunday. He previously spent approximately five months in Germany, where he received treatment for a suspected nerve-agent attack that he blames on Russian secret agents.

United Airlines said that it does not expect the airline industry to recover from the coronavirus slump until 2023. The airline, which lost $7.07B in 2020, forecasts that 2021 will also be a challenging year. Airline executives had previously pinned their hopes on a quick vaccination campaign but so far, the rollout has been slower than expected. 

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• United expects first-quarter revenue to be 65% to 70% below 2019 levels.
• The number of passengers is forecast to be half of what it was in the first quarter of 2019.
• United lost $1.9B in the fourth quarter, which compares with a profit of $641M a year earlier.
• United said that it lost $33M a day on average in the last three months of 2020.
• However, United's cargo business made $560M in revenue, a 77% increase from the previous quarter.

Amazon-backed Rivian has raised $2.65B as it prepares to make the first deliveries of its all-electric pickup truck, SUV, and delivery van later this year. Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund was among the investors, according to TechCrunch.

More:

• Since 2019, Rivian has raised $8B from Amazon, Ford, BlackRock, and other investors, making it the most well-funded U.S. automotive startup ever.
• Amazon has ordered 100,000 electric delivery vans from the company, which it will fulfill over several years. It plans to begin the first deliveries of the vans in late 2021.
• Rivian also plans to start early model deliveries of its consumer electric vehicles, the R1S SUV and R1T pickup, this summer.
• The support of investors will help Rivian focus on the deliveries and scale the business for its next stage of growth, Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe said.

Related news:

• On Wednesday, semi-truck manufacturer Paccar announced a partnership with Amazon-backed startup Aurora, which will provide autonomous-driving technology to power Paccar semi-trucks.
• Amazon also acquired autonomous driving technology startup Zoox in a $1.2B deal last year.

This story first appeared on Inside Amazon. To read the whole issue, click here.

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