The takeover in 2016 by right-wing extremists of a federal bird sanctuary in Oregon. A standoff in 1992 between white separatists and federal agents in Ruby Ridge, Idaho. The 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people.

Right-wing extremism has previously played out for the most part in isolated pockets of America and in its smaller cities. The deadly assault by rioters on the U.S. Capitol, in contrast, targeted the very heart of government.

And it brought together, in large numbers, members of disparate groups, creating an opportunity for extremists to establish links with each other.

That, an expert says, potentially sets the stage for more violent actions.

“The events themselves, and participation in them, has a radicalizing effect. And they also have an inspirational effect. The battle of Capitol Hill is now part of the mythology,” said Brian Michael Jenkins, a terrorism expert and senior adviser to the president of the RAND Corporation think tank.

Mary McCord, a former acting U.S. assistant attorney general for national security, said the climate for the insurrection had been building throughout the Trump presidency.

She cited the 2017 “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that killed one person, aggressive demonstrations at statehouses by armed protesters railing against COVID-19 public health safety orders and mass shootings by people motivated by hate.

“All have led to this moment,” McCord, now a visiting law professor at Georgetown University Law Center, said in an email.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors U.S. extremists, has recorded a 55% increase in the number of white nationalist hate groups since 2017.

Among those who participated in the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol were members of the Oath Keepers, which often recruits current and former military, police or other first responders; the Proud Boys neo-fascist group; followers of QAnon, which spreads bizarre conspiracy theories; racists and anti-Semites; and others with nearly blind devotion to then-President Donald Trump.

“January 6th was kind of a Woodstock of the angry right,” Jenkins said in an interview. “The mere fact those groups were coming together, mingling, sharing this anger, displaying this passion — it is going to have effects.”

But what happens next? Will Jan. 6 be a high-water mark for right-wing extremists, or lead to other attacks on America's democracy?

Right now, the movement — if it can be called that — seems to be on pause.

Supposedly planned armed protests at all 50 state capitals and Washington this past week that the FBI issued a nationwide warning about drew virtually no one. That could indicate the groups are demoralized, at least temporarily.

Donald Trump is no longer president and his social media reach has been severely curtailed, with Twitter banning him. The extremists had come together in Washington on Jan. 6 because of their fervent belief in Trump's lies that the presidential election had been stolen, and in response to Trump's tweeted declaration that the protest in Washington “will be wild.”

But now, some are clearly angry that Trump disassociated himself with the very insurrection that he stoked. They're upset that he failed to come to the rescue of rioters who were arrested while he was still president and are still being detained and charged.

Online, some people associated with the Proud Boys, which adored Trump, appear to have dumped him.

“No pardons for middle class whites who risked their livelihoods by going to ‘war' for Trump," a Telegram channel associated with the group said after Trump issued many pardons, but none for the insurrectionists.

Another posting on the channel said: “I cannot wait to watch the GOP completely collapse. Out of the ashes, a true nationalist movement will arise.”

Believers in QAnon are also reeling after Trump left office without fulfilling their baseless belief that he would vanquish a supposed cabal of Satan-worshipping cannibals, including top Democrats, operating a child sex trafficking ring.

Among them was Ron Watkins, who helps run an online messaging board about QAnon conspiracy theories.

“We gave it our all. Now we need to keep our chins up and go back to our lives as best we are able,” Watkins wrote on Telegram after President Joe Biden was sworn in and Trump flew off to Florida.

Jenkins said the next phase for the extremist groups and people who saw Trump as a savior could transform into a broader national movement in which factions coordinate and combine their assets.

Or the widespread condemnation of the insurrection could cause the movement to shrink, leaving more determined elements to strike out on their own and launch attacks.

Jenkins recalled the 1970s, when some anti-Vietnam War militants hardened into the Weather Underground, which launched a bombing campaign. Among places targeted were the U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon, but the only people who died were three militants who accidentally blew themselves up.

“I think given the events of this past year, and especially what we’ve seen in the last couple of months, this puts us into new territory," Jenkins said "And you don't put this back in the box that easily."/AP

Dr. Anthony Fauci told Rachel Maddow on Friday that he had long wanted to be a guest on her MSNBC program but that the Trump administration had not allowed him to appear.

“I’ve been wanting to come on your show for months and months,” the nation’s top infectious disease expert and an authority on the coronavirus pandemic, told Maddow. “You’ve been asking me to come on your show for months and months, and it’s just gotten blocked.”

Fauci added: “Let’s call it what it is: It just got blocked because they didn’t like the way you handle things, and they didn’t want me on.”

Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said he told officials that he liked Maddow and that she was “really good,” but it didn’t “make any difference.”

But look for major changes, he promised. “I don’t think you’re going to see that now” in Joe Biden’s administration, Fauci said. “I think you’re going to see a lot of transparency. ... You’re not going to see deliberate holding back of good people when the press asks for them.” (Check out the clip above.)

Fauci told CNN on Friday that the Trump administration’s mangling of facts and sound scientific advice regarding COVID-19 “very likely cost lives.”

When “you start talking about things that make no sense medically and no sense scientifically, that clearly is not helpful,” he added.

Fauci told Maddow, a progressive voice in TV news, that working in the Trump administration was a “tough situation; it really was.”/ HUFFPOST

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian police arrested more than 3,000 people Saturday in nationwide protests demanding the release of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin's most prominent foe, according to a group that counts political detentions.

The protests in scores of cities in temperatures as low as minus-50 C (minus-58 F) highlighted how Navalny has built influence far beyond the political and cultural centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

In Moscow, an estimated 15,000 demonstrators gathered in and around Pushkin Square in the city center, where clashes with police broke out and demonstrators were roughly dragged off by helmeted riot officers to police buses and detention trucks. Some were beaten with batons.

Navalny’s wife Yulia was among those arrested.

Police eventually pushed demonstrators out of the square. Thousands then regrouped along a wide boulevard about a kilometer (half-mile) away, many of them throwing snowballs at the police before dispersing.

Some later went to protest near the jail where Navalny is held. Police made an undetermined number of arrests there.

The protests stretched across Russia’s vast territory, from the island city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk north of Japan and the eastern Siberian city of Yakutsk, where temperatures plunged to minus-50 Celsius, to Russia’s more populous European cities. Navalny and his anti-corruption campaign have built an extensive network of support despite official government repression and being routinely ignored by state media.

“The situation is getting worse and worse, it’s total lawlessness," said Andrei Gorkyov, a protester in Moscow. "And if we stay silent, it will go on forever.”

The OVD-Info group, which monitors political arrests, said at least 1,167 people were detained in Moscow and more than 460 at another large demonstration in St. Petersburg.

Overall, it said 3,068 people had been arrested in some 90 cities, revising the count downward from its earlier report of 3,445. The group did not give an explanation for its revision. Russian police did not provide arrest figures.

Undeterred, Navalny's supporters called for protests again next weekend.

Navalny was arrested on Jan. 17 when he returned to Moscow from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from a severe nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin and which Russian authorities deny. Authorities say his stay in Germany violated terms of a suspended sentence in a 2014 criminal conviction, while Navalny says the conviction was for made-up charges.

The 44-year-old activist is well known nationally for his reports on the corruption that has flourished under President Vladimir Putin's government.

His wide support puts the Kremlin in a strategic bind — officials are apparently unwilling to back down by letting him go free, but keeping him in custody risks more protests and criticism from the West.

In a statement, the U.S. State Department condemned “the use of harsh tactics against protesters and journalists this weekend in cities throughout Russia” and called on Russian authorities to immediately release Navalny and all those detained at protests.

Navalny faces a court hearing in early February to determine whether his sentence in the criminal case for fraud and money-laundering — which Navalny says was politically motivated — is converted to 3 1/2 years behind bars.

Moscow police on Thursday arrested three top Navalny associates, two of whom were later jailed for periods of nine and 10 days.

Navalny fell into a coma while aboard a domestic flight from Siberia to Moscow on Aug. 20. He was transferred from a hospital in Siberia to a Berlin hospital two days later. Labs in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, established that he was exposed to the Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent.

Russian authorities insisted that the doctors who treated Navalny in Siberia before he was airlifted to Germany found no traces of poison and have challenged German officials to provide proof of his poisoning. Russia refused to open a full-fledged criminal inquiry, citing a lack of evidence that Navalny was poisoned.

Last month, Navalny released the recording of a phone call he said he made to a man he described as an alleged member of a group of officers of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, who purportedly poisoned him in August and then tried to cover it up. The FSB dismissed the recording as fake.

Navalny has been a thorn in the Kremlin’s side for a decade, unusually durable in an opposition movement often demoralized by repressions.

He has been jailed repeatedly in connection with protests and twice was convicted of financial misdeeds in cases that he said were politically motivated. He suffered significant eye damage when an assailant threw disinfectant into his face. He was taken from jail to a hospital in 2019 with an illness that authorities said was an allergic reaction but which many suspected was a poisoning.

BEIJING (AP) — The U.S. has reaffirmed support for Taiwan following China’s dispatch of warplanes near the island in an apparent attempt to intimidate its democratic government and test American resolve.

The State Department on Saturday said it “notes with concern the pattern of ongoing (China's) attempts to intimidate its neighbors, including Taiwan.”

“We urge Beijing to cease its military, diplomatic, and economic pressure against Taiwan and instead engage in meaningful dialogue with Taiwan’s democratically elected representatives," spokesperson Ned Price said in the statement.

Washington will continue to deepen ties with Taiwan and ensure its defense from Chinese threats, while supporting a peaceful resolution of issues between the sides, the statement said.

There was no immediate Chinese response Sunday.

Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said China on Saturday sent eight bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons and four fighter jets into airspace just southwest of the island, part of a long-standing pattern of Chinese incursions aimed at pressuring the government of President Tsai Ing-wen into caving to Beijing’s demand that she recognize Taiwan as a part of Chinese territory.

The latest Chinese overflight came on the heels of President Joe Biden’s inauguration, emphasizing the island's enduring position in the panoply of divisive issues between the sides that also include human rights, trade disputes and, most recently, questions about China's initial response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Biden's administration has shown little sign of reducing pressure on China over such issues, although it is seen as favoring a return to more civil dialogue. In another sign of support for Taiwan, the island's de-facto ambassador to Washington, Hsiao Bi-khim, was an invited guest at Biden's inauguration.

And in a final swipe at China, the Trump administration’s outgoing U.N. ambassador tweeted that it’s time for the world to oppose China’s efforts to exclude and isolate Taiwan, drawing sharp criticism from Beijing.

Ambassador Kelly Craft accompanied the tweet with a photo of herself in the U.N. General Assembly Hall where the island is banned. She carried a handbag with a stuffed Taiwan bear sticking out of the top, a gift from Taiwan’s representative in New York, Ambassador James Lee.

Taiwan and China separated amid civil war in 1949 and China says it is determined to bring the island under its control by force if necessary. The U.S. switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979, but is legally required to ensure Taiwan can defend itself and the self-governing democratic island enjoys strong bipartisan support in Washington.

Tsai has sought to bolster the island’s defenses with the purchase of billions of dollars in U.S. weapons, including upgraded F-16 fighter jets, armed drones, rocket systems and Harpoon missiles capable of hitting both ships and land targets. She has also boosted support for Taiwan's indigenous arms industry, including launching a program to build new submarines to counter China’s ever-growing naval capabilities.

China’s increased threats come as economic and political enticements bear little fruit, leading it to stage war games and dispatch fighter jets and reconnaissance planes on an almost daily basis toward the island of 24 million people, which lies 160 kilometers (100 miles) off China’s southeast coast across the Taiwan Strait.

A study conducted at a research and training hospital in the capital Ankara found links between COVID-19 and a widely-infectious bacteria.

The study -- Effect of Helicobacter Pylori on the Presentation and Clinical Course of COVID-19 Infection -- was published in the Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition last month.

Leading the research, Dr. Necati Balamtekin from Gulhane Training and Research Hospital told Anadolu Agency that helicobacter is one of the most common and infectious bacteria in the world.

In Turkey, the bacteria is seen in one in every two people, often without any symptoms, and it may cause stomach ulcers and gastritis, and even some types of cancer, Balamtekin said.

Through their research, he said they found that those with the bacteria in their bodies had more severe discomfort in the digestive system if they contract the novel coronavirus.

"The helicobacter increases the frequency of ACE-2 receptors, which are the gateway of the coronavirus into the body, in the gastrointestinal (digestive) system. This causes digestive system symptoms of the coronavirus, such as abdominal pain, diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting, to be seen more frequently in people with H. pylori," he said.

Balamtekin urged those with helicobacter to get immediate treatment, if they are also at high risk groups for COVID-19, so that they would face fewer digestive issues in case they contract the virus.

He said the study was conducted among 100 COVID-19 patients in a six-month period.

"Ours will guide future studies in this field. The relation between helicobacter and COVID-19 will be studied further, and more detailed research will be conducted from now on all over the world. We will do it as well," he added./aa

DAKAR, Senegal(AA)

Turkey launched diplomatic efforts to find crew members that were kidnapped after a pirate attack on a Turkish cargo ship off Nigeria, according to diplomatic sources.

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a telephone conversation with Furkan Yaren, the fourth captain of the ship that was ambushed, the Presidential Communications Directorate said in a statement.

Erdogan received information that the ship was moving toward Gabon with three crew members, it said.

Closely following the process, Erdogan instructed authorities regarding the rescue of the ship’s personnel.

Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavuvoglu also talked to Yaren and received information about the incident and the situation on the ship.

Cavuvoglu spoke to Osman Levent Karsan, the operator of the company that owns the ship and conveyed his condolences, emphasizing that necessary actions will be taken to rescue the crew as soon as possible and return them safely.

Cavusoglu also had a telephone call with his Azerbaijani counterpart, Jeyhun Bayramov, and expressed his condolences for the crew member who was killed in the attack. 

"Today, the owners and operators of the M / V MOZART ship, which was abducted at gunpoint in the Gulf of Guinea, have regretfully confirmed that one of its crew members was killed and the others kidnapped,” Istanbul-based Boden company said in a statement.

Company officials expressed condolences and support for the crew's families, it said.

They called for a sensitive approach to the rescue for the sake of crew members and underlined they were trying to solve the problem as soon as possible in the safest way,

Turkish embassies in surrounding countries, including Nigeria, have been mobilized for the crew, diplomatic sources added.

The ship is expected to arrive at Gabon's Port-Gentil at 9 a.m. local time in Turkey.

The Mozart was attacked by pirates early Saturday while one crew member was killed and 15 others kidnapped from the ship that had a crew of 19.

Fifteen crew members moving from Lagos, Nigeria to Cape Town, South Africa were kidnapped, while three remained with the pirates, David Johnson, the head of the UK-based EOS Risk Group had said in the statement.

Mozart was attacked in the Gulf of Guinea, 160 kilometers (100 miles) off Sao Tome, he added.

A tape recording had been shared on Twitter and believed to be belonging to the captain of the ship says: "I don't know where I'm going. The pirates dismantled all cables, nothing is working. Only the navigator works. They gave me a route, I'm moving accordingly."/aa

The EU and European countries on Saturday raised their concern over the detention of people in Russia protesting the arrest of Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny.

Tens of thousands of people on Saturday gathered in Russia to protest Navalny’s detention, demanding his immediate release.

Many people supporting Navalny were detained in the country while police intervened the protestors harshly.

“Following unfolding events in #Russia with concern. I deplore widespread detentions, disproportionate use of force, cutting down internet and phone connections,” Josep Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief, said on Twitter.

Borrell said the EU foreign ministers will discuss “next steps” on the issue at the Foreign Affairs Council on Monday.

UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office also raised concern over “the detention of peaceful protesters and continue to monitor the situation closely.”

“We urge the Russian government to respect and comply with its international commitments on human rights, and release citizens detained during peaceful demonstrations,” the statement said.

Navalny’s wife Yulia Navalnaya was also held by the police on Saturday protests, she posted on Instagram.

Navalnaya posted a photo of herself with the caption “Sorry for the poor quality. Very bad light in the police van."

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday that attempts to organize unauthorized rallies and incite young people to participate in them is “unacceptable”.

“The only appropriate stance is in favor of abiding by the law and against the organization of unauthorized activities, let alone attempts to incite young people and children to take part in them," he told reporters.

- Navalny video breaks record

Navalny and his team posted a video on YouTube claiming Russian President Vladimir Putin built a palace on the Black Sea coast for $1.4 billion with the “bribes he got.”

The video, which claimed the palace is “the most expensive in the world", has been watched for more than 71.60 million times.

Peskov, criticizing the allegations on Friday, said: "Putin does not have such a palace. He does not have any palace."

Navalny, 44, who received treatment in Germany after alleged poisoning, was arrested in the Russian capital Moscow upon his return Sunday evening. Russian authorities said he had violated probation terms from a suspended sentence on a 2014 money-laundering conviction, which Navalny says is "politically motivated".

Less than 25 hours after his return, Moscow’s Khimki Court ruled that he will remain in custody on a 30-day pre-trial detention.

Navalny is now behind bars in Moscow’s infamous jail Matrosskaya Tishina.

In an Instagram post he wrote through his lawyers on Wednesday, Navalny said: “I’d read about it [the prison] in books and now I’m here. Russian life.”

The prominent opposition figure fell sick last August on a flight to Moscow. After an emergency landing in the Siberian city of Omsk, he spent two days in a Russian hospital before being sent to Berlin for treatment.

After tests in several labs, German officials said Navalny was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok, which was also used according to the UK government in a 2018 attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the British town of Salisbury.

Russian authorities deny any involvement in the case and contend that chemical weapons have neither been developed nor produced by Russia since the last chemical round was destroyed in 2017./aa