Ripped from the Headlines: January 2021: This Week In Words: Current Events Vocab for January 23–29, 2021

The Biden administration announced that it is "exploring ways to speed up" the release of $20 bills that will bear the face of renowned abolitionist Harriet Tubman. The new bills will replace the current version that features Andrew Jackson, the seventh U.S. President. Tubman worked tirelessly to help enslaved people gain their freedom.

West Virginia has vaccinated a higher percentage of its population than every other state except Alaska, and it has administered the highest percentage of second vaccine doses. The state is also using the most doses from its allotment of vaccines — 83 percent — while some other states throw out unused doses due to distribution problems.

Impeachment managers from the House of Representatives delivered one article of impeachment against President Trump to the Senate. This charge is for inciting the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. The Senate trial will begin on February 9, and 67 votes are required for a conviction.

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) discovered a system in the Eridanus constellation that has three pairs of binary stars orbiting a common gravitational center. That means if you lived on a planet in the system — though none have been discovered there yet — you would see two suns and four large, bright stars in the sky. The system, which has the extremely exciting name TIC 168789840, is around 1,500 light years from Earth.

Moderna is developing a booster vaccine to help fight the coronavirus variants that have evolved in Europe and South Africa. The injection would be administered after the two regular vaccine doses, and would provide added protection against the two new strains that are causing concern due to their rapid spread.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers will face the defending champions, Kansas City Chiefs, in Super Bowl LV on Sunday, February 7 in Tampa. The Bucs quarterback, Tom Brady, will be playing in his record-setting 10th Super Bowl. Buccaneer comes from buka, a Tupi word for a wooden frame used to hang meat over a fire for smoking. The French turned this into boucaniers: pirates who roamed the Caribbean during the Colonial period.

The Bidens are joined in the White House by their two canine companions, Champ and Major. Champ has been with the Bidens since the 2008 election, when Joe Biden became Vice President. The couple adopted Major from a Delaware shelter in 2018. A few months back Major achieved fame when Joe Biden broke his foot while playing with the dog.

Some people who fall ill with Covid-19 can take months to recover, and some continue to feel ill nearly a year later. Many of these "long-haul Covid" patients share symptoms with people suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, a condition that sometimes follows serious viral infections. Researchers hope that the similarities between the two illnesses will help them understand and treat them more effectively.

Officials announced this week that acting North Korean ambassador to Kuwait, Ryu Hyun-woo, defected to South Korea. This is the second such defection to take place recently, and observers say the defections may be a sign that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is losing his grip on power. As a noun, defect means "a flaw," but as a verb it describes deserting one side in a conflict and joining the other.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell agreed to the power-sharing deal proposed by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. McConnell initially demanded that Democrats pledge not to abolish the filibuster. Schumer refused, but McConnell withdrew his demand after two Democratic senators said they would not get rid of the filibuster. The filibuster lets senators prevent a vote on an issue by refusing to cede the floor. It requires 60 votes to override a filibuster.

Henry Louis "Hank" Aaron, a basebell icon, died at the age of 86. Aaron hit 755 career home runs, which was the record from 1974–2007. He still holds the records for RBIs (2,297), total bases (6,856), and extra-base hits (1,477). Besides being widely viewed as one of the game's all-time greatest players, Aaron was also admired for his activism, courage, and dignity.

Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy will preside over the second impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. Leahy is the president pro tempore of the Senate, a role that the Constitution assigns to the longest-serving member of the majority party. You can see preside in president because they both originate in the Latin verb praesidere, meaning "to govern or control."

Thousands of people took to the streets in Russia to protest the imprisonment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his wife, Yulia Navalnaya. More than 2,100 people were detained as crowds braved fierce cold — as low as -63˚F — to chant "Putin is a thief!" and pelt police with snowballs. The U.S. embassy in Moscow issued a statement in support of the protests.

The Biden administration reinstated travel restrictions on non-citizens from Brazil, South Africa, the U.K., and 26 European countries. The travel ban is due to the highly contagious variants of coronavirus that are spreading in these countries. Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden's chief medical advisor, called the move "prudent" and said that while the existing vaccines appear to be effective against the new strains, it's important to keep them from spreading.

A subreddit called r/WallStreetBets caused chaos in the stock market by encouraging millions of individuals to buy stock in GameStop and other companies, driving their share prices to record highs. Besides an effort to make lots of money, the effort also seemed to be driven by anger against short-sellers, who bet that a stock's price will fall. One hedge fund in particular, Melvin Capital Management, suffered huge losses as a result.

The Justice Department inspector general has opened an investigation into whether any department employees tried to use the power of their offices to overturn the results of the presidential election. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had called on the department to launch an inquiry, saying that the public needs to know if officials attempted "to subvert the people's will." Subvert comes from the Latin subvertere, meaning "to overturn or corrupt."