Uniquely Nelson

Russian anti-Putin campaigner Alexei Navalny has denounced his detention as "blatantly illegal" in an appeal hearing via video link. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny appears on a screen at the Moscow Regional Court via a video link from prison. Photo: AFP A judge heard, and then rejected, his appeal against detention for 30 days. He was arrested on 17 January for not complying with a suspended sentence. He had only just arrived from Berlin, where he spent months recovering from a near-fatal Russian nerve agent attack. Thousands of Navalny supporters protested across Russia last Saturday. The authorities say he was supposed to report to police regularly because of a suspended sentence for embezzlement. But his lawyers called this "absurd", saying the authorities knew he was being treated in Berlin for the Novichok poisoning, which happened in Russia last August. Navalny, Russia's most prominent opposition leader, told the judge on Thursday "this is all massively, blatantly illegal". His lawyers protested that Navalny's hasty trial at a police station on 18 January had lacked transparency and that they had been denied access to him. Navalny also complained he had not been allowed to speak to his lawyers in private since his arrest. Then the judge did allow that to happen briefly. Police crackdown Police have arrested some of his top aides, including lawyer Lyubov Sobol and his brother Oleg. Two other aides - his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh and anti-corruption investigator Georgi Alburov - were escorted back to their homes to witness police searches, then returned to detention. Navalny's doctor Anastasia Vasilyeva was among those whose flats were raided by police on Thursday. A video clip shows her defiantly playing the piano while a police officer reads out an official document, demanding that she sign it. Anastasia Vasilyeva, an ally of Alexei Navalny, decided to play the piano while police raided her house along with other properties connected to the Kremlin critic pic.twitter.com/BkGOQVyVEK — Reuters (@Reuters) January 28, 2021 Navalny accuses President Vladimir Putin of running an administration full of "thieves". Putin refuses to name him in public and belittles him as simply a "blogger". The campaigner's Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) has urged supporters to rally again on Sunday. The wave of arrests is linked to last Saturday's unauthorised rallies. One of the accusations is that children are being drawn to them via social media. In the appeal hearing, Navalny blamed his treatment on "those who want to shut me up - to scare me and everyone else." "You want to show you're the bosses of this country. But you are not. You have the power now, but that's not eternal." He said the protesters and his team facing criminal charges and having their homes searched were the real patriots of Russia - and the majority. Navalny blamed state security agents under Mr Putin's orders for the Novichok attack which nearly killed him. Investigative journalists in the Bellingcat team have named Russian FSB agents suspected of the poisoning. The Kremlin denies involvement and disputes the conclusion, by Western weapons experts, that Novichok was used. - BBC

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is heading to Scotland today in a bid to stem growing support for another independence referendum by arguing that the Covid-19 pandemic has shown the benefits of staying together. Boris Johnson and Nicola Sturgeon. Photo: AFP The bonds that tie England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland together in a $US3 trillion economy have been severely strained by both Brexit and Johnson's handling of the coronavirus outbreak. Opinion surveys show that a majority of Scots would now back independence, though Johnson has repeatedly said that now is not the time for another referendum that could break apart the more than 314-year-old union between England and Scotland. Ahead of his visit, which was criticised by Scottish nationalists, Johnson said that Scotland as a part of the United Kingdom gained access to a coronavirus vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and the shots are being administered by the shared armed forces, who are creating 80 new vaccine centres in Scotland. "We have pulled together to defeat the virus," Johnson said. "Mutual cooperation across the UK throughout this pandemic is exactly what the people of Scotland expect and it is what I have been focused on." Members of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards work to convert a sports hall into a Covid 19 vaccination centre at the Donald Dewar Centre in Glasgow. Photo: AFP Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon criticised Johnson's trip, questioning whether his reasons for visiting are "really essential" and arguing it sets a bad example to the public. Sturgeon, who runs Scotland's semi-autonomous government, is hoping a strong performance by her Scottish National Party in an election for the country's devolved parliament in May would give her the mandate to hold a second referendum. If Scotland voted for independence it would mean the United Kingdom would lose about a third of its landmass and almost a tenth of its population - just as the world's sixth-biggest economy is grappling with the impact of Brexit. Johnson, who would have to agree to a new referendum, has said there is no need for a new vote after independence was rejected by Scottish voters in 2014. Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has criticised Boris Johnson's trip during the pandemic. (file pic) Photo: AFP / FILE Scotland voted against independence by 55 percent to 45 percent in a 2014 referendum. But a majority of Scots also backed staying in the European Union in the subsequent 2016 Brexit vote, stoking demands by Scottish nationalists for a new independence vote after the UK as a whole voted to leave. Scottish nationalist attempts to force a change to the United Kingdom's constitution are a massive distraction while the government battles Covid-19, the UK's Minister for the Cabinet Office Michael Gove said. "At the moment, when we are prioritising the fight against the disease and also the need for economic recovery in due course, talking about changing the constitution and so on is just a massive distraction," Gove told Sky News. Gove said that Johnson, who had made himself minister for the union, was the best frontman for the keeping the United Kingdom together. - Reuters

The GameStop saga has taken an unexpected twist, with shares plunging after an investor forum on Reddit closed temporarily. Pedestrians go past a GameStop store in lower Manhattan in New York. Photo: AFP The wallstreetbets public forum had fuelled massive gains in a number of shares including GameStop, a US games company. But those companies' shares fell sharply after the forum temporarily turned invitation-only. The trading frenzy has spread globally and has led to a White House alert. GameStop has been the main focus of attention of traders having seen its share price soar more than 300 percent in the past week. Experts say it is the result of a fight between private and professional investors. After some frenetic trading activity, Reddit moderators closed the wallstreetbets forum to make adjustments after it was blocked on chat app Discord due to obscene content. "We blocked all bad words with a bot, which should be enough, but apparently if someone can say a bad word with weird unicode icelandic characters and someone can screenshot it you don't get to hang out with your friends anymore," read a message from the group's moderators after wallstreetbets reopened. Discord said its decision to block the forum had nothing to do with its apparent impact on share prices. Shares of Gamestop, AMC Entertainment, Koss Corp and BlackBerry all dropped at least 20 percent moments after the forum was closed, although the companies recovered some of their losses when the forum reopened about an hour later. Even with the pause, GameStop shares were selling at $US292 ($NZ410), compared with less than $20 just a few weeks earlier. The fall highlighted the role the forum has played in fuelling stock rallies of several hundred percent that experts say have been driven primarily by private investors. The massive GameStop share surge appears to be less about the company - which is a loss-making bricks and mortar gaming retailer - and more about a fight between Wall Street fund managers and individual investors organising online. Many Wall Street funds had taken short positions on the business, effectively seeking to profit on its share price falling. The wallstreetbets followers responded with a "short squeeze", which involves pouring money into the company with the aim of pushing up the price. If the price rises dramatically, short sellers incur losses and then need to cover their initial bets to avoid steeper losses. A number of funds sold off share positions to pay for losses from shorting GameStop, contributing to a slide of more than 2 percent in Wall Street's main indexes. Several platforms, including TD Ameritrade, Robinhood and E*Trade experienced outages as the number of retail trades soared amid interest in previously forgotten shares. Ameritrade announced it will place "several restrictions" on GameStop and a number of other securities "out of an abundance of caution amid unprecedented market conditions and other factors". The sudden surge of activity has led to some unusual activity elsewhere. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that a tiny West Australian mining company saw a 50 percent surge in its share price, most likely due to its Australian stock exchange (ASX) code matching that of the American video game retailer. A number of funds sold off share positions to pay for losses from shorting GameStop, contributing to a slide of more than 2 percent in Wall Street's main indexes. Photo: Kena Betancur / AFP Regulators watching The GameStop issue has also caught the attention of the White House and other officials. Press secretary Jen Psaki said President Joe Biden's economic team, including newly-appointed Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, was "monitoring the situation". New US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is among those in the Biden administration keeping an eye on the performance of GameStop. Photo: Brendan Smialowski / AFP US stock exchange Nasdaq's chief executive Adena Friedman said exchanges and regulators should watch whether anonymous social media posts could be driving "pump and dump" schemes. "If we see a significant rise in the chatter on social media ... and we also match that up against unusual trading activity, we will potentially halt that stock to allow ourselves to investigate the situation," Friedman said on CNBC. -BBC

Transparency International has again named New Zealand and Denmark as the world's least corrupt countries. Photo: 123RF However, the organisation warned that despite its number one ranking in the annual index of perceived public sector corruption, New Zealand faces corruption risks. They include inadequate protection for whistle-blowers, and no register showing who ultimately controls or benefits from companies registered in this country. Chief Ombudsman Peter Boshier said the index was not an absolute measure of corruption but it was a very strong indicator. "Our standing depends on the strength of our systems and the reputation of our integrity agencies," he said. "This is testament to the hard work of our public sector and to the oversight bodies that hold government to account when it is needed." New Zealand's continued high performance was good for its international reputation, trade, and investment, Boshier said. The 2020 index ranked 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption, drawing on expert assessments and surveys. Denmark and New Zealand received 88 points, while Syria, with 14 points, and Somalia and South Sudan with 12 points each, ranked last. Transparency International chair Delia Ferreia Rubio said the index revealed widespread corruption was weakening the Covid-19 response. "Covid-19 is not just a health and economic crisis. It is a corruption crisis. And one that we are currently failing to manage," Rubio said. "The past year has tested governments like no other in memory, and those with higher levels of corruption have been less able to meet the challenge. "But even those at the top of the Corruption Perceptions Index must urgently address their role in perpetuating corruption at home and abroad."

Australia has extended quarantine-free travel across the ditch for New Zealanders for another 72 hours, with anyone arriving from Aotearoa now being put in hotel quarantine.  [embedded content] Despite that, the group tasked with forming a full trans-Tasman bubble believes it could be in place in eight weeks.  The forum has been working for 10 months on an agreement to get international travel between the two countries off the ground, with the two-way tourism trade worth more than $5 billion.   Every time it seems a bubble is close there have been setbacks, new cases or divided opinions.   But co-chair of the leadership forum Ann Sherry told Checkpoint any bubble needs to work on the basis there will be more Covid-19 cases in both countries.   "I think the idea that neither side of the Tasman is ever going to have a case when we've got citizens coming back from all over the world is fanciful.  "The real question then is, how do we manage the odd case that pops up as these have?"  The recent cancellation of quarantine-free travel for New Zealanders to Australia was a health response decision rather than a "political knee-jerk," she said.   "I think the prime ministers need to keep talking to each other. My understanding is they have been and they will continue. We just need to find better mechanisms rather than 'close the border' being the first thing we ever do, rather than the thing we do when we've got real reason to do it.  "My strong preference - and I think it's true of all businesses, everyone who's trying to manage trans-Tasman - is that we're not in the 'on again, off again' button switch; that we've got mechanisms that allow us to manage it.  "What we're talking about is managing individual cases or a couple of cases. And that's been true in Australia as well, I think.   "When you look at the UK and other parts of the world we're all happy that we're not in that position. They rejected elimination as a strategy and have ended up in a complete mess. So, that's not where we want to be.   "But if we're going to let our citizens back in from other parts of the world, we've just got to have good systems for managing that, and whether they're total quarantine, whether it's greater testing and people coming back from overseas, we've just got to put better mechanisms in place for doing that.   "So I'm in favour of keeping the numbers low, people want to get on about their business. And if that requires us to have maybe small hotspots… rather than shutting complete countries out, then that's probably a better mechanism to manage it in the long term."  Sherry said ideally the bubble would be country to country, but if it had to be between individual states with New Zealand, that would be better than nothing.   "If that's what we need to do to start then let's do it that way… hopefully, first quarter this year.  "End of March is what we're still hoping for.   "There's so much work going on between health departments, between Border Force, there's a lot of activity. I just think we've got to keep giving ourselves some deadlines to at least try and work to, otherwise it just drifts off into the never-never.  "On both sides of the ditch we've got huge tourism industries, huge numbers of jobs that are just falling away from us as we procrastinate, so we've got to try and get something in place.  "I think the challenge has been we haven't had coherence on the Australian side."  She said she had been working on trying to achieve a trans-Tasman deal for about 10 months.   Advice from the Ministry of Health: [LB][LI] The recent cases of Covid-19 in Auckland and Northland have been linked to Managed Isolation and Quarantine. There is no evidence so far that suggests community transmission. [LI] The locations visited by the recent cases can be found on the Ministry of Health website[LI] To help stamp out Covid-19, it's important the right people isolate and get tested[LI] If you were at the locations of interest at the times stated, you need to: isolate away from others, call Healthline 0800 358 5453 for advice on when and where to get tested, and remain isolated until you have a negative test result[LI] If you were not at a location of interest at the stated times and you have no symptoms you do not need to be tested[LI] If you were not at any of the locations of interest at the stated times, but you have symptoms, call Healthline for advice on 0800 358 5453[LI] If you are going to get tested, remember you may have to queue. Please take food and water and continue to be kind to each other and our public health team[LI] Everyone should continue to scan QR codes using the Covid Tracer app and turn Bluetooth on to help stop the spread of Covid-19[LE] 

Mandatory hotel quarantine will be imposed on New Zealanders travelling to Australia for an extra three days after the Federal Government extended the suspension of the trans-Tasman travel bubble. A passenger wearing a mask arrives from New Zealand at Sydney International Airport on 16 October, 2020. Photo: AFP Green-zone travel arrangements were paused after a Kiwi woman infected with the highly contagious South African variant of Covid-19 travelled to about 30 locations in New Zealand before testing positive. Australian health authorities had sought information on a further two people who tested positive to Covid-19 in New Zealand. The initial 72-hour suspension was due to end at 2pm today. Acting Chief Medical Officer, Professor Michael Kidd, said the suspension would protect Australians while the extent of the situation in New Zealand can be determined. Pullman Hotel outbreak The Australian Government announced it was suspending the bubble on Monday afternoon after New Zealand recorded its first case - a woman who recently returned from overseas - in the community in two months. The 56-year-old woman was found to have contracted the South African strain of coronavirus that is more transmissible, and two more people who were staying in the same hotel as the woman had also tested positive. Prof Kidd said the government was determined to keep Australians safe from the virus and flagged concerns around an additional group. "We've also been advised a small number of people who were in hotel quarantine in the Pullman Hotel in at the same time as these other cases have since travelled to Australia on 'green zone' flights before the pause was introduced on Monday afternoon," he said. "All these people are being followed up by the health authorities in the state where they landed." Twelve of these people arrived in Sydney, with three travelling onto Hong Kong and two to Queensland. Earlier in the week, Prof Kidd urged those who have flown to Australia from New Zealand on any flight since 14 January to get tested and go into isolation. He expanded that advice on Thursday to cover anyone who had flown into Australia from New Zealand since 9 January. The Northland woman, who tested positive after leaving managed isolation on 13 January, had recently returned from Europe and tested negative twice during her isolation period. The bubble was formed at the end of 2020, allowing New Zealanders to travel to certain Australian states before later becoming a national agreement. The Federal Government has repeatedly said it would like to see the arrangement become reciprocal. -ABC

The EU has urged pharmaceutical firm AstraZeneca to supply it with more doses of its Covid-19 vaccine from UK plants, amid a row over shortages. A woman receives the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine during its trial (file). Photo: AFP / University of Oxford Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides said the company was wrong to say its agreement with the EU was non-binding. She said UK factories, which have not experienced production problems, were part of the deal and had to deliver. AstraZeneca reportedly said last week the EU would get 60 percent fewer doses than promised in the first quarter of 2021. It cited production issues at a Belgian plant. Kyriakides said this characterisation of the deal was "not correct or acceptable", and called on the company to be "open and transparent" about its production of vaccines. A confidentiality clause binds AstraZeneca from releasing the details of its deal with the bloc. The two sides are set to meet later for talks. Earlier on Wednesday, an EU official said that AstraZeneca had pulled out of the meeting, but the company has since insisted it will attend. Pfizer-BioNTech, which has an even bigger vaccine-production deal with the EU, is also experiencing delays. French drug maker Sanofi has announced that it will help produce 125 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech jab by the end of the year. The company will allow Germany-based BioNTech to use its facilities in Frankfurt from July, Sanofi said in a statement, having delayed the development of its own vaccine. Pfizer says its agreement with Sanofi is just one of several efforts it is making to increase supply by expanding manufacturing facilities, and adding suppliers and contract manufacturers to its supply chain. What are the supply problems? The EU signed a deal with AstraZeneca in August for 300 million doses, with an option for 100 million more, but the company has reported a production delays at two plants, one in the Netherlands and one in Belgium. AstraZeneca chief executive Pascal Soriot said production was "basically two months behind where we wanted to be". Italy was among the countries threatening to sue over the delays. The Anglo-Swedish company says it has been able to meet a separate deal with the UK because it was signed three months earlier. The AstraZeneca vaccine has not yet been approved by the EU, although the European Medicines Agency (EMA) is expected to give it the green light at the end of this month. The EU had hoped that, as soon as approval was given, delivery would start straight away, with some 80 million doses arriving in the 27 nations by March. Officials have not confirmed publicly how big the shortfall will be, but Reuters news agency reported that deliveries would be reduced to 31 million - a cut of 60 percent - in the first quarter of this year. The EU has also ordered 600 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, but the company was not able to supply the 12.5 million vaccines it promised the EU by the end of 2020. Pfizer said last week it was delaying shipments for the next few weeks because of work to increase capacity at its Belgian processing plant. The EU has threatened to restrict the exports of vaccines made within the bloc to deal with the shortfall. The head of BioNTech, Uğur Şahin, in an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, explained the delay by saying the EU had wrongly assumed that several vaccines would be ready at once and therefore spread its orders. He also said his company was ramping up its manufacturing capacity. Which other vaccines is the EU buying? The European Commission says it has reached agreements with four other pharmaceutical companies to purchase hundreds of millions of vaccines, once they pass clinical trials: Sanofi-GSK: 300 million doses Johnson & Johnson: 400 million doses CureVac: 405 million doses Moderna: 160 million doses The Commission also concluded initial talks with another company, Novavax, for up to 200 million doses. What about the UK? The UK did not take part in the EU vaccine scheme although it could have done until the end of 2020, while it was still in the Brexit transition period. At the time, the government said it was opting out because it felt it wouldn't be allowed to continue its own negotiations with potential suppliers and wouldn't have a say on the price, volume and date of possible deliveries. The UK was the first country in the world to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine (and rolled it out several weeks before the EU). The UK has also approved the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and the Moderna vaccine. - BBC

Microsoft Corp reported its Azure cloud computing services grew 50 percent, the second quarter of acceleration in a business that had begun to slow as the global pandemic benefited the software maker's investment on working and learning from home. Photo: AFP / Gerard Julien The company's shares rose 4 percent in extended trading after gaining about 41 percent in 2020 as Covid-19 shifted computing to areas where the software maker has bet big. It also saw a surprise recovery in sales on the LinkedIn professional social network and navigated a chip shortage that had threaten to hold back its Xbox business. The shift to work from home due to the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated enterprises' switch to cloud-based computing, benefiting Microsoft and rivals such as Amazon.com Inc's cloud unit and Alphabet Inc's Google Cloud. Microsoft was expected to give more information on a conference call with investors but technical problems disrupted the Teams presentation shortly after it started and it resumed a few minutes later. Microsoft said revenue in its "Intelligent Cloud" segment rose 23 percent to $US14.6 billion, with 50 percent growth in Azure. Analysts had expected a 41.4 percent growth in Azure, according to consensus data from Visible Alpha. The previous quarter Azure grew 48 percent. "This was really driven by continued customer demand, with stronger-than-expected consumption as customers have increased their focus on digital transformation," Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood told Reuters in an interview. Atlantic Equities analyst James Cordwell said that last year, "economic weakness and delays in implementation had masked the extent to which Azure was benefiting from the accelerated shift to the cloud caused by the pandemic. But with these results that benefit is now plain to see." LinkedIn revenue growth, which dipped as the pandemic shut down businesses, reached 23 percent, near its pre-pandemic rate of 24 percent a year earlier. Hood said advertisements on LinkedIn drove the increase. "We continue to see advertising market recovery," she said. Microsoft bundles several sets of software and services such as Office and Azure into a "commercial cloud" metric that investors watch closely to gauge the company's progress in selling to large businesses. Commercial cloud gross margins - a measure of the profitability of its sales to large businesses - were 71 percent in the quarter, compared with 67 percent a year earlier. Revenue from its personal computing division, which includes Windows software and Xbox gaming consoles, rose 14 percent to $US15.1 billion, driven by strong Xbox content and services growth, beating analysts' estimates of $US13.5 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. Microsoft in November released two new Xbox consoles, its most visible non-work and non-school brand, but the hardware proved difficult to find as a global semiconductor shortage contributed to tight stocks as many retailers. Xbox hardware sales were up 86 percent despite the shortages, and Hood said growth is likely to continue, with older models also contributing to sales. "Demand still outpaces supply, and we do expect that to continue," Hood said. "The team did a nice job of getting consoles, both of this newest generation as well as continuing to sell the older generation, which provides a great value for gamers." Microsoft's gaming business topped $US5 billion in quarterly sales for the first time ever and was propelled by gaming subscriptions and sales as well as new consoles. Microsoft said Xbox content and services revenue grew 40 percent in the quarter. The software giant's overall revenue rose to $US43.08 billion in the second quarter ended 31 December, from $US36.91 billion a year earlier, beating analysts' estimates of $US40.18 billion, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. -Reuters

Donald Trump left Washington DC almost a week ago, but he continues to cast a long shadow over the US Republican Party in Congress. Clerk of the House Cheryl Johnson leads the Democratic House impeachment managers through Statuary Hall to deliver the article of impeachment to the Senate. Photo: AFP In the first on-the-record test of support for conviction on impeachment charges that Trump incited his supporters to mount an insurrection at the US Capitol, 45 out of 50 Senate Republicans voted to stop the trial before it even starts. After the vote Rand Paul, who pushed for the dismissal, crowed that the impeachment article delivered by the House on Monday was "dead on arrival". He's probably right. It would take 17 Republican senators breaking ranks and voting alongside the 50 Democrats to convict Trump and, with a subsequent up-or-down vote, prevent him from ever running for federal office again. Tuesday's vote shows there are only five who even want to consider the evidence - Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Ben Sasse and Pat Toomey. The rest contend that presidents can't face impeachment trials once they've left office. "My vote today to dismiss the article of impeachment is based on the fact that impeachment was designed to remove an officeholder from public office," Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia said, in a statement released after the vote. "The Constitution does not give Congress the power to impeach a private citizen." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, one of 45 Senate Republicans who voted to end the impeachment trial. Photo: AFP Democrats will surely find that a very convenient way of not having to pass judgement on the president's behaviour. They'll also point out that while there is no historical precedent for such proceedings on the presidential level, a cabinet secretary in the 19th Century faced a Senate impeachment trial on corruption charges even after he resigned from office. Regardless of the explanations and justifications, the procedural vote is just the latest, clearest sign of fading Republican support for finding Trump responsible for the Capitol riot three weeks ago. Shortly after the incident, Lindsey Graham - one of the president's closest allies in the Senate - said the president's actions "were the problem" and that his legacy was "tarnished". Then-Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, reportedly was "pleased" with the House's impeachment efforts and said just last week that the mob that attacked the capital was "fed lies" and "provoked" by Trump. But both Graham and McConnell voted to end the impeachment trial on Tuesday. The Republican Party's evolving views on the president's culpability are probably best captured by the shifting comments of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. During the impeachment debate in the House of Representatives two weeks ago, McCarthy said Trump "bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack by mob rioters", and recommended he be formally censured by the chamber. Last week, he said he didn't believe Trump "provoked" the rally and then, a few days later, that "everybody across this country has some responsibility" for creating the political environment that led to the insurrection. Donald Trump and First Lady Melania, leaving the White House for the final time. Photo: AFP Meanwhile, those who spoke out against the former president and haven't walked back their comments are facing growing calls for political retribution from within their own party. Liz Cheney, who forcefully criticised the president and was one of 10 Republicans to vote for impeachment in the House, is facing an attempt to remove her from her party leadership post. Others are being threatened with primary challenges if they run for re-election next year. Following Tuesday's vote, the Senate will go into a holding pattern on the matter for two weeks, while the House impeachment managers and Trump's legal team prepare their cases. Given the apparent disposition of the Republican senators, the Democrats' only strategy may be to make an acquittal vote as uncomfortable as possible, even if it is a fait accompli. They'll do their best to remind the 100 senators of the fear, confusion and anger they felt on 6 January, as they fled the chamber in the face of an angry mob. They'll try to lay responsibility for the riot at the feet of a president who spent two months questioning the outcome of the election, and chose to hold a protest rally within walking distance of the Capitol on the day Congress gathered to certify that election. And then they'll have to hope that history - and American voters - are willing to assign guilt, even if the Senate isn't. -BBC

More than 100 million people around the world have now been infected with Covid-19, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. People wearing protective face masks are seen in a subway amid the coronavirus pandemic, in Moscow, Russia. Photo: AFP The United States remains the worst-hit country, recording more than 25 million cases and 420,000 deaths. President Joe Biden, who has promised a fierce fight against the pandemic, has set a goal of administering at least 100 million vaccinations in his first 100 days in office. India and Brazil have the second and third highest case tallies after the US, standing at more than 10.6 million and 8.8 million infections respectively. Men line up in Kolkata in India which is the world's second worst affected Covid-19 country. Photo: AFP It is well understood that the true number of cases is likely to be far higher than what has been reported. Countries continue to exceed grim milestones, with more than 100,000 people dying in the United Kingdom after contracting coronavirus. The UK's health department said 100,162 people had died after testing positive for Covid-19, including 1631 new deaths reported on Tuesday. Britain is the fifth country in the world to pass that mark, after the United States, Brazil, India and Mexico. Indonesia has confirmed more than 1 million coronavirus infections, with hospitals in some hard-hit areas nearing capacity. Indonesia's health ministry announced new daily infections rose by 13,094, bringing the country's total to 1,012,350 - the most in South-East Asia. 'Every moment counts' - WHO boss The World Health Organisation (WHO) chief has doubled down on calls for a more equal distribution of Covid-19 vaccines. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says least-developed countries have to "watch and wait" while richer countries power ahead with their immunisation programmes. "Vaccine nationalism might serve short-term political goals but it's in every nation's own interest to support vaccine equity," Dr Ghebreyesus said. With Africa struggling to secure sufficient vaccines to start countrywide inoculation programmes for its 1.3 billion people, the international Gavi vaccine alliance meanwhile has said the surplus doses that richer countries had ordered ran into the hundreds of millions. A medical worker prepares to inoculate a colleague with a Covid-19 coronavirus vaccine at a hospital in New Delhi. Photo: AFP or licensors The WHO chief urged countries around the world not to "squander" the window of opportunity that vaccines gave them to curb the spread of coronavirus, and criticised what he described as a growing divide between richer and poorer countries in the procurement of vaccines. "The stakes could not be higher. Every moment counts," he said. The African Union this month secured 270 million shots for the continent to supplement 600m doses from the Covax vaccine distribution scheme co-led by the WHO and Gavi. Those doses are expected to become available this year but none have arrived yet, while parts of Europe, Asia and the Americas are well into their vaccination programmes. Britain has ordered 367m doses of seven different vaccines - some already approved and some candidate drugs - for its population of roughly 67m, while the European Union has secured nearly 2.3 billion doses for its 450m people. Last week the WHO chief warned that the world was on the brink of a "catastrophic moral failure" of equitable delivery of vaccines. Virus origins remain a 'big, black box' A relative of a coronavirus victim in China is demanding to meet a visiting World Health Organisation expert team investigating the origins of the virus. They say they should speak with affected families who allege they are being muffled by the Chinese government. Zhang Hai's father died of Covid-19 in February 2020. He has been organising relatives of victims to demand accountability from officials. Zhang says he is worried the WHO might be used to provide cover for alleged Chinese mis-steps in the early days of the outbreak. WHO says the visit is a scientific mission to investigate the origins of the virus, not an effort to assign blame. The WHO team is expected to begin fieldwork later this week. Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease official in the US, told the World Economic Forum that the origins of the virus are still unknown, "a big, black box, which is awful". Keiji Fukuda, a public health expert at the University of Hong Kong and former WHO official says investigators need access. "It all comes down to what will the team have access to," he said. "Will they really be able to ask the questions that they want to ask?" - ABC