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Indonesian authorities say they have found the location where they believe a Boeing 737 passenger plane crashed into the sea shortly after take-off from the country's capital Jakarta on Saturday. Officials at a port in Jakarta inspect a part that is believed to be some wreckage from the crashed plane. Photo: AFP The Sriwijaya Air jet was carrying 62 people when it disappeared from radars four minutes into its journey to Pontianak in West Kalimantan province. More than 10 ships have now been deployed to the site with navy divers. Investigators are analysing items they believe to be wreckage. Search and rescue efforts were suspended overnight but were due to resume early on Sunday. The aircraft is not a 737 Max, the Boeing model that was grounded from March 2019 until last December following two deadly crashes. What happened to the aircraft? The Sriwijaya Air passenger plane departed Jakarta airport at 2:36pm local time on Saturday. Minutes later, at 2:40pm, the last contact with the plane was recorded, with the call sign SJY182, according to the transport ministry. The usual flight time to Pontianak, in the west of the island of Borneo, is 90 minutes. The aircraft did not send a distress signal, according to the head of national search and rescue agency Air Marshal Bagus Puruhito. It is thought to have dropped more than 3000m in less than a minute, according to flight tracking website Flightradar24.com. This is what we know about Sriwijaya Air flight #SJ182 based on ADS-B data.Route: Jakarta to PontianakCallsign: SJY182Aircraft: Boeing 737-500, PK-CLCTake off: 07:36 UTCHighest altitude: 10,900 feetLast altitude: 250 feetSignal lost: 07:40 UTChttps://t.co/fNZqlIR2dz pic.twitter.com/CPzFJdsuJZ — Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) January 9, 2021 Witnesses said they had seen and heard at least one explosion. Fisherman Solihin, who goes by one name, told the BBC Indonesian service he had witnessed a crash and his captain decided to return to land. "The plane fell like lightning into the sea and exploded in the water," he said. "It was pretty close to us, the shards of a kind of plywood almost hit my ship." Relatives of those aboard the aircraft wait for information at Sukarno Hatta airport in Jakarta. Photo: AFP A number of residents of an island near where the plane disappeared told the BBC they had found objects they thought were from the plane. (file pic) Photo: AFP Who was on board the flight? There were thought to be 50 passengers - including seven children and three babies - and 12 crew on board, though the plane has a capacity of 130. Everyone on board was Indonesian, officials say. Relatives of the passengers have been waiting anxiously at the airport in Pontianak, as well as at Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. "I have four family members on the flight - my wife and my three children," Yaman Zai told reporters through tears. "[My wife] sent me a picture of the baby today... How could my heart not be torn into pieces?" What do we know about the plane? According to registration details, the plane was a 26-year-old Boeing 737-500. Efta Kurniawan, left, a relative of a Sriwijaya Air passenger who was aboard a flight that has crashed, is seen at Soekarno-Hatta Airport, in Indonesia. Photo: AFP It was in good condition, Sriwijaya Air chief executive Jefferson Irwin Jauwena told reporters. Take-off had been delayed for 30 minutes due to heavy rain, he said. Sriwijaya Air, founded in 2003, is a local budget airline which flies to Indonesian and other South-East Asian destinations. The plane went missing about 20km north of the capital Jakarta, not far from where another flight crashed in October 2018. A total of 189 died when an Indonesian Lion Air flight plunged into the sea about 12 minutes after take-off from the city. That disaster was blamed on a series of failures in the plane's design, but also faults by the airline and the pilots. It was one of two crashes that led regulators to pull the Boeing 737 Max from service. The model resumed passenger flights in December after a systems overhaul. The BBC's Jerome Wirawan in Jakarta says the latest events will bring up difficult questions and emotions in Indonesia, whose airline industry has faced intense scrutiny since the Lion Air crash. - BBC

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he was lifting restrictions on contacts between US officials and their Taiwanese counterparts, a move likely to anger China and increase tensions between Beijing and Washington in the waning days of President Donald Trump's presidency. Mike Pompeo says limits were put on the US's relationship with Taiwan "to appease the Communist regime in Beijing". Photo: 2020 Getty Images China claims democratic and separately ruled Taiwan as its own territory, and regularly describes Taiwan as the most sensitive issue in its ties with the United States. While the United States, like most countries, has no official relations with Taiwan, the Trump administration has ramped up backing for the island country, with arms sales and laws to help Taiwan deal with pressure from China. Pompeo said that for several decades the State Department had created complex internal restrictions on interactions with Taiwanese counterparts by American diplomats, service members and other officials. "The United States government took these actions unilaterally, in an attempt to appease the Communist regime in Beijing," Pompeo said in a statement. "Today I am announcing that I am lifting all of these self-imposed restrictions," he added. The Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States in Washington, which serves as Taiwan's unofficial embassy, said the move showed the "strength and depth" of the United States' relationship with Taiwan. The US ambassador to the United Nations, Kelly Craft, will visit Taiwan next week for meetings with senior Taiwanese leaders, prompting China to warn on Thursday they were playing with fire. China has already warned the US about the visit of its UN ambassador to Taiwan in a few days. Photo: Unsplash / Remi Yuan Chinese fighter jets approached the island in August and September during the last two visits: by US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and US Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Keith Krach, respectively. The US is Taiwan's strongest international backer and arms supplier, and is obliged to help provide it with the means to defend itself under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act. "The United States government maintains relationships with unofficial partners around the world, and Taiwan is no exception. ... Today's statement recognises that the US-Taiwan relationship need not, and should not, be shackled by self-imposed restrictions of our permanent bureaucracy," Pompeo said. China and Taiwan were divided during a civil war in the 1940s. Beijing has long tried to limit Taiwan's international activities and both have vied for influence in the Pacific region. Tensions have increased in recent years and Beijing has not ruled out the use of force to take the island back. Although Taiwan is officially recognised by only a handful of nations, its democratically-elected government has strong commercial and informal links with many countries. - Reuters / BBC

For an animal that's culturally ubiquitous, koalas are remarkably hard to spot in the wild. Because spotting is slow and expensive, estimates of koala populations vary wildly. Photo: 123RF As a result, it's difficult for scientists and conservationists to know just how many koalas are out there. In New South Wales the population could be around 36,000, but last year's NSW parliamentary inquiry heard those figures are "outdated and unreliable" and the real number could be half that. The same inquiry recommended exploring the use of drones to gain a more accurate head-count. Happily, researchers from the University of Newcastle were already testing drones in collaboration with the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment. Their study, published in the journal PLOS One, suggests that it works. Drones found koalas 'every two hours' A team with a drone was able to spot koalas more effectively and cheaply than a team using more traditional methods, such as studying the forest floor for traces of koala scat, or shining spotlights into trees at night to catch a glimmer of eye-shine. Photo: 123RF "For our sample area in Port Stephens, koalas can be located with the drones every two hours," lead author Dr Ryan Witt said. "This is very different to spotlighting, which we found was one every five to seven hours. "And with the scat samples it was one every 43 hours." Dr Witt and his team flew drones in the night-time hours before dawn. In the infra-red images, the koalas appear like fuzzy white blobs, sometimes almost indistinguishable from the canopy in which they perch. To visually confirm that the blobs were in fact koalas, the researchers flew the drone back at first light to check. Though the grainy black-and-white images may not seem like much, Dr Witt believes they could herald an important change - and not just for koala conservation. Ultimately, he envisions airborne fleets equipped with AI to scan and sift through a landscape, automatically cataloguing the animals below. This would mean that for the first time accurate population data may be gathered for many species - from flying foxes to brush-tailed possums. That AI technology already exists, but does not yet work in real-time. Last year, QUT researchers flew AI-enabled drones over forests burnt in the Black Summer fires to estimate the number of koalas that had survived. By teaching the AI to distinguish possum from koala, researchers are building the foundations of a "dataset for biodiversity", Dr Witt said. "I think that we're really at the start of what might be a new tool that revolutionises the way that we monitor biodiversity on a regular, longitudinal basis," he said. AI technology is set to revolutionise gathering data on animals, such as koalas, a university academic believes. Photo: 123RF Current spotting methods 'labour intensive' A common traditional technique to count koalas is for a team of six to spend several nights walking through an area of bush along parallel straight lines, shining spotlights into the trees. "That method is really labour intensive," said Dr Witt. Because spotting is slow and expensive, estimates of koala populations vary wildly. In 2016, a panel of 15 experts estimated there were over 300,000 koalas in Australia, though they admitted it was hard to say for sure. Their estimate had a sizable margin of error: from 600,000 to 144,000. Three years later, the Australian Koala Foundation produced its own figure: as few as 43,000 koalas remained in the country. The Black Summer bushfires have confused this picture even more. A report commissioned by WWF estimated over 60,000 koalas in four states had been killed, injured or displaced as a result of the Black Summer fires. A koala injured in a bushfire on Kangaroo Island receives treatment in January, 2019. Photo: AFP This loss, combined with land-clearing, feral animals, and disease, has led to predictions that the koala is fast going extinct. In Queensland, New South Wales and the ACT, koalas are listed as 'vulnerable' under national environmental law and may be upgraded to 'endangered' this year. Need for 'baseline data' Last year's NSW parliamentary inquiry concluded the tree-dwelling marsupial could vanish from NSW forests "well before" 2050. A few months later, in November, Federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley announced $A2 million ($NZ2.14m) for a national koala population census. This would provide "baseline data" on how many koalas were out there, she said. "I have been so frustrated that no one could give me the data I needed ... it's just not there - only in patches," Ley said. The $2m set aside for a national koala audit will have to stretch far to cover the vast national distribution of the species. In fact, dividing the funding figure by the distribution one leaves $1.40 to survey each square kilometre. Deploying drones may help, but the drones themselves are expensive - the one used for the research would cost about $20,000 to buy today. Even so, Dr Witt believes drone-mounted AI systems are the future of biodiversity monitoring. "The greatest challenge will be to get this drone system working in real time so that you don't have to rely on someone looking at a screen and going that could be a koala that might not be," he said. And this fine-tuning, he said, will require old-fashioned boots on the ground. "You can start to teach the AI to decide that's a koala, that's a rock, that's a possum, that's a wallaby, and so on," he said. - ABC

India will launch its vaccination drive against the coronavirus on 16 January, the government has announced. A healthcare worker at a vaccination centre in New Dehli, India. Photo: Mayank Makhija/NurPhoto PM Narendra Modi called it a "landmark step" and said the aim was to vaccinate 300 million people by July. India has a population of 1.3 billion. Healthcare staff and frontline workers will be among the first to receive doses, he added. India has recorded the second-highest number of Covid-19 infections in the world, after the US. Since the pandemic began it has confirmed more than 10.3 million cases and nearly 150,000 deaths. The country's drugs regulator has given the green light to two vaccines - one developed by AstraZeneca with Oxford University (Covishield) and one by Indian firm Bharat Biotech (Covaxin). "Starting that day [16 January], India's nationwide vaccination drive begins," Modi tweeted on Saturday. "Priority will be given to our brave doctors, healthcare workers [and] frontline workers." On 16th January, India takes a landmark step forward in fighting COVID-19. Starting that day, India’s nation-wide vaccination drive begins. Priority will be given to our brave doctors, healthcare workers, frontline workers including Safai Karamcharis. https://t.co/P5Arw64wVt — Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) January 9, 2021 A government statement said that next in line for the jab would be people aged over 50 and anyone under 50 with serious underlying health conditions. Indian health officials have already staged mass trials at vaccination centres across the country. Training has been given to about 150,000 staff in 700 districts. Saturday's announcement came days after experts raised concerns over India's emergency approval of Covaxin before the completion of trials. The Covaxin vaccine. Photo: AFP Health watchdog All India Drug Action Network said there were "intense concerns arising from the absence of the efficacy data" as well as a lack of transparency that would "raise more questions than answers and likely will not reinforce faith in our scientific decision making bodies". India's Drugs controller general, VG Somani, insisted Covaxin was "safe and provides a robust immune response". "The vaccines are 100 percent safe," he said, adding that side effects such as "mild fever, pain and allergy are common for every vaccine". The regulator said the vaccine had been approved for "restricted use in emergency situation in public interest as an abundant precaution, in clinical trial mode, especially in the context of infection by mutant strains". Krishna Ella, chairman of Bharat Biotech, said the approval of Covaxin had not been rushed. "Under Indian laws we can get emergency approval for the vaccine based on fulfilling five parameters after Phase 2 trials. That is what has happened with our vaccine. So it is not a premature approval," he said. "We will complete the Phase 3 trials soon and provide the efficacy data for the vaccine by February." - BBC

A prominent follower of the baseless conspiracy theory QAnon has been charged over the US Capitol riots. Jacob Anthony Chansley is alleged to be the man seen wearing horns and a fur hat in photographs, including this from inside the Senate chamber. Photo: Getty Images Jacob Anthony Chansley, known as Jake Angeli, is in custody on charges including violent entry and disorderly conduct. Chansley, who calls himself the QAnon Shaman, is allegedly the man pictured with a painted face, fur hat and horns inside Congress on Wednesday. US President Donald Trump faces another impeachment charge for his role in the unrest. Democrats accuse the president of encouraging the riots, in which five people died. The FBI has been appealing to the public to help bring the assailants to justice. Chansley has not commented publicly on the charges. A statement from the federal attorney for Washington DC said: "It is alleged that Chansley was identified as the man seen in media coverage who entered the Capitol building dressed in horns, a bearskin headdress, red, white and blue face paint, shirtless, and tan pants. "This individual carried a spear, approximately 6 feet in length, with an American flag tied just below the blade." The statement said police had also detained a man from Florida believed to have been photographed carrying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's lectern from the House of Representatives chamber. A man is pictured carrying the lectern from the House of Representatives. Photo: Getty Images via AFP Adam Johnson, 36, is being held on charges including one count of theft of government property and one count of violent entry. Also among those charged is West Virginia lawmaker Derrick Evans. He is alleged to have posted a video of himself online, standing outside the building with Trump supporters, and then going inside. He was arrested on Friday and is also accused of violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol Grounds, the Department of Justice statement said. More than a dozen people have now been charged in offences related to the assault on the Capitol building. They include an Alabama man allegedly found with 11 Molotov cocktails near the unrest. Trump is due to leave office in 11 days. Democrats in the House of Representatives plan to introduce an article of impeachment against him on Monday, for "incitement of insurrection". A White House spokesperson said impeaching the president at this late stage would only further divide the country. - BBC

With only days left in his presidency, Donald Trump - silenced by Twitter and shunned by a growing number of Republican officials - faces a renewed drive by Democrats to remove him from office after he incited his supporters to storm the US Capitol. Donald Trump acknowledges supporters at his "Stop the Steal" rally in Washington that preceded the occupation of the Capitol. Photo: AFP House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the top congressional Democrat, threatened to impeach Trump for an historic second time unless he resigned "immediately," a move the pugnacious president is unlikely to consider. Democratic members are circulating formal charges that could lead to impeachment and may introduce them in the House as soon as Monday. Pelosi has also asked members to draft legislation aimed at invoking the US Constitution's 25th Amendment, which allows the removal of a president unable to fulfil the duties of the office. Trump "has done something so serious -- that there should be prosecution against him," Pelosi told CBS' 60 Minutes, according to an early excerpt of the interview. Pro-Trump supporters storm the Capitol. Photo: 2021 Getty Images The intensifying effort to oust Trump from the White House has drawn scattered support from Republicans, whose party has been splintered by the president's actions. Democrats have pressed Vice President Mike Pence to consider the 25th Amendment, but a Pence adviser has said he opposes the idea. The odds that Trump will actually be removed before 20 January, when President-elect Joe Biden is sworn in, remain long. Any impeachment in the House would trigger a trial in the Republican-controlled Senate, which is scheduled to be in recess until 19 January and has already acquitted Trump once before. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell sent a memo to his fellow Republican senators suggesting a trial would not begin until Trump was out of office, a source familiar with the document said. A conviction in the Senate requires a two-thirds vote. Democrats will take control of the Senate later this month, after Georgia certifies two runoff elections won by Democratic challengers. Twitter permanently cut off Trump's personal account and access to his nearly 90 million followers late on Friday (US time), citing the risk of further incitement of violence, three days after Trump exhorted thousands of supporters to march on the Capitol as Congress met to certify Biden's 3 November election victory. The resulting assault, viewed with shock around the world, left a police officer and four others dead in its wake, as rioters breached the Capitol and forced lawmakers into hiding for their own safety. A Florida man who was photographed smiling and waving as he carried Pelosi's lectern from the House chambers amid the chaos was arrested by federal law enforcement on Friday. Dozens of others face federal and state charges. Fears for inauguration Experts are warning there could be further violence from far right extremist groups on 20 January, the day Biden will be sworn in as president. Online posts from hate groups and right-wing provocateurs are calling for civil war, the deaths of top lawmakers and attacks on law enforcement. The chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks and counters hate, Jonathan Greenblatt, says white supremacists and extremists feel emboldened after last week's attack on the US Capitol building. He says violence could get worse before its gets better. A researcher into cyber-security John Scott-Railton, says he is terribly concerned about the inauguration. He says while the broader public was shocked by this week's violence, among hate groups and the far-right, the riot is being seen as a success. Trump proposes new social media platform Twitter's decision stifled one of Trump's most potent tools. His frequent posts helped propel his 2016 presidential campaign, since which he has used the site to fire up his base and attack his political opponents from both parties. Photo: AFP Trump later used the official @POTUS government account to lash out at Twitter, vowing that the 75 million "great patriots" who voted for him "will not be SILENCED!" He said he was considering building his own social media platform. Twitter quickly deleted those posts and soon after suspended the Trump campaign account as well. The suspension came a day after a subdued Trump denounced Wednesday's violence in a video in which he also vowed to ensure a smooth transition of power. A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted on Thursday and Friday found 57 percent of Americans want Trump to be removed immediately from office following the violence. A small but growing number of Republicans have joined calls for Trump to step down, and several high-ranking administration officials resigned in protest. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said Friday that Trump should resign immediately and suggested she would consider leaving the party altogether if Republicans cannot separate themselves from him. "I want him out. He has caused enough damage," she told the Anchorage Daily News. Senator Lisa Murkowski: "I want him out. He has caused enough damage." Photo: AFP Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, a frequent Trump critic, told CBS News he would "definitely consider" impeachment because the president "disregarded his oath of office". Trump allies, including Senator Lindsey Graham and House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, however, urged Democrats to shelve any impeachment effort in the name of unity. "Impeaching President Donald Trump with 12 days remaining in his presidency would only serve to further divide the country," said White House spokesman Judd Deere. A copy of draft articles of impeachment circulating among members of Congress charged Trump with "inciting violence against the government of the United States" in a bid to overturn his loss to Biden. The House impeached Trump in December 2019 for pressuring the Ukrainian president to investigate Biden, but the Senate acquitted him in February 2020. Only two other presidents have been impeached, and none has been impeached twice. Trump spent months falsely claiming the election was stolen from him due to widespread fraud. Dozens of courts across the country have thrown out lawsuits seeking to challenging the results, and election officials in both parties have said there is no evidence to support his allegations. Pope 'astonished' Pope Francis said on Saturday people working against democracy must be condemned whoever they are, and lessons should be learned from this week's attack on the US Capitol. "I was astonished because they are people so disciplined in democracy," the pontiff told Italy's Canale 5 news channel in his first public comments on the events. "There is always something that isn't working (with) people taking a path against the community, against democracy, against the common good," the pope said. "Thank God that this has burst into the open and is clear to see well, because you can put it right," Francis said, adding: "Yes, this must be condemned, this movement, no matter who is involved in it." Pope Francis: "Yes, this must be condemned, this movement, no matter who is involved in it." Photo: AFP He said violence could flare anywhere and it was important to understand what had gone wrong and to learn from history. "(Fringe) groups that are not well inserted into society sooner or later will commit this sort of violence," he said. - Reuters /CNN

A Boeing 737 passenger plane carrying 62 people is believed to have crashed into the sea shortly after take-off from Indonesia's capital, Jakarta. Efta Kurniawan, left, a relative of a Sriwijaya Air passenger who was aboard a flight that has crashed, is seen at Soekarno Hatta Airport, in Indonesia. Photo: AFP The Sriwijaya Air disappeared from radars four minutes into its journey to Pontianak in West Kalimantan province. It is thought to have dropped more than 3000m in less than a minute, according to flight tracking website Flightradar24.com. This is what we know about Sriwijaya Air flight #SJ182 based on ADS-B data.Route: Jakarta to PontianakCallsign: SJY182Aircraft: Boeing 737-500, PK-CLCTake off: 07:36 UTCHighest altitude: 10,900 feetLast altitude: 250 feetSignal lost: 07:40 UTChttps://t.co/fNZqlIR2dz pic.twitter.com/CPzFJdsuJZ — Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) January 9, 2021 Witnesses said they had seen and heard at least one explosion. Fisherman Solihin, who goes by one name, told the BBC Indonesian service he had witnessed a crash and his captain decided to return to land. "The plane fell like lightning into the sea and exploded in the water," he said. "It was pretty close to us, the shards of a kind of plywood almost hit my ship." (file pic) Photo: AFP A number of residents of an island near where the plane disappeared told the BBC they had found objects they thought were from the plane. The transport ministry said search and rescue efforts were under way. Arya Karisma Hardy, a relative of a plane crash victim, speaks to media at Soekarno Hatta Airport in Jakarta. Photo: AFP The Indonesian navy has been deployed to look for the aircraft, reports say. Navy official Abdul Rasyid told Reuters news agency it had determined the plane's coordinates and ships had been deployed to the location. The aircraft is not a 737 Max, the Boeing model that was grounded from March 2019 until last December following two deadly crashes. Difficult questions Last contact with the plane, with the call sign SJY182, was made at 2.40pm (local time), according to the transport ministry. The usual flight time to Pontianak, in the west of the island of Borneo, is 90 minutes. It did not send a distress signal, according to the head of the national search and rescue agency, Air Marshal Bagus Puruhito. There were thought to be 50 passengers - including seven children and three babies - and 12 crew on board, though the plane has a capacity of 130. Everyone on board was Indonesian, officials say. Relatives of the passengers have been waiting anxiously at the airport in Pontianak, as well as at Jakarta's Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. "I have four family members on the flight - my wife and my three children," Yaman Zai told reporters through tears. "[My wife] sent me a picture of the baby today... How could my heart not be torn into pieces?" A police officer stands guard at the crisis centre for relatives aboard the Srwijaya Air plane at Soekarno Hatta Airport, Tangerang, Banten Province, in Indonesia. Photo: AFP According to registration details, the plane is a 26-year-old Boeing 737-500. It was in good condition, Sriwijaya Air chief executive Jefferson Irwin Jauwena told reporters. Take-off had been delayed for 30 minutes due to heavy rain, he said. Sriwijaya Air, founded in 2003, is a local budget airline which flies to Indonesian and other South-East Asian destinations. The plane went missing about 20km north of the capital Jakarta, not far from where another flight crashed in October 2018. A total of 189 died when an Indonesian Lion Air flight plunged into the sea about 12 minutes after take-off from the city. That disaster was blamed on a series of failures in the plane's design, but also faults by the airline and the pilots. It was one of two crashes that led regulators to pull the Boeing 737 Max from service. The model resumed passenger flights in December after a systems overhaul. The BBC's Jerome Wirawan in Jakarta says the latest events will bring up difficult questions and emotions in Indonesia, whose airline industry has faced intense scrutiny since the Lion Air crash. - BBC

The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh have received Covid-19 vaccinations, Buckingham Palace has said. Photo: AFP A royal source said the vaccinations were administered on Saturday by a household doctor at Windsor Castle. The source added the Queen decided to let it be known she had the vaccination to prevent further speculation. The Queen, 94, and Prince Philip, 99, are among around 1.5 million people in the UK to have had at least one dose of a Covid vaccine so far. People aged over 80 in the UK are among the high-priority groups who are being given the vaccine first. The couple have been spending the lockdown in England at their Windsor Castle home after deciding to have a quiet Christmas at their Berkshire residence, instead of the traditional royal family gathering at Sandringham. Last month, the Queen appeared alongside several other senior members of the royal family for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began. In 2020 she went seven months - between March and October - without carrying out public engagements outside of a royal residence. During that time, her eldest child, Prince Charles, 72, contracted coronavirus and displayed mild symptoms. The Queen, Prince Philip and Prince Charles. Photo: AFP Palace sources also told the BBC that her grandson Prince William tested positive in April - although Kensington Palace refused to comment officially. The Queen used her Christmas Day message to reassure anyone struggling without friends and family this year that they "are not alone". She said the pandemic had "brought us closer" despite causing hardship, adding that the Royal Family has been "inspired" by people volunteering in their communities. On Friday a third coronavirus vaccine - made by US company Moderna - was approved for use in the UK, joining the Pfizer-BioNTech and Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines already approved by UK regulators. It is not known which vaccine the Queen and Prince Philip have received. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said the aim is to vaccinate 15 million people in the UK by mid-February, including care home residents and staff, frontline NHS staff, everyone over 70 and those who have been categorised as clinically extremely vulnerable. Pope to be vaccinated Pope Francis said he planned to have a Covid-19 vaccination as early as next week and urged everyone to get a shot, to protect not only their own lives but those of everyone else. "I believe that ethically everyone should take the vaccine," the Pope said in an interview with TV station Canale 5. "It is an ethical choice because you are gambling with your health, with your life, but you are also gambling with the lives of others." The Vatican City, the smallest independent county in the world, has said it will shortly launch its own vaccination campaign against the coronavirus. "Next week," the Pope said, "we will start doing it here, in the Vatican, and I have booked myself in. It must be done." -BBC / Reuters

Storm Filomena has blanketed parts of Spain in heavy snow, with half of the country on red alert for more this weekend. A woman walks through the snow in Madrid. Photo: AFP Road, rail and air travel has been disrupted and interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said the country was facing "the most intense storm in the last 50 years". Madrid, one of the worst affected areas, is set to see up to 20cm of snow in the next 24 hours. Further south the storm caused rivers to burst their banks. Four deaths have been reported so far as a result of Filomena. Officials said two people had been found frozen to death - one in the town of Zarzalejo, north-west of Madrid, and the other in the eastern city of Calatayud. Two people travelling in a car were swept away by floods near the southern city of Malaga. A homeless man tries to stay warm next to some shelter in Madrid. Photo: AFP As snow fell on Madrid on Friday evening, a number of vehicles became stranded on a motorway near the capital. The city's Barajas airport has closed, along with a number of roads, and all trains to and from Madrid have been cancelled. Firefighters were called in to assist drivers who had become stuck. In some areas the military were called in to help clear roads. Photo: AFP Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez urged people to stay at home and to follow the instructions of emergency services. King Felipe and Queen Letizia took to Twitter to urge "extreme caution against the risks of accumulation of ice and snow". The country's AEMET weather agency said the snowfall was "exceptional and most likely historic". Photo: AFP A number of people were seen making the most of the snowy scenery, walking through Madrid's Puerta del Sol square. Large parks in Madrid have since been closed as a precaution, AFP news agency reports. The cold weather is set to continue beyond the weekend with temperatures in Madrid predicted to hit -12C on Thursday. - BBC

A woman who contracted the mutant UK strain of Covid-19 and flew into Brisbane from Melbourne after clearing hotel quarantine has since tested positive to the virus again, prompting an urgent public health response. Photo: 123RF Under the previous national protocols, the woman was allowed to leave after 10 days in hotel quarantine, and did not need to return a negative test before doing so. But because authorities are so concerned about this new strain, those rules have now been changed. What do we know about this case? Queensland's Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said the woman flew into Melbourne from the UK on 26 December and tested positive a day later. She spent 10 days in hotel quarantine, "cleared all her symptoms and was allowed to leave Victoria", Young said. The woman caught flight JQ570 from Melbourne to Brisbane, arriving at 11:00pm (local time) on 5 January. She then travelled to her parents' house in Maleny, on the Sunshine Coast. Young said Victorian authorities alerted their Queensland counterparts the woman had tested positive to the UK variant. She was retested in Queensland yesterday and found to still be positive. Authorities said she posed a very low risk, and they were contact tracing out of an abundance of caution because of this new strain. So why was she allowed to leave hotel quarantine? Until recently, people who tested positive to Covid-19 while in hotel quarantine could leave once they had no symptoms for three days, and at least 10 days had passed since they delivered the positive test. That's in contrast to the mandatory 14 days - based on the life cycle of the virus - in place for travellers who do not contract the virus. That was under guidelines from the Communicable Disease Network Australia, which Victoria and other states and territories had followed. A lifeguard stands watch over a deserted South Bank beach on the first day of a snap lockdown in Brisbane on 9 January Photo: AFP Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley said "the person wasn't infectious" when she left the Victorian quarantine system. She was cleared on day 10 of hotel quarantine after showing no symptoms for three days. "That was totally in line with both Australian national and international standards and protocols," Foley said. Under those old guidelines, which were in place since March 21, travellers with a mild case of Covid-19 did not need to return a negative test before leaving hotel quarantine. One of the reasons for that is people who have contracted the virus can still test positive to Covid-19 after they have passed their infectious period, in a process known as "shedding". Why are authorities worried? The woman who left Melbourne contracted the same UK strain as the Brisbane hotel quarantine cleaner - whose positive result has sent Greater Brisbane into a three-day lockdown and seen borders slammed shut across the country. Research estimates the UK variation could be up to 70 percent more infectious than other strains, and authorities fear transmission could be hard to control if it gets into the community. "We have to assume that this strain will become the dominant strain and it is important to keep re-assessing our settings, keep staying vigilant," New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian said. Queensland's Dr Young said the risk of the woman passing on the virus was very low, and "with a normal variant we would not be as concerned". The UK strain is just one of a number of new variants of Covid-19 that appears to be more transmissible and therefore more concerning to authorities. "We are seeing the emergence worldwide of a number of strains and, with travel, they are no longer the UK strain or the South African strain," New South Wales Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said. "It is important that we live in a global world and so all returning travellers are at increasing risk of having one of these mutations." Chant did clarify that there was at this stage no evidence the new strain behaved any differently to the dominant strain when it came to being cleared of the virus, but authorities were taking no chances. What rules are changing as these new strains emerge? The guidelines from the Communicable Disease Network Australia have been updated to advise anyone who tests positive for the mutant UK strain to quarantine for the full 14 days from the onset of symptoms. In Victoria, those changes came into effect on 6 January - a day after the woman discussed today flew into Queensland. Chant said the advice now included giving people a PCR test at the end of their isolation period to show they were no longer infectious. "Now, it is important to note that some people still can have remnants of the virus for a long time, so we will use an expert panel to ensure we are not releasing cases that are infectious and that will require more intensive testing if anyone still remains PCR-positive," she said. Chant said out of an "abundance of precaution", NSW authorities had also updated a list of exposure sites that a person who was previously cleared of a mutant strain had visited. "We're taking a very precautionary role as we learn about this disease," she said. Yesterday's National Cabinet meeting saw a number of other rules tightened to guard Australia against the strains. International passenger caps have been reduced, masks are now mandatory in airports and on planes, tests will be compulsory before and after international flights and there will be daily tests for hotel quarantine workers. The increased testing for quarantine staff was already in place in Victoria, which has dramatically overhauled its system in the wake of the state's deadly second wave. NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard said daily testing being introduced in his state was "an important step forward, particularly to manage the increased issues related to these new variants". - ABC