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  Global Covid-19 cases hit a daily record on Monday, disrupting the holiday season a year after vaccines first started rolling out and two years after the emergence of the virus that many hoped would be fleeting. The more than 1.44 million worldwide infections smashed the prior record after factoring out a day in December 2020 when Turkey backdated a significant number of cases. A more conservative gauge -- the seven-day rolling average that smooths out one-time fluctuations and holiday reporting irregularities -- is also at a record level, thanks to a tidal wave of Omicron infections. The highly-mutated and most transmissible variant yet, Omicron is fast becoming the dominant strain globally as it evades immunity normally provided by vaccines and previous infections. The seven-day rolling average of cases on Monday stood at about 841,000, a jump of 49% from a month ago when Omicron was first identified in southern Africa. Studies suggest that although Omicron infects 70 times fas...

  Moscow:  Russia's Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the closure of Memorial, the country's most prominent rights group that chronicled Stalin-era purges and symbolised post-Soviet democratisation. The ruling against Memorial International, the group's central structure, caps a year that began with the jailing of President Vladimir Putin's top critic Alexei Navalny and saw a historic crackdown on rights groups and independent media. But the ban against Memorial stands out even in the current climate and would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. Judge Alla Nazarova ordered the closure of Memorial International and its regional branches after prosecutors accused the organisation of failing to mark its publications with a "foreign agent" label, the tag for groups receiving overseas funds. "Disgrace! Disgrace!" supporters shouted in court after the ruling. Prosecutors also accused Memorial International of denigrating the memory of the Soviet Un...