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First Thing: ‘monumental moment’ as US backs patent waiver for Covid vaccines

<span>Photograph: Allison Bailey/Rex/Shutterstock</span>
Photograph: Allison Bailey/Rex/Shutterstock

Good morning.

The US has declared its support for a patent waiver for Covid-19 vaccines, in an attempt to enable more widespread access to vaccines around the world. The head of the World Health Organization welcomed the move as a “monumental moment in the fight against Covid-19”.

India and South Africa have been supporting a waiver since October, along with about 100 emerging economies. However, wealthier countries have been blocking a debate on the issue at the World Trade Organization.

  • What will a waiver mean? At the moment, coronavirus vaccines are considered the private property of the pharmaceutical corporations, making it harder for poorer countries to get access. A patent waiver will enable other companies to manufacturer the vaccine without violating intellectual property laws. Some people have described it as “sharing the vaccine recipe”.

  • Problem solved? As Michael Safi writes in his explainer this morning, waiving patents is not a panacea. “For one thing, the WTO has to actually adopt the waiver … Second, vaccines are extremely complex formulations. As we have seen throughout this year, even experienced companies are running into problems scaling up production.”

The US trade representative Katherine Tai: ‘The extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures.’
The US trade representative Katherine Tai: ‘The extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures.’ Photograph: Sarah Silbiger/AP

Two American students were found guilty of murdering an Italian police officer

Rosa Maria Esilio, the widow of Mario Cerciello Rega, a police officer, reacts after Finnegan Lee Elder and Gabriel Christian Natale-Hjorth were found guilty of the murder of her husband, in Rome.
Rosa Maria Esilio, the widow of Mario Cerciello Rega, a police officer, reacts after Finnegan Lee Elder and Gabriel Christian Natale-Hjorth were found guilty of the murder of her husband, in Rome. Photograph: Remo Casilli/Reuters

Two American students have been sentenced to life in prison over the murder of an Italian police officer in 2019. After almost 13 hours of jury deliberation, a court in Rome found Finnegan Lee Elder, 21, and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, 20, guilty of murdering Mario Cerciello Rega in a street in the Italian capital.

  • Cerciello Rega was stabbed 11 times, and his colleague Andrea Varriale injured, after they confronted Elder and Natale-Hjorth about a bag theft. The officers were in plainclothes and without their service pistols, and the Americans claim they thought the officers were criminals and acted in self-defence.

What could the raid on Rudy Giuliani’s apartment and office mean?

An officer from the New York police department places barricades outside the apartment building of Rudy Giuliani.
An officer from the New York police department places barricades outside the apartment building of Rudy Giuliani. Photograph: Andrew Kelly/Reuters

The FBI raid on the apartment and office of Donald Trump’s personal attorney and former New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani, has sparked debate about the criminal charges he might be facing. So what do experts think is going on?

  • Who authorised it? It is highly unusual for a lawyer to be raided, let alone the former president’s lawyer, so it probably required a signoff from senior officials in the Department of Justice, according to experts.

  • Was it to do with Ukraine? Authorities have been investigating whether Giuliani illegally lobbied the Trump administration in 2019 on behalf of Ukrainian officials and oligarchs, who were helping him search for dirt on Trump’s political rivals. Former prosecutors say the raid suggests the criminal investigation into his links with Ukraine is growing.

In other news…

  • Space X finally successfully launched and landed its Starship yesterday, after the previous four test flights ended in fiery explosions. Elon Musk hopes he can use the rocket to land astronauts on the moon and send people to Mars.

  • A giant sequoia tree is still smoldering in California’s national forest, months after wildfires ravaged the area. The tree was found charred but still standing by researchers in the lower part of the national forest this week.

  • A Hong Kong court jailed three people for rioting despite no evidence they were involved. The three protesters are all in their 20s and face up to four years and three months in prison. The judge reportedly said that although there was no evidence the trio were involved in any rioting, their presence at the rally in October 2019 encouraged other protesters.

Stat of the day: the city of Albuquerque has the second highest rate of fatal police shootings in the US. Can things change?

Since 2015, police in the Albuquerque metro area shot 44 people, killing 42. Previous demonstrations against the shootings seemed to promise reform, but the shootings carried on. How are locals dealing with the trauma, and is an end in sight?

Don’t miss this: Hillary Clinton talks big tech, democracy and the future of truth

Hillary Clinton’s presidential run was the subject of huge volumes of fabricated news and conspiracy theories. Five years later, she’s calling for a “global reckoning” with disinformation. In an interview with the Guardian from her home in New York, Clinton discusses democracy, social media, and truth – and warns that “the technology platforms are so much more powerful than any organ of the so-called mainstream press”.

Last Thing: a Utah woman who went missing for five months has been found alive

Diamond Fork canyon in Utah, close to where an abandoned car was found in November.
Diamond Fork canyon in Utah, close to where an abandoned car was found in November. Photograph: Isaac Hale/AP

A Utah woman who vanished in November has been discovered alive in a tent at a campsite. The 47-year-old, who has not been publicly named, was reportedly living off grass, moss and water from a nearby river. The sheriff’s office said they believed “she knowingly chose to remain in the area over the months since November 2020”. Authorities said she had not broken the law and “in the future she might choose to return to the same area”.

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