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I'm Nick Miles. And in the early hours of Wednesday, the 3rd of February, these are our main stories. The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been jailed for more than two and a half years following his return to Moscow after being poisoned. US Democrats have released pre-trial documents accusing Donald Trump of whipping his supporters into a frenzy and a desperate effort to cling on to power. The UN Security Council has failed to agree on a statement condemning the military coup in Myanmar.

Also in this podcast, light emitting semiconductor devices are now all around us from household lamps and the screens on our phones and TVs to powerful lasers, the cut metal and sanitizing equipment that will deactivate the coronavirus. We look at the prize for a group of scientists who helped light up our lives.

The Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny has been jailed by a court in Moscow over a conviction he says was fabricated to curb his challenge to President Putin. Prosecutors accused Mr. Navalny of hiding from justice when he was in hospital in Germany, recovering from an attempt to assassinate him with a nerve agent before the verdict. He got the chance to speak, was as defiant as ever, saying that he was being jailed to intimidate others.

And again, accusing President Putin of poisoning him with his only method is trying to kill people. However much he pretends to be a great politician, he'll go down in history as a poisoner. You know, there was Alexander the Liberator, Yaroslav the Wise and Vladimir the underwear poisoner.

I feel like I need to go to court.

But the judge was not swayed, sending him to prison for two years and eight months, the remainder of a suspended sentence for embezzlement dating back to 2014. As the sentence was read out, Mr Navalny looked relaxed, smiling and shrugging his shoulders at one point, even drawing a hard on the glass wall of the dock, maybe for the benefit of his wife, Yulia, who was in court.

I spoke to our correspondent Sarah Rainsford, in Moscow. So was she expecting this result? Yes.

Although, you know, when these big moments come in Russia, you sort of think about what the Kremlin's calculations might be and you wonder, will it be a different this time? Will they step back from the brink? Might they, I suppose, basically show some mercy? But any kind of considerations along those lines were thrown out of the window when we heard the verdict, the ruling from the court that Alexei Navalny was going to be sent to prison.

And, you know, this is a man, as you mentioned, he was poisoned last August before that. He's been prosecuted multiple times, several criminal cases against him. He's spent an awful lot of time in police custody. And he's also spent a year under house arrest for the case that he's now going to go to prison for. So he's a man who's been through an awful lot. And in fact, he came back to Russia, of course, knowing that he was going to be detained when he stepped back on Russian soil.

He'd be warned of that in advance. The prison service had said they wanted to send him to prison, claiming that he'd violated his suspended sentence. Mr Navalny denied that in court. He explained primarily that he'd been in a coma in Germany when he was supposed to be checking in with the prison service here and said there was obviously no way he could be signing in as his suspended sentence dictated.

Already, there's been a lot of condemnation. Let's hear from President Biden's press secretary, Jen Psaki, who said the White House was deeply concerned.

Like every Russian citizen, Mr Navalny is entitled to the rights provided in the Russian constitution. And Russia has international obligations to respect equality before the law and the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. We reiterate our call for the Russian government to immediately, unconditionally release Mr Navalny, as well as the hundreds of other Russian citizens wrongfully detained in recent weeks for exercising their rights.

There are those already talk about more sanctions being put on Moscow with regards to this.

But even if that happens, I imagine the Kremlin will shrug it off. What does it mean, though, for Mr Navalny, his ability to rally opposition to Mr. Putin from within prison?

Is he going to be able to do that? Well, not him personally, but his team are certainly going to give it a go. In fact, they've already called people onto the streets. They've said that this ruling is spitting in the face of the entire country. They've said that if they don't come out and protest, you know, keep up the protests to get Mr Navalny release, that it's quite clear that this is not just a two year, eight month sentence.

They say they were going to be other cases brought against him, that he's basically not coming out of jail now. I think, you know, they think this is very personal. They think that Vladimir Putin essentially had made the decision because Alexei Navalny has targeted him with his anti-corruption investigations. He's made it personal in a way. And in court, he was incredibly personal about Russia's president, not only accusing him of ordering his poisoning, but the language that he was using to refer to him as a coward, as a man cowering in his bunker, afraid of political opposition.

So Mr. Navalny said it was a show trial and I think he was expecting this result.

Sarah Rainsford in Moscow. So how the Russian government supporters view the handling of this case, could it be counterproductive for the Kremlin? Tim Frank spoke to Sergei Markov, a former member of parliament, with the ruling United Russia Party, which supports President Putin.

Usually in Russia will have such rules that if no violation of the rules by that, they liberated after just after 50 percent of the time next. So I predict that Alexei Navalny will be free after one year. And now the reason of this sentence is it. Before President Obama started his political career, Kubin businessman, he served as economic adviser to the Russian government of Kirov region. It was a corruption tip. The governor of the region, the chief former chief of the Noviny, she already sentenced to 10 years and spent already five years in a Russian prison because of corruption.

And Alexei Navalny took part in this corruption deal and he was sentenced. But the arrest was conditional. And now, because he violated the conditions of conditionalities, he's changed to the real artist. He is regarded by the West as a main opponent of Vladimir Putin, but he's not regarded in Russia.

OK, well, let's let's we can talk about the politics of this in a moment. The issue is he's been sent back to prison because he's been deemed to have violated the terms of his parole, where he was supposed to present himself at a at a police station every week or so for inspection.

He points out that for quite a lot of the time that he was unable to do that. He was in Germany recuperating from having been poisoned with a Russian military grade nerve agent for the poisoning about by now, which is a big falsification.

It was a falsification, but he's going to use this as a factor because it's not suspect they see him that one may be in the hospital. And nobody pretends that when he's been in Coloma, he can show up himself in hospital and left hospital in September 20th. So secret after all, when? November, December, almost 100 days. And he never showed up to himself. He's got in Russia as main political agent of the Western countries. Right.

So just to be clear, you think that the you think that the thousands of people who turned out to protest and were arrested right across Russia last weekend and the weekend before, they're all sort of the dupes of the West, are they?

You can call them as big political sect, but not a real part of the Russian population as they believe that they were caught between Western countries and Russia. Western countries are right and Russia is wrong. And Russia should recognize SIGIR warning or the Washington and Western countries.

I wonder actually if that is what is motivating them as opposed to them being fed up with low standards of living and rampant corruption among the political leadership.

Corruption exists in every continent for sure. Russia is absolutely not the corrupted country.

Sergei Markov, a former member of parliament with the ruling United Russia Party well away from politics now.

But staying with matters, Russian and the country's Sputnik V has become the latest coronavirus vaccine to show a high degree of effectiveness in large scale trials. The medical journal The Lancet has published results that suggest that it's more than 90 percent effective.

The vaccine was initially met with some controversy after it was rolled out last year before the final trial data had been released correal. Dimitriades is chief executive of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, which finances the vaccine.

I think it's very important that the results are very positive. It's 90 percent efficacy and we believe human is one of the vaccines for the mankind. And secondly, the spirit of partnership that we have. We have a partnership with AstraZeneca. We'll have a partnership with some other vaccines. But Russia wants to partner with other nations to produce a vaccine.

But the health journalist Natasha Loda, who works for The Economist newspaper in London, says Mr Dimitriades words shouldn't be taken at face value.

Through the end of last year, there was a really nasty Russian led global vaccine misinformation campaign aimed at vaccines produced by the West. And in fact, Mr Dimitri of last year was very keen to call the Oxford vaccine the monkey vaccine when it suited him. So I do think that if the Russians want to take credit for improving the lot of humanity, they need to put their vaccine misinformation campaign into reverse gear.

So whatever the spin, we do now know that Sputnik V is a vaccine that works.

I've been talking about it with our health reporter Jim Reed is interesting because this was, in fact, the first vaccine really back last summer in August to talk about being effective. And it wasn't proven at that point, but the Russian government sort of announced it anyway, picked up quite a bit of controversy and criticism over this was a lack of transparency because the Russian government was rolling out key. Workers in the Moscow area and in other parts of Russia before it had finished these phase three trials, so a lot of scientists in places like the UK, in the EU, in America were looking at this saying, you know, this is coming too early.

It's rushing it through. So the fact that now we've had these phase three trial results and it does look like a very significant trial. I mean, 20000 people at a number of hospitals and sites in Moscow, they're used to this. They've published it very interestingly in The Lancet, a very well respected British medical journal. And that's for a reason, because they're trying to kind of shrug off this reputation that this in some way wasn't so trustworthy. So in that respect, these results are quite important.

And Jim, we heard there from one of the people who's putting the money into this vaccine that he wants to mix and match with other vaccines.

What's the science behind? The science behind that is actually fairly reasonable. I mean, there are three vaccines being developed so far. This is the third which is published full phase three clinical data, which are all based on the same sorts of technology and all are based on this technology of kind of manipulating a common cold virus. Now, there's some evidence from the way that other vaccines are developed that if you offer two vaccines that are based on the same sort of idea, but a slightly different, you might be able to provoke a stronger immune response or one that is more long lasting.

And in fact, trials using Sputnik there and using the AstraZeneca Oxford vaccine are now expected to start later this month to try and prove that.

So we've got more vaccines, more successful vaccines, but more variants of coronavirus, a more variant of variant one coming out of the U.K. It's important to point out that every virus mutates and has variants.

And the fact that we seem to be focusing on these names countries, you know, the British variant, the Brazilian one, the South African one is largely probably because other variants in different countries haven't been picked up and analyzed yet. Already there's talk of a Californian variant now a German variant. So I don't think this is going to be anything new or anything that's going to go away. What's interesting, as you say today, is they've done some analysis of what's happening to the genetic make up of the British variants in the UK.

And it appears to be showing the same sort of mutations now that we're noticing in the South African and Brazilian variants that change in particular, we do think or scientists do think could make a vaccine potentially less effective. That sounds like very negative news. However, the fact that we're seeing what appears to be the same sorts of genetic changes could in fact, be good news because they are all making the same sorts of changes in the same sort of area that that makes it potentially easier to tweak a vaccine which can then deal with that change.

Jim Wright, to the United States now, where a group of Democrats from the House of Representatives has outlined the case against Donald Trump ahead of his Senate impeachment trial next week. Mr. Trump is, of course, charged with inciting a violent insurrection at the Capitol on January the 6th, something that his lawyers have denied.

Our correspondent Gary O'Donahue is following events in Washington and explained what the Democrats had been saying, really setting out the case against the president, suggesting that he sort of he whipped his supporters up into a frenzy, exhorted them into a frenzy, was their phrase, and pointed them like a loaded cannon at the Capitol on that day, January the 6th. And that's really all his actions up until that had been aimed at that. But there was a significant escalation, they say, of his rhetoric in the days running up to those events on January the 6th.

And they say he effectively broke his oath of office. He incited an insurrection. I mean, really, they're throwing the book at him and talking about it as a betrayal of historic proportions and that it should disqualify him from holding public office ever again. Mr. Trump's lawyers, as I said, say that the Senate doesn't have the authority to try him as a private citizen. It will go ahead, though, won't it?

Yes, it will go ahead. It'll start probably next Tuesday. We think the president has obviously put his response in his plea and if you like, rejecting the authority of the Senate, as you say, and also say that he has he's protected by free speech, but it doesn't look like it will be probably pretty brief. The last trial, of course, and he's only the first president ever to face two impeachment trials. The last one lasted more than 21 days.

This one is going to be considerably shorter. And in many ways, the evidence is already out. There isn't in the public are aware of it. They saw it on the day. They've seen his tweets and the videos. So it's going to be it's going to be quite dramatic, but it's not going to be anything that we don't already know. I don't think.

And briefly, Gary, if you would, where do we stand on the numbers that Democrats have got to sway a pretty big group of Republicans, something they've got to sway 17 in order to get a conviction.

It needs two thirds of the Senate. That doesn't look like that's going to happen. Particularly because Republicans have already voted once in the last couple of weeks on this constitutional issue and about 45 of them agreed that it was wrong constitutionally to put him on trial.

Gary O'Donahue in Washington. The British Second World War veteran captain, Sir Tom Moore, who raised tens of millions of dollars for health workers treating coronavirus patients, has himself died with the disease. He was 100 years old.

He was admitted to hospital with covid-19 on Sunday after needing help with his breathing. The Army veteran came to prominence last year by walking 100 laps of his garden in the run up to his 100 birthday during Britain's first national lockdown. His efforts turned him into a real celebrity. Queen Elizabeth is sending a private message of condolence. Here's our correspondent David Sillitoe.

It was in April of last year that 99 year old Tom Moore began a little challenge to the target, 100 laps of his garden.

And he hoped to raise some money with the target, 2000 pounds. And we seem to have got a little bit better than that.

By the time he reached his 100th birthday at the end of April, he'd raised more than 30 million pounds for NHS charities.

His 100th birthday was marked by an ARIA flypast.

I'm absolutely delighted with all the people like you who have come to wish me many happy birthday. It really is awesome.

Captain Tom was made an honorary colonel, which was then followed by a knighthood. He even had a number one single with Michael. Through the wind in the midst of lockdown, a pandemic sytems, good cheer and determination was for many inspirational.

On his 100 birthday, they had to take over the local school to show off his 140000 birthday cards. If he goes much further than he had, if nobody will visit. David Sillitoe reporting.

Still to come, why is Amazon, the company worth more than one point six trillion dollars?

But the Amazon rainforest, the greatest ecosystem on Earth, worth virtually nothing until that is, you cut it down, sell the wood and start farming the land?

Well, we look at calls for nature to be valued alongside profits when measuring economic success.

A new study from Oxford University says the coronavirus vaccine developed with AstraZeneca not only protects from severe disease, but also reduces transmission of the virus significantly. Researchers found that the jab provided good protection even when there was a gap of 12 weeks between the first and second doses. Michelle Roberts reports.

The analysis by researchers at Oxford University shows protection from the vaccine that they developed with AstraZeneca reaches around 76 percent after a first shot and he sustained for up to three months. The findings will provide reassurance about the UK's decision to leave a 12 week gap between doses in order to get more people immunized quickly rather than hold back stocks for second doses. The new research shows a second dose given by 12 weeks increases protection to eighty two point four percent. Tests also show the vaccine may substantially cut disease transmission by around 67 percent, something that scientists had hoped but had not been able to prove until now.

The European Commission president Ursula on the line has gone on the offensive over criticism about the slow pace of the EU's coronavirus vaccine rollout.

In an interview with several European newspapers, she hinted that other countries had gone too far, saying that the European Union took longer to negotiate contracts because it was not willing to compromise on safety and efficacy. Spain was one of the hardest hit countries in Europe when the first waves of covid-19 struck. And although the third wave has hit the country later than many of its neighbours, Spain is now starting to feel its force, with a total of nearly 60000 deaths registered so far.

And it's being affected by the controversy surrounding vaccine dose deliveries in the EU, as Guy Hedgecoe reports from Madrid.

In Madrid's Isabell Central Hospital, health care staff are being vaccinated. Among them is Claudio Lopez, working here in their Isabell handling their hospital and working as a nurse. I'm really very excited because I had my second vaccine and now I'm feeling really well at the moment. This is very important for everyone to have the vaccine because I think this is the beginning of the end of the end of the covid.

Health care workers and residents of care homes and their carers have been those receiving the jab in recent weeks. But problems with vaccine deliveries in the European Union have meant that the administration of doses is being prioritized even more than before. In Madrid, vaccine shortages mean that only second follow up jobs are currently being administered. Caveat Markel is a medical director of the hospital. We are not going to be able to meet our plan. The delay of the vaccination program is going to be visible on the number of patients that are going to get infected and the number of deaths.

The controversy in Europe over deliveries of vaccine doses has had relatively little political impact here in Spain. But there has been outrage due to a series of scandals caused by public figures who have apparently used their position in order to jump the queue and get vaccinated early.

These cases have angered ordinary Spaniards.

It's another winter. I no matter whether this is a disgrace, it's a social disgrace and a problem we're having in Spain. It is the kind of thing that you hear about in other areas of life.

But this time it's more visible to everybody that I'm seeing is just really tired of the situation. We are all just sick of it and we don't see the end. And I think it is really upsetting and it's really upsetting. That's like saying that you have to act really responsible and then the people that are in charge are not acting responsibly at all.

Here in Madrid, bars and restaurants are open, albeit with restrictions on opening times. In recent months, local authorities have been imposing and then lifting restrictions according to infection rates, as the country tries to keep normal life going as much as possible. Spain is trying to push through this latest wave of covid without introducing a full lockdown, and it's hoping recent problems with vaccine distribution won't stop it.

That was Guy Hedgecoe in Madrid.

Three opposition political parties in Ethiopia's TIKRAI region have said that more than 50000 civilians have been killed since the start of the conflict in November. They said numerous war crimes had been committed to with towns and villages destroyed by shelling.

Well, Ross reports the three opposition parties from Tigray warn that unless the international community intervenes within days to provide food and medicine, there could be a humanitarian disaster on a biblical scale. They say Ethiopian government soldiers and Eritrean troops have carried out numerous atrocities, including extrajudicial killings and gang rapes. With the Ethiopian government severely restricting access, we can't assess the true impact of this war. The UN refugee agency says the government's prevented its staff from reaching the town of Chiari.

There it believes thousands of people who'd fled a camp are sheltering without food or water.

Well, Ross, the United Nations Security Council has failed to agree a joint statement condemning the military takeover in Myanmar after China objected. The UN special envoy to Myanmar, Christine Streiner, had urged the Security Council to send a clear signal in support of democracy by condemning the actions of the military. Not a taufiq in Washington reports.

The statement drafted by the UK would have condemned the coup, called on the military to respect the rule of law and human rights and immediately release those unlawfully detained, a senior Security Council official said negotiations will continue in an effort to reach consensus on a statement. In particular, according to the official China, Myanmar's largest trading partner repeated its view that the council must not do anything to inflame the situation there, which it views as an internal issue.

Nader Taufiq. One company which has certainly benefited from the pandemic is the online retailer Amazon.

On Tuesday, it reported record profits in its latest quarterly figures, and it also announced that its founder, Jeff Bezos, will step down as chief executive later this year, instead becoming executive chairman.

Our US technology reporter James Clayton says that decision has come as a real shock.

He's missed the Amazon. It brought the company up from nothing to nearly two trillion dollar company, so I think the key thing to about Jeff Bezos is he's worth nearly 200 billion dollars. He's got lots of other interests. He wants to, like, colonize Mars. He's got this huge 10 billion dollar Earth fund that's designed to combat climate change. He owns The Washington Post. So I think what's happened here is he's just realized, look, I don't have to be CEO of this company for the rest of my life.

I have many other things I can do with 200 billion dollars. I think for Amazon, it's worth saying that he's not gone. He stepped aside and he'll still obviously be perhaps not so much involved in the day to day running of the company, but certainly strategically he'll still be there. So it may not mean much for the person who's replacing him comes from Amazon Web Services, which kind of suggests that that's where Amazon sees a lot of that future in cloud based computing, not necessarily online commerce, which is what you might think of when you when you think of Amazon.

But this is very, very shocking and certainly big news when it comes to big tech.

James Clayton, the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, and the naturalist Sir David Attenborough have welcomed the review, which has called for nature to be valued alongside profits when measuring economic success. The report by The Economist Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, warns that recent growth has come at a devastating cost to the environment. It says governments almost everywhere pay people more to destroy nature than to protect it. More from our chief environment correspondent, Justin Rowlatt. Here's the question.

Why is Amazon, the company worth more than one point six trillion dollars? But the Amazon rainforest, the greatest ecosystem on Earth, worth virtually nothing until that is, you cut it down, sell the wood and start farming the land.

Today's report attempts to resolve this contradiction. And Britain's greatest naturalist, Sir David Attenborough, has welcomed Professor Sampath.

Thus Gupta's review, saying if adopted by government, it should help avoid the disasters that currently threaten the very future of all life on this planet.

The report says We need to recognise that humanity is part of and not separate from the natural world. It recommends ditching GDP for a measure that reflects the true value of nature. Meanwhile, Professor Dasgupta says taxes and subsidies should also be directed to protecting ecosystems.

Contemporary economics does not take nature seriously. My review is arguing that nature needs to be embedded in our economic thinking.

Make no mistake, what he's proposing represents a fundamental attempt to transform the way our economies work.

Change won't happen immediately, but the hope is this will begin a serious international discussion about what we really value as our societies continue to encroach on the natural world as never before.

Justin Rowlatt there. I've just noticed that it's got a bit dark here in the state.

I think we need to turn on the light. Just a moment. Oh, that's better.

That, of course, was a switch and I suppose an early deal wouldn't quite make that sound.

But LEDs, light emitting diodes have been around for decades, but few people would have predicted just how big a role they've kind of play in so many aspects of our lives. Now, five men who helped develop them have won the prestigious Queen Elizabeth Prize, widely seen as a sort of Nobel Prize for engineering.

The five Nick Hallenbeck, George Crawford, Russell Dupree is Samuel Kazuki and Shuji Nakamura will share the award of nearly one and a half million dollars.

Here's our correspondent Jonathan Amos.

The genius of the Kiwi prize winners this year has literally lit up the world. Light emitting semiconductor devices are now all around us from household lamps and the screens on our phones and TVs to powerful lasers that cut metal and sanitizing equipment that will deactivate the coronavirus. The USA's first solid-state lighting, as it's called, have become myriad and ubiquitous. Hollandia Crawford deputy Akasaka Nakamura are recognized for pushing forward the technology over six decades. And while some users today have surprised even them, Rusty says his colleague Nick Hollenbach always knew LEDs had a big future.

He was interviewed by Reader's Digest that was published in 1963, predicting that eventually the semiconductor being down would be the ultimate lamp. So in 1963, he was predicting that incandescent bulbs were doomed. All of our lighting would come from semiconductors.

LEDs are so efficient, many countries are now mandating their use. And with 20 percent of all energy consumption going into lighting, this technology will play a big role in reducing wastage, helping us to meet our climate objectives. Jonathan Amos.

And that's all from us for now. But there will be an updated version of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics we've covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is Global Podcast at BBC Pochoda, U.K.. The studio manager today was Jonathan Grea. The producer was Leah McAffrey. The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Nick Miles. And until next time, goodbye.