BREXIT BILL CLEARS FINAL UK PARLIAMENTARY HURDLE AHEAD OF JANUARY 31 EXITBritain moved a step closer to its January 31 exit from the European Unionwhen the legislation required to ratify its deal with Brussels passed itsfinal stage in parliament on Wednesday.The bill will officially become law when it receives Royal Assent from QueenElizabeth, something that could happen as soon as Thursday.Earlier on Wednesday, the lower house of parliament, the House of Commonsoverturned changes the upper house, the House of Lords, had made to thelegislation, including a clause to ensure protections for child refugeesafter Brexit.Prime Minister Boris Johnson had refused to accept any changes to theWithdrawal Agreement Bill, which will enact Britain's departure from the EU,facing down opposition lawmakers who say he has hardened its terms.The Lords could have sought to reinstate the changes, but opted not to,allowing the legislation to clear its final hurdle.Johnson's Conservatives won a large majority in the House of Commons in ageneral election last month, enabling the government to bring an end to morethan three years of wrangling in parliament over Britain's EU exit.UN EXPERTS LINK SAUDI PRINCE TO HACKING OF AMAZON CHIEF'S PHONEA WhatsApp account belonging to Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed binSalman appears to have been used to hack into the cellphone of Jeff Bezos inan effort to "influence, if not silence" reporting on the kingdom by TheWashington Post, two United Nations human rights experts said Wednesday.Bezos, the billionaire chief executive officer of Amazon, who also owns ThePost, received an encrypted video from the crown prince loaded with digitalspyware that enabled surveillance of his cellphone starting in May 2018, theUN experts said in a statement.The new allegations against Crown Prince Mohammed, whose rise to power inSaudi Arabia has been punctuated by a wide-ranging crackdown on dissidentsat home and abroad, suggest that the kingdom's hacking and social mediaattacks have hit a wider range of targets than was previously known.In recent years, technology researchers and human rights groups havedocumented cases of operators who appear to be working for Saudi Arabiainfiltrating the devices of well-known Saudi dissidents and manipulatingsocial media in the kingdom to amplify voices praising Crown Prince Mohammedand drown out his critics.But targeting the cellphone of an American citizen who is one of the world'srichest businessmen would mark a clear escalation.The Saudi Embassy in Washington on Wednesday called the idea that thekingdom had hacked Bezos' cellphone "absurd."The hacking is particularly sensitive because of Bezos' ownership of ThePost, which at the time it was done was publishing coverage critical of thekingdom and had taken on Jamal Khashoggi, a dissident Saudi writer, as aregular columnist. Khashoggi had fled Saudi Arabia for the United States andoften criticized Crown Prince Mohammed in his columns.In their statement Wednesday, the U.N. experts also accused Saudi Arabia oflaunching vast social media campaigns to tar the image of Bezos after thekilling of Khashoggi.CHINA SUSPENDS ALL PUBLIC TRANSPORT IN WUHAN CITY AS CORONAVIRUS CASES CLIMBTO 571 WITH 17 DEATHSLess than a month after the first few cases of a new respiratory illnesswere reported in Wuhan, China, travelers have carried the virus to at leastfour other countries, including the United States. More than 500 people areknown to have been infected, at least 17 have died - and the world isbracing itself for what might come next.On Wednesday, experts at the World Health Organization decided to postponeuntil Thursday a decision on whether the current outbreak constitutes a"public health emergency of international concern," a label given to"serious public health events that endanger international public health" and"potentially require a coordinated international response."A vote by WHO's emergency committee was split down the middle, its chairmansaid, and the group concluded that it did not have enough information tomake a decision."The decision about whether or not to declare a public health emergency ofinternational concern is one I take extremely seriously, and one I am onlyprepared to make with appropriate consideration of all the evidence," Dr.Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO's director general, said at a news briefing.Adding that a WHO team was in China gathering information, he said, "We willhave much more to say tomorrow."But even as the WHO debated its decision, officials in China began closingtransportation links from and within Wuhan, China, the epicenter of theoutbreak. The move was a significant escalation in the country's attempts tocontain the spread of the virus as the Lunar New Year approaches and holidaytravel commences.Tedros and WHO officials at the briefing said they had not advised China toclose Wuhan, but nonetheless expressed support for the decision, saying itcould protect other parts of China and other countries.IMPEACHMENT: DEMOCRATS REJECT WITNESS SWAP IN TRUMP TRIALUS Democrats have ruled out a "witness swap" with Republicans in PresidentDonald Trump's impeachment trial.Lawmakers who are seeking to remove the president from office hope to heartestimony from his former National Security Adviser John Bolton.But Democrats refused any deal to allow the son of former US Vice-PresidentJoe Biden to be called as a witness.The trial could end next week, but Mr Trump's fellow Republicans control theSenate and are unlikely to oust him.Attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, MrTrump jokingly warned he might confront Democrats by coming to "sit right inthe front row and stare at their corrupt faces".He denies using US military aid as a bargaining chip in an attempt to prodUkraine into announcing an investigation to discredit his would-beDemocratic White House challenger, Mr Biden.Mr Trump has been touting corruption claims against Mr Biden, whose sonHunter held a lucrative board position with a Ukrainian gas firm while hisfather was US vice-president and in charge of American-Ukrainian relations.TRUMP TO ATTEND ANTI-ABORTION MARCH IN FIRST FOR US PRESIDENTPresident Donald Trump will become the first sitting president to addressthe anti-abortion March for Life in person with a planned trip to the rallyon the National Mall on Friday as he courts conservative voters before theNovember elections.The president has twice addressed the event via satellite from the RoseGarden, and Vice President Mike Pence spoke at the rally itself last year.Trump announced his planned attendance on Twitter.Organizers for the event said they were excited for Trump to join theprotesters, who visit the Capitol each year to mark the anniversary of theSupreme Court's landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that protected the rightto abortion."He will be the first president in history to attend and we are so excitedfor him to experience in person how passionate our marchers are about lifeand protecting the unborn," Jeanne Mancini, president of March For Life,said in a statement.N KOREA ABANDONS NUCLEAR PLEDGE, BLAMES US SANCTIONSNorth Korea has said it is no longer bound by commitments to halt nuclearand missile testing, blaming the United States' failure to meet a year-enddeadline for nuclear talks and "brutal and inhumane" US sanctions.North Korean leader Kim Jong Un set an end-December deadline fordenuclearisation talks with the United States and White House nationalsecurity adviser Robert O'Brien said at the time the US had opened channelsof communication. O'Brien said then he hoped Kim would follow through ondenuclearisation commitments he made at summits with US President DonaldTrump.Ju Yong Chol, a counsellor at North Korea's mission to the UN in Geneva,said that over the past two years, his country had halted nuclear tests andtest firing of inter-continental ballistic missiles "in order to buildconfidence with the United States". But the United States had responded byconducting dozens of joint military exercises with South Korea on thedivided peninsula and by imposing sanctions, he said."As it became clear now that the US remains unchanged in its ambition toblock the development of the DPRK and stifle its political system, we foundno reason to be unilaterally bound any longer by the commitment that theother party fails to honour," Ju told the UN-backed Conference onDisarmament.TOLD TRUMP WAR WITH IRAN WILL BE DISASTROUS: IMRAN KHANPakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday said he has told USPresident Donald Trump that a war with Iran would have disastrousconsequences.Asked whether Trump agreed with him, Khan said the US President did not sayanything but he probably understood what he meant."Afghanistan is yet to be resolved and Iran would be much bigger (if warstarts)," Khan said.Khan met Trump on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) summithere on Tuesday.Tensions between the US and Iran have escalated in the wake of the killingof powerful Iranian commander General Qasem Soleimani by America on January3."If there is conflict between Iran and the Western world it will be adisaster - it will cause poverty in the world - and who knows how long itmay go on. In my opinion it would be insanity," Khan said."I spoke to President Trump yesterday and I told him it would be adisaster," Khan said.The Pakistan Prime Minister also said he does not understand why countriestry to resolve their differences through military conflicts."The moment you start a military conflict, you don't know where it willfinish. It has unintended consequences," he said.GREECE ELECTS FIRST WOMAN PRESIDENTGreece's parliament on Wednesday elected the first woman president in thecountry's history, a senior judge with an expertise in environmental andconstitutional law.A cross-party majority of 261 MPs voted in favour of 63-year-old EkateriniSakellaropoulou, parliament chief Costas Tassoulas said.The new president, until now the head of Greece's top administrative court,the Council of State, will take her oath of office on March 13, he added.The daughter of a Supreme Court judge, Sakellaropoulou completedpostgraduate studies at Paris's Sorbonne university. She was also the firstwoman to head the Council of State.Although the president is nominally the head of the Greek state andcommander-in-chief, the post is largely ceremonial.UK FOR DIGITAL TAX DESPITE US WARNINGBritain's planned digital tax on tech giants will proceed as planned fromApril, United Kingdom Finance Minister Sajid Javid insisted Wednesdaydespite US threats of retaliatory tariffs. "We plan to go ahead with ourdigital services tax in April," Javid said at the Davos economic summit, asUS Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin warned that Washington would look toretaliate with a tariff on European Union auto imports.Javid described Britain's tax, seen as targeting especially United Statesgiants such as Amazon, Google and Facebook, as "proportionate" and"temporary".Addressing the annual World Economic Forum, he added: "It will fall awayonce there is an international solution."Also speaking in Davos on Wednesday, Mnuchin said: "If people want toarbitrarily put taxes on our digital firms we will consider putting taxesarbitrarily on car firms."