| |  |  | The Reuters Daily Briefing | Thursday, January 28, 2021 by Linda Noakes and Nigel Stevenson | | | Good morning, . Here’s what you need to know. How far from GameStop to game over?
The battle between small-time traders and hedge funds that has shaken U.S. and European stock markets moved into Asia, with surges in several Australian companies squeezing another batch of financial institutions that have bet on the stocks falling.
The war began last week when famed short seller Andrew Left of Citron Capital bet against GameStop and was met with a barrage of retail traders betting the other way. Consequently, the video game chain rallied as much as 1,700% in two weeks, costing some large short hedge funds billions.
The squeeze has made Reddit required reading on Wall Street. Discussions on the social media forum fueled the action around individual stocks.
Calls for a probe are building. This week’s turmoil caught the attention of the White House, with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on her first full day on the job "monitoring the situation.”
Read our explainer on why regulators may scrutinize GameStop's stock surge.
Wall Street saw its worst sell-off since October as funds scrambled to sell their positions in stock market darlings, such as Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, to make up for surging losses from bets made against struggling smaller companies.
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Europe's fight to secure COVID-19 vaccine supplies sharpened on Thursday when Britain demanded that it receive all the shots it had paid for after the European Union asked AstraZeneca to divert supplies from the UK.
India says it has contained spread
India said on Thursday it had curbed an increase in infections, with a fifth of its districts reporting no new cases for a week.
The country of 1.35 billion has recorded the highest number of cases in the world after the United States, though the rate of infection has come down significantly since a mid-September peak.
WHO team in Wuhan leaves quarantine
A World Health Organization-led team investigating the origins of the pandemic left its quarantine hotel in Wuhan on Thursday to begin field work, two weeks after arriving in the Chinese city where the virus emerged in late 2019.
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New Zealand, Vietnam and Taiwan rank as the top three in a COVID Performance Index of almost 100 countries for their successful handling of the pandemic, with Britain and the United States near the bottom of the pile.
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Pandemic spurs quest to enroll more Black Americans in vaccine trials. Enrollment of Black people in clinical trials is a particular challenge. Mistrust runs high, in part because of the nation’s history of unethical practices in medical research on African Americans. | | | | | | | Quote of the day "We warn those 'Taiwan independence' elements: those who play with fire will burn themselves, and 'Taiwan independence' means war" Wu Qian Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman China sharpens language towards Taiwan | | | | Video of the day  A Bernie doll made $40,000 for charity on eBay | | | | And finally… Wanted: bison rangers for woodland in the Garden of England  A Bison is seen at Wildwood Trust, Wild Animal Park, Blean Woods, Canterbury, Britain, January 27, 2021. REUTERS/Paul Childs Conservationists in England are looking for the country’s first ever rangers to look after European bison, Europe’s largest land mammal, which is being introduced to Kent more than 15,000 years after its ancestors roamed the landscape. | | | Thanks for spending part of your day with us. | | | | | |
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