◼ IN BRIEF
● Global coronavirus cases have topped 266 million, and almost 5.3m people have died. Authorities around the world are imposing fresh restrictions to curb the spread of the omicron strain, closing nightclubs and schools and mandating vaccines for private-sector workers. ● The U.S. won’t send officials to the Winter Olympics in Beijing, which start on Feb. 4, citing human-rights abuses. China, which denies the allegations, has threatened the U.S. with unspecified retaliation for the diplomatic boycott. ● “Things we did not do in 2014, we are prepared to do now.” U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said President Joe Biden told Russia’s Vladimir Putin that the U.S. won’t stand by idly if Ukraine is invaded, a departure from the response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. ● Amazon.com’s cloud-computing arm suffered an outage…