for one pedpedophile, her long-e associate jeffrey epstein. and at the request of the russian government, joe biden and vladimir putin will speak by phone on thursday, about the military buildup of russian forces on ukraine s border. live, from cnn center, this is cnn newsroom with john vause. welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. we begin this hour with the pandemic, entering a third calendar year, now just days away, with covid infections at all-time highs. averaging more than 1 million a day worldwide, according to johns hopkins university. and the united states is averaging 300,000 daily cases, the highest number since the pandemic began. while there s a lot of uncertainty surrounding the omicron variant, there s agreement, the numbers are starting to rise.