play an important role ringback. as mass vaccinations begin in the u.s. the number of americans killed by the coronavirus passes 300000. barbara sorry you're watching al-jazeera live from london also coming up i cast my vote for president joe biden joe biden takes another step closer to the white house says electoral college voters formally confirmed his victory in the presidential election the u.n. says more than 400000 people have now fled their homes in northern most of the

fighters have seized entire towns and the storm washes away one of australia's most famous speeches but there is better news from the great barrier reef. it's a tragedy on the scale of events that have reshaped america and the world for decades coronavirus has now killed more than $300000.00 people in the u.s. the country statistically hardest hit by the pandemic it comes on the day that thousands of people there have received their 1st vaccines a new york intensive care nurse who was treated some of the sickest cove in 1000 patients for months was the 1st person in the u.s. to receive the vaccine made by pfizer and biotech regulators approved it for emergency use on friday and almost 3000000 doses have since been shipped to right across the country medical workers and elderly care home residents are being

prioritized during the rollout. different from any other. thing where. i would like to thank the workers. who've been doing their part and they're all over the world. are you. really. i feel like i'm in. well canadians have also started receiving their pfizer bio on take vaccine with 30000 doses expected to arrive this week the 1st batch has been sent to the province's of on tardio and quebec both of which have borne the brunt of the country's outbreak health care workers and care home residents are being prioritized after 80 percent of all coronavirus deaths were recorded in care facilities. but staff at the white house will not be among the 1st people to be

immunized essential government personnel are expected to receive the job within the 1st 10 days but president trump says he's asked for that to be adjusted a list specific people are deemed in need of the vaccine. meanwhile in europe the netherlands has followed to germany and the now nationwide lockdown as coronavirus cases surge across the continent the measures will be imposed throughout the festive period cutting short the busy christmas shopping season meanwhile millions of people here in london are also said to be placed under tougher restrictions as john a home every ports. london's festive preparations dealt a blow to the capital moving to tighter restrictions that will ban households from mixing and see the hospitality sector shut down again the health secretary warns that a new variant of the virus might in part be behind fast rising infection rates the

medical advice that we have is that it is highly unlikely that this new variant will impinge the vaccine and the impact of the vaccine but we will know that in the coming days and weeks as a vaccine this as the new strand is cultured. london joins much of the rest of the country under tears 3 restrictions a government plan to relax these measures for a few days over christmas itself is fueling fears of a 3rd wave in the new year there have to do what they have to do it's a shame though that things have been left to the last minute this is something that in. the u.k. is far from alone in europe to the christmas lights signal festive cheer but there's not a lot of it about french hotel and restaurant workers in paris protested for the right to work their industry shut since the end of october and won't reopen until late in january. in italy the government is debating tougher measures after an

easing of restrictions saw shoppers pouring onto the streets on the weekend the country overtook britain to become the european nation with the highest official death toll more than 64 and a half 1000 italians have died. no such debate in germany set to go back into lockdown on wednesday with the closure of non-essential shops and schools until january the 10th in the netherlands they're about to do the same. as we have 600 deaths a day that's no joke i mean i'm 65 and i'm healthy touch wood but i'd like to stay that way and so now we all have to withdraw bit. even though that's not what i want . in the u.k. the rollout of the. vaccine continues the 1st country in europe to do so a flurry of excitement in recent weeks suggested the pen demick was nearly over christmas besieged by new restrictions proves it's not jono al-jazeera.

let's go back to the united states and speak to patty cool hand who joins us live now from washington d.c. so passy in the u.s. the vaccine was approved on friday already being used today on monday tell us a little bit about the rollout all of the facts you know cross the united states. well it's been pretty fascinating if you watch the american cable channels you watch cameras glued to fed ex trucks leaving factories all across the country following them with security and seeing them loaded on to planes and people cheering is the 1st vaccines were in fact given right now there's about $2900000.00 doses of the pfizer vaccine that they say are going to be shipped out immediately and those are mostly going to hospitals because the pfizer vaccine has to be kept an ultra cold conditions and hospitals tend to have the refrigeration system and the government has decided the very 1st people who need to get this vaccine are the people who are suffering so much dealing with all these covert patients so we're

seeing doctors nurses respiratory therapist people who work in hospitals people clean hospitals they're going to get the 1st vaccines along with people who live in long term nursing home facilities so that's happening right now they think that they can maybe get 20000000 doses into the arms of people by the end of this year so we'll wait and see you know it was a hopeful day after so many months of just depressing headlines day after day of the bizarrely it kind of came with that the pressing headline as well the optimism of today because now the u.s. has surpassed 300000 deaths which is a pretty shocking number how is that news being welcomed by people there. it is a remarkable number but i mean really if you think about it we have seen over the last month record breaking days 1st it was 3000 dead in a day now it's 300000 dead since the pandemic and i think most health benefits using health experts would have told you at the beginning of this if the end total

was more than $300000.00 then you've done something very wrong what we've seen in this country is the politicization of the virus and so we see the president saying don't wear masks don't worry about the virus keep the economy open and then you see democrats put on a mask put in restrictions were seen because the federal government hasn't had a really big response we're seeing each individual states basically deciding how their states are going to handle it so you've got states in the dakotas that are run by republicans who've been not wanting to cancel giant motorcycle festivals which were a super spreader event or even telling people to wear masks and then you see in many democrat run states they're shutting down parts of the economy and trying to get ahead of this virus but really it's at the beginning of this if you think about it we saw major lockdowns cross everywhere that was affected they locked it down the federal government sent people money we don't see that anymore and the problem is when it was just a few hot spots they could bring in staff for those hospitals that were being

overrun like new york and california now the entire country is a hot spot just to give you one statistic 200 hospitals are at full capacity in this country more than a 3rd of americans live in places where their hospitals are running ridiculous short of intensive care beds in one state they've already given the ok to ration care meaning doctors decide who has a chance to live and who probably is going to die and so here's the concern the numbers are just growing exponentially what we're seeing is what officials said it was going to happen they said if you travel for thanksgiving and you go see your gramma and you all sit in the house unmasks you're going to see a spread we saw millions of americans take to the skies take to the trains. going into their relatives houses now we're seeing what analysts said we would see which is a gigantic spike and dr anthony fauci the lead infectious disease expert in this country says we're going to see a spike on top of the spike if people don't stay home for the upcoming christmas holiday so it's an optimistic day on

a really really grim milestone at the same time it really is pascall hang with the latest there from washington d.c. patty has always thank you. staying in the u.s. joe biden is moving a step closer to the white house says the u.s. electoral college convenes state by state to formally confirm his victory it's one of the last steps to finalize the outcome of november's election each state has already certified its result giving joe biden the win and the electorate are expected to reflect that outcome officials in georgia pennsylvania and nevada have already voted for the democrat trump had sought to overturn the results in all 3 states and the electors in california are now casting their votes which will push biden over the threshold to clinch the presidency. well nationwide the electoral college has 538 members but each state's number of electors is based on the size of

its population to win a candidate needs at least 270 votes joe biden beat donald trump 53062232 but electors can also defy the choice of their state's voters and cast their ballots for somebody besides the winner they're known as faithless electors they can be penalized by state authorities trump would need at least $38.00 of these to defect to hold on to the presidency that is unlikely to happen though as electors are hard core loyalists picked by the state's winning party so it would require democratic electors to vote for trump but she returns he joins us live now from wilmington delaware do you think we're going to get any surprises over the next few hours or do you think it's a given that we will see joe biden officially declared the winner of the election.

very unlikely to see any prizes that's not to say however that now that the electoral college has voted there might not be further surprises down the road i'll explain that in a moment we are expecting joe biden to speak in a few hours from here and wilmington as a result of this vote say look the battle for the soul of america has now been won we can now turn the page the the various checks and balances of american democracy have held because after all as you said although the states did certify his victory where he did he won the election is have voted as they were expected to win that in the lower courts trump has lost almost every case that he brought and many of those judges were republican appointed the supreme court some of his own appointees rejected the donald trump campaigns arguments out of hand so biden will make that statement about you know i can now we can we can move on however it's not over yet

because the next stage is january the 6th when all of these electoral college votes end up and kept counted in congress and certified in congress and there are rumblings that some republicans may make another last symbolic stand it's thought depending on whether donald trump puts his weight behind the symbolic stand and that weren't necessarily change anything except for continue this narrative which will exist no matter what the results of the election officially are that that dubai has stolen the election when you look at the polls 80 percent of voters think that biden has stolen stolen this election number 73000000 people voted for biden so that's a sizable chunk of people places and this will now remain and i mean there are memories of how of how donald trump victory was immediately did legitimized by the clinton camp when he was immediately dismissed as having been appointed basically by vladimir putin so there is that element of revenge but it's also that along with the donald trump now how is this power which will remain no matter what we just

don't know quite what he's going to. do with that because that huge chunk of the republican base a cylinder even to a large number of them so committed maybe time to move on but not to forget this was a we're going to see how the old right now uses that moving forward and what effect that has on the republican party itself. should that 80 percent of trump voters are still not convinced that biden is the legitimate president but when it comes to the republican leadership have they pretty much accept that now that joe biden is the president and are any of them still supporting trump's attempts to legitimize the election. funnily enough we've been scanning our twitter feeds precisely because a number of senior republican senators have said once joe biden crosses the 270 threshold which may be any minute now we will begin calling him president elect including so that majority leader mitch mcconnell has crossed that yes we expect in california to help him do that at any moment now at least one republican senator

john thune has just said yes once it's to 70 i will but remember for other members of the house in particular but also in the senate there's a huge republican base if they if they desert trump now they can expect to be prime rate pretty quickly it when they run for reelection it's a it's a real bouncing out that they have now so again trump has that power we don't know whether trump is going to use it but we do know he's going to continue the narrative for as long as possible but we don't know whether that's for his own political aims whether it's revenge for the for russia gate whether it's financial for the future there was an article saying the people around trump say he tells them he just wants to be part of the conversation for now he has made a decision on his future but as long as that base is believes that trump has been slighted and trump says i have been slighted he's been tweeting all day about well the republican party you know he's a lot of members of the republican party are going to think twice about crossing trump certainly not leaving the political scene any time soon she had with the

latest from wilmington delaware she had thank you. still to come in this half hour still no answers for these protesters now the caretaker prime minister won't take questions over the group blast. in south korea restricting free speech in a bid to start talks with north. there's just been some pretty vicious weather off the coast of east australia neighbor has been described as the equivalent of catching road cycling i wasn't cycling but it certainly was stormy we had waves forces 10 metres high that rather low and that nobody whips up the sea gives you folks on the beaches in the sunshine coast the gulf coast coastal erosion down in byron bay this is soft christiansand just washed

away because this is not the 1st storm of the season inland it is more obvious from the amount of rain that fell it is one in 100 year event in a half a meter of rain with a raise not quite as bad now nor is the wind it's all going south through sydney's as renewed in new south wales as things improve in brisbane melbourne same time has seen a rise in temperatures could be 2 days of 30 degrees that were lost because the rain heads down towards eastern victoria and a.c.t melbourne stand about $23.00 now that is boris where it should be the average is about 20 says be a 10 degree drop in terms of showers get to you on thursday or friday equally we can talk about temperatures on the northern side of the equator a drop of about 30 degrees means minus 55 to start the day in the siberian arctic clearly it's not as cold as a cold air leaks out across the sea of japan the sea but it produces huge amounts of snow for most of mainland japan.

a city with a drug problem. in our neighborhood consumed by traffic. transformed. into. street and it's. out on the street part of the viewfinder latin america series. the in the old. of a back here's a reminder of the top stories on al-jazeera vaccinations against the coronavirus of

started in the u.s. and canada and new york intensive care nurse was the 1st person in the west with thousands of other caregivers prioritized to receive the job more restrictions are being imposed in europe the dutch prime minister says his country will close for 5 weeks and london will be moved into the u.k.'s highest restriction level of state joe biden's u.s. election when is being further confirmed as the electoral college casts the results from each state officials in georgia pennsylvania and nevada have already voted for biden. at least 400000 people have now fled their homes in northern mozambique has fighters linked to ice will burn villages kidnap civilians and seize entire towns some of them a found shelter at this camp in the province which is home to a multi-billion dollar natural gas project the un's refugee agency has warned that

the crisis will spill over the country's borders unless mozambique's neighbors step in leaders from zimbabwe south africa botswana and tanzania and hold talks with mozambique and officials and the capital. alan castle is head of the mozambique and branch of doctors without borders he says getting access to the space communities is proving difficult. well the moment there are 50000000000 cells. but then some of them might still be if you could do which because. it's so dark out of the book and also in the. in the most so this we were talking about we don't know exactly what the groups seeger's in the. world is or a group. and a 1000 people and yet they're moving. most of the time now they're moving from one place on the trees because of that. we look for more protection and

will be the parental government to set the. terms and this is a. good suit because where we are really think so of course is if you go to. look at basically people who may be reading. nigeria's federal police force says it's for investigators have been the point to help find hundreds of missing school boys a manhunt spin underway in katsina state since friday night when government stormed the state secondary school in the town of calcutta the state governor says 333 students are still unaccounted for while the nigerian president's office says that at least 10 boys were abducted parents of missing students have been protesting demanding that their children be found. aid has begun to arrive in ethiopia's northern tikrit region after weeks of fighting it comes as the lifting of

a media blackout reveals what life is like for the people still living there volunteers from the international committee of the red cross are distributing medical supplies blankets and clothes residents are now reporting of food and fuel shortages with price hikes for basic necessities including water and it's thought that up to a $1000000.00 people have fled after fighting between federal and regional troops. lebanon's caretaker prime minister is refusing to be questioned over the devastating explosion at the port of beirut has sent the abol is charged with negligence over the blast but he says the investigating judge is playing political games with that the zoster that killed 200 people say the hold of reports from. the rule of law is what these people are demanding they came to the palace of justice to show support for a judge who is facing a political backlash for charging the caretaker prime minister has stand and former ministers with negligence over the beirut port explosion fadi so when it was

supposed to question them this week but the defendants accuse him of violating the constitution by overstepping his powers and are refusing to comply it says me either he takes a decision that shows that he is truly working for justice in lebanon or he don't do that and the shield that the whole decision that he took and everything that happened in the past few weeks was just another scenario that case is now politicized leading politicians and religious officials friends and foes rallied behind accusing so when of bypassing parliament and are calling his decision selective justice. some say so one could have avoided criticism if he explained that more officials will be charged judges. is the jurisdiction to indict to. file a claim against anybody once the judge has

submitted to the parliament no i think he has the total and complete jurisdiction jurisdiction over the port was in the hands of many security agencies ministries and political parties and the ammonium nitrate blamed for triggering the explosion was stored in warehouse 12 since late 2013. that is why some politicians believe the charges are about settling political scores they question why former ministers linked to president michel aoun for example have not been charged the president has the night accusations that he intervened in the judicial probe the families of the $200.00 people killed believe charges of negligence are not enough and that many more officials need to provide answers. we want justice for the blood of the victims we want to know who caused the death of

our children we are with you so when in a country with a history of a lack of accountability and the judiciary long accused of being politicized this is uncharted territory but justice here is now at stake center beirut. south korea's national assembly s past the new law making it illegal to fly propaganda balloons into the north it's seen as an effort to ease tensions and revive denuclearization talks but as pride reports from so it's controversial for many people in the south. branding them as human scum north korea has long been enraged by defectors releasing propaganda messages into its territory activists have regularly sent leaflets by balloon or in rice filled bottles to float across the waters separating the 2 koreas the issue came to a head earlier this year with the north destroying going into korean liaison office on its side of the demilitarized zone and cutting all hotline communications with

the south in a bid to restore relations with north korean leader kim jong un south korea's liberal president moon j n has tried to prevent the propaganda or activities the defectors have accused him of violating their rights to free speech. as long as kim jong un continues to threaten south korea with nuclear weapons and to suppress the people of north korea we will continue to release our leaflets under this new law or offenders will now face up to 3 years in prison and sauza as of dollars in fines it's not known how north korea will respond and quickly president moon remains optimistic as when he addressed the virtual un general assembly in september. the republic of korea has been steadfast in making relentless efforts to achieve denuclearization and establish permanent peace on the korean peninsula with north

korea still largely isolated by the international community and by the global pandemic president moons options for reviving into korean relations are limited but by passing this legislation he'll be hoping to at least keep those hopes alive robert bright al jazeera so. heavy storms battering australia's east coast are washed away a popular tourist beach the main beach at byron bay had already been depleted but it's now all but disappeared into the sea a heavy band of wind and rain generated by an intent. slow pressure system off the coast brought $700.00 millimeters of rain in just 48 hours. but in some better news from australia don't we all need some of that scientists are using i.v.'s to help save the great barrier reef instead of helping create baby is it's being used to grow and transplanted new coral in one of the world's most endangered ecosystems alexandra briars has more. who they may not be the most

vibrant but these corals are healthy and resilient and represent a major lifeline for the most spectacular ecosystem of its kind on the planet. they're part of the very 1st trial of in vitro fertilization for corals or coral i.v.'s. coral large by our collective during what are called mass spawning events they're rare annual moments linked to the cycles of the moon then baby corals are cultivated in floating nursery pools before being transplanted onto damaged areas of the reef. 4 years later the original population has grown large and even survived coral bleaching events. this proves that the lava restoration take works just as we predicted and we can grow very large corals from tawney

microscopic larvae within just a few years. scientists say the success of this project is critical for the great barrier reef the un listed world heritage site runs more than 2000 kilometers along australia's north east coast but it's being severely damaged by climate change and ocean warming it's lost more than half of its coral in the past 3 decades impacting many other species that depend on it at the beginning of december its status was downgraded to critical and deteriorating that prompted environmental experts to call on the australian government to step up its efforts to protect the reef it's a clear climate. what we. mediate in significant we don't need to be chary no more and we need to be glass. and we need to be watching. leadership as well broad policy change may take longer

to achieve but harrison and his team say they're optimistic their technique will work. soon these will be the world's 1st transplanted coral populations to start reproducing on their own. and it's hoped they'll start to really grow what's been lost on the great barrier reef alexandra byers al-jazeera. and now a reminder of the top stories on al-jazeera the 1st americans and canadians have been vaccinated against the corona virus a new york intensive care nurse was the 1st person to be inoculated in the u.s. with thousands of other caregivers prioritize that to receive the jab but this good news comes too late for meddling with several states still in the grip of a post thanks.