yes there could be another. child. now within reach of those seeking caleb's. those toxic substances. that many invisible thread on al-jazeera. 'd coronavirus cases surge across europe pressure mounts on regulators to approve a vaccine for use as soon as possible this while in the u.s. a 2nd vaccine is close to getting the go ahead even as intensive care units are running out of space in several areas. as a whole raman you're watching al-jazeera life my headquarters here in doha coming up on the program. and we will control the senate. president elect joe

biden campaigns in georgia in a bid to boost the democrats in runoff races crucial for control of the upper chamber. also a faction of boko haram says it was behind the abduction of hundreds of school children in northern nigeria. and scientists are tracking a rogue antarctic ice berg that's on a collision course with the island of south georgia. welcome to the program several nations in europe are facing tough choices in the fight against the coronavirus cases a surging ahead of the christmas period with fears that increased travel could accelerate the spread but new restrictions will hit businesses there the past day has also brought new hope that vaccines could be administered in several countries a soon as next week the team barbara has more from brussels. in brussels they're

dreaming of a busy christmas shops reopened in belgium on tuesday despite a recent rise in covered 19 cases but bars and restaurants have to stay closed shop keepers here in belgium are hoping to make the most of the reopening but with daily covered 19 infections were easing and the reproduction rated almost one the government is not ruling out bringing in new restrictions at the end of this week. over the border in the netherlands they've gone into a 5 week lockdown closing all non-essential shops as well as schools prime minister insists that rising infection rates make it essential to in his words bite through this very sour apple before things get better. it's totally understandable the numbers. if this wasn't done the consequences cannot be neglected. or locked down is not really dissolution of a strict enforcement not compulsory facemask even the coronavirus at temperature should be checked. but there is new hope at the prospect of mass vaccinations

across europe after pressure from the german government the european union's regulate free body is set to approve the pfizer biotech vaccine next monday ursula von der lion president of the european commission tweeted i welcome the e m a bringing forward its meeting to discuss the pfizer buy on take vaccine before christmas likely that the 1st europeans will be vaccinated before the end of 2020. germany hopes to vaccinate up to $4000000.00 citizens by the end of the year but with hundreds still dying from the corona virus every day it's bringing international locked down on wednesday. in france they've lifted a lot down but they're bringing in a nighttime curfew and bars and restaurants remain closed tuesday so members of the cultural industries protests angry that places like museums and theaters and also allowed to open the number 3 to the huge numbers of cinemas in theaters that will close its catastrophic person will no longer be the culture city it was before the lockdown and you know you can't say one sector is essential and another is not

there's no evidence of clusters in theatres and cinemas now the government's advice in people to quarantine before meeting up at christmas because. scientific can't sleep and i view that as reasonable if you can self confine for 8 days before christmas if you can it's not possible for everyone across europe the message from governments is the same please be careful over christmas so the new year can be a better one knitting barber al-jazeera brussels. britain's prime minister is under pressure to reconsider plans to ease krone virus restrictions over the christmas period and the current measures up to 3 households will be allowed to mix over the 5 day festive season and the review was called for the 2 leading medical journals warned the decision to relax the rules was rash and would cost many lives a decision is expected by the end of the week or meanwhile travel restrictions are

due to come into force in the british capital at midnight local time jonah hole has more from london. tonight spiraling rates of infection around the london area and the southeast it some places infection rates doubling in 7 days we're told that there is this particularly virulent variant of the virus that's been identified in part responsible for that fast uptick in infections and then this rather in congress situation where the government is lifting all restrictions for a 5 day period over christmas to allow families to get together in their homes to mix together and it sparked real concern about what comes down the line beyond christmas possibly a 3rd wave in january maybe even a 3rd lockdown real criticism aimed at the government not least on tuesday from 2. preeminent medical journals in this country both internationally respected that have issued a very rare joint editorial warning the government of what is at stake here saying

simply that if people do get together people will die most likely elderly relatives predicting that the caseload for the national health service after christmas will be 40 times higher than it was at the beginning of the 2nd lockdown back in the autumn and urging the government not to blunder it says into another era so lots of these voices now aimed at the government urging change that it sounds like there might be some tweaks in the offing the government and the other nations of the u.k. discussing the possibility of tweaking these rules and one minister earlier on in the day admitting that look all coronavirus measures are under review all the time . a 2nd coronavirus vaccine is set to be given approval in the u.s. this week regulators say the job produced by the drug firm maternal is safe and highly effective if an independent panel gives it the go ahead on thursday it would make the u.s. the 1st country to approve 2 vaccines tests showed the maternal vaccine is more than 94 percent effective when 2 shots the taken $28.00 days apart. in

our life in los angeles with a very low. begin. with the real. estate that your. yes that's right so failed the system is really approaching its breaking point very quickly the numbers in california and across the united states are staggering 42000 new cases of covert 19 reported on monday in california that broke all previous existing records i mean cal in california and the nation's largest county los angeles county 10000000 people live here how many i.c.u. units intensive care unit beds are left in los angeles county less than 100 and in some counties in california east of here and to the north the number has dropped to

0 in at least one state the state of mississippi the health authorities there are reporting that they have completely run out of intensive care unit beds the governor of california gavin newsom in a briefing earlier today spoke of authorizing the purchase and distribution of 40000 body bags as he tried to impress upon people the importance of abiding by the stay at home orders that are in effect in this state and not traveling or gathering in family groups during the current hanukkah holiday season which ends on friday and the upcoming christmas holiday next week now as we know the fires are vaccine was approved several days ago and hundreds of thousands of doses are being taken around the country and administered with the doctors nurses hospital staff and other health workers in the front lines today dr anthony found out she in an

interview said that he believed it was a matter of national security importance for the. president elect joe biden who is 78 years old and his vice president elect kamel harris to receive the vaccine as soon as possible and biden told reporters he would do so and he would do so publicly so while rob thanks very much simpler runnels live in los angeles for us well the day after his presidential win was verified by the electoral college joe biden has traveled to the state of georgia to campaign for 2 democratic candidates in a runoff that will determine control of the senate now the republicans have a narrow majority in the upper chamber and the democrats need to win both races in january to flip control i thought republicans win either contests they would maintain power in the senate allowing them to block biden's legislative agenda folks you know you all did something extraordinary in november you voted in

record numbers you voted to approve the lives of every georgian and you voted as if your life depended on it well guess what now you got to have to do it again come january 5th you've got to vote in record numbers again well earlier the man whose power the democrats are seeking to ricci's through the georgia race to senate majority leader mitch mcconnell finally a knowledge joe biden's victory the electoral college spoke so today i want to congratulate president elect joe biden the president elect is no stranger to the senate he's devoted himself to public service for many years i also want to congratulate the vice president elect our colleague from california senator harish beyond our differences all americans can take prothero our nation has a female vice president elect for the very 1st. can be held at all white house

correspondent is live for us now in atlanta georgia so we have a very happy president elect kimberly but as we have just been saying you know his focus really has to be on georgia for so many reasons. yeah primarily that if you want to get anything done he needs to take control of the senate with those 2 very pivotal senate seats so that's why joe biden is here he knows that his agenda is really riding on it and winning those seats in the runoff election that will take place on january 5th now as you can see behind me and not a lot of early voters here at this polling station so he's got a bit of work to do in terms of getting people to come out but there still are a number of weeks until that runoff race is officially wrapping up so he's got some time but at the same time what he needs to do is convince voters who came out historic numbers in november to do it again and here's the problem there typically

is low turnout in these special elections or runoff elections as so that's the challenge because joe biden flipped the state georgia by just 12000 votes when i say flip what does that mean it means that typically this is a republican stronghold it went to joe biden this time around but in terms of that senate race there is certainly an uphill climb for the democrats who again are trying to take over those 2 republican seats so that not only will democrats control the house of representatives as they do right now but also the white house and they hope the senate so that there is really no effort to stop any of the agenda items for joe biden can believe your republican president or if you're a democratic president of the united states no one if you're supporting them wants to see a lame duck president so you can use it his executive powers the interesting thing about joe biden he's a consensus money house would to with republicans in the past if he doesn't win these seats in georgia do you think they're all republicans that would actually

work with him after what has been a rather. past 4 years. you know every president whence they become president they say that they want to unify the country but as we saw in the last 4 years and even before that when barack obama was in office we didn't see a lot of evidence of congress working together and there's really no expectation that this is going to be any different even as joe biden was delivering his speech here in atlanta talking about wanting to be a president for all americans he was continuing to take shots at the president that $74000000.00 americans still for the most part support or at least did support on november 3rd so this is the challenge and while there are many like mitch mcconnell who are now embracing president like biden's victory there are many more that are saying that they still won't accept biden's when in fact while the electoral

college is not made this official congress still needs to ratify it on january 6th and well it's not expected to have any problems there could be some shenanigans or stunts in congress by some republicans who want to try and prolong batter delay that in some way they don't have the numbers to stop joe biden's victory but certainly they can make it more difficult so that's what we see happening right now even as the top republican mitch mcconnell is signaling that it's time to move on for the update good to get your insight that can be helped at all white house correspondent for us in atlanta georgia thank you well still ahead here on al-jazeera a former presidential rival is all set to meet joe biden's cabinet will have more intrigued by this choice the transportation secretary. this italian also his returning from his highest award a form a government minister will tell us why she's following him.

winter came into the u.s. and canada fairly quickly he's gone south quite a long way south temperature wise at least so loud some snow to come some ice this is icicles formed in the subzero air on the shores of lake superior in wisconsin such a situation the air is still cold even if the waves aren't big anymore if you look at this temperature regime from north to south these are low temperatures even for this time of the year about 4 degrees below normal in new orleans but you know we're talking about not getting above freezing in the midwest and increasing that's the case in new england new york at the moment 4 degrees in the sun these are for this snow is gathering once again heading towards arkansas so it's going to give another few centimeters i would have thought and same time of the pacific seaboard the big storm is expanding bringing snow to the cascades the rockies and rain near

the coast but the same time as snow starts to rebuild itself that looks like a pretty big winter storm potential again in new england more than we've had so far new york shows it the temp should dropping down you've got 1st of all snow then snow with a roll wind accompanied on friday plus 2 to minus 4 out in the sunshine what a lovely picture and there it is disappearing out into the atlantic if you're interesting. was. i was raised in france. these are my grandparents. these are my parents and this is mean. fighting both isis and as of. the 1st of a 2 part epic tale of a remarkable family. the father the son and the jihad.

run on al-jazeera. where. the world. welcome back you're watching al-jazeera with me the whole robin a reminder of our top stories several nations in europe are still deciding whether to ease or tighten restrictions ahead of the end of year holiday period health experts say lock downs are needed to curb increased travel and a surge in cases but others are warning it'll come at the cost of business is also a 2nd quarter virus vaccine is set to be given approval in the u.s. this week regulators say that produced by the drug for maternal is safe and highly effective and the u.s. president elect joe biden has been campaigning for the democrats in the state of

georgia ahead of 2 runoff elections next month that if the republicans win either contests they maintain power in the senate allowing them to block by his legislative agenda. president joe biden is expected to appoint one of his former rivals to a key cabinet position peter. previously of south bend indiana has been tipped to head the transportation department let's get more on this and she had a chance he's in wilmington delaware a familiar face and a young political blood has been picked as the secretary this a pleased the democratic base in some areas. and far be it for me to correct you there are familiar face perhaps not was familiar name if you was reading it all the time judge. he often says hash. yes these are really a face people will be happy as is often the case with biden's picks perhaps some of

the people who will be most happy may not be the people you'd expect but people judge did capture that national international attention with what was initially a very successful primary run for the democratic nomination but he flamed out completely his message was very much the future my face is my message and. and i'm sure we'll have that sort of thing this week when joe biden nominates and the problem is all for obama and the disappointment that so many felt about his presidency you actually need policies to back that up and say look i have fresh thinking and i'm going to do something and as it turned out the millennial who is particularly trying to attract didn't find that in his policy platform they preferred the face of the future to be the oldest face but he started us so people to judge his campaign flames flames out he also makes terrible mistakes in the primaries particularly with the african-american community and after a while the democratic establishment says german look you have to drop out of the race if you don't drop out and bernie sanders wins this and not joe biden we will

remember this. he drops out of the race now it's payback time and there's that american political concept of failing upwards and we've heard for weeks now that he's been looking for a position in the cabinet that's exciting and high profile because he has obviously very big political ambitions u.n. ambassador ambassador to china the transition team hasn't gone for that they did offer him office of management budget veterans affairs it was reported but it just didn't go for that but now it's got the popular trolls but which may seem all that credibly important may seem a bit pedestrian no problem but as a lobbyist said to politico word does mean you make you increase your network of contacts out of the stimulus and some sort of some sort of program you're the one of the groundbreaking ceremonies doling out the money so this is very good for a political a political campaign now but the problems are his lack of experience in transportation this is this is of $1819000000000.00 agency $55000.00 people work for the

department of transportation around the world he was a former mayor of south bend indiana the population of south bend indiana is 100800 80 buses i think i read somewhere he doesn't have that experience even i can see pundits already say oh but potholes he used to fix so he's got a transportation. even his record on pot holes is about according to the south bend local newspapers not only that he has a very bad record again with the african-american community just before this announcement was made local african-american community leaders in south bend indiana said don't nominate him because what he was famous for was penalizing low income black residents. making them pay big penalties a big thing them while lavishing funding on private developers for redevelopment now again he has a lot of experience but that sort of thing is the sort of thing that actually a republican or someone might think oh that's someone else we could work with the

money to be made him much will be made also about his time at mckinsey at one of the most notorious management consultancy firms in the us the reason i'm a taurus is because they are known to do anything to maximize shareholder value which means offloading jobs outsourcing just anything anything so once again that's something that might pick up the is off the establishment in congress because 'd because that's the kind of think of a like the idea of shareholder value that donors progress it was well be too happy but then i think they've already beginning to give up on joe biden but it's just the experience issue which may be trouble or him in congress she had thanks very much for the update. function of boko haram has claimed responsibility for the abduction of hundreds of school boys in northern nigeria now these students were taken on friday from a boarding school in can seen a state there are concerns the government has not been upfront about the real number of those abducted it says it's negotiating with what it call armed bandits.

the parents of the missing children have staged protests demanding the return of the students they don't remember now we want government to rescue our children because they have the capacity to do so but their actions are smoke because it is not their children that are involved in the incident they put us in the situation not parents and grandparents are an absolute confusion they've stopped us from having peace of mind we are totally said. a prominent italian writer and former government officials say they'll return france's top award in protest of the decision to grant the same honor to gyptian president of the c.c. writer karada handed his leisure to the french embassy in rome says he was given the award last week despite human rights concerns over the case of italian student julio ragini in 2016 italian prosecutors blame egyptian security officials for torturing and killing him al-jazeera spoke to the former italian culture minister

giovanna melandri who's also returning her medal in protest it is impossible for me to share this armor with regime where young people are tortured and killed you see an italian young student at. a young. excellent student in 2016 julia jane was unequivocally an equivocally. tortured and here and and it's proved now that there was a role for of the national security forces in this. 3 far right activists have been sentenced in the french quarter after an al-jazeera investigation helped convict them of assault and in one case inciting terrorism and undercover reporter infiltrated a right wing group in the northern city of the judge said the evidence they found

played a key role in establishing the guilt of 3 men david harrison as well. was the only one of the 3 men who appeared in court to hear the verdicts grammy follies and done how and have avoided media attention since legal proceedings began 2 years ago after they were featured in an al-jazeera documentary. an undercover reporter from the network's investigative unit infiltrated a branch of generation identity in the northern french city of lille. the far right movement believes that europe needs to be reconquered from what it sees as muslim invaders of former generation identity activists rémy families was found guilty of incitement to terrorism and assault he was given an 8 month jail sentence suspended for 18 months. follies was filmed covertly at the group's legal headquarters he described his dying wish to drive a car into

a crowded market popular with muslims. most were children to. do so. he says. it was a media folks like you. and it was the. police's conviction for assault followed an argument with arabic speaking teenagers in leo's nightlife area. wearing plastic reinforced gloves follies struck a 13 year old girl. charged alongside fillies was gay on some p.s.t. he was convicted of assault and given a 3 month suspended sentence he was filmed using pepper spray on the same teenage girl that bullies later punched. a 3rd defendant etienne's on

how when was convicted of assault and incitement to racial hatred he was given a 5 month jail sentence suspended for 18 months but helen was filmed making a toast to the nazi party in a bar with other far right activists was. the judge said that evidence from the al jazeera documentary played a key role in establishing the 3 men's guild said this your one is less clear this decision sends a clear message to the muslims of france and around the world but especially in france that today we will not accept discriminate 3 acts perpetuated because of people's religion and in particular those towards muslims. relations between the french government and the country's 4000000 muslims have been strained by a series of crises in recent months to date suspended sentences recognize the racist motive and the link with far right ideology. they may fall short of what many muslims here would consider justice for a racist attack on

a 13 year old girl because she was an actor. david harrison al-jazeera. the team of british scientists is heading into the south atlantic to investigate a massive iceberg the size of a small country which is drifting towards the island of south georgia they'll be assessing potential damage to the region's delicate ecosystem the reports are from . the ice berg known as a 68 a is one of the biggest ever recorded more than 4000 square meters it broke away from the antarctic last in the sea ice shelf in 2017 and is drifting toward south georgia at about 20 kilometers a day and is actually massive in terms of icebergs mostly icebergs when they're in the open ocean they tend to break our current or smaller icebergs this one remarkably as remained intact and that is still even more remarkable because it's

got quite a shallow keel is not very thick so we'd expect it to break apart a $68.00 day is about 200 meters thick and one theory is that the iceberg will run aground when it reaches the continental shelf around the island the challenge facing the team is to assess the impact something so huge might have on the vulnerable south atlantic ecosystem so something the size of lots of bird is going to be a massive impact on an island like south georgia which isn't that much bigger than luxemburg itself. the iceberg is formed from glacier ice and as it melts to release billions of tons of freshwater into the sea potentially devastating krill phytoplankton and other species low on the food chain that in turn could threaten the diverse ward life on the island there's another. moon it's one of the most pristine pieces in the world with the ocean of foreigner at its most of the world that's the problem. the scientists will employ 2 robotic submarines to measure the

temperature salinity and levels of phytoplankton in the water around the iceberg they also collect and study animals in the water you know they'll say well it doesn't just any minute if we don't protect the oceans at these kinds of events will become increasingly frequent and the impact it with. greenpeace and others have long been warning of the effects of climate change but say the threat presented by this enormous iceberg is one that cannot be ignored. and there al-jazeera one osiris. you all deserve it means the whole wrong or mind of our top stories several nations in europe are still deciding whether to ease all tighten restrictions ahead of the end of year holiday periods health experts say lock downs are needed to curb increase travel and a surge in cases but others are warning it will come at the cost of businesses

a 2nd coronavirus vaccine is that to be approved in the u.s. this week regulators say.