global pandemic positive change. the fix the killing of it. exposes the privilege of poverty during a crisis. hundreds of boys abducted in nigeria are freed almost a week after they were taken from a school. you're watching al-jazeera live from the headquarters and. also coming up the u.s. moves closer to approving a 2nd perona virus vaccine more than 17000000 cases have been reported. u.s. president elect joe biden nominates to be the country's 1st native american cabinet secretary. 5 years after hands raised unanimously for peace talks in syria

we look at the stalled diplomacy and bloodshed that's followed. tello more than 300 school boys have been released the week after they were kidnapped in northwestern nigeria the governor of katsina state says they'll be back with their families after being checked over by doctors the boys were taken when gunmen thought to be linked to boko haram stormed the school in the town of last friday. live outside the government house. with an update on where the boys are right now. well during the boy in approaching cuts in a city now and all have been completed to receive them

here the government house all they had been just a few meters away from a few 100 meters away from the government house we understand also that when they arrive here they will see the governor forced who will then inform the president who happens to be in cuts in a state occasion now to come forward to come and meet them before they fly and they are finally reunited with her parents the governor of kids in a state i mean i've been with my study said they will also make sure that they get the best medical attention possible before they are finally transported home that's the situation right now don and what do we know about how the sox really happened in terms of the negotiations that led to their release because we know that the government in nigeria has a policy of not negotiating with armed groups. exactly the details of how the secured the release of these boys being kept close to government officials the hundreds of government officials they are refusing to say

anything about it they insisted that neurons some prisoner swap done in exchange of the children but a lot of people doubt that because from day one when these children were taken on friday night we were told by officials that the military and other security forces engaged in the abductors in a firefight and till the government again decided to stop the fighting because of fear of course not troll damage for fear of losing any child because of the exchange of fire between security forces and their abductors now the situation since then has been the talk of negotiations the talk of intermediaries between going between the government sides and the abductors so a lot of people believe that because of that they could be some form of exchanges. that money tree or some assurances but again if you just keep telling us that it's

because the abduction been down to a particular section of the forest for a state they had they were denied freedom of movement and they were unable to transport them outside of nigeria but to coolly across the border in tunisia republic so that's what the u.s. government officials are telling us right now that they're not being run some not paid run some and have not swap and prison in exchange for the children all right thank you for that update from katsina in 1000. germany's announced another record number of corona virus infections just 3 days after imposing tighter restrictions there were more than $30000.00 cases in 24 hours that's the highest daily tally yet it's also counted more than 800 deaths pushing this hold so nearly $25000.00 the government hopes vaccinations will begin after christmas. a panel of experts advising the u.s. food and drug administration has recommended the emergency use of

a 2nd coronavirus vaccine the committee endorsed one week after backing the pfizer bio intact vaccine that's being administered right now across the u.s. our white house correspondent kelly halkett reports from washington d.c. it looks like we have a favorable vote the maternal vaccine on track for emergency use authorize ation following the f.d.a. advisory panels overwhelming indorsement in a 20 to 0 vote the advisers agree the benefits of a dearness vaccine are greater than its risks. that. great. in. ways. that we need once emergency use is granted and the centers for disease control signs off more than 50000000 doses for health care workers and care home residents will be distributed the church's vaccine follows last week's pfizer approval it comes as

covert infections and deaths continue to spike due to the november thanksgiving holiday there are fears those numbers will climb further with the christmas and new year holidays just days away. millions of americans still fear the vaccines were developed too quickly and are unsafe that's why u.s. vice president mike pence and his wife will get vaccinated on camera on friday to boost public confidence the challenge to contain the virus will be daunting for america's next president joe biden start or stay or go take back our democracy but as he prepares to take on this challenge other headlines linger we have great confidence in our side biden and his wife dr jill biden appeared on the late show with stephen colbert to defend their son hunter he confirmed 2 last week prosecutors are investigating his tax affairs but the president elect says he's not

worried i'm not concerned about any accusation has been made against him it's used to get to me i think it's kind of foul play but look it is what it is and he's a grown man the accusation his son profited from his time as vice president is a headline joe biden can't seem to shake as he prepares to take the oval office and confront the global pandemic can really help get al-jazeera washington and the united states is set to have its 1st native american cabinet secretary president elect joe biden has nominated hollande to be interior secretary it would put hollande in charge of a powerful department that's wielded influence over native american affairs for generations shepparton see has more from joe biden's hometown of wilmington delaware. if he is confirmed she will be the 1st native american cabinet secretary

and not just any cabinet department the department of the interior the battles between indigenous community indigenous tribes here and the development here isn't just about oil and gas all of that's and natural resources and as has been quite clear in recent years it's the public of interior which has within it the bureau of indian affairs which has been responsible for the destruction of native america over the last couple of 100 couple of 100 years now the idea of a native american woman in charge of that the public at least nominally is symbolically is astonishing and the fact that she would be in charge of a big swathe of the north american continent in charge of the public lands the natural resources the wildlife the water this is this is enormous now that's not to say that joe biden hasn't also nominated various people in his cabinet who are you know i close the oil and gas industry and you know opacity you know you know will be there will be battles ahead but at least now there is real substantial diversity

in the cabinet nominations from joe biden and not only that but he sounded just on wednesday that the key the key progressive senator had said he hadn't seen one progressive nomination yet from joe biden now there is one brendan o'connor is an associate professor of american politics at the university of sydney he says that hollande can bring a perspective to government that's been missing. well that would be very appropriate i think ken very important to have a native american woman as head of the department of the interior if we think about sort of national parks in the united states government and lay and manage tribal lands really in the end of the die all of those lands will once native american lands and maybe a still have claims to some of the appox some of the resources and there has never been and i had american person who is being interior secretary there's never been

a person who's been head of that department who had is a native american son so lots of ways it's america catching up with what is i think fear what should have been the case maybe in the past and she will i think be welcomed in that role and celebrated in that role too i will say the negotiations with native americans across the united states. supercycle has had fiji killing at least 2 people one of them a 3 month old baby the category 5 storm struck the pacific island nation on thursday night causing widespread destruction when he reports from auckland to new zealand. this is just the beginning of the south pacific storm season and cyclon yes it was a destructive starts the category 5 storm came ashore with wind gusts of up to 345 kilometers an hour houses and other buildings were destroyed and crops flattened and we will continue to assess the scale of damage in the coming days but we're

looking at hundreds of millions of dollars in damages still it could have been much worse a late change of direction meant the capital suva avoided a direct hit as it was more than 93000 people were in the storm's path and more than 23000 went to evacuation centers fijian are used to cycle loans but they're happening more often and becoming more dangerous and the prime minister blames climate change is the world is getting warmer these storms are good and stronger every one of us must do is come with a few. deadly seriousness this storm season could be particularly painful for fijian whose economy which is reliant on foreign tourists has been badly affected by the corona virus pandemic wayne hay al jazeera all clones. japan has sent the military to help people trapped by heavy snowfall which is 2 meters deep in some

places thousands of vehicles are stuck and power has been cut off to more than 10000 homes in northern japan and more snow is forecast over the weekend. we'll get a check on the weather up next and then argentinians expressed frustration about an economy suffering from the financial effects of the pandemic plus france's president isn't self isolation after testing positive for $1000.00 details right after the break. how the weather looks pretty quiet but cold across central and eastern parts of year the main weather action is further west and that's where we got the mild air in place we got set bands of cloud in the right areas of low pressure sweeping in from the atlantic securing it on settle here but with the winds coming in from a general south westerly direction temperatures getting up to maybe 12 celsius

there in london and glasgow getting up to around 10 degrees there in paris at 10 left the madrid as well as that west the weather which will extend all the way down into the northwest of spain and eventually it slides across a good parts of spain as we go on through saturday while wet some windy weather rattling across the british isles heading towards scandinavia norway seeing a fair bit of rain there and some snow over the high ground the west the weather will make its way across france as well somewhere where the pushing into the northwest of the central had east and passes said it is looking lossy dry but quiet with high pressure in charge quite so into the eastern side of the mediterranean in that 5 and dry weather that stretches down across the northeast of africa much as cats would have to coastal showers the into northern egypt a few showers too much in northern parts of algeria south of that it is generally dry but showers into the far south of west africa.

dissecting the headlines in the midst of a pandemic let's start with some of the on the ground realities affecting the news coverage what's the lay of the land stripping away the spin. about presidential corruption it is real reporting it's not if you're challenging assumptions and the official line we all decided we need to kind of i would clearly we don't want to lie on the authority and it's media village just on al-jazeera.

following on the top stories on al-jazeera more than 300 school boys have been released the week after they were kidnapped by an armed group in northwestern nigeria the governor gets you know state says they'll be back with their families after being checked over by doctors germany has had a record number of corona virus infections just 2 days after imposing tighter restrictions it had more than 30000 cases in 24 hours for the 1st time since the start of the outbreak more than $800.00 deaths. the united states it's set to have its 1st native american cabinet secretary president elect joe biden has nominated dept hall and to be interior secretary it would put hollande in charge for powerful department that's wielded influence over native american affairs for generations. they software giant microsoft has confirmed it's a target of a hacker operation that's being described as the worst in u.s. history more than 40 organizations have been targeted including the u.s. government's energy defense state and homeland security departments the attack

which is still ongoing is suspected to be linked to russia it was uncovered last week but investigators believe it's been going on for months richard stein an as chief research analyst for i.t. harvest he says this hack more than any other proves just how vulnerable the u.s. is if you look at the history of these types of attacks attributed to nation states you know you can go back to taking rain in the early 2000 or buckshot yankee in 2008 that the defense department viewed as a wake up call and eventually led to the creation of u.s. saber command this is being viewed as a wake up call which is unfortunate because we should be awake at this point but i think everybody's treating it with the seriousness that it deserves and that this will be viewed as one of the most serious attacks ever. in the fact that it was sold syrup tisha slee deployed throughout 3rd party through

a you know software vendor that was in hundreds of thousands of companies even though a claim only $18000.00 were impacted we just saw from microsoft that 40 of their customers they indicate have indications that they've been impacted and interestingly enough government agencies are the biggest representation in that 40 other tech companies are so we can look to future types of attacks of file the same wrote through a 3rd party so now everyone has start worrying about their supply chain. it's been 5 years since the u.n. security council adopted a resolution meant to pave the way for a political solution in syria european diplomats believe the assad government is stalling on purpose hoping for a change in the u.s. syria policy our diplomatic editor james frey's reports. 2015 was arguably the year that changed the course of the war in syria russia got

involved militarily bombs from its jets changing the for choose of the assad regime . earlier in the war according to international inspectors the regime of used chemical weapons on number of occasions a red line had been crossed but the u.s. leader president obama did not act in response to a growing crisis the international community came together unanimously around the u.n. security council resolution that's been quoted by world leaders ever since with the united nations resolution 2254 times the security council resolution 2254 resolution 2054 did on a resolution of understand on the dummy rid of. it was supposed to deliver a cease fire and peace talks in reality though december 25th is when russia took the upper hand diplomatically with the rest of the world taking

a back seat. with both turkey and iran russia organized the new peace process in a stana and sochi it didn't lead to peace areas declared safe zones were retaken by a sad helped by russian bombardment break 2 u.n. envoy is continue to work diligently trying to pursue talks but the latest effort setting up a committee to draw up a new constitution for syria could become bogged down many suspect this was russia and the sides plan all along. it is increasingly apparent that the assad regime is durang the committee's work at the time as it prepares to carry out his sham presidential election in 2021 and washingtonians of the year in summer take the political process let's be honest after merely a decade of conflict the political process has not delivered for the syrian people and they continue to suffer deeply oh inside an old side syria only

a political solution can embrace suffering historians a lightly judge russia's diplomacy over this period is both cynical and a masterful they've used their power in syria and their veto power in the security council to change the course of the war for the assad government they now could be less concerned about the international dynamics of the situation but they must be deeply worried about things inside syria the economy is now rock bottom their own supporters are increasingly unhappy they may have almost won the war but they risk losing the peace before it even starts jamesburg al-jazeera at the united nations. when american economy 7 suffering through their worst drop in growth for more than a century the coronavirus pandemic is the main cause but the finances of countries like argentina are already in bad shape the reports from.

the economies of latin america and the caribbean have been hit particularly hard by the covered 900 pandemic so any grain of good news is welcome when grim new statistics are announced. so i know that our figures are negative all negative it doesn't mean that we are much better off than we were in july but the drops are a little lower than forecast. those statistics still translate into tens of thousands of businesses closing growing unemployment poverty and homelessness. but it's bad in latin america it's even worse in argentina the economy here is shrinking by 10 percent in the 3rd quarter of 2020 workers and social organizations have already taken to the streets on thursday alone we cover 2 demonstrations within walking distance of the al-jazeera office. what we'd like is health to be a priority especially in this pandemic year and this in

a country where 50 percent of children are poor and need public hospitals it would be an increase to make the health system work. along with the peso hitting an all time low against the us dollar it's inflation that bites into workers' wages and c.n.n. has one of the worst rates in the world more than 30 percent this year forecast to be even higher next year you know maybe more you know in the past we've been saying on all our marches when the workers lose through inflation it's not because that money is disappearing it's because someone is profiting with what should be ours and the rest of the workers. president alberto for than this took office just weeks before the pandemic arrived he said from the start to put the nation's health before the economy but with the russian sputnik 5 vaccine due to arrive next week the economy hasn't gone away. protests like this noisy and colorful her regular feature of everyday life in argentina with the cover of night in front of the

country but particularly on there would you like me to recruit him out of that setting. the question is always where the money's going to come from argentina is one of the world's leading graeme produces but the industry has been paralyzed of the strike by workers demanding a wage increase enters its 2nd week. part of a growing demand from workers across argentina and the rest of latin america they don't want to emerge from the pandemic worse off than they went into an. al-jazeera one of cyrus. palestinians living in is really occupied areas may have to wait months to receive a current virus vaccination israel will begin its inoculation campaign next week israeli settlers living in the occupied west bank will receive it at the territories 2 and a half 1000000 palestinians won't they'll have to wait until the world health organization delivers doses to the palestinian authority for the 3rd day in

a row south korea has announced more than a 1000 new infections most of them are in seoul and its surrounding regions the. trying to make sure there are enough hospital beds and in australia christmas travel plans are up in the air after a coronavirus cluster on sydney's northern beaches grew to 28 people several states introduced border restrictions with new south wales amid concerns the outbreak there could get worse the french president says he plans to keep running the country remotely after testing positive for covert 19 the diagnosis forced other european leaders to self isolate as they had several meetings with my call in recent days and talked about their reports from paris. the french president looked tired but relaxed as he hosted a video called friends with several charities the meeting came only hours after the release a palace announced that emanuel macro had tested positive for the covert 19 the 42

year old leader plans to keep working during his 7 days of isolation but he will not. he will honor his appointment but with even more caution than is usual really sorry for the president since the start of the pandemic in public micro was a face mask and takes precautions but at times he has failed to social distance. he's attended a number of offense in the past week including an e.u. summit he also met several european leaders in paris including portugal's prime minister and tony acosta and spanish premier petra sanchez who are now self isolating in france the prime minister and macros wife bridges are in quarantine several members of the government and president's policy up being tested it is clear that the message from the elite is that it is good medicine as usual unless michael's condition deteriorates he will remain in charge throughout his isolation there is that this doesn't change anything and. it's not

a big deal that's what there is a disease trying to say but they're not saying what are the symptoms that said the president as we know that he was tested after showing symptoms and and we don't know where those symptoms are the french government has lifted some lockdown restrictions but reimposed a nighttime curfew as the country continues to battle the pandemic michael's diagnosis is a sobering reminder that anyone can be infected. al-jazeera paris. we're just taking you over to katsina state that's in nigeria where more than $300.00 school boys have now been released they are in that bus right there they were released after being kidnapped. in northwestern nigeria last week and the governor of could see in a state says they will be back with their families after being checked over by doctors and they are arriving right now into could see in

a state on that bus they were taken just a reminder when gunmen thought to be linked to boko haram stormed a school last friday so we will keep an eye out on that situation and could see interstates and we'll bring you more live coverage as and when the story develops. well the king of sweden has admitted the country's much questioned approach to coronavirus has failed sweden has reported almost 350000 infections in the death toll is close to 8000 the government resisted the lockdowns and restrictions imposed by neighboring countries. really have to go through put simply i think that we have failed many people have died and that is horrible that is something we can all sympathize with that we haven't been able to help them and it is very sad terribly sad it's the swedish people who suffered enormously under difficult circumstances it's frightening to talk about it the u.k.

government is imposing tougher restrictions in parts of england but it's still going ahead with plans to ease the rules over christmas as paul brennan reports from london. government here in the u.k. is wrestling with exactly the same kind of di lemmas that governments across europe are wrestling with and that is how to bring down the infection rates of this virus how to protect the national health care systems and also how to prevent the economic impact from being too great while at the same time trying to give the general public the opportunity to celebrate christmas which is a popular and much cherished festival in the european calendar and elsewhere i'm here in parliament square it's the last sitting day of parliament on thursday and one of the last acts inside that building behind me was the health sector mats hancock saying that many more areas are going to go into tier 3 restrictions at the highest level of restrictions it means hospitality venues will have to close apart

from takeaway only households will not be able to mix and all of this will start on saturday london itself was already under tier 3 and i can tell you for example there's a restaurant popular restaurant on the corner of parliament square over there which often as well always has the pungent smell of fish and chips coming out of it not today as of earlier this week it's had to close under the new restrictions but this situation is that on wednesday of next week a new set of eased restrictions comes into place for christmas 5 days where up to 3 households can mix and many epidemiologists and many critics of the government are wondering how they can reconcile these 2 things tighter restrictions from saturday to wednesday easing of restrictions from wednesday for the following 5 days and the expectation then there could be an even bigger spike come january. parliament has its own worries as well they may also want to come back and sit in between christmas and new year because of the potential. deal but here in london

and across the u.k. there is a great fear the come january coronavirus will come back with a vengeance russia that's banned from major sporting events reduced to 2 years after an appeal hearing the world anti-doping agency wada gave them a 4 year penalty last year it believes the handed over by russia during a doping investigation was tampered with and even with the punishment being russia still won't be officially represented the next series tokyo olympics or a qatar is $22.00 football world cup. hello again the headlines on al-jazeera this hour more than 300 school boys kidnapped last week in northwestern nigeria have now arrived in katsina states you're looking at live pictures from the city and the governor of code.