the most toxic substances. to land me in physical threats on al jazeera. a growing number of countries place restrictions on travelers from the u.k. amid fears of a new more contagious strain of corona virus. an article out this is out 0 live from doha also coming up. and importantly we're going to supply those emergency aid in a way that is smart and responsible the u.s. senate majority leader says a deal has been reached on a massive covert 19 relief package after months of negotiations. 0 click hack dozens of al jazeera journalists reportedly targeted in

a phone hacking attack using an israeli spy a. growing anger in northern nigeria where the threat from armed groups is crippling farmers like me. so that a number of european nations have imposed new restrictions on travelers from the u.k. that's a response to a new fast moving strain of the coronavirus passengers rushed to catch the last trains on sunday before the new rules came into place countries including the netherlands france and germany have imposed new restrictions the measures come amid fears that it could spread to the continent italy has reported one case of the new strain already in someone recently returned from the u.k. meanwhile britain's health minister has warned the varian strain is out of control there and the government's put stay at home orders in place in parts of the country is not in barber now reports from london. with

a week to go until christmas goodwill in some parts is being strained to the limit in much of the u.k. a planned relaxation of indoor mixing rules has been cut from 5 days to one day and in england a 3rd of the population is now in new to here for restrictions meeting people can't mix it all with other households here in central london there are people out and about for a walk but all the shops are shut these new restrictions are going to be devastating for thousands of businesses as well as for families who had planned to get together a christmas. i think at the newsstand a virus the suffering concerning and i think it is the right decision but i just wish it would have been made a few days earlier yeah i'm pretty upset about it i think the lack of planning and the lack of ability to tell people that this is going to happen in advance of when it did. cause a lot of havoc and confusion there's also a ban on nonessential travel in and out of tier 4 areas that's where the rise in covered $1000.00 cases has been steepest with london's mayor saying the numbers of

coronavirus patients in hospital about at levels last seen in the spring the government's put the surge down to a new variant that's much more easily transmitted the new variant is out of control and we need to bring it under control and this news about the new variant has been a an incredibly difficult and. frankly an awful year and it's important for everybody to act. essentially act like they might have the virus. but trains out of london were packed on saturday ahead of the deadline and on sunday more travelers headed for the stations raising fears about the mutated virus spreading things like wearing them off it's like to me to think they just reduce your chances of getting infected then they don't stop you getting infected. and i guess that this increased transmissibility shifts the dial a bit back in the favor of the virus those things that mask very sick

become a bit less effective. with many questions unanswered about the new strain the netherlands imposed a ban on flights to and from the u.k. other european nations are followed suit at least temporarily saying they have to protect their citizens and their health services that's also the reason the u.k. government's given for the last minute lock down its hinting the new restrictions may have to stay in place for at least 2 months until a far greater number of people have had the covered 1000 vaccine nadeem al-jazeera london let's speak now to lawrence gostin who's director of the o'neill institute for national and global health lord georgetown university joins us by skype from washington d.c. lawrence gostin welcome to the program now i understand that a virus mutating is what you would expect but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's more dangerous is that right. that's right you know viruses mutate quite frequently in the coronaviruses

a little bit more stable than say an influenza virus but still still doesn't. it appears from what we know now that this new variant is much more transmissible that is you know it's continuing more contagious person to person but there's no evidence that it's more pathogenic bet is it doesn't cause more serious disease hospitalizations or deaths and importantly it doesn't look like it should affect. that you can see. that have been deployed now. coming to that a separatist just say that it's more contagious but not more deadly but can it be more dangerous in the sense that if more people get infected fast then hospital beds are going to become more and more stacked up only going to create more problems and especially for those who can't get into hospital. oh absolutely of

course it's very concerning. yes the more the more cases that you have the more hospitalizations that you will have. be it's and so yes we are seeing a spike in one do not the places with a new variant i expect to see a spike in other areas as well because it's very likely this new variant is well beyond southern england and probably well beyond the state cell so yes it's it's concerning it doesn't it doesn't train any individual it doesn't mean it mean that you're more likely to die if you get coated but on a population basis it has. implications for our hospital services as far as the tate in this way could there be mutations that do become dangerous you know in the sense that some genetic changes are in consequential but some may

give the virus an edge for life yeah that's right i mean you know viruses they mutate sometimes they're meeting good ways you know it may make them less a theory of wind or less transmissible but yes it could change in ways that made it . more pathogenic. luckily the spy protein that we've all talked about in this corona virus is the one that vaccines use and they target and that doesn't seem to be as mutating as frequently so we had good reason for hope and optimism but we have to absolutely be vigilant of course it absolutely couldn't. be in a bad way to make it even more lethal than it is right and you talked about the efficacy of the vaccine the vaccination program is as you know well underway in the united kingdom. do you think that variants of credit are so this particular one is

not going to undo the efficacy of the vaccine this that's being put into people's homes right now. and that's exactly right. from all that we know the mechanism that the vaccine use is. certainly not science a biotech maxine it's used in the u.k. and also. in the during a vaccine that's also just been deployed in 19 states. both of them are are or are targeting the protein in the virus which hasn't. and so we have no reason that the vaccine would be any less effective than the already. in clinical trials which is very high and exact and up to 95 percent effective well that's certainly good to go so we do appreciate your expertise thanks very much for joining us. legibility of now u.s.

congressional leaders say they've reached a deal on a $900000000000.00 corona relief kind of virus relief package that had been disagreements over the federal reserve's of much of seed lending pass a vote on the stimulus package is expected to take place on monday if passed it will be the 2nd largest economic support package in u.s. history after the relief funds that were approved for coronavirus back in march. castro is live for us from washington then so heidi we reach the 11th hour and they seem to find a deal. they have but really what they're doing is pushing back that final deadline right now members of the house are voting on us and other stop gap measure that will allow the federal government stay funded and stay open past this upcoming midnight so they're giving themselves an extra 24 hours in order to finalize the text of the covert relief bill as well as the omnibus full year spending deal which

members of both parties say deals have been reached on this code that relieve it is $900000000000.00 which is more than what republicans wanted and less than what democrats have wanted what it what it includes is checks of $600.00 to every american almost those who meet income requirements and extended unemployment benefits as well as rental assistance and help with small businesses now is sensually very importantly the white house the leaders of the house and the senate say the white house is on board for this deal as well and they're still trying to get this done as soon as possible with signatures expected in the final vote expected tomorrow nic i did if you just heard i guess heidi but he was talking about the medina vaccine which is you know just been signed off in the united states so there's more about that and what that means. right and that is another

deadline about that we're racing towards about $6000000.00 doses of that madonna vaccine have left at the warehouse and are on their way now to about $3000.00 distribution sites for tomorrow to begin injections what's different about this vaccine versus the pfizer one we saw approved a week earlier is that the minturn of vaccine is easier to transport does not require that ultra cold storage and transportation so it may make it easier to get to more remote places and no other hurdle that was met today is the c.d.c. determining its recommendation for who's next in line for these very limited doses now after everyone in the nursing homes and the front line health care workers are vaccinated who will come next according to the c.d.c. are the front line essential workers which is a big group covering everyone from teachers to bus drivers to police officers to

grocery store workers as well as americans or people in the u.s. over age 75 that comes out to be about $80000000.00 people in all nikken right now there's only going to be about $20000000.00 doses by the end of the year so even within those groups there's going to be a lot of jostling and we're already seeing it at lobbying states who ultimately make the final determination of who to prioritize and there's concerns of course about how to give out these vaccines in an equitable manner taking into consideration that many of these frontline essential workers are people of color meanwhile you have companies like amazon or are lobbying state legislatures to prioritize their workers so a lot more decisions at the state level still to be made to get out of difficult childhoods these rights he's rolled out to heidi thanks for the. now spyware sold

by an israeli private intelligence firm has been used to hack the phone of dozens of ounces era journalists that's according to citizen lab researches at the university of toronto the digital security watchdog says the unprecedented cyber attack is likely to be noted by saudi arabia and the united arab emirates investigators say mobile phones were infiltrated with malicious code switch uploaded data on to foreign service without users taking any action the report also raises questions around the security of apple i phones later i spoke to bill mug zack who is the lead author of the report a senior research fellow at the citizen lab at the university of toronto and he says it's difficult to guard against 0 click ok. certainly our research methodology here at the citizen lab when we track this sort of spyware is typically that we ask journalists dissidents members of civil society to keep an eye out for any sort of suspicious messages suspicious links special attachment and trying to avoid

clicking on them but also fording them to us so we can potentially get a copy of a spyware but in this case with the 0 click exploit not only does the target not really have a chance to notice or prevent the hacking but we as researchers are sometimes robbed of the opportunity to identify additional targets and additional victims so we think that the targets that we have disclosed $36.00 targets that al jazeera are simply the tip of the iceberg of a much larger global campaign and it also raises questions as a same not least about the the parent vulnerability of life friends yeah well it's interesting you know if you think about your phone i'm sure you're constantly getting notifications things popping up and this is all caused by code which is running continuously on the phone and processing essentially arbitrary messages from the internet and i think that vendors need to do more to try an audit this code to make sure it's 3 of plugs 3 of vulnerabilities and 3 of issues and i think to apple's credit you know in iowa us 14 in the newer version they added we

understand some mitigations that would hopefully prevent this sort of this sort of hacking in the future and i think that other companies would be wise to also audit their code bases and put in similar sorts of mitigations to prevent this the 0 click hacking. coming up aaron al-jazeera israel begins vaccinating its cave with 19 but it's not known when millions of palestinians will be offered the job. and still no deal breaks a trade negotiations at a crucial stage is the deadline draws closer. but i'm pleased to say we are starting to see the snowy weather clearing away from japan so things improving here as we go through the next couple of days not just yet though we still got the winds coming in from a northwesterly direction the i suppose the right wing up so the winds are starting

to just ease off and they're just back off to move a westerly direction so the less column out a direction then as we go on into monday some rain state the snow a possibility for monday i wanted to choose day that snow increasingly turning to right at that stage still a little bit of wet weather there but it is an improving picture i promise she thought ensure i across the korean peninsula temperatures around 5 or 6 celsius for seoul and also for beijing much of china will be fine and 7 now it's not too fun to settle across the philippines at the moment to see some rather nasty weather developing tropical depression coming through here some of the intensified to much more that we're already seeing but wet and windy weather gradually pushing out into the south china seas gradually making its way towards the south of vietnam as we go on through monday then it will start to weaken but as syncs further southward and eventually will see just scraping its way along the far south of the pushing a little further west with it will head towards southern thailand along with

a lamp an inch. and the poorest suburbs of 3 european cities community tensions often reveal a shop cultural divides them but they feel they have no future and are sidelined as job discrimination is a real problem in a brussels al-jazeera world meet some of those struggling with racism radicalization and life on the margins of the droit told this young man a week from to set them there to stitch the other face of europe on al-jazeera.

better get your watch out there are remote about top stories this hour and several european nations are banning all restricting travel from the u.k. they responded to britain's announce when the new fast moving strain of corona virus is causing concern. the u.s. senate majority leader says a deal has been reached on a massive covert 19 relief package for millions of americans this comes as shipments for the 2nd approved caver done 1000 vaccines have begun across you know . spyware sold by an israeli private intelligence firm has been used to hack the phone of dozens of al jazeera journalists researches at citizen labs say the unprecedented cyber attack is likely to be bordered by saudi arabia and the united arab emirates. to israel where prime minister benjamin netanyahu is calling on all his fellow citizens to get the vaccine he was the 1st to get the job on sunday as part of a mass inoculation campaign about the national rollout excludes 2 and

a half 1000000 palestinians living in the occupied west bank and gaza are in nasa reports now from west jerusalem. idea of hope and celebration in israel as people here receive the 1st doses of the pfizer violent tech vaccine. government ministers hospital managers and health care workers received a jab in the early hours of sunday that she fought for prime minister netanyahu was the 1st israeli to be inoculated so we all know. it's a very big day for the state of israel we've been living for almost a year but the most difficult. that humanity has seen for the last 100 years and now is the beginning of the way out millions of vaccines will arrive in our small state it's not trivial millions more up to come and everyone needs to get vaccinated but as the vaccination program rolls out in israel millions of palestinians in the occupied west bank and gaza are waiting to hear when they'll be

vaccinated the palestinian authority says it's in talks with the world health organization and vaccine developers analysts and human rights groups say even if enough doses can be bought the palestinian authority will need international help to distribute them we know that. you are. alone. there and you know i think. countries c their partners their word. and there will be a secure as well. there's a record number of covert 19 cases w.h.o. is warning the health care system there may collapse israel is being asked by human rights organizations to insure all palestinians are also vaccinated in response to these really government says it may donate doses left over after all israelis have

had their us. so for now there are celebrations in israel but in the west bank and gaza there is no way of knowing when palestinians can feel the same sense of relief irene nasser al jazeera western. health experts in thailand say they will test over 10000 people before christmas softer more than 600 new covered 19 cases were recorded at the weekend a majority of the new cases have been linked with shrimp market in the central province of some of the so-called temporary lockdown and curfew has been put in place thailand has recorded only a small number of infections over the past several months due to strict border coroutine controls. somalia and kenya have agreed to hold talks to restore diplomatic ties off the east african leaders held an emergency summit in djibouti smaller cut ties with kenya on tuesday accusing it of meddling in its internal

affairs leaders of the internet into governmental authority on developmental it got have made dealing with the dispute a priority the block is also looking to tackle the humanitarian crisis in ethiopia north into greater reach. so it's why armed groups have crippled agriculture and other economic activities in northwest nigeria it's estimated output in the area has dropped by as much as 60 percent i would address reports now from katsina where hundreds of people including school children have recently been abducted. in north western nigeria where armed bandits room free mosque barrios are regularly event hardly a day passes without an attack on a village somewhere that leaves either dead or injured and those taken hostage entire villages have been sacked crippling local economies and social activities if you. spent well over a success in towns of parental control days the last

a month our families that cannot access their farms the lows that what you both the law also cut to the lows mills of level who people who cannot access their homes the quantum is imagine it has negatively effect impacted on the lives of our people the violence that began as a localized conflict between farmers and cattle herders in just one area has now escalated to a full blown crisis affecting the whole region and beyond. the recent abduction of hundreds of school children by those the government describes as bandits underlines the worsening security situation in northwest nigeria. many pharmacy have been forced to leave their land after being unable to pay off their armed groups. to find a farmer who can pump about $10.00 to $20.00 heck that's what this is cutie they

cannot be able to fund their farms and it under small power most who are about to. go to bed last the 2 to be up to 5 hectares there where earth would be important to abandon their land and be inside those to take it if again the insecurity the cattle herders association says nearly every member has had some animal story line here but cattle market there are only a few animals on display raids by armed bandits have depleted stocks and potential buyers are staying away and in the grain section of the market it's a similar picture the northwest is nigeria's main grain and cereal producing region the fighting near sparked fears of food shortages in the months ahead with attacks now growing in number and sophistication reassuring words from the central government of our little comfort to those facing such violence and the misery

brings how many degrees al-jazeera northwest nigeria. an opposition coalition in central african republic is calling for elections to be postponed just one week before the vote request comes a day after the government accused former president francois boise's of attempting a coup it claims he's behind an alliance of rebel groups are moving on the capital rebels say that president faustine a challenge to hunter who's running for reelection failed to offer them promise. british in european union negotiators up to continue trade talks in the belgian capital brussels on monday which is part of latest deadline ukase david frost and his e.u. counterpart michel barnier still have to sort out 2 issues the bugs fishing rights in british waters and fair competition rules for businesses the european parliament's had warned it won't have time to ratify any deal before the official deadline at the end of the letters agreed by midnight brussels time and the deal

breaks it would lead to tariffs on goods crossing the border and possible shortages of some foods and medicines in the u.k. is were a challenge with the latest from london. that's only just heard was another breaks a deadline whooshing past sunday was supposed to be the crunch day with the e.u. saying that if a deal had been reached by the end of the day wouldn't give the e.u. parliament and nuff time to ratify before the transition period ended on december the 31st well u.k. government source says that teams have been negotiating throughout the day and are expected to continue tomorrow that monday talks remain difficult and significant differences remain we continue to explore every routes to a deal that is in line with the fundamental principles we've brought into the negotiations the truth is that that he used deadline never really was was a reality there is the possibility that member states can agree a deal in principle and then ratify it at some later date that doesn't mean of

course that a deal is going to happen both sides have dug their heels in with big difference is remaining over fishing rights and the level playing field but this weekend there have been some things which perhaps the sharpening mines in london there have been pictures on british t.v. of lorries backed up the motorway for kilometers from channel ports because of companies stockpiling things ahead of a possible no deal in january a foretaste perhaps of the chaos to come if there is no deal the french also have just said because of this new strain of coded that there is no travel from the u.k. into france including travel linked to the transport of goods so that all adds to the anticipation and the anxiety as well in london boris johnson is also pretty much just cancel christmas and it would be quite the double whammy for him to cancel christmas and loss of breath to deal with in the space of just

a few days does that mean a deal is going to happen well i don't know but it was not something i would want on my political record if i were him. u.s. republican senator mitt romney has called the recent hacking campaign against the united states extraordinarily damaging and he's demanding a response so it was a curate experts say more than 40 organizations were targeted including several government agencies they say could take months when rival your search your state might pompei said it was pretty clear russia was behind the attack something moscow has denied president donald trump tweeted that china could instead be responsible. and they apparently didn't think that we would respond in a very aggressive way and i think all those things have to be addressed i think we have to be much more serious about our cyber capabilities off and defensive and i think we have to rethink about that at the department of facts as well as our other agencies and i think we have to have a very clear eyed approach to how we deal with russia going forward this demands

a response and the response you'd expect to occur would be a cyber response i don't know if we have the capacity to do that in a way that would be. of the same scale or even greater scale than what russia has applied to us but this is something we have to address as soon as possible. but russian president vladimir putin has praised the country's foreign intelligence service on its 100th birthday despite claims the agency is behind several global hacking plots putin says the agency is crucial for most because sovereign and independent developments u.s. president elect joe biden's team is considering punishing russia for its suspected role in the hacking of u.s. government agencies really was. shit i've used to excess to everyone who defends at all or people from external and internal threats to defense of identity and the actual interest and from whom the security and availability of the model involves ease and will be the main business of death and title life. a ceremony has been

held in lebanon is comparable to remember those killed in the august port explosion people released lanterns at night in a suburb close to the site of the blast hundreds of people were killed and thousands left injured after the experience. 'd 'd for let's have a quick check of the headlines here on out is there are several european nations are banning all restricting travel from the u.k. trying to stop the spread of a fast moving strain of corona virus even parts of the united kingdom british governments has put millions under tough new restrictions the u.s. senate majority leader says a deal has been reached on a massive cave of $900.00 relief package for millions of americans politicians will vote on the $900000000000.00 deal on monday comes the shipments for the 2nd approved cave 19 vaccine have.