al jazeera, ah ah, i'm calling to damp in holiday plan. hundreds of lives cancelled just before christmas. and corona virus infection serge, globally. ah . hello, i'm emily angland. this is al jazeera alive from joe ha. also coming up and overcrowded ferry catches fire in bangladesh, killing at least 59 people. police in india have begun an investigation into video showing hinder religious leaders calling for genocide against muslims. and as

christian celebrate christmas eve, wherein bethlehem in the occupied west bank to see how the pandemic is affecting this preparation, we begin this bulletin with christmas chaos more than 2000 flights globally has been cancelled on christmas eve. the light is blow caused by the highly transmissible army chrome variant. it is left would be travelers stranded as the holiday season kicks off, loose hands a delta and united airlines say the virus is affected, their flight cruise in the u. k. the prime ministers urging the public to get the booster shots in his christmas message. johnson's resistant calls for ty to restrictions for the holidays as cases surge to record hot. though the time for buying presence is theoretically ruddy out, there is still a wonderful thing. you can give your family or the whole country that is to get

that job, whether to 1st to 2nd or your booster. so that next year's festivities are even better than this years. and in the meantime, i thank you. i wish you all a very merry christmas and the countries like france and australia have shortened the wait time to receive a booster shots as a rush to stem. the tide of infections were a challenge. these live for us in lewis in the u. k. but 1st to, let's cross now to alan fisher, who's following developments from washington day say, hello there, ellen. this is just awful news for people travelling for christmas. isn't it? exactly right. and start to the christmas holidays for millions of people across the united states. they are seeing that their flights have been canceled the by waking up this morning to text messages, e mails, whatsapp messages saying saudi, you're not going anywhere to day according to flight. watch the flight monitoring

company, 440 flights and the united states have been canceled. united of cancelled 169 delta, a 127. so what's the problem? well, it's flight crew testing positive with corporate or people who are the support staff on the ground testing positive with covered it's just a few days ago that the american airline industry asked the cdc to make the quarantine period much short of the say 5 days and then a negative dest, if you've got covered at that, hasn't been implemented by the c d c. what they have said is there, if you're a health worker, and you test positive with covered, you must isolate for 7 days, rather than the 10 it was. and then a negative test and you can come back that is because of the stream that the surgeon omicron is putting on hospital systems across the united states. it is no the dominant strain here. it is an all 50 states. it is a huge problem. if there is any good news on the flight front, that is that,

remember when i'm a con started, joe biden put in place a flight barn on 8 southern african countries, you couldn't come in to the united states on there? natalie. folksy said earlier this week, there was the possibility that the administration was going to lift that the mood music we're getting out of the white house. we're expecting an announcement at some point in the next couple of hours. joe biden is going to left that band but not until new year's eve. so another week of that been in place. it was put in place originally to try and get in top of omicron. they've no decided, it's no point in having it there. while that sally's sam, good me, is an ellen. what's the situation more broadly across the u. s. when it comes to coven cases? well, in places like new york, we're seeing record numbers. we already had al, the record number on monday. that again, has been defeated. that means they're cancelling the big time square celebration at, sorry, not cancelling, scaling it back. there's not going to be thousands and thousands of people there.

there's just going to be a few 1000 people there and they have to be vaccinated before you can get in. and it will be in reserve sitting and they're hoping to bring in social distancing as i say. hospital systems across the united states are struggling with the numbers that are there are, there are a lot of people on the road they're going to christmas gatherings. they're hoping that members of the family will be there, some of them won't be able to show up because of the problems in the year. but the health experts are worried that all these gatherings, all these parties, all these get togethers, it could lead to another surge sometime after the christmas period. so i think health experts are going to be celebrating this christmas. but really watching the figures of omicron infections with their face hidden behind their, their hands simply because they're going to be worried about the impact is going to have across the united states afterwards. well, let's just get through this christmas period before worrying about the new year. that's for sure. thank you very much for that update. alan fisher live for us in

washington, d. c. all right, let's get that perspective now across the u. k. were a challenge, is laughter. us in louis. hello ne rory we had a little bit earlier in the bulletin, johnson has issued his christmas message and urged everyone to get a booster jab. what else did he say? well, we had lots of familiar. john, sony and half flourishes. rhetorical flourishes as a classic speech from, from the british prime minister here, throwing in plenty of cultural references that anyone from the u. k. would instantly recognize. he talked about how this christmas. if you have to cook a big turkey, if you have to appeal more brussel sprouts, if you have a, a big pot of washing up unusual, and a big pile of scum pulled wrapping paper. well, that's all to the good because that means that this christmas you have got to spend it with more of the people that you love, more family members than you got to last year. of course, last year,

chris christmas was pretty much cancelled. very short notice throwing lots and lots of people's plans into disarray, meaning that many people have to spend christmas to be there by themselves or, or just with their immediate family. he also talking of rhetorical flourishes, essentially suggested that if you didn't get your job, then you weren't doing what jesus would have liked. he said that getting a job is basically a service to your community. it's something that you do in a spirit of navy linna neighborliness, and that is what jesus, his message was all about, particularly christmas time. he is right to say that this christmas is looking better than last christmas was last christmas, as i said, was canceled a very short notice. this christmas much more free, at least by recent standards, and people are able to spend it with more of their family members. and loved ones that they did last year, of course, on chrome though, surging throughout the united kingdom, causing

a big shadow still to be felt over this past season. just as covert did in general over last one certainly sounds like a jam packed speech. and i want to know who's having brussel sprouts for christmas dinner. thank you very much for that update. we're a challenge live for us in louis. ok, let's take a look now at some of that data which suggest omicron is milder than previous variance. the you case health security agency says people with a very interest amended to be up to 70 percent. less likely to be admitted to hospital. imperial college found people infected with only kron a 40 percent. less likely to be in a hospital for a night or more compared to the delta variance. and very early data from the university of n embrace indicates a 2 thirds reduction in the risk of ending up in hospital. on tuesday, a study from south africa showed people infected 70 to 80 percent less likely to have to be admitted. professor cheryl cohen is

a senior author of that south african study at the national institute for communicable diseases and has more on her teams finding. when we look at this finding that we have offered you severity, there really are 2 possible explanation that i think it's likely both of them contribute to. the one is that potentially the virus is actually intrinsically less than there are some early data to suggest was ample. the, the parts of the body that a target in the lines might be different and contribute to it actually being intrinsically less likely to cause severe disease. but the other important contribution is the role of pre existing immunity. so in south africa, more than 70 percent of people have had source covey to before, and many people have also had vaccination. and so in the, the people included in our study and then we know me, crime is more likely to cause a breakthrough infection. so many of the american patients will actually have had previous conviction over explanation. so. so part of this reduce severity might

actually just be that in many, many people, they've already had it before. they have some level of immunity. and when we compared those current patients in the early wave to people in the delta wave. so the previous wave, we also found a mass hospice about people. they were 70 percent less likely to develop severe disease. and, and importantly, we really waited from the time of diagnosis. we gave it a whole 3 weeks for those people to actually have got severe disease or got admitted to hospital. so. so, you know, the vast majority of those people would have had a severe disease if they were going to get it so, so we feel that these data are not quite about to the world news. now at least $39.00 people have been killed in bangladesh, shafter a phi ripped troll of ferry carrying hundreds of passengers place the blaze broke out in the engine room in the middle of the night, and quickly engulfed the box than at smith were. pull this open, i very was packed with up to 800 people heading out of docker for a weekend away with friends and family. many would have been sleeping in these

crowded cabins as the fire took hold in the engine room. oh, the engine had been running for about an hour while on fire. later, the fire probably spread from the engine to the earl tanker and his tongue with a loud bang at this spot where he is standing right now about that it was not as flames whipped through the fairy. many passengers jumped into the river to escape, according to police. they believe the engine carried on running for an hour as the fire took hold, knowing many survivors of stuff, a terrible burn injuries and the death toll is expected to rise. i was on the 2nd floor. suddenly the engine exploded and caught fire. it had be malfunctioning from earlier on. but the negligence of the ferry authority resulted in the far the ferry with coveting curtains. all the heat from the explosion was trapped inside and that he'd made everything firm. dozens of bodies have been recovered so far, very accidents, a common in bangladesh,

usually blamed on over crowding, and lacks enforcement of rules. fairies are a main means of transport and a country that criss crossed by more than a 130 riddles. the government to set up 2 committees to investigate the fire. they been ordered to report their findings in 3 dates, bernard smith, all jesse police in northern, in the, in the northern indian state of order rec, and have launched a heights speech investigation following a meeting of hindu religious leaders. video from last week's event showed them cooling. for genocide and the use of weapons against muslims, it sparked outrage on social media after the footage when viral penny mitchell is following this story from new delhi a week after this event. the police has we just heard a case against one person. now the event in question was a concave of thought, organized by villages him the leaders in a template town in order in the other towns consider to be wholly by many. now at

this event, many inflammatory features were made the call for genocide, similar to what we saw on man mar against. they will have all of this is on tape. the speeches went viral. so the police has evidence of radiographic evidence, but nothing else has actually been done. in fact, the, the organizer of the event is a repeat offender. this is not the 1st time that he has made an 2 minority or rather anti muslim statement statements. in fact, he recently gave an interview saying that we stand by watson says and is not afraid of getting arrested. and the reason is that many of these leaders who are there and may enjoy our support and friendship of members belonging to prime minister in the range of the political party that is opposed to just the party or the b j b. interestingly, the one person who, against whom the case has been registered. if someone who recently converted he was

muslim and now goes by him to name. still ahead on al jazeera, thousands of civilians flee, strikes along me and my island. and the long warning conflict escalades plus fiction or future, some british to terrifying outcomes from facial recognition technology and artificial intelligence. ah, it's the weekend. here's your forecast. hello everyone. we're going to start in india. a bit of a foggy start to the day for roger stun. and then see this cloud around delhi that could generate some showers out of season showers. so we look at the 3 day forecast . the rain risk sunday into monday. your temperature is slight as well to below average. next we're going to se asia, the rain piling up southern sumatra,

west java will power ups and thunderstorms call them poor singapore, jakarta, and bali with the high of 33 degrees. the ne monsoon active again, so that steering what, whether into central, northern portions of vietnam, getting striped with some showers as while for high man on saturday. northern china, a cold blast of air. we'll talk more about this in a sec, but 1st the winter wall up for the northwest of hook kado over the next little bit . you could pick up 50 centimeters of snow. the winds will be blasting. so visibility will be knocked down. ok now to that cold air we're seen at migrate to the south look, shanghai just for degrees, but this will be a short lived shot of cold air. so being minus 4 degrees on saturday, we look at the 3 day forecast. don't worry your pop up to 5 degrees on monday in the sunshine. can't wait for that. that's it. that's all. see again soon. take care . ah.

ah well young into a world of comfort im services without you business class, which way your privacy is paramount and your experience comes on. sit back, relax in your own private space and let us take care of everything. catera weighs the airlines you can rely on lou ah, hello, you're watching out 0. i'm emily ang, when a reminder of our top stories,

the salem, more than 2000 flights, had been cancelled globally on christmas eve. the light is blow served by the army con variant if the current virus, lufthansa, united, and delta airlines say the virus is taking a toll on they starve. at least 39 people have died after a fire. a fairy caught fire in bangladesh rescue teams managed to save some passengers, but local sources believe the death toll is likely to rise. the ferry was over crowded and carrying up to 800 people. and place in the northern indian state of order rec hand have launched a hate speech investigation following a meeting of hindu religious ladies. videos from last week's event showed them calling for genocide and the use of weapons against muslims. south korea has pardoned former president park goon, hey, who's been serving a 22 year prison sentence for corruption, park became the country's 1st democratically elected later to be thrown out of

office in 2017. alexey o'brien explains pocky on hays removal from office and raced in 2017. was a dramatic fall from grace that saw her go from south korea's president to prisoner . she's been serving a 22 year sentence for corruption of the governments part and we'll see her released on december 31st along with around 3000 others. how are you putting on your credit score? we have included former president park and he and former prime minister hon young shook to list to overcome on fortunate past history and cries of co 19 about it. realized pupils, unity and provide a chance to take a new step forward to the future. park is currently in hospital and analysts believe that's played a part in her imminent release. i think it's really heard dancing age and her health issues. she's had both physical and mental health issues since impeachment

i'm, i'm, she's pretty clearly not going to have any kind of meaningful political role in korean life. she's allowed, gomez appears going to happen. hawk was one seen as political royalty. the daughter, a former president, part young he, she served as acting 1st lady after her mother was killed in 1974. jo, you young? so yes, i got one young head. oh, in 2013 park. yeah. hey, became the country's 1st female leader scoring a decisive victory for her conservative policy. but she suffered a shop drop in public support after more than 300 people, mostly children ground when a fairy capsized in 2014 just 2 years later, another political scandal engulfed her administration after an old friend choice and so was alleged to have used her influence over the president to middle and state affairs,

hundreds of thousands of people gathered every weekend to demand parks resignation . there was celebrations when she was impeached, thrown out of office, and later jailed for collusion with joy to receive billions of dollars from major companies. the scandal also landed heads of 2 conglomerates in prison. what occurred in the blue house during her reign was unacceptable. ah, but there are corruption indeed, but ah, overall i, i personally didn't feel that she was deeply involved into these, into the entire scheme and so on. she has been jailed. she's in poor health. i feel like the time is right to let her go and give her the pardon. at the moment of the palm on me, i feel upset as a citizen, i feel that it's regrettable. at such a decision was made all of a sudden when it would undo what was achieved through the candle lit vigils. almost all of south koreans, former presidents have been implicated and corruption scandals. leaning back, the only living ex president aside from park is also in prison. he didn't receive

a pardon. alex o'brien al jazeera, hundreds of refugees have fled across the me and my border into thailand on friday after fighting between me and my army. and the car ran at national union fighting has been going on for more than a week following a raid to seize dissidents opposed to the military current. but it now seems to be growing in its intensity as tiny chang reports. a video posted on social media from miss or on the border with myanmar gunfire. so loud it's clear. fighting is very close elsewhere video. so people playing towards timer, the thump of heavy artillery in the background. here the river is relatively easy to cross and obvious route for those trying to escape the fighting. overnight hundreds had left under cover of darkness to be met by the ty army time media reporting that that come on the aerial and artillery bombardment. fighting in the

town of lake a go broke out last week after the mir mom military rated the town looking for suspected dissidence. the ethnic korean national union that control the area are reported to a fort backed ferociously. since then, several 1000 people have crossed into thailand, many with only the clothes on their backs, your bags, my child, and ran immediately across the river. tie soldiers told us to run fast. tie soldiers have allowed the refugees to stay. unlike during clashes earlier in the year when they were pushed back and thailand's prime minister provisions had been made for others to come, as more fighting is anticipated along the border. the qur'an, in particular, have been hom bring formally or informally, some of the resistance groups that have been set up to counter the coop. and i think the army is going off to them with something bigger. and these are the lucky

ones. say for the moment inside china and with basic food and shelter across the border, 20000 more have played their homes with fighting intensifying, they to may try to seek sanctuary. inside thailand, tony chang al jazeera to ukraine. now hers a top, which is her. sorry, it's top court rather has summoned president, let me lensky in a law suit lodged by his predecessor, petro. par shankar now comes a day after partially anchor himself failed to appear before prosecutor's investigating him for treason. ukraine accuses pershing co of financing pro russians separatists in dom best by helping them fell $54000000.00 worth of coal to kiev. partially unco denies the charge has demanded. the court forces the landscape to provide proof in 2019 zelinski school landslide victory and the countries presidential election against par shanker. he seems pledged to route out corruption

and investigate the previous administration. alexi huron is a professor of comparative politics at the key of mer, healer academy, he says, president lensky would benefit more from promoting national unity against russian aggression limit this size he states, when he was right now, why don't you be in a position but nevertheless, i've been b, y for the last life forces needed to use the production the actually was the routers organized in the years of june 2015 when the key. so this time they read it. but why use the national

sanctions? again, they used these were actually what christmas celebrations had begun in bethlehem. the biblical birthplace of jesus christ, the but the outbreak of the new coven, 19 very into omi crime has been. if you have been to see the time has been almost deserted as israel, which controls traveled the occupied west bank as effectively suspended phone tourism. because of the pandemic needed. abraham has moved from major square all in all. this is a happy season for many palestinians, but it's lacking an important element which is tourism. usually the city would be bustling with foreigners work coming in to celebrate christmas, because as many paulson is with tell you, this is the capital of christmas. this is where everything has started since they

believe the jesus christ has been born here. but it's been tough for people living here the past 2 years since the funds i make. i started. i want to talk more about that here with my guess load load. i saw was an accident. laura, if you could give us an idea how difficult, where are these 2 past 2 years for you? well, these 2 past year were really difficult for everyone. i mean in the whole word and especially in palestine because i think that the lockdown we had under the all the restrictions that we had because of the occupation because of other restrictions. i mean the panoramic and so we were like under 2 locked down into jail, let's say open jails. so there was really hard because we are used to receive a lot of people to this. i have a lot of friends from the whole world and like 2 years ago and many of my friends celebrated year. and i think we have a very like

a great luck to live year beside these important sites in the holy ones. and i do believe that it's an important part of the very politically and bridget from the religion side of course, and many people do wish to live here. so i think we have a mission to spread the mission of, of peace and love to spread because this is the city of love and peace. thank you so much, laura. i thought she is an activist and she calls the city or the city. many people here were saying they're proud to be from bethlehem. they say this is the capital of christmas with just a wake left in 2021. we're looking back at some of the biggest stories of the year and looking ahead to what might shake the news agenda in 2022. there are concerns about the growing use of facial recognition technology. government sites for security, but others project a terrifying feature. reynolds explains in this dramatize ation of

a potential dystopian future technology watchdog group, the future of life institute portrayed killer autonomous weapons. using facial recognition technology and artificial intelligence to commit crimes attack military and civilian targets and spread terror all without direct human involvement. if it's not science fiction technology experts say you can actually create a drown that you say, just go hunt this specific individual and kill them. promote little and i think it's an extremely dangerous situation to be visual recognition technology or f r t doesn't require billions of dollars or dozens of super computers. we're talking about being able to do something with commodity hardware with freely available tools and stuff. it's been around for, you know, a few years now, and there's no reason why that couldn't be used by. i folks, even, you know, you don't have deep technical expertise. the prospect of non state actors employing

the technology is troubling. but countries are already using mass surveillance, f r t. in the u. s. police used f r t to identify specific black lives matter. protesters then scrutinize their social media accounts and check for outstanding warrants. other countries have massive networks of interconnected cameras. london is a city that comes to mind, it's one of the most, you know, it has one of the widest networks for surveillance. and they have a processes in place to manage. some of china uses f r t to curtail human rights. in china. there are specific a ways in which they're trying to recognize the weaker minority so that they can again surveil and curtail their movements and harass them and put them in concentration camps. and so ah,

there are also positive light saving applications of the technology. for example, in auto safety, most people may not realize, but many new automobiles now have a camera that's built into the car that actually is, is observing the driver. and those sorts of technologies can be used then to help you know, recognize that somebody's using drowsy or you know, is to repair, to driving those sorts of things. like many technologies that have burge and in recent decades, f r t is largely unregulated in september, a united nations report singled out a i enabled f r t as posing special threats to human rights. the un human rights chief michelle bunch. a lead called on member states to issue an immediate moratorium on artificial systems.