and closing two compounds, in response to evidence that hackers tried to subvert the us presidential election. the us also says american diplomats have been harassed in moscow. kremlin offcials say they will retaliate. president—elect trump has said it's "time to move on, to bigger and better things." but nevertheless, he said, in the interests of the us he will meet intelligence chiefs next week, to be updated on the facts of this situation. a partial ceasefire in syria has come into effect in the past few hours. president putin, who helped broker it, says the warring parties have declared their readiness to start peace talks. but he described the agreements as "fragile". extremists from the so—called islamic state and the group formerly known as the nusra front are not covered by the truce. now on bbc news victoria derbyshire takes a look back at the exclusive interviews and films which have featured on her programme in 2016. hello and welcome to the programme.

over the next half an hour we'll bring you some of the exclusive interviews and original stories that we have broadcast over the last year. actor and film director, adam deacon, is one of britain's brightest talents, winning a bafta in 2012, but then his life took a downward turn and he ended up being sectioned after threatening people, including his former mentor. he was later diagnosed with having bipolar disorder. in an exclusive film he made for our program, adam went to meet stephen fry, who also has bipolar, to discuss the impact the condition has had on their lives, theirjobs, theirfriendships. you was one of the main people that i'd find miself kind of youtubing. you had quite a public... yes... a public breakdown yourself. i did and i suppose it all started for me...i'm almost certain that had i lived later i would have been

diagnosed as having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as a child. i look at all my school reports — unbelievably disruptive, brilliant, annoying, who just cooldn‘t stop speaking. and that was bad and disruptive and i got expelled from this school and that school. i did eventually go to prison for complicated reasons that i've written about. and then i thought everything was fine. i kind of got over it in my early 20s. and that is really when it all started to go wrong. i realised that i was somehow prey to these terrible moods and so when it came to this period, i was in a play and i zooped off... you walked out. yeah, i walked out, had a kind of collapse of confidence, the general feeling that my life was over. i got the proper diagnosis then and that's when i thought everything was ok because i had named the beast. i'd faced it. i was killing myself.

really? the much worse suicide attempt came several years after that. i was lying in a hospital bed thinking i am a lunatic. i look back at the work i have done, maybe it stems from the bipolar. i look back on a film i made — i wrote it, i directed it, i was acting in it, but when i look back to outsiders looking at me, everyone seemed to say the same thing that you was quite manic. they banned red bull — i think they thought it was red bull at the time. there was loads of red bull on set and i was drinking it down. one of the things i learnt from my experience and it still shocks me is that people who love me best read my mood more quickly than i can myself. right. my husband, he knows when i'm manic. he hears it in my voice, he sees it in my eyes. does that worry you at all? yes, it does. i once had it so badly that i honestly, and i am the least superstitious

person in the world, had i even a grain of religious in me, i would have thought god was talking to me. i felt like joan of arc. i felt shining and it was weird. it was quite frightening in the end. you are dealing with your own demons, in the first place, and going through hell, all over the place and then bang, it is everywhere. how did you cope with that? well, i have always lived my life in a strangely public way in terms of being open about things. in the 80s, when it was quite unusual, i came out as being gay. of course, there were plenty of gay people in showbusiness — there were not many who were out at all. it was a similar thing as much as, if in our business it is a lot easier to talk about your emotions because our business is one in which emotions and experience are the kind of ingredients for the films or the books that we cook up. i ended up having this kind of breakdown, i ended up making it even more public because of twitter.

i was writing all this crazy stuff on twitter without even realising it. sometimes i'd just wish someone took my phone away and just made me... i feel very much better for it. next, an unprecedented admission by the former head of the britis army. in an exclusive interview with this program, general sir richard dannatt told us about how he refused to take a controversial anti—malaria drug because of concerns over its catastrophic side—effects even though he knew the drug was being given to his troops. general sir richard dannatt tells us his own son, bertie, suffered mental health issues after an army doctor gave him lariam. he was in africa, shortly after taking his first couple of doses and became very unwell, very quickly. he became extremely depressed. not the person that he would normally be. normally a very bubbly personable sort of individual.

he got very withdrawn and we got very worried about him. have you ever taken lariam? no. because... because bertie had that effect, whenever i was given anti—malarial drugs, i said, i'll take anyhting, i'm not taking lariam. drugs, i said, i'll take anything, i'm not taking lariam. i took something else on my occasion and made myself very ill. but i realized very quickly that i did not have a mental health issue. but that was happening. you knw you wouldn't take lariam at the same time as members you knew you wouldn't take lariam at the same time as members who were serving under you were taking it? yes, that is true. but again, i think it was because the organisation had not reached a certain view on whether lariam was more beneficial... but if it was not good enough for you, should it have been good enough for anyone serving under you?

because i had first—hand experience in what could happen, i could not see the point of putting myslef in the same position so i took something else. but other people were being put in that position? well, this is true. but again, i come back to the fact that the ministry of defence, as an organisation, were still trying to come to a conclusion, in general terms, whether the beneficial or harmful effects to lariam were greater or less. the effects were almost immediate. it was as if the wiring in your brain had completely gone or completely rewired. i do get depressed, to the point of suicidal thoughts. since 1997, the british national formulary, which gps consult when prescribing medicines, has made absolutely clear what anyone given larium should be told about it. it lists a series of

neuro—psychiatric side—effects and says that the drugs must be stopped immediately if any of them are experienced. we have spoken to many members of the military who say they were simply not made aware of that. we were just told, this is what you're taking, away you go. were you told there might be side—effects? no, not at all. in a statement the ministry of defence said... in many respects, i'm a broken man. the army has broken me. the government has broken me. why do the british government continue to give this drug to it serving members? rayna holden was 18 when her boyfriend beat her unconscious and left herfor dead in a pub carpark, in washington, tyne and wear.

the attack was caught on cctv. rayna came on to our program back in february to tell her story and encourage others to speak out and get help. he always used to put me down. if things did not go his way, or if you wanted to do something and i didn't want to do it, that is when the abuse would happen. also, when he had no money. when he did not have money for alcohols, his drugs, i took all the backlash off that. can i ask you, rayna, what kind of things he used to do to you? he used to pick me up, throw me, rag me about with my hair, he used to punch me in the face, slapped me. he would call me nasty names... he wasjust... he was just a horrible man. i think as well, as well as that horrific physical abuse, on the controlling side of things, he would

control access to your telephone, or who you were allowed to see? who i was allowed to see, who i was allowed to speak to, who i had my facebook. there was one occasion, i was on the phone to my granddad and he actually snatched the phone out of my hand and the took the battery so i could not have any contact with him. wow. why was he doing this to you? i do not know the reasons why he was doing it to me. but i think... i don't know, i think it is more to do with having control over a person. he used to like controlling me and telling me what to do. can i ask you about the attack that he committed on you in that pub carpark, in november 2013. yeah, i was meant to be going to meet him. so i've walked down to the cross keys pun in the village, in washington.

and i walked into the pub and darryl was stood with his mate and two other women he was playing pool with them. he was smacking their arses and ijust walked out of the pub. i was outside, and then his mate followed meout and i was just tlaking to his friend and about ten minutes after, darryl came outside and he was telling me how come you're getting jealous, you are not my girlfriend any more. telling me that i'm worthless, that i meant nothing to him. that i wasjust a child to him, that my family had give him to. he didn't care about me so we ended up in a massive argument and that argument resulted in him chasing me out the carpark. he had a pint glass in his hand and he tried to smash it on my head. it hit me six times before it shattered. he grabbed me by my hair when the glass shattered. he pulled me down.

he then had me behind the car and he just kept punching me, kicking me, punching me and when i was unconscious, he picked me up by my hair, and dragged me halfway across the carpark to a set of bins where he dropped me again and stood all over my body. that was rayna holden speaking about her ordeal at the hands of am ex—partner. i can tell you that she has now found happiness with someone else and is going to be spending christmas with her baby son who was born last month. in september i sat withjulie walters. she talked in depth about the death of her dear friend victoria wood and why, in hollywood, she would be considered a freak. can i ask you about victoria wood? you can. for most of us it was a huge shock, we didn't know, and people felt really close to her even though they did not know her. you actually were close to her which must have made it very, very difficult?

it was and the fact that it is kind of in the public domain makes it really strange. i could not respond to it very much at the beginning even though we all knew that it was probably close. still a huge shock. death is anyway but it was still a huge shock and i found i could not respond for some time. i felt hugely anxious, first of all. massive anxiety about it. and then... when i was able to relax and see my husband, then hejust went... yeah, huge loss. huge. still thought about her today, i can't think why, what brought it up. we were in a taxi coming here. and i thought chrissie, who does my make—up, she's very close to her, and i thought, she's obviously with us. in the taxi — why would i think about her? but i think everyone goes through that thing with grief, when you go — they are not here! how can she not be here?

you can't believe it. no. she was 62. it is nothing. not these days. she looked... you know, before she got ill she looked fantastic. really, really well. not a mark on her skin. so, yes... you may not want to answer this and that's fine — could she rationalise the diagnosis? yes. i don't want to say anything else, really. that's fine. victoria's legacy is her work. people are going to enjoy her work, your work together for ever more. oh, i hope so. that would be brilliant if it's the case. her brother wants a statue to be erected in berry, where she went to school, a statue of her sitting at a piano which... what do you think of that idea?

it sounds gorgeous. yeah, as long as it's flattering, she wouldn't like it if it wasn't. it does not seem enough, a statue but... you know... her work is the thing, isn't it? it is her work that really, as if you say, is the legacy and that stimulates everybody‘s memories of her, keeps her alive. before you met victoria which was the mid—70s, towards late 70s... 1978. before that you were part of a generation of working class actors who graduated from the everyman in liverpool... bill nighy. and now eddie redmayne, damina lewis, ithink tom hiddleston, they all went to eton and... is that an issue for you? no, they're wonderful actors.

i love them. i've worked with tom. they're fantastic. no, it's not the fact that they're all doing brilliantly. it's the fact that it's very hard for working—class kids to... in my day, we subsidised theatre, we got grants, but these days, you can't get a grant for drama school at all. no. so that's a worry, then. where will the next generation of working class actors come from? i don't know. they will not come, presumably, through drama school, obviously. i think things go in cycles, don't they? i do believe that. i was lucky to be on the wave of michael caine, tom courtenay, albert finney — all started it for us in the ‘60s. then in the ‘70s, we really cashed in on that. it was really not good to have a middle—class accent. you'd hear posh people trying to talk like that so they would be accepted. because it wasn't trendy.

i was lucky to be part of that. there was no feeling... before that, you had to get rid of any accent you had. do you think hollywood has gotten better, or not, when it comes to roles for older women? no. i don't think there are good roles for women. you see wonderful actresses... there are exceptions, such as meryl streep. and julianne moore, people like that. i mean, she's not that old, julianne moore, she's 50—odd. i have just worked with wonderful annette benning. so it is better. annette bening doesn't look like she's had anything done to herface, and that's unusual in hollywood. if i went out there now, i'd look like a freak because everybody has. but you'd look authentic. i'd look real, yes. that's all right! it is good! i don't want to do that. no.

and you can watch the full interview withjulie walters on our website: it was the craze of the summer, the mobile phone game downloaded more than 500 million times, that had millions wandering the streets trying to find virtual pokemon go characters. but an unintended consequence of the app caught our attention. we heard from the parents of autistic children about how the game was providing vital help in transforming their young child ren's lives. music plays he has been engrossed and obsessed with minecraft the last five years, literally living and breathing it. very good!

he has gone from hardly leaving the house, only to go to college, to wanting to go out every night. he has found another one. when he first said he wanted to come out, i thought, "we'll see how it goes," but we were still out three hours later. i wasjust like, "oh, my god." you can evolve it. don't want to. all right. he spent two years pretty much out of school because he was either going in and being sent home because he had had a bad anxiety attack to the point he was doubled up on the floor in pain with his stomach. then he would spend days wrapped in a sleeping bag. every time you would try to take him out, he would have an anxiety attack. this is luke.

luke, fiona, sam, daniel. normally he would not have lasted two minutes. we would have had to leave straightaway because he would have started feeling sick. his stomach would have started hurting. just being around people that were a bit noisy or talking a bit loud, he would not have coped. we would have had to remove him. but he stayed. take care! he waved. he nodded his head a few times, which is brilliant. there are none there? oh, no. what will you do? down that way, then? down that way? 0k. it is helping reinstate that mum and son bond. i have spent so long being his carer. i'm going to cry. it'sjust nice, you know.

i have not seen him this relaxed and happy in a public place for so long. it really means a lot. you can see that he is happy and relaxed, he's smiling. he's not ticking. it's just so nice, it really is. it's like i've got a bit of my son back. i caught it. high five. he's made more progress than we have seen in the last four years. obviously it is small steps of progress, but what he has made to us as a family has been immense. it made a huge difference to adam's quality of life.

currently, pre—pokemon, it was not the greatest life he was living. he was shut up in his bedroom, locking himself away from everyone. where is that poke gym? that's there. so you could go there and let a lure off. if anyone told me six months ago that a simple game like this would get him out of the house, i would have laughed at them and said "no, not a chance." i never in a million years thought this would happen, so for us, it is a huge celebration. do you like being outside at the moment? yeah? good. coming out tomorrow night as well? another drowzee. another drowzee? how many drowzees is that now? before we go, it was one of the highlights of the year. team gb finishing second in the medals table in rio. we beat china, russia, and in the process became the first country ever to improve on a home medal haul at the next olympic games, winning 67 in total,

two more than london 2012. here's a reminder of how inspiring team gb were. it is not the critic who counts. not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles. 0r whether the doer of deeds could have done them better. the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena. whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood. who strives valiantly. who errs.

who comes short again and again. because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. i'm so sorry for the people that stayed up late to watch and cheer me on. but who does actually strive to do the deeds? who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions? this may be the last one? possibly, yeah. i don't want to cry. who spends himself in a worthy cause. who, at the best, knows in the end, the triumph of high achievement. and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. thank you very much for watching. we are back on air on january the 3rd. in the meantime, you can watch our films on our programme page: not as much fog around england and wales as friday begins

but still the potential for some dense patches. do not drop your guard just yet. still worth checking the situation where you are, especially across parts of east anglia, south—east england where it's a cold start once again but a few fog patches elsewhere. also into wales and midlands. a very different story in northern scotland. a weather system hanging around throughout the day with wind and rain. that rain is more on than off across the north and the western isles. actually to the east of that, parts of north—east scotland will see a bit of sunshine occasionally. this is the picture at 8am, plenty of cloud around and in the west in the west—facing coast and hills, damp and drizzly at times. that a feature of the weather throughout the day. many of us getting off to a fairly mild start but where we have some of that fog around and particularly across east and south—east of england, temperatures there close to freezing. some starting with a frost. if you stay misty and

murky, your temperature will be held down into single figures whereas elsewhere, despite the cloud, it turns out milder than thursday. especially when you can see a bit of brightness, maybe north—east wales, north—east england and eastern parts of scotland. still, north of scotland throughout the day you have rain and wind. double—figure temperatures for glasgow but just five celsius in norwich. into friday night you will probably be struck by the fact that this weather system is still hanging around the same parts of northern scotland. as we look further south we keep plenty of cloud. it will still be damp and drizzly at times in the west. the west—facing coast and hills. there will still be a few fog patches but not as much as we get friday morning. thatjust easing away from being a majorfeature of our weather. not as cold as well. as new year's eve begins, this is how it looks for the final day of 2016. finally this weather system is getting a move on and taking the rains southwards through scotland and northern ireland.

the good news is that if you are out and about and celebrating the arrival of 2017, that should push away from you although cold air behind it with wintry showers. the start of 2017 you can see the band starting to push towards parts of england and wales, especially the further north you are. for much of england and wales it will be fairly mild to be out and about. that will not last long. look at it for new year's day. the rain clears its way southwards and all of us will find ourselves in colder air with a few coastal showers around. cold air for the start of the new year. welcome to bbc news, broadcasting to our viewers in north america and around the globe. my name's mike embley. our top stories: president 0bama expels 35 russian diplomats, accusing them of interfering in the us elections. moscow says it will retaliate. president—elect trump says it's "time to move on," but he will meet intelligence chiefs for a briefing next week. president putin declares a ceasefire deal in syria, brokered by russia and turkey.

it came into effect a few hours ago. road to nowhere — why this street in a french town is causing controversy. hello. president 0bama has imposed sanctions on russian individuals