to affect the 2016 presidential election. it comes as a court in new york says michael cohen should serve a substantial jail term for crimes including tax evasion. a top executive from the chinese telecoms giant, huawei, will remain in custody over the weekend, after appearing in a court in canada on fraud charges. meng wanzhou, the daughter of the firm's founder, is accused of breaching sanctions against iran. and french students clash with police as the country prepares for more anti—government protests this weekend. the capital is hunkering down, with much of paris in lockdown, as tens of thousands of police are deployed around the country. embattled president emmanual macron plans to address the nation on the yellow vest movement's grievances next week. in a few minutes, we'll have this week's newswatch. but first on bbc news, click. planet earth is under attack... from us.

we are failing to meet the targets to slow down global warming. if we do not take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon. we're all told how much we throw away every single day. but, wow, i have to say, this place really rams it home. this is where the mixed recycling bins outside our homes end up so they can be sorted into different materials. there's a really mechanical way of sorting the recycling into different sizes and shapes. smaller, lighter bits of paper get thrown over the top. the smaller, heavier objects fall through the gaps.

and the heavier, larger objects roll down these wheels to be collected at the bottom. this plant can sort 230 tons of waste in a day. that's almost 30 trucks worth, although it's just a fraction of what we throw away, and the problem is not all of our plastic ends up in the recycling. and even then, not all can be recycled. i think the truth is, a lot of us pop the plastic into the recycling bin and we think that's it, job done, our conscience is clear. but, of course, it's nowhere near as simple as that. but there are some people who have decided to deal with plastics in a much more drastic manner. well, it all started at home, during the preparation of our dinner. first we decided to try to experience zero waste at home, to avoid contributing constantly to this tremendous problem all around the world.

so i thought, well, what can i do with waste plastic? can i build something out of that? not a toy, or a sculpture, or an adorable thing, but something useful. everybody said, "well, you can't do this. it's not possible. " meet liesbeth and edwin, two ordinary people with extraordinary ambitions. they've spent the past three years designing and building a solar—powered vehicle that's almost entirely made of plastic from the rubbish bin. and we're notjust talking about a vehicle to drive on their local, flat dutch roads. no, this is one built to withstand the toughest conditions — antarctica. the couple will drive 2,400 kilometres from union glacier to the south pole and back... ..in a car made from rubbish.

they want to show just how wasteful it is to throw away plastic in the quantities that we do. this actually the raw material we use building the solar voyager. it is collected by children from the primary school. we called it "urban mining". they sort it, the waste plastics, on types, and they have cleaned it and made these chips out of it. what you see is that they are starting to feel more attached with the material, because they do not see it as waste, they see it as raw material for building the solar, for instance. the plastic shreds are melted into a filament for a 3—d printer. 30 of these have been working continuously for six weeks to produce a ii,000—piece of plastic

jigsaw puzzle designed to fit together to make the shell, the interior and two trailers. to test the durability, the couple took the vehicle to iceland in april. the pace looks slow and it is — four kilometres per hour, but they plan to drive the solar voyager during every hour of antarctic sunlight that's available which, at this time of year, is 2a hours a day. and so, in continuous shifts of three hours, they'll navigate some of the trickiest terrain on earth. wednesday the 28th of november — the solar voyager has arrived at base camp.

after years of prep, it's day one of the mission. we're heading for south pole. at the moment, with a speed of 2.5 knots nautical miles per hour. this is amazing. this is super, super cool. the entire round trip could take a0 days, which means liesbeth and edwin should be on their way back from the south pole, when they get to celebrate a drastic but fantastic plastic christmas. and just when the ice goes, the truck goes away and out of sight

climate predictions are based on solid data, some going as far back as a few hundred years. in reading at the national centre for atmospheric science , the old weather instruments are still in use alongside the modern ones. now, the reason that they're still using these pretty old—fashioned devices is for consistency. so you know the readings you're getting today were measured in exactly the same way they were 100 or 150 years ago. swag-é asses—st: csazrs‘jea—wf” ” now it's been fine tuned to correctly reflect what's actually happened, researchers have started changing the environment and watching the effects. what we can do with the model is we can lower the temperature in this part of the world and see whether or not we still produce that many hurricanes. i'm assuming then you have done that, you have lowered the sea temperature to see how it affected the number of hurricanes, what happened? it certainly played a role, around half of the hurricanes happen because the sea surface temperature was up that year. professor vidal also told me

in the future tropical storms are predicted to originate further north, and importantly curve east and back towards europe. so that means that parts of the world that have never had to be hurricane—ready before will have to start thinking hurricanes? yes, they do. but the search is on for cleaner, greener forms of energy. the most established alternative to burning fossil fuels is solar power, and lara has failed to a very special island just off norway. we've travelled west now to 0ust norway. it is so calm here. it is absolutely beautiful. but not far from here, the waves can reach up to three metres, and that's where we're heading because we're going to go and take a look at an island that is made up of solar panels, and the idea is that they need to fare 0k whatever the weather. oh, thank you!

i've made it. wow, we're walking on water! these certainly aren't the first floating solar panels, but the innovation being tested here is the fabric itself, creating a cost—effective weather resistant material that could easily be scaled. there's talk of a setup near the equator the size of a football pitch. this has been designed to withstand wind, rain and ice. but round the edges, these barriers prevent any seawater from getting in. so while you can see i'm standing in a pretty large puddle right now, that's from last night's rain. what i'm actually standing on is less than imm thick, and it really feels it, it's quite hard to stay balanced. it's made from polyester coated in a polymer. what makes this polymer special is how lightweight yet strong it is, meaning it's ideal for this type of installation. in the not too distant future,

we think we can build systems that are comparable with the so—called ground mount installations on land, and that will be a big breakthrough for floatable devices. because then you have suddenly large surface areas where you can build cheap, renewable energy very close to large consumer groups. and making use ofjust a fraction of the sea's vast surfaces area, as well as taking advantage of the water's ability to keep the panels cool, means that the scaling of this does seem plausible. the solar power being harnessed is being used here on this fish farm. now, the island has been developed to be the exact right size to harness the right amount of power in the summertime, that's presuming the weather's good. the rest of the year it's running on diesel, so obviously you can see the environmental benefits of this.

but the suggestion is an island this size, if anchored in the london area, could power 20 average uk homes. make the island the size of a football pitch, and that could rise to 200. but, of course, the investment needed is huge, so moving forward on this could prove more complicated than the proof of concept. that was lara in norway. you know, if you've seen the pixar film wall—e, you'll know that in the distant future, the earth gets covered in cubes of rubbish like this, mountains of these cubes and humanity has to leave. and at the moment, no matter how much recycling we do, i get the feeling that that future is getting more and more likely. something's got to be done. see ya. hello, and welcome to newswatch.

broadcasters and politicians said they all wanted a tv debate about the prime minister's brexit proposals, along with her and other party leaders. but, it's not happening, why not? how to keep broadcasting when the world is collapsing behind you. no question where most of the news focus was this week — in the house of commons. where the government suffered three defeats on tuesday, much of the action was britain's live much of the action was britain's live on the news channel and all of it on the parliament channel, a duplication which urked some people. mr dobinson and may not have been a potential viewer of

the planned leaders debate on brexit, which bbc one and itv had hoped to show this weekend. but, instead of the spectacle of theresa may and jeremy corbyn arguing over the finer points of the eu withdrawal agreement, audiences of regular sunday evening broadcasting can enjoy their usual programmes as planned. some though, thought the failure of broadcasters and politicians to agree on a format was a real loss for the democratic process. a snp mp suggested: the bbc said, it's disappointed to have dogged the planned

programme, which would have involved, what are they called, a substantive head to head debate. as well as contributions from other voices, including other political parties. reflecting the wide range of views on brexit. neither that nor any other format proposed by broadcasters met with the agreement of both theresa may and jeremy corbyn. if that's a shame for some, it's not a surprise. after all, the history of tv debates between political leaders in the uk