the us government shutdown is to continue until at least monday, after the senate was ajourned until new year's eve. president trump blames the democrats for blocking his amendment to the budget bill, which would add $5 billion to build a wall along the border with mexico. protesters have clashed with police in the east of the democratic republic of congo, after the election was postponed in several areas. the outgoing president, joseph kabila, told the bbc the ebola outbreak is one of the reasons for the delay. he said there wouldn't be any major issues with the more than 1 million voters whose participation will be delayed until later. austrian police say that five monks were attacked during a church robbery in a suburb of vienna. the assailants reportedly entered the catholic church with a gun. the monks were beaten and tied up. now on bbc news, a special programme looking back at 2018 — and it's a year in which britain's farmers have faced unusual weather and tough conditions. our correspondent danny savage takes a look at a challenging 12 months

for the countryside in review 2018: the rural year. it was the year which had a summer to remember, long hot days basking in glorious sunshine. long before that came a few weeks of unusually severe winter weather. some remote rural communities had to be supplied by airdrops. but the pressure on farmers was immense, animal feed was in short supply for much of the year because of the extremes of the british climate. and those extremes had alarming consequences. the roof of england caught fire and farmers acknowledged they may have to get used to new parameters if their businesses are to survive. this year has been a wake—up call,

it has been extraordinary, particularly the hot, long summer we had, and we should expect more of this in the future, and farmers need to adapt and be aware of this, to forward plan and make sure they won't be taken by surprise in years to come. and what a year it was, for surprises and consequences, linked to our climate. winter 2018 didn't really get going until the end of february, it was high ground which was affected first. in north yorkshire, traffic struggled on the hills but it didn't seem like a big deal, as everybody did their bit to keep going.

but a second day of snowfall hitting lower, more populated areas started to cause more widespread problems. farmers were worried because this was nearly the beginning of march and lambing was imminent. the problem in this weather is that the weaker lambs will freeze to death in it, that's where most of the problems will lie, and the farmer himself getting round the sheep to find which ones are in a corner, they don't always lamb where you want them to. you would have to be out looking, finding them in the snow? yes. airports are warning of more delays and cancellations... by the end of the day, the severe weather was the top story in the uk. 0ur reporter danny savage is in durham for us tonight. the infrastructure of the uk has taken a real battering in the last 24 hours, this is the east coast main line, there are trains coming through here tonight which are more than four hours late... right across the country there was chaos, with lorries unable to gain traction and move. some places were gridlocked, with shortjourneys taking hours.

they poor nightguards, they're still on shift, they've been there since 7:30pm last night and no one can get in. we should have stayed home, really, but someone has got to keep the world running. the following day the weather front which had been named the beast from the east had vast swathes of britain in its grip. what's different today is the wind and the immense windchill which comes with it. it's whipping the falling snow and the stuff that's lying around into these huge drifts. behind the front door of this icicle covered home in county durham was a snapshot of life across the country. schools were closed and it was too cold to play outside. childcare is an issue for a lot of parents and we end up with a house full of children. we've got old people, vulnerable people that unfortunately can't get out.

it's hard, to dig each other out, but a lot of community spirit goes on. in between the snowfall, all ages helped to dig out footpaths. here in teesdale, the unofficial snow depth is... 33 centimetres. by the friday morning of the worst week of the winter, more and more people were having a bad day. this was a motorway in greater manchester, poor visibility and ice were factors in scores of accidents. thankfully, there were no fatalities here, but the insurance bill was huge. thousands were stranded overnight on the m62, it was eventually cleared but it didn't reopen. we landed in manchester airport about two o'clock yesterday and we've been trying to get home since then. i've been stuck for 12 hours, you know, since last night, ten o'clock. from yorkshire to scotland, every route linking east and west was closed, this was the a66 on the border between county durham and cumbria.

even the gritters aren't venturing out this far, this should normally be a busy dual carriageway over the pennines but it's been shut for days, it probably won't open for days yet, and it's all because of these gale force winds blowing across the carriageway. in wales, the drifts were so deep that three people had to be rescued after getting buried in their car near cowbridge — they had to sound their horn to guide the searchers in. in the frozen hills of the north, feeding livestock was a priority. getting them something to drink was a problem. the water's frozen, that's the main thing, in the house and out of the house, so watering animals is a big chore at the moment and just trying to feed and getting to the sheep that are three miles away. fun and games at the minute, really. in the countryside in cumbria,

special vehicles were brought in to reach outlying farms, as the snow covered the features of the land. that weekend saw the situation improve slightly, but by the first monday of spring, it was clear that many communities in northern england were completely cut off. drastic measures were needed, an raf chinook helicopter was sent to cumbria, it patrolled the frozen uplands, dropping in on isolated communities. for some, it wasjust to check all was well, but others were fast running out of fuel and needed help. what's been the reaction when you drop in? i think they're quite surprised but pleased to see us, we're here to reassure them that help is on its way. we are working with the police and the mountain rescue. what are you giving them? food from one of the leading supermarkets and also wood and coal. the helicopter stopped forjust a few minutes at each location, before setting off again, leaving residents grateful. it's a bit of excitement

really, and a bit unusual, we'd never dreamt that that was going to happen. it's a lifeline for us, really, we haven't had any contact for over a week now. it means that we can heat the place at temperatures that we want and need. but in many rural areas, it was the farmy army who kept roads open and kept suppliers coming through. it wasn't bad news for everyone, though, the ski slopes at the cairngorms in scotland had weeks of good conditions. it was worse last year but this is boom, fantastic, and when we saw that weather forecast with the beast from the east, we thought, yes, here it comes! the fairly late winter never really gave way to a textbook spring,

and by april you would have been forgiven for despairing at the conditions, which is what we found when we went to talk to farmers over a wide part of england. upland farming does not get much more remote than amanda 0wen‘s fields on the border between north yorkshire and cumbria. come on. spring was hard work here. things are desperate. we are quite used to spring coming late in the hills, it has to be said, but it's just really so unforgiving. usually we lamb outside and we're having to lamb inside. it'd all about doing the best for your stock and it's tough. we should have grass but it hasn't come, it's cold and wet, and muddy, it's really tough on the animals. a few miles away, on the other side of the moor, nikki was down

to her last bags of feed, they should have been eating grass but spring shoots were nowhere to be seen. the people that started lambing at the start of march have just been dreadful, they couldn't cope, they were picking up dead lambs, they're just not being able to turn lambs out, they're having to keep them in — it's the cost of feeding inside. you need bright shoots to come through for the lambs to grow, they can't produce the amount of milk when they have no grass, and that means the lambs are struggling to grow really. this is what lots of low—lying farmland now looks like, the heavy snow was followed by heavy rain, leaving many fields flooded, and where there should be livestock at the moment, instead there's ducks and geese. many miles further east in the yorkshire wolds, paul temple's cattle herd was still inside and being fed the expensive way. 2018 was already proving wearing. it's mother nature and if there's one thing farmers are used to, they know what food security is about because you try and make sure you've got more than enough

for the worst winter, which is why this is pushing us. you just have to get on with it, but it is tiring after you've had six months of it. by the end of april, going into may, all reservoirs, including this one in cumbria, were brimming, but then the british weather went from one extreme to another. it stopped raining, for a very long time. for the first few weeks of dry weather, britain made the most of it. warm temperatures and good conditions that lasted for more than a fortnight were a novelty. this was the lake district at the beginning ofjune. then, the problem started. tinder dry moors above manchester were, in some cases, deliberately set alight. whatever the cause, they spread exactly like the cliche, within a few days, a large area above saddleworth was burning, along with the top of winter hill, near bolton.

the effect downwind was terrible, thick smoke hanging over large parts of greater manchester, blotting out the sunshine, school children were given masks to help breathing. 0n the third night, the out—of—control fire at saddleworth raced across the heather and bracken, down a hillside towards people's homes. it threatened these houses, bought for their moorland views, they were hastily evacuated. i kept looking out the window, and went about my usual business, having something to eat et cetera, and then there was a knock at the door, after eight o'clock, one of the special police officers, he said, you have got to get out. you have got to evacuate. the last thing i said to him was don't let my house burn down! from dawn to dusk, fire fighters made use of every hour of daylight to tackle the flames.

but fire on ground made of peat soil is a tough opponent. no sooner was one source tackled, another would quickly appear. the problem with peat is it burns like tobacco, so it smoulders slowly and that's why we need the water to get in there. it's fine knocking the fire on the surface but then, like you say, it burns underneath, so we need the water to soak into the ground and completely saturate the area. this is not something that will end today by any stretch of the imagination. this could go on for days, or even weeks. as the fire spread over several square miles, helicopters were brought in to help. there was plenty of water around but they were needed to get it to the right place. time after time, the aircraft dipped and dropped. after a few days, the army was called on to help, soldiers were sent out with the firefighters to beat flames on the remote hilltops, a very unusual sight, because of the extraordinary conditions. the focus then moved to the second major fire at winter hill, near bolton, again a large area of moorland was destroyed.

the mayor of greater manchester reacted angrily to reports that fires had been started deliberately. i think itjust beggars belief, doesn't it, to hear that people may have been coming onto this land over the weekend, adding to the burden of the emergency services, and basically taking risks with people's land it's just an unbelievable state of affairs. the moorland fire smouldered for weeks and cost the public purse a fortune to deal with. then asjune ended and we headed intojuly, we started to hear more about hosepipe bans. northern ireland saw one put into force first, in the republicm even the lorries which moved the black

stuff were filled with water instead. as july progressed, the sunshine kept beating down and then the reservoirs in north—west england started drying out. the english lake district, which has so many lakes because it usually rains so much, was parched. thirlmere, a source of water here for manchester, was emptying fast, along with here, where the ancient settlement flooded to make way for the reservoir and became visible again. united utilities gave notice of a hosepipe ban to millions of customers, to the surprise of no one. i'm not cross that we're short of water, i'm happy that we've had such sunshine, and if a shortage of water is a by—product, we've just got to be careful. does it make you cross that it's coming in? no, no at all.

it's the right thing to do. we all have to do our bit. look at how low the reservoir is, we clearly don't have enough water. throughout the summer months, parallels were drawn with 1976, a year when standpipes appeared in the streets and people shopped their neighbours for using water when they shouldn't. sprinkler system operating where? a riding school? i see, and you feel something should be done about that, of course. this summer, farmers were also worried. nearyork, paulwebstertook us out into his dusty fields, where his cattle should have been eating the grass but instead, were having to be fed with bales. it was only three months ago it was too wet for this cattle to be on this land, but now i don't think we've had any significant rain for six weeks, i would think, so now we're having to feed the winter forage that we've kept back for winter, and there's going to be a shortage of straw. it could be quite an expensive winter, i've never known anything as dry as this in

all my time farming. as you can see, this is an irrigated crop, it's wilting, it'sjust not growing. a few miles away, this crop was taking a hammering, the vegetables were not getting big enough. the business consequences, we have less crop and we are letting our customers down and we have less income coming into the business and the longevity of that means we won't have the money to grow next year's crop unless we completely revisit our models with our customers and our price because we are in a critical condition. in the yorkshire dales, this is what some of the streams and waterways looked like, this river was typical of the upper reaches of inland valleys. if you have a closer look at the river bank you can see the debris and it shows where the water got to in the winter and early spring, where it has left is just how high the water got, and now compare that to now and the difference is extraordinary. mile after mile of this river bed is completely dry, and an awful lot of rain will have to fall over these hills to get

the water flowing again. some rainfall in catchments meant the hosepipe ban was never implemented in august but it was a time to reflect on the damage caused over the summer. claire uses her quad bike on a daily basis. her family farms the moors above stalybridge which was destroyed by the summer fires and with it went a lot of their livestock. it was quite shocking at the time because the fire was raging, worse than any fire i've ever seen, and we had a big team of farmers come from miles away to help get the sheep off at the time and still now we are getting phone calls from farmers saying, we have a few more of your sheep, they are turning up in various places.

just devastation. nine weeks after the fires, the area looks desolate. richard is the gamekeeper up here and he now has to manage a fire—damaged moorland. very depressing, yeah. to pick yourself up and go forward, so sad. the only thing that is keeping me going is that this is all coming back, the heather is reshooting and if we can get this back together it will be good. how many years will it take? some of this — four years. other bits, probably 20 years. that long? yes. a few miles along there was optimism from the rspb, which manages different parts of the land. the fire jumped over these areas here and they are really still growing green and there has been a patchwork of areas unaffected really. although there was some rain in august it wasn't enough to replenish the reservoirs. it may have been a good summer for holidays but it wasn't so good for people who rely on our usual climate to make a living.

late summer and early autumn saw the consequences of the weeks of dry weather. in the fertile fields east of york, harvest time highlighted the lower yields that many farmers were seeing. it should be a lot greener, as you can see, the plants are dying now, as you can see. stewart looks in dismay at his crop, potatoes are 80% water, so a lack of it caused problems. the potatoes just stopped growing, they shut down. there is so much stress that they have not recovered from it. normally i would be looking at 18 tonnes per acre. last year it was a good wet summer so we were averaging 20 tonnes but this year i have fields which are doing only ten, in this field will probably do 13—14 tonnes, but it has been one of the worst seasons i've come across. but it was a different story

for stewart in a nearby field, which he was able to irrigate because of access to a borehole, regular watering meant a much better crop and much bigger spuds and the contractors bought into harvest were busy. putting an inch of water on about eight times so it is never actually getting dry, and so you get the quality and the yield. we are supplying supermarkets that want nice bright skinned baking potatoes. dairy farmerjonathan has had an expensive year, as well, poor grass growth in the summer heat means he might not have enough forage to see him through the winter. we did enough to see us through to the 5th of may, so if we don't have enough forage we can't feed all the goodies. that means they will be slaughtered, not at the end of their productive lives, they will go for meat earlier than they have to do,

and what happens is that next year when we have the forage we then won't have the livestock because it takes two years before an animal starts producing milk. so farmers have acted as a community and worked out a solution tojonathan‘s problem — his friend tom is converting a poor bean cropping to animal fodder for the first time. the year has been unbelievabe in terms of the weather patterns we have experienced all in one year. some tremendous difficulties with people not getting the yield from their grasses and so the winter feed is massively short and we have got to get there. some people will still be short when we get there but we are trying to work with the livestock farmers to balance that out, that is what we are trying to achieve. this is how it is harvested, the whole bean plant is gathered, finely chopped, and then fed into a huge airtight bag to be used

as needed through the winter. it is not all problematic in the countryside, though. the weather has been good for this vineyard in york. 2018 could be a vintage year, it's the best crop they have ever had. fruitful, plenty of fruit, and the year we have had so far has been one of the best we have experienced in terms of picking fruit and the grapes and apples and pears, the whole lot. so looking back, perfect conditions, another few years like that would be great. it hasn't been bad for a place which describes itself as britain's most northerly commercial vineyard. this is arguably the future of agriculture. dr mike hardman has focused his career on farming and how climate change will affect it and he believes things will have to be done differently.

we could see new pests and new diseases coming into the uk as well as affecting agriculture in ways we haven't seen, especially southern farmers, they will be affected mostly negatively in the future, and we could see northern farmers who could prosper through some of the warmth of the climate. there will be opportunities, as well, we can grow new types of produce and higher yields in the future. vital research is needed, he says, to adapt to our changing weather. so the beast from the east, we will see more of that over the next decade or so, these extreme weather patterns and unpredictable weather patterns are likely to be part of human induced climate change and so the severe effect it had on the agricultural industry, when it brought the country to a halt, that is

something we will have to deal with in the years to come. that doesn't mean the beast from the east will reappear annually from now on, but a pattern of extreme weather events is developing and scientists want everyone to change our lifestyles to reduce the impact of these weather events in the future. and the widely accepted climate forecast means there is now big pressure on farmers who produce our food to deal with these extremes. hello there. nothing particularly dramatic in this weather forecast. it stays pretty quite over the next few days but that is not to say there will not be some contrasts. take a look back at thursday and you can see that across county down we've had some sunshine and temperatures up to 13 degrees whereas parts of the west country got stuck under fog and temperatures in some areas of somerset did not get above four degrees. and looking ahead to friday's weather, we're going to start off with quite a lot of cloud, mist and fog. it should then turn a little bit brighter for some of us later

on and there is a bit of rain around as well through the morning, particularly across scotland — that'll be travelling its way eastwards. now, after such a cloudy, murky, foggy start across some southern areas, it is going to struggle to brighten up here. but we should see some brightness for the midlands and wales, for northern england and certainly for northern ireland and scotland some decent spells of sunshine expected by the afternoon. those temperatures 9—11 degrees, not bad for the time of year. but bear in mind, any lingering fog towards the south—west could hold those temperatures back once again. then as we go through friday night into the early hours of saturday, it's that mixture of mist and murk and low cloud but another batch of wet weather sliding in across northern ireland and scotland as the night wears on. temperatures typically between three and eight degrees. so saturday starts off with a frontal system starting across northern areas. but high pressure still holding on down to the south. so it is a day of split fortunes on saturday, but one thing that we will all experience is this mild west or south—westerly wind.

quite a brisk wind actually at times across the northern half of the uk. outbreaks of rain drifting eastwards as we go through saturday morning. clearing from scotland through the afternoon, something brighter developing and it will stay quite windy here as it will across parts of northern england. generally further south, more in the way of cloud, a lot of dry weather but those temperatures for the time of year pretty impressive, 12 or 13 degrees. as we look ahead to sunday, again, there could be a little bit of patchy rain around in northern areas. that could lingerfor a good part of the day across the northern isles. eleswhere, largely dry but largely cloudy. the best chance of any brightness and some shelter from the westerly winds, maybe to the east of the pennines, the eastern side of scotland, and again, those temperatures 11 or 12 degrees. and then for the final day of the year, new year's eve, again high pressure in charge. a lot of cloud and some fog trapped underneath the high. and we stick with that theme as we go into monday night. so if you are planning to be out and about celebrating at midnight, the weather doesn't look

particularly dramatic, it should be mostly dry, but there's likely to be a bit of cloud and some fog patches as well. welcome to bbc news — broadcasting to viewers in north america and around the globe. i'm lewis vaughan jones. our top stories: the senate stands adjourned until 10am on monday, december 31. the partial us government shutdown goes on after congress meets and adjourns within minutes. it will now continue into next week. confusion and anger in the democratic republic of congo. the election‘s postponed again in some areas. the outgoing president tells the bbc the delay is due to ebola. 0n the day that people were supposed to vote, you don't have this epidemic spreading like wildfire. a huge hunt is launched in austria after five monks