with no clear frontrunner set to sweep the board, it's likely there'll be a few memorable moments ahead. the golden globes are notoriously difficult to predict. the only real certainty is that champagne will flow — and probably a few tears, too. sophie long, bbc news, los angeles. now it's time for a look at the weather. it is unseasonably mild. if you think it is mild now, wait until tuesday, really mild weather on the way. we have had great weather to contend with today. in most places, cloudy, but that will break up across north wales and the midlands. eastern scotland doing nicely for brightness but the north—west of scotla nd brightness but the north—west of scotland will see outbreaks of rain. temperature is above average for the time of year. this evening and tonight, rendell splashed across northern scotland. windy and the west, and generally, it will be

cloudy, the odd spot of drizzle, some helpful, but where we keep clear, it will become chile, the east of scotland and england. tomorrow, a cloudy, drizzly start, then this band of rain will push and accompanied by brisk winds. the skies were clear and we will see something brighter, with some showers. look at the temperatures on tuesday. some spots will get to 16 degrees, but with that, some wet and very windy weather.

hello, this is bbc news with lu kwesa burak. the headlines: hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets in iran to mourn the assassinated military leader general soleimani. president trump warns the us has a list of 52 targets that will be hit "very hard" if iran decides to retaliate. the iraqi government has summoned the us ambassador over the airstrike which killed the general. royal navy warships are ordered to escort british—flagged vessels in the persian gulf and the prime minister is returning to the uk from his caribbean holiday. the australian prime minister warns that the bushfire emergency could last for months. 2a people have now died since the crisis began and thousands have lost their homes. the costs of hs2 are "out of control" and its benefits overstated, according to the deputy chair of its review panel.

now on bbc news, it's time for dissenting opinion in which razia izbal has a rare interview with justice ruth bader ginsburg, the leading liberaljudge in the us supreme court. i, ruth bader ginsburg, do solemnly swear that i will support and defend the constitution of the united states, so help me god. justice ruth bader ginsburg is the leading liberaljudge on the us supreme court. at 86, she has been fighting for decades for women's rights, including for equal pay and fair access to abortion. it is no exaggeration to say

that her crucial work has effected profound change in the legal status for women in america. and it is for this reason that she has been awarded this year's berggruen prize for philosophy and culture — a prize she will be awarded here at a special ceremony in the new york public library in front of an invited audience. but first, i've been given a rare opportunity to interview rbg — an affectionate nickname — about her career, her popular iconic status, and her hopes and fears for the future of america. ladies and gentlemen, supreme court justice ruth bader ginsburg. thank you, thank you so much, everyone, be seated. applause thank you so much. let's start with the prize.

this is a prize that you have been given for the impact that you have made to effect social change in this country. what does it mean to you to have won this? i was overwhelmed with the letter inviting me to accept the berggruen prize. as a government officer, i can't accept money for myself. but this was an opportunity to give money to many good causes. i was a bit taken aback because i'm surely not a philosopher. but i do interpret a text, and the text i interpret most often is the us constitution. applause

i can assure everyone here it is indeed a living constitution, because who would want to be governed by a dead constitution? laughter i wonder if i can take you back now to when you first started. and when you graduated from columbia, i wonder what you set out to think about the kind of legal career that you thought you wanted, that you thought you could have. just take us back there. yes, there were nine women out of over 500 in the class. women were 3% of the lawyers in the country. there were precious few on any

bench, precious fewjudges. and there was no law that prohibited discrimination on the basis of gender, so legal employers were upfront in saying they didn't want any lady lawyers. and in my case, they certainly didn't want a woman who was already a mother because my daughter was four when i graduated, almost four when i graduated from law school. so it was the closed—door era. and at the time, did you think that that's what you wanted to do? to devote your career to trying — just to try and break that culture, the attitude that "lady lawyers", as you referred to them, were not going to be part of the fabric of the legal establishment?

did you think that was what you were going to devote your career to? not when i was in law school. it wasn't until there was a groundswell, women waking up, women in numbers, joining together to change the not—so—good old ways. but it was that... when i got into the... effort to make women citizens of equal stature to men, i was really driven by two forces. one were my students. the feminist movement was reborn, and my students wanted a course on women in the law.

so i went to the library and inside of a month, i read every federal decision that was ever written about gender—based discrimination. it was no mean feat, there was precious little. laughter and then, there were women coming into the aclu. i was teaching at rutgers university, so women had complaints that they hadn't aired before. one group were teachers who were put on what was euphemistically called "maternity leave" as soon as they began to show. because after all, you didn't want the little children to think that teacher had swallowed a watermelon. laughter but these were women who said, "we are ready, willing, and able to work, and there is no

reason why we should be forced out of the classroom". and it was the students on the one hand, the new complainants on the other, that drove me into the effort. i wonder if you would reflect for us, in the context of the progress that you made, we've heard about some 300 cases that were taken when you were involved with the american civil liberties union, to do with gender discrimination — six of them were heard by the supreme court, five of which you won. i wonder whether you think that the sort of progress that was made during your time with the american civil liberties union, whether you think that those things are slowly coming under threat now in the 21st century. what was done in the 1970s

was, in a sense, easy. because the law books, both federal and state, were riddled with gender—based discrimination differentials. and they all had been rationalized as operating benignly in women's favour. ourjob was to show whatjustice brennan put so well in one of the decisions, that the pedestal on which women were thought to stand more often turned out to be a cage. so the mission in the ‘70s was to get rid of all these gender—based classifications. so in the space of a decade, almost every explicit gender—based classification was gone. it was not there any more. and those laws are not

going to come back ever. so when you say that we're not going to go back to the kind of gender—based discrimination was eliminated in the ‘70s onwards, i wonder if you would accept that there are laws that were passed then that are under threat now — when you look at the specifics of states in the south of this country, that fair access to abortion is under threat. do you think women need to be — or society as a whole, notjust women — needs to be ever more vigilant? i think society needs to be more active on this issue. the truth is that with all these restrictive laws, the only people who are being restricted are poor women. there are some states... applause and you say that because if you have

money, you can travel to a state where you would be able to? yes! yes, it's a little bit like divorce was in the old days, when if you had the money to go to nevada and stay there for six weeks, you could get a divorce. now we have no—fault divorce in every state. so no woman of means will ever lack access to abortion in the united states, because there are some states that will offer it. so it's... the brunt of all these restrictive laws is on poor women. not only if they can't pay the plane fare or the bus fare, they can't afford to take days off

from work to go. so when you say that society needs to be much more active, how do you think that...? i think one of the things that happened after roe v wade is that the women who wanted women to be able to control their own destiny, they won, so they retreated. and the other side geared up, and we have the situation that we have today. and i suppose, just pressing you a little on what you would suggest society should do in order to continue with the trend of continued fair access to abortion, what would you... ? people should care about it the way they did when many women didn't have access to... didn't have the right to choose. anyway, but it is so obvious that the only people

restricted are poor women. one day, i think people will wake up to that reality, that we will never have a situation again where a woman of means has any problem. the polarisation in society that we see today has been long in the making. and i wonder if you would reflect for us on the role of the supreme court as an institution in an environment — a cultural, social, and political environment — where there is so much ideological polarisation. how would you talk to people about the continued active role of the supreme court in that context? first, it hasn't been so long in the making. think back to the year that i was nominated by president clinton.

1993. the vote in support of my nomination was 96—3. orrin hatch, the senatorfrom utah, was my chief supporter on the judiciary committee. my white house handlers were worried about my aclu connection, and i said, "forget it. there's nothing that you can say to me that would lead me to do anything but praise the aclu." there wasn't a single question — not a single question — asked about my aclu work. and as i said, the vote was 96—3. there was no polarisation, congress was working the way it should. there was a true bipartisan spirit. so how did we get back from polarisation now, then? how do we get back?

how do we get back to that, but how do you account for it? what is it that is the root cause of it, even if it's not been that long in the making? i can't say any more than anyone here can, how this happened. but it's not the way it should be. and i hope that there will be good people on both sides of the aisle who will say, "let's stop this dysfunction and let's work together for the good of the country." applause but it's quite clear

that there is a huge lack of that effort — of good people on both sides of the aisle coming together. this country is in the throes of an impeachment crisis, and i wonder if you would reflect for us this notion that senators should be impartial when the trial approaches. that this is something that is in the constitution, the impartiality of senators. and that doesn't seem to be something that is likely to happen. well, we shall see what this process turns out. laughter do you think they should be impartial? the house indicts, and the senate tries. should a trier be impartial? of course, that is the job of a judge, to be impartial.

but you will be very aware that there are senators who are already saying, before the impeachment gets to the senate or the trial in the senate, they've already made their minds up. that's problematic. well, if a judge said that, thejudge would be disqualified from sitting on the case. laughter applause but it's about the level of accountability, so if a senator says they've already made their mind up and the trial doesn't even exist at the moment, there is no accountability, is there? my old chiefjustice put it very well, and he said, "the day a judge stops being impartial and starts to do things to please the home crowd," or whatever your home crowd is, "that's the day thatjudge should

step down from office". so, in that context, what you're saying is that you would urge senators to be impartial? and to act as jurors, as opposed to responding to their own ideological partisanship? that's the role in which the constitution cast the senate for this purpose. they are the triers. we have a process to selectjurors. if a juror reveals a bias, thatjuror will not be chosen. the one who is a judge or a trier must be impartial.

what is your reading of the constitution in the context of the president of the united states saying that the supreme court should stop this impeachment? this is something that he has tweeted not that long ago, and i wonder what, if anything, exists in the constitution which allows people to interpret that there is — that some sort of response should be made when the head of the country says that the impeachment should stop and the supreme court should intervene. is there a reading that you can present to us? the president is not a lawyer, he's not law trained. laughter applause you have been spoken about as being even bigger than a rock star. let's talk about the popular iconic status that you have acquired — and your view of it,

whether you enjoy it, for a start. i think it is an amazing phenomenon. laughter here i am, almost 87 years old, and everyone wants to take a picture with me. applause but i should tell you how it all started. it was started by a second—year student at new york university law school. she started it when the supreme court decided a case involving a key provision of the voting rights act of 1965. the decision was divided. it cut the heart out of the voting rights act. and this young woman was angry.

and then she thought to herself, "well, what good is that going to do, just to be angry? i have to do something positive." so she took the announcement of my dissent that i read from the bench, not the whole long dissent, just the five minutes or so in which i summarised it, and she put it on some kind of a blog. and it took off from there into the wild blue yonder. laughter and she called it the notorious rbg, after the famous rapper, the notorious big, because she decided that the two of us had something very important in common. what we had in common is that we were both born and bred in brooklyn, new york. applause

you've seen so much change. i wonder what you would say to young people who you talk to all the time, and people come to seek your advice — what would you say to young women who look at your example, and are either despondent in the current climate that progress is not possible — what would you say to them? well, the young people are my hope. and when my granddaughter, who is here tonight, who is doing what she can to make things better in our society, think of malala. malala yousafzai? the swedish... ..greta thunberg. i think the young people that i see are fired up, and they want our country to be

what it should be. so my faith — one of the things that makes me an optimist are the young people. applause justice ginsburg, thank you very much for speaking to us. thank you for being here. applause thank you. the only reason i am here tonight is tojust share the same oxygen as the notorious rbg. oh, come on, she's everything! she's a pioneer, she has stuck her neck out for women and for equality before it was fashionable to do so. i have two daughters. they're never excited about anything i go to. but tonight really

meant a lot to them. it has not been quite this grey everywhere but most of us have had quite a lot of cloud to content with this weekend. it has however been largely dry, pretty quiet weather—wise, that will not last because through the week ahead we will see outbreaks of rain, gales in the north, generally it will feel mad for the time of year and it will turn drier later in the week, largely dry out there at the moment but that cloud in places producing the odd spot of drizzle. that cloud gives late spells of sunshine. temperatures 9—11d. through this evening, we will see rain across the far north—west of scotland and a feed of cloud rolling in from the south—west. lowering down onto the hills to give murk and hill fog. we

keep some clear spells. it might get a bit chilly but generally speaking of night and an increasingly windy one in the west is well ahead of a weather front. this will move its way in tomorrow bringing outbreaks of rain. some of that rain will be heavy and we will see brisk winds as well. many of us starting up cloudy across england and wales but largely dry. that rain will move to northern ireland and scotland, heavy bursts here accompanied by brisk winds. that weather front gets down into northern england, wales, the south—west and midlands as we go through the afternoon. temperature —wise, 9—10d, a mix of sunshine and showers following on behind that rain band. as we get into tuesday, here is a big weather maker for the middle of the week, a deep area of low pressure will bring heavy rain, strong winds and severe gales but also this wedge of really mild air which will be unseasonably mild, dare i say it even warm on tuesday.

dry weather towards the south—east, wetter weather for the north and west, very strong when speaking across scotland with gusts of 70—75 mph and gusty to the eastern side of the pennines, quite poor conditions for high sided vehicles, but there's temperature is 13—15 for the moray coast of scotland, up to 16 degrees, very unusual for this point in january. it will cool offer some of us as we january. it will cool offer some of us as we get to wednesday. this confront pushes its way south—eastwards, cool air introduced across northern and central areas, martin further south, 11 in cardiff and 13 in london on wednesday. on friday, drier, brighter but a bit colder. more weather throughout the rest of the day, but that is all from me for now.

this is bbc news. i'm lukwesa burak. the headlines at 3: hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets in iran to mourn the assassinated military leader general soleimani. president trump warns that the us has a list of 52 targets that will be hit "very hard" if iran decides to retaliate. the iraqi government has summoned the us ambassador over the airstrike that killed the general. meanwhile, royal navy warships are ordered to escort british—flagged vessels in the persian gulf as prime minister returns to the uk from his caribbean holiday. the australian prime minister warns that the bushfire emergency could last for months. 2a people have now died since the crisis began and thousands have lost their homes. i didn't see any flame.