this is bbc news. welcome if you're watching here in the uk, on pbs in america or around the globe. i'm mike embley. our top stories: blockades and barriers. china's villages try to keep out strangers and the coronavirus. president trump accuses his former national security advisor of betraya, and the white house warns him not to publish his book. —— betrayal. # for auld lang syne, my dear # for auld lang syne...#. fraternal singing from some, flag—waving from others. brexit clears its final legal

hurdle in the european parliament. the sun as it's never been seen before. we'll talk to one of the scientists behind these new high—resolution images of its surface. hello to you. plans to evacuate foreigners from the chinese city of wuhan have been delayed as special flights haven't yet been cleared to leave. foreign governments have organised chartered flights to take their citizens out of the city as the numbers infected with the potentially deadly coronavirus continues to rise. authorities there say 170 people have now died, there are another 1,700 confirmed cases. hong kong is preparing to halve the number of flights to mainland china and suspend train and ferry services. john sudworth has the latest. safely out of wuhan, a plane arriving at a

california air base with 200 americans on board. earlier, japan got a flight full of its citizens out, touching down in tokyo. the night before the great escape... but the brits are still only preparing to leave. kharn lambert‘s grandmother, vera, stuck here on holiday, is running low on her medications. how do you feel about going home? delightful. there's frustration with the uk government. i think it's been an absolute shambles, to be honest with you. i don't think the government have really known what they've been doing. i don't think they've had as much contact with the chinese authorities as they say, because, if they had, i would assume that they'd been getting the same information that the americans have got, the japanese have got, and they'd have been able to put plans in place sooner. despite the lockdown, infections in wuhan are still rising rapidly, and anyone flown home from here faces two

weeks in uk quarantine. maeve clarke, a lecturer from birmingham, stuck in wuhan, says she understands why. i think it's a good precautionary measure and it's in line with what other governments are doing as well, and i think it gives reassurance to people back home, in the uk, that the right steps are being taken. much is still not known about the virus but, across china, few are taking any chances. villagers are putting up roadblocks and shutting out the world with great barriers of earth. "no outsiders are allowed in at all," this man tells me. beyond the human cost, for china there is another impact to all of this — fear. with countries beginning to advise against travel, with airlines cancelling flights, and with whole villages cutting themselves off

from the outside world, the economic cost is likely to be severe. my name is nick. this is... for some uk nationals, escape is not an option. nick house is british but his wife's from indonesia. she's been told she can't get a place on the plane. my mum and dad are worried, my sister's worried. theyjust want us home, really. they face more long weeks of uncertainty in a ghost city. john sudworth, bbc news, beijing. drjohn cahill is director of global health and tropical medicine services at mount sinai, and advisor on coronavirus response in the us. he gave more details about the virus itself. so this coronavirus to date seems to be less severe than sars, though it is premature to have a full understanding of how significant this virus might

be. but at this point, it's slightly more severe than influenza and the patients that we're really worried about at this point would be the elderly, the very young and the people with significant lung disease or heart disease. and it typically presents with a fever, chills, shortness of breath and a bad cough that can rapidly progress. the thing about this that is different to sars is that this virus, where sars was within a two to three day incubation period, it's14 days, which is different to the other coronavirus that we've seen in the last several years. that incubation period as you say is different and it's a problem. it makes spread more likely? it makes spreading it much more hard for us as public health officials to have a very good grasp and to be able to predict what is going to be the course of this virus. hence the recommendations that anyone travelling from china at this point should be quarantined for two weeks

before going to a workplace or being close to other family members. so wat‘s your best weapon against it? awareness 7 public health awareness, quarantine and time. certainly over the next month or so, we'll have a much better idea about where this virus is headed and how much it will have an impact both for china as well as for the global population. quarantine at this point is the key thing. sorry to interrupt you, but what chance of a vaccine do you think? a vaccine is very promising but once again, we're talking about three to six months before a vaccine will be readily available and by then, we will probably have seen the peak of the outbreak before the vaccine is available. how worried are you about this coronavirus? i'm not overtly worried. we still need to learn more but just like influenza, it's a little bit more severe. we need to have excellent

public health surveillance, quarantine is the right thing to do at this point, but hopefully this will be a virus that declare itself over the next month and will be limited. looking at sars or middle eastern respiratory syndrome, another coronavirus, those initially tended to be much more severe than this novel coronavirus that we are looking at right now. doctorjohn cahill there. the white house has warned the former us national security advisor, john bolton, not to publish a book which it says contains classified information. speculation is growing that he may give evidence at the president's impeachment trial after lea ks of his memoirs appeared to contradict the defence put forward by donald trump's lawyers. they wrapped up their arguments earlier, triggering two days of questioning by senators. let's speak to our correspondent in washington, chris buckler. chris, how significant does all this seemed to be? yeah, mike, the thursday of those questions and answers has wrapped up after a marathon session, ten

hours, where both democrats and republicans in the senate had their chance to put forward the questions to the two impeachment teams, the defence and the prosecution. the question everyone wants a nswered question everyone wants answered is whether president trump's form a national security adviser, john bolton, will be allowed to give evidence. that depends on getting a simple majority of senators to agree in a vote likely to take lace on friday, and there had been suggestions that perhaps some republicans, some moderate republicans, were moving towards the democrats and may support them, which would be needed in order to allow this vote to take place. but republicans seem to be a little bit more confident in the last hours also that mr bolton will be prevented from giving evidence and that is very important for mr trump becausejohn very important for mr trump because john bolton, according to the leaks of his book of which have been published in the new york times among other places, seems to believe that he has evidence to suggest mr trump did specifically link

this allegation of withholding military aid to ukraine to his desire for the country to launch investigations into his political rivals. frankly, that would be very damaging to mr trump's defence, which is probably why we've had the president really sending out several tweets attacking john bolton, suggesting that wasn't appropriate behaviour and indeed that mr bolton was lying. whether or not he will be tested inside this and it and we get some questions from some of those impeachment teams to him remains to be seen. chris, many thanks indeed for that. police in mexico have begun a huge manhunt for a leading member of the country's biggest drug gang, who's escaped a top security prison, with two others. extra police have been deployed in mexico city, along with helicopters, to search for victor felix beltran. he has family links to the former leader of the sinaloa cartel, joaquin guzman, known as ‘el chapo‘. the brexit process has cleared its final legislative

hurdle — the european parliament has voted overwhelmingly to ratify the withdrawal agreement. the vote, after farewell statements from members, clears the way for the uk to leave the eu at 11pm on friday. our europe editor, katya adler, reports. # for auld lang syne, my dear # for auld lang syne...#. it's been an emotional day in brussels. most of these meps deeply regret brexit. they felt honour—bound today to approve the negotiated brexit deal. but they meant what they then sang. after more than a0 years of eu membership, old acquaintances, the uk in this case, will not be forgotten. to come to results... the new european commission president declared everlasting love for the uk today, using the words of british novelist and poet george eliot. only in the agony of parting do we look into the depth of love. we will always love you and we will never be far. long live europe.

applause it is all over, finished! and the uk's best—known european parliamentarian ensured he would not be forgotten. he told the eu it was doomed, and then... i know you want to ban our national flags, but we are going to wave you goodbye, and we will look forward in the future to working with you as sovereign. . . mid—sentence, he had his mic cut. no national flag—waving allowed here. could you please remove the flags? there's something slightly surreal about this day, this week of goodbyes here in brussels, and that's because the day after brexit day, we enter the transition period. so, yes, legally we have left the european union, but while we are sorting out a new trade deal, practically, things stay the same — paying into the eu budget, accepting laws made here inside the european parliament, but we will no longer have a seat here at the decision—making table.

that is a lot of voices to lose. for some uk meps today, even emptying their post box at the european parliament was a symbolic event. it is a disaster, it's a huge disaster. europe is not going to go away. we are going to have to trade with them. we will come on holiday and we will move around and we will drive around. the regulations will be made here, in this house, but there will be no british voice standing up for the uk when those regulations are made. tonight, scottish national party meps bid a tuneful, tea rful farewell to the european parliament. music: flower of scotland. the union flag flies here until friday but, with trade talks just ahead, the eu—uk conversation is far from over. katya adler, bbc news, brussels. 0n the eve of the uk's

departure from the european union, former commission presidentjean—claude juncker has told bbc hardtalk the negotiations on the future trading relationship between britain and europe would be very tough, especially when it comes to the fishing industry. i think it's up to the negotiators to sort out what can be done in favour of britain, and what has to be kept alive as far as european rules and some things are concerned. we will have negotiations, these will be very tough negotiations, but we knew this before. so don't be surprised that these negotiations will be tough. but when emmanuel macron says," if there is not continued european access to british fishing, there's no chance of a comprehensive trade deal", are we to take him seriously? yes, because we

say huge concern in the french port and other regions in europe, so this is the point... but the vast majority of eu nations are not even fishing states. but this doesn't take away the importance of fishing for france, belgium, the netherlands, and others. it seems there's a danger in talking tough this way, the eu is misreading the politics in the uk because the whole point of brexit is to take back control. if you listen to some of the british fishermen‘s leaders, as i've been doing in recent days, they are saying what they see from the eu is a cynical attempt to continue deeply unfairfishing cynical attempt to continue deeply unfair fishing practices which have disadvantaged to fishermen which they will no longer tolerate. but this was part of all the treaties and negotiations we had over the decades we've written. the fact the european union wants to stick to these

arrangements is not a surprise. and you can see the whole of stephen sackur‘s interview with jean—claude juncker here on hardtalk at 0430 gmt, that's in just a few minutes. stay with us on bbc world news, still to come: two decomissioned satellites travelling at more than 50,000kph have a very near miss above the us city of pennsylvania. the shuttle challenger exploded soon after lift—off. there were seven astronauts on board, one of them a woman schoolteacher. all of them are believed to have been killed. by the evening, tahrir square, the heart of official cairo, was in the hands of the demonstrators. they were using the word "revolution". the earthquake singled out buildings and brought them down in seconds.

tonight, the search for any survivors has an increasing desperation about it as the hours passed. the new government is firmly in control of the entire republic of uganda. survivors of the auschwitz concentration camp have been commemorating the 40th anniversary of their liberation. they toured the huts, gas chambers and crematoria, and relived their horrifying experiences. this is bbc world news, the latest headlines: the world health organisation has warned the entire world needs to take action to stop the spread of the new coronavirus which began in the chinese city of wuhan. the white house has warned president trump's former national security advisor that his controversial new book can't be published unless he deletes classified information.

france is to outlaw the culling of unwanted male chicks by the year 2021, as part of wider animal welfare reforms. currently, male chicks are killed on an industrial scale — because they don't lay eggs and are often not wanted for meat. this report from rich preston — you may find some of it upsetting. about 7 billion male chicks are killed around the world each year. it's common practice in the food industry. male chicks don't grow as quickly as female ones, so aren't considered useful for their meat and, of course, they don't lay eggs. they're sorted shortly after being born and either gassed or sent to high—speed grinders. now france says it will put an end to the practice. translation: certain practices today may be considered shocking to our fellow citizens. 0ur farmers do not do these things out of pleasure. we're going to publish the regulations in the next few weeks to ban all painful practices in animal

husbandry. the move will make france one of the first countries to ban the culling of male chicks. it's already banned in switzerland and germany's only allowing it to continue temporarily until a new measure is found. it's hoped techniques will be developed to allow the sex of a chick to be determined before it hatches — making culling no longer necessary. but animal rights activists say the moves don't go far enough, highlighting that there have been no promises to improve slaughterhouse conditions or move away from intensive animalfarming. rich preston, bbc news. the latest scientific research suggests the lungs have an almost magical ability to repair the damage caused by smoking but only if you actually quit. a study, published in thejournal nature, found that cells that escape damage can help the lungs recover, even for patients who smoked 20 cigarettes a day for a0 years. many scientists had believed the mutations that lead to cancer

are permanent. audit ethiopia will fill a contested dam. egypt relies on the river for 90% of its water supply. two decomissioned satellites, travelling at more than 50,000km/h seem to have had a near miss. organisations tracking space objects estimate they came within 150 feet of each other, above pennsylvania. some estimates had put the chances of a collision ati in 20 raising fears of catastrophic damage to other satellites from the crash debris. one of the people keeping an eye on those satellites was the astronomer jonathan mcdowell, from the harvard—smithsonian centre for astrophysics. well, it's good news. the satellites didn't hit each other. the radar tracking, post the encounter, has confirmed that they are both still carrying on in their orbits. and i was watching with a friend from the roof of the harvard 0bservatory and we didn't see any nasty flashes as they passed each other, so that was

really a relief. but, you know, no collision today, but there is a lot of space junk out there. so it is going to happen at some point in the future. given that, are you surprised that they didn't? no, one in 20 is still i9 chances out of 20 they don't, right? i would not have been surprised if they did. i am relieved. but at any one time you don't know if it will happen, all you know is eventually collisions like this will happen, like the one we had back in 2009. jonathan, how common a situation is this, how big a problem is it? it's a problem and an increasing problem. right now we are running at about one major collision every 10—15 years. and that has increased the amount ofjunk that other

satellites have to dodge. but as the number of satellites increase we are looking at expectations of a tenfold increase in the number of satellites in low orbit in the next few years. that would increase the risk of near misses actual collisions by rate of 100. an increasing problem in the sense that every piece of space debris, no matter how small, is an issue, is a threat. that's right. they are all going at 18,000 mph. this potential collision today, they were going at 50,000 kilometres per hour towards each other. and that is pretty typical. that is a lot of energy. so even a tiny piece could destroy a valuable satellite that is providing safe weather data or communication services. fascinating stuff and alarming stuff. jonathan, thank you so much. you're welcome. astronomers have revealed never before seen images of the sun — and they've got closer than ever before.

the striking high resolution images of the sun's surface were captured by a solar telescope in hawaii. this is one image, looking a lot like a collection of gold nuggets actually, each one of these nuggets is roughly the size of texas. thomas rimmele is the director of the inouye solar telescope project. well, what you are looking at are the first images of what is the largest and most powerful solar telescope in the world. the what you are seeing are convection cells on the solar surface. that is where hot plasma rises and cools off and drops back down beneath the surface. and as part of the motion, magnetic fields are generated and you see those in the images as little bright features, little bright points which, for the first time, we have been able to resolve at their intrinsic scale. and that scale is extraordinary, isn't it? obviously you knew what you are trying to get. when you first saw the images what was your reaction? oh, i wasjust

very, very happy. we have spent 25 years of work on this telescope. a whole team of engineers and scientists have basically put their life's work into this and seeing the images was the reward after all this work. we were just very, very happy. so, in more detail, what are the images telling you? these images let us resolve the magnetic fields which the sun generates on these very small scales, the size of manhattan. and we are looking at those from 93 million miles away. what we really want to accomplish with this telescope is to precisely measure the magnetic field, not only on the surface of the sun, but also in the upper atmosphere, in particular in the corona of the sun, so the corona is the outer atmosphere of the sun that you can see with your naked eye during an eclipse. what we currently cannot do is measure the magnetic field in the corona. and this telescope will let us do that. that's incredibly important

to us because the sun generates this immense amount of energy and stores it in the magnetic field that sometimes becomes unstable and leads to solar eruptions, flares, coronal mass ejections that impact us very much here on earth, power grid failures, communication failures, satellites can be taken out by solar storms. so we're very much interested in fully understanding the physics behind the solar magnetic field. yes, on the particular point, are there specific things that these images make you think we need to know much more about this? yes, as i mentioned, we have to measure the magnetic field. these are the very initial images from this new facility.

they indicate that we have achieved the resolution that we were looking for, but now with new instrumentation and that is yet to come online, that we will bring online in the next few months, we will be able to precisely prove the magnetic field and trace it all the way up into the corona. the swedish climate activist greta thunberg has applied to trademark her name, to stop people impersonating her. the 17—year—old has also registered her ‘friday‘s for future' movement, the banner under which she first started protesting outside the swedish parliament every friday, instead of attending school. she's also announced plans to set up a non—profit foundation, promoting sustainability and mental health. for the first time, berlin zoo has unveiled a pair of twin pandas to the public. meng xiang and meng yuan are both 5 months old. they're the first panda cubs born at a german zoo — which probably explains why their names mean ‘long—awaited dream' and ‘dream come true'.

they've been nicknamed pit and paule by their keepers. a reminder of our top story. the chinese government is now saying at least a hundred and seventy people are confirmed dead from the coronavirus outbreak — there are more than seven thousand confirmed cases. the world health organisation will meet later on thursday to decide whether to declare a global health emergency. hello there. we started off this week with a wintry flavour, cold for all of us. but wednesday brought a day of contrast. it was a glorious afternoon across much of england and wales with some sunshine coming through, as you can see in bedford, and a little milder with it. different story, though, further north as we saw some heavy, persistent rain. some areas of scotland seeing over a couple of inches in a 24—hour period.

now that weather front continues to drift its way steadily north. we've got a weaker area of low pressure pushing its way in from the south—west. but one unifying factor as we move into thursday and friday is a south—westerly flow will drive mild air right across the country. so wednesday morning we saw temperatures hovering around the freezing mark. but thursday morning, and it really looks as though it will be a different story. we're going to start of mild, 7—8 degrees widely across the country. so, yes, it's a mild start, but it's a rather cloudy, grey, drab one, unfortunately. there'll be some rain, some of it heavy and persistent, moving its way up through western scotland to the north. and then behind it we've got quite a lot of cloud, thick enough for the odd spot or two drizzle, light patchy rain, misty, murky weather conditions, maybe some dense fog lingering in the far south—west. lighter winds to the south, but always strongest the further north and west with that rain. but look at this.

those temperatures widely double digits. 10—14 degrees our afternoon highs. as we move out of thursday into friday, unfortunately, yet again, there's another frontal system that's going to push in from the west and that's going to bring more wet weather with it. now, the heaviest of the rain is likely to be through western areas for a time on wednesday. and as it pushes its way steadily eastwards it'll weaken, fragment to showers into the afternoon. but we're likely to see more persistent rain just clinging on to the north—west of the great glen. however, the wind direction‘s still a south—westerly, still mild for all, 8—11; the high. now, as we move out of friday for the start of the weekend, unfortunately it looks as though we're stuck in repeat. low pressure never too far away, but weather fronts crossing the uk, they ease away, a brief respite before the next weather front which is in. so it does look likely that it's going to stay pretty u nsettled. so this is our city forecast for both saturday and sunday. it's going to be a case showers

or longer spells of rain, but it's still on the mild side for this time of year, with temperatures widely into double figures. take care.

this is bbc news, the headlines: the chinese government is now saying at least 170 people are confirmed dead from the coronavirus outbreak. there are more than 7,000 confirmed cases. the world health organization will meet later on thursday to decide whether to declare a global health emergency. special flights have not yet been cleared to leave wuhan. the white house has warned president trump's former national security advisor that his new book cannot be published unless classified information is deleted. john bolton's lawyer insists nothing in it should be considered classified. comments in the book, it's reported, directly contradict the president's defence in his impeachment trial. the european parliament has ratified the brexit transition agreement, the final hurdle before the united kingdom leaves the european union

on friday after 47 years. negotiations now begin on a final agreement, which the british government hopes to conclude before the end of the year. now on bbc news, stephen sackur is in luxembourg for a special edition of hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk, i'm stephen sackur. britain is about to make history by leaving the european union. it's a historic fork in the road, for the uk and maybe europe too. many on both sides didn't think it would come to this, even after the brexit referendum of 2016, but it has. my guest is jean—claude juncker.

he was the president of the european commission