this is bbc news. the headlines: people arriving anywhere in the uk from spain will now have to quarantine for two weeks. it follows a sharp increase in spanish coronavirus infections — nearly 1,000 new cases in the last two days. the spanish foreign ministry says the country is safe, saying outbreaks are localised and isolated. thousands of protestors have gathered in cities across poland against the government's decision to withdraw from a european treaty aimed at preventing violence against women. the government says the treaty undermines what it describess as the traditional family model. and tributes have been paid to the veteran of american television regis philbin, who has died at the age of 88. according to the guiness book of world records, mr philbin spent more hours in front of the camera than any other television personality. the case for action on obesity

has never been stronger — that is the message from public health england after a review has found that being overweight greatly increases your chances of being hospitalised or dying if you have covid—19. ministers are due to publish a new strategy for tackling obesity this week. simonjones has the story. the warning from health officials is clear. if you're overweight or obese and get coronavirus, you're more likely to end up in hospital, more likely to become critically ill. this graph illustrates the scale of the problem, based on a study of over 19,000 people who have tested positive for covid—19. it shows the bigger the bmi, or body mass index, the risk of intensive care increases. someone who is severely obese has over four times the risk compared to someone who is the normal weight. being overweight increases the chances of insulin resistance.

it puts up your blood pressure. and all of these extra pressures and strains on the body are likely to be part of the reason why people when they contract covid, if they're also overweight, have these extra chances of being really sick. although some of us have been using the extra time we have had on our hands during lockdown to do sport, evidence suggests overall exercise levels haven't increased. what has is the amount ofjunk food and alcohol we've been buying from high street shops. at this park in london, despite no shortage of keen exercisers, people admit the past few months have been challenging. i made quite a conscious effort to try and do more exercise. and obviously with a little one, we've been getting out to the parks pretty much every day. but i would say i have probably eaten more, as well. once the bars opened, we've been sort of overindulging, probably, back in bars and restaurants. it is trying to get that...

i think it will settle down, and we'll get a balance. looking at the rate of obesity per 1,000 people in european countries, the uk, here in blue, is among the most obese, with 26.2 people out of every 1,000 considered obese. the government is expected to unveil a long—awaited obesity strategy for england next week which could see snack food promotions limited and a ban on tv adverts for junk food before the watershed. it's very important to get the balance right... public health england is saying the case for action has never been stronger. we need to change, if you like, the food culture, so that people are encouraged to eat healthily. in the past, the government has shied away from taking action. do you think it's going to be different this time? there is a need to respond to the pandemic, and the prime minister has spoken about his commitment to tackling obesity. so we're optimistic for the announcements which we've been told will be coming next week. the aim is to reduce the amount of sugar on our shelves and in ourdiets. simon jones, bbc news. now on bbc news: antarctica is one of the most remote and inhospitable places on earth.

reporterjustin rowlatt travels to thwaites, the so—called doomsday glacier. antarctica — the world's most remote and inhospitable consonant. —— continent. this is the story of a team of scientists who are trying to get to thwaites, the so—called ‘doomsday glacier'. no—one's ever really been under thwaites, and what icefin's going to do is get up and close to the sea floor and allow us to see what's happening in kind of a real way. oh, oh! look at that! 0h! yeah! what happens to thwaites affects us all, because as it melts, it will drive up the sea level around the world. this glacier is part of a system. if it all of that goes, you could end up with upwards of three metres of sea level rise. but first, the scientists need to get there. it's so difficult to operate here. all the planes are grounded.

they're saying we won't fly anywhere. one only does anything in antarctica with the cooperation of the weather. antarctica is a place of extremes. it is the coldest, highest, driest and windiest continent on earth. capped by an ice sheet of up to five kilometres thick, this continent contains 90% of the world's ice. i begin myjourney in new zealand. i don't need your passport, that's all good. they say travelling to antarctica is like travelling to another planet. so, here goes.

the us air force provides the planes. the safety briefing may be familiar, but nothing else about this flight is. i'm travelling with professor david vaughan, the director of science at the british antarctic survey. after flying due south for five hours, i get my first glimpse of antarctica, snow and ice stretching as far as the eye can see. finally, our destination. we are heading to mcmurdo. which is pretty much straight off over there. it is the last fingerhold of civilisation, the most southerly town on earth, and the largest centre for scientific research

on the continent. and, out across the sea ice, the first peaks of the mighty tra nsa ntarctic mountains. keep it staying in place... it is here in mcmurdo that our expedition to the thwaites glacier begins. so thwaites glacier is vulnerable, and there is nothing stopping a collapse once it really takes hold. thwaites glacier is the size of britain and already accounts for 4% of global sea level rise. the fear is, if the melt rate increases, much of the west antarctic ice sheet could go, too. that could raise world sea levels by more than three metres. why is the glacier changing? why is it being eaten away? it's being eaten away because there are winds on the ocean's surface that are actually driving currents away from this ice sheet. when that happens, this water

comes in underneath like this. this deep ocean water is really warm. and that eats away at the glacier. this normally doesn't happen. these winds have been increasing, and so more of this water has been coming up onto the continental shelf and interacting with this glacier. the scientists say global warming has changed the wind patterns and sea currents, bringing warm ocean water to the front of the glacier. we have loaded the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, we've set the temperature going up, and... doctor britney schmidt is in charge of a nasa—funded robot submarine called icefin. the plan is to lower it almost half a mile through the ice to map conditions in the seawater below. so, britney, give me a tour of icefin. so, up at the front, we have sensors that are going to make measurements of the oceanography, telling us

what the temperature is, and the salinity of the water, and how much oxygen is there. in addition to that, we have a forward—looking sonar here that allows us to map the three—dimensional cavities, so it allows us to see the shape of the ice and its texture. no—one's really been under thwaites, and what icefin's going to do is get up and close to the physics, get really close to the ice, really close to the sea floor, and allow us to see what's happening in a real way. how much of a challenge do you think this is going to be? well, it's always an impressive challenge to do anything here in antarctica, and much more so when you're, you know, 1,200 miles from mcmurdo. when you think about drilling through 600 metres of ice, drilled by the best people in the world, just to make an observation, it's quite a challenge. and then to operate a moving platform through there is pretty special, actually. icefin may have a big task ahead, but not the one as big that faced the men

who stayed in this hut. so this is a truly unique historical site, literally frozen in time. it is the base camp of captain scott's ill—fated 1911 attempt to reach the south pole. whispering: look at this. this is amazing. god, it's incredible. i'll tell you what strikes you first. it's — it's the smell. it really smells of kind of smoked fish. so there are all sorts of objects. the tin cans and the food they ate on the expedition. so we've got some — what's that, tinned salmon? that looks like a can of sardines. and here we've got cocoa, which was a huge drink for them. that was the drink of the polar explorers. they'd make cocoa. and dry, hard biscuits —

ship's biscuits, baking powder. this is seal blubber. what they would do is kill the seals on the ice, bring them back here. they'd eat the meat and use the blubber to burn their stoves to keep them warm. which is why it smells like smoked fish in here, because it is covered, you can see it is just covered, with soot from the blubberfire. it's actually really ghostly, ‘cause you get a sense of the people being here. scott himself, leaving from here with that great ambition to get to the pole and then of course dying on the way back. and, like captain scott before us, our plans are frustrated by the antarctic weather. i'm beginning to understand why doing science here is so difficult. then i hear a crisis meeting has been called. the delays have got so bad, they're going to have to scale back some of the science. i want to find out what's going on. i managed to track

down david vaughan. well, i think there's a lot of ambitions at stake here. people have been working on these projects for several years already. so, when the bad news comes, i don't think it's quite yet but the delays are continuing. things are going to change, and that's going to mean a lot for some people. so can i come to the meeting? i'd rather you did not on this one, justin. i'm not allowed in? no. so you're not expecting — a difficult meeting, but? no, no, i think — but we just to people — let people get that news and process it, and think about what they're going they're actually going to when they actually get — finally get in the field. thanks very much. good luck. thank you. when the meetings over, i learned the weather is hampering efforts to supply spare parts to the plane we need to get to the thwaites glacier. there's parts coming down from new zealand to get those planes functional again. so we have to sit and wait.

how many days behind schedule are we now? uh, i don't really even... i don't know, actually. why count? i think we can still imagine that we can still do 100% of the tasks, but... you can still imagine? i can still imagine that we could do — with the following wind — 100% of the tasks. but time is getting very, very tight. people are getting a little itchy, and a little bit concerned. one only does anything in antarctica with the cooperation of the weather. suddenly the weather clears, and miraculously, it seems the project is back on track. it's all hands on deck to get the kit boxed up and transported to the airfield, ready to go. and the team are there, itching to get cracking. so we're super excited. we're out at lilyfield and we're finally about to get

to the plane out to thwaites divide. i can't wait to get out and start the next phase of the melt project. you can't fly straight to thwaites. there's no ice runway that can take these big planes. so the 1,300 milejourney is done in stages. thwaites divide is the project's staging post in the middle of the west antarctic ice sheet. this is where passengers, fuel and cargo are dropped off before being ferried on to the field sites on the glacier itself. the plan is only to stay here for a couple of days, but this being antarctica, it's not long before the weather changes again. so we've been out here for like, i don't know, an hour and a half, and this is the result. i think it gives you an idea of why it is so difficult

to operate here. all the planes are grounded, they're saying we won't fly anywhere for at least three days. keeping the camp from being overwhelmed by snow is a full—timejob for the snowploughs. the wind is gusting up to 50 miles an hour and the temperature is —20. check the snotcicles on this! oh, my god, that's absolutely horrible. oh, god. ergh. i can't get it off. i do manage to warm up but i realise something isn't quite right. my finger has gone all kind of white and it looks a bit burnt. i think you should go and see the doctor to see if it needs a dressing on it because it doesn't look right to me. david is worried it could be the early stages of frostbite, commonly known as frostnip. can you feel that? i can feel it but it doesn't feel the same as... it doesn't feel the same as the other fingers. it feels a bit numb. frostnip is a freezing of the tissue but not a permanent freezing

of the tissue. no ice crystals in the deep tissue like you would with full frostbite. so i haven't actually killed the top of my thumb just yet? not just yet. for the next couple of days, it's going to be more likely to get frostbite. the cold and the wind and the vast distances here make the logistics of a project like this very challenging. two ice—hardened ships brought hundreds of tons of fuel and cargo to a remote ice shelf. then, specialists snow vehicles hauled it 1,000 miles over land. everything was previously done by aircraft and then as science projects grew, and equipment grew, there became a need to do it more efficiently and cost effectively. each machine will pull up to 70 tons. these vehicles have transformed the science we can do in antarctica, increasing the scale, the number of people, the number of scientists we can bring to bear on these problems.

six people can deliver all the cargo for maybe 30 scientists, and then we can deliver the fuel that can operate five or six airplanes. wejust truck along, day from day, nobody really knows where we are and then we just suddenly turn up. delivering bounty — bladders of fuel instead of sacks of presents. presents would be very welcome because even in these extreme conditions, there are some traditions that have to be kept up. so what are you doing? i'm preparing us for christmas at the south pole. and christmas is not christmas without a few carols. they tried to get us to sing, but we didn't practice. we don't have a song so we told somebody else. who are we competing against? lower thwaites. how many people at lower thwaites? less than here. how many? five people. 3,2,1...

# jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way. # oh what fun it is to ride on one—horse open sleigh. cheering and it doesn't stop there, i knew i was spending christmas on the ice and was all set to have to forgo my turkey dinner — how wrong i was. and i made some salmon, turkey, ham. that is quite a christmas spread. 0reo cheesecake. it looks amazing, hey. it's great. all in western antarctica. all in the middle of nowhere! christmas is over and the storm has blown itself out. time to load up for the final 400 miles to the glacier. not in one of the big planes this time, in something much smaller. this is a twin 0tter — rugged, reliable and great on short runways, perfect for working out here on the ice.

we're headed to the place where the base of the glacier goes afloat. it's called the grounding line, and is where this glacier is melting. an advance party are already on thwaites glacier. theirjob — to map the area where the scientists are going to be deployed to make sure it's safe. the glacier is littered with deep crevasses, which could be lethal. this is actually the first open crevasse we've driven into. you can see the layers here don't connect with these layers over here. this is a void, the actual crevasse itself, which is the one right here. another team survey the site to pinpoint exactly where the grounding line is. it has taken almost five weeks but we're finally at the front of the glacier. until this year, only four people had ever been here before.

we made it! oh my god! hello, friend. this is where icefin going to be deployed but first, they need to drill a hole, or rather melt one, using hot water to bore down almost half a mile into the ice. so task one — create a vast reservoir of water using this huge rubber bath which the scientists call a flubber. we need ten tons of water again. 10 tons? so 10,000 litres of water? when we want to do the drilling, we'll pump that water using these large borehole pumps and those heaters over there. they're essentially boilers. they're like an oversized domestic boiler. heat the water, get it hot enough to melt the ice, put it down the hole. it's taken us what, five, six weeks to get here. huge amounts of resources have gone into bringing the fuel and all the stuff you need.

how does it feel to be, kind of, the top of the... the cutting bit. there's a serious sense of responsibility. there's a huge amount of money, time and effort gone into this by a lot of people to get us here. so many things can go wrong and if you lose the borehole, then you've lose all the fuel you need to make the borehole. you're ultimately fuel—limited. you've got a certain number of drums that we can use and once that's gone, it's game over. with the snow melted, it is time to start drilling and this involves unwinding the longest hosepipe you've ever seen. threading the hose through the wench, goes around this capstan and then that drives the hose up and down the hole. they fire up the boilers and it is melting time. this is an historic moment — the first time anyone has tried to drill down through the front of what is the most important glacier in the world in terms of future sea level rise. slowly, slowly, the drill melts

a 30cm hole down through tens of thousands of years of ice deposits. you can see it's looking 0k. it's not looking bad. a bit glazed. probably better than we both expected. after 36 hours, they finally break through to the sea below — mission accomplished. now it is time for icefin to take centre stage. as it's lowered through the glacier, brittany and the team ready themselves to pilots the robot submarine. it's more than a mile to where the warm ocean water meets the ice, and along the way icefin gathers crucial data. we're driving forward slowly. it's a real moonscape. it almost looks like

it has craters on it. that is weird. it is weird. we rolled up on this maybe half a metre of this very clear ice, and you could see the sediment—rich ice right above it through the ice layer, which was something i'd never seen before. this is incredible. it's seriously like another planet. what is going on? we should let other people know, because this is really cool. are you ready for weird? dude, i'm so excited. get ready to have your brain blown. so this is a clear layer of ice. this part has a bunch of sediment particles in it. but let me introduce you to your new friend. there is a whole bunch of anenome things burrowing out of the ice. wow! see the little tentacles? piloting your own vehicle underneath the ice is a pretty cool experience. to get to the grounding zone, you can kind of see the water column narrowing, the ice

coming down at you, the sea floor coming down to you and there is a huge rush of energy. look at that! singing we do see warm water making it all the way back to the grounding zone, which is changing the base of the glacier right to the boundary zone. we are coming right up to the grounding zone now. no—one else is above us. that's ok, we're the only people in the world right now. we're seeing a whole new crazy thing. that place is really important because it controls how much ice is coming off the continent and at what rate. so taking a vehicle like this right there to map it out in detail means that we can really start to figure out exactly what is going on. we've been talking about this for seven years, and to finally actually make it there isjust incredible. oh, yes! that's so cool!

because of all the delays, the time spent at the grounding zone is shorter than planned, but icefin managed to complete five missions — one more than expected — and collected a huge amount of data. the thwaites team is delighted. this season has been tremendously successful. we've seen the warm water coming up from the continental shelf and making contact with the ice, and we've measured the rate of that melt. and to know that we are in a position to begin to understand those changes in a way that actually can shape the future of policy, and of people's lives, that's a humbling thing. as we leave, we fly over the main front of the glacier. the epic forces that are tearing the ice apart are all too obvious here.

in some places, the ice has broken up completely, collapsing into a jumble of icebergs. i'm surprised, myself, sitting here thinking about it, how emotional i am. i think it is, yeah, it's shocking and we should all be upset by what's happening here. do you come away feeling upset that what you've seen is a process of destruction, of destroying a huge body of ice? no, ifeel like i understand the planet, hopefully better. it's better to know how things are happening than to guess at it, or to hope it goes away. we know there's been change that we'll have to accommodate, and this story is about how do we get together and try to fix things to make the world sustainable for ourselves and future generations?

hello. after a saturday which brought us some torrential downpours, some thunderstorms, even a tornado, sunday is looking a little bit quieter by comparison. a lot more in the way of sunshine around for many of you. some will stay dry, but there'll still be a scattering of showers to hide from every now and again. and one or two showers have continued through the night into the first thing in the morning. a fresher feel, as well, but still temperatures in double figures. and with the sunshine on your back across england and wales, that won't feel too bad in particular. plenty of dry, bright weather here to begin with. a few isolated showers in the west in the morning, developing more widely into the afternoon. showery morning followed by a largely sunny afternoon for northern ireland, southern and eastern scotland. but more persistent rain will be arriving into the hebrides later on, and it's here where winds will strengthen

to gale—force. elsewhere, though, more of a breeze around compared with what we saw through saturday. temperatures will have dropped, but don't forget — with a bit more sunshine and strong july sunshine on your back at that, it shouldn't feel too bad, around 17—23 degrees. coolest of all, though, in the north—west of scotland, where the strong winds, heavy rain will continue into the first part of the night. after a dry start to the night elsewhere, though, cloud and rain will develop in england and wales to take us into the monday will develop in england and wales to take us into the monday morning rush—hour. temperatures climbing again. could be down to single figures, though, to start the day across parts of scotland and northern ireland. so, a cool start to the week here. but here's the chart that shows what's happening through sunday night into monday. outbreaks of rain comes from this weather system. now, a little bit of uncertainty how close that'll get to northern ireland and southern scotland. it does look like we'll see some wet weather for a time, but that should ease for northern ireland later. heaviest of the rain, most persistent of the rain in northern and western parts of england, as well as across wales. the rain fairly showery towards the south—east, and it's across the south and east where we see the strongest of the winds, touching gale—force for one or two. temperatures, well down again

on we'll see on sunday. and given the fact there'll be cloud and rain for many, too, it is going to feel distinctly cool. and a cooler feel as we go into the middle part of the week. that weather system clears out during monday night. tuesday allows a north—westerly flow to develop, coming all the way from the north atlantic. bringing a few showers across northern and western areas. varying amounts of cloud, driest and brightest further south and east you are, but when you're out of the sunshine, a noticeable chill. temperatures for many sitting in the teens throughout. that cooler feel continues into wednesday, too. we could see rain return to scotland and northern ireland through thursday and friday. but further south and east, could we see the return of some summer warmth with temperatures approaching 30 degrees?

this is bbc news. welcome if you're watching here in the uk or around the globe. i'm aaron safir. our top stories: the uk brings in a two—week quarantine for anyone arriving from spain. it follows a spike in coronavirus cases in spain and the return of restrictions in some regions, including catalonia. india records nearly 100,000 new cases of covid—19 in two days. a chief minister is one of those testing positive. thousands protest at poland's decision to withdraw from a european treaty combatting violence against women. and tributes are paid to the veteran american tv host