welcome to bbc news. my name's mike embley. our main news: green light for president—elect joe biden as transition process is finally given the go—ahead. mr trump says his team will do what needs to be done in the best interest of the country but vows to keep up the fight. joe biden‘s team issues a statement saying the transition will begin with meetings with government officials on a response to the pandemic and national security issues. donald trump says he has told his team to co—operate with the transition to a joe biden presidency,

after the agency which oversees the process ruled that it could formally begin. the general services administration will now release funds to mr biden, and his officials will receive security briefings. this is how mr trump's acceptance came, in a tweet that says it's in the best interests of the united states for his team to co—operate with protocols. joe biden has unsurprisingly welcomed the decision, saying: today's decision is a needed step to begin tackling the challenges facing our nation, including getting the pandemic under control and our economy back on track. in the days ahead, transition officials will begin meeting with federal officials to discuss the pandemic response, have a full account of our national security interests and gain a complete understanding of the trump administration's efforts to hollow out government agencies. i'm joined now by our north america correspondent peter bowes in los angeles.

some weeks ago any of us had never heard of the general services administration and what it does is pretty much routine but it has become crucial to the democratic process 7 crucial to the democratic process? and it it hadn't been for this stand—off between the white house and joe biden public team, we probably wouldn't have heard about it during this transition period it goes on behind the process in post election periods but of course this was an election like no other. donald trump is still refusing to concede although he is moving and i think moving significantly towards accepting thatjoe biden will be the next resident. it was a buildup of stea m resident. it was a buildup of steam especially with senior republicans really telling donald trump time is up, you really must concede this election. with michigan being certified in biden‘s favour,

one that —— one of the states that donald trump is disputing, but it has been certified now. you get the sense that time is up you get the sense that time is up and it was time to move forward and donald trump is essentially doing that but doing it in his way. and yet as you say, there is no mention in the gsa statement and the phrase president—elect and the legal challenges going on, even though 30 or something have already been thrown out. it can't be good for the democratic process, can it?” don't think it is good for the democratic process and it is certainly not good and a lot of republicans have talked about this, it is not good for the image of united states overseas. if this is how this democracy is seen to be working oi’ democracy is seen to be working or not working, during this crucial period. the lack of recognition still that mr biden is the president—elect and that donald trump is not conceding,

clearly, to a lot of republicans are just —— it is just plain embarrassing in terms of the affairs of the country sees itself in now. no sign on the horizon that the president will change his sta nce president will change his stance and a lot suggesting that maybe he won't, that maybe he will just that maybe he won't, that maybe he willjust kind of fizzle out from this presidency without actually conceding or even calling mr biden to congratulate him. peter, thank you very much for that. we can now speak to us economist avril claudia sahm who previously worked at the federal reserve with chairjanet yellen who is now set to be the us treasury secretary. shejoins us from arlington, virginia. thank you for your time. quite a challenge facing janet yellen. yes, yes it is quite a challenge and i am thrilled to see someone challenge and i am thrilled to see someone put into this position that is so highly qualified and has experience dealing with economic policy through past crises. what does she bring to thisjob?

through past crises. what does she bring to this job? she brings a number of things. she brings a number of things. she brings deep economic expertise, both in her academic work on wages and employment and in her yea rs of wages and employment and in her years of policy—making, she has been a leader at both the council of economic advisers, the federal reserve and will now be at the treasury. that is unparalleled expertise and wisdom to bring into this crisis, and it is so needed. as you say, it is so needed. tell us you say, it is so needed. tell us what she faces? because of coronavirus and covid—i9 as a whole? the work that lies ahead is hard to overstate and we, at this point, don't know how bad it is going to be. we have case cou nts it is going to be. we have case counts of the coronavirus rising stop we have signs in the united states that we could

be headed for a double—dip recession. so when the administration, when the biden and harris administration comes into office next year, when janet yellen takes the helm at the treasury, we are going to have a very serious situation and it appears that it will be within a very difficult and complicated political environment. so her work is cut out for her, as is everyone in dc was up i think the other thing that she brings is his ability to lead an organisation and we know that many federal government agencies have been put under a lot of pressure, are demoralised right now, and she is the kind of person that can marshal the resources that we have and really push us to do the absolute best we can under a difficult situation. as you say, such a difficult situation, it could well make an administration very unpopular. yes, that is a real risk but i think that is where her leadership and her ability

to listen to people make them feel heard, regardless of their political backgrounds, but‘s what we need in this moment. i don't want to be overly optimistic, this is really hard but we have to take our best shot at it and having a leader with experience like hers, that is the absolute best we can do right now. are there particular unpleasant things that you are expecting that she will have to do to the country? i think she will be in a role, by being pa rt will be in a role, by being part of the administration that is in the political crossfire. 0ne is in the political crossfire. one of the reasons that efforts to provide economic relief have become hamstrung as this crisis has gone on is because we have a highly politicised environment, so once you're inside the administration, that's very different to being the chair of the federal reserve. as treasury secretary inside of politics, you are trying to thread what is an incredibly difficult needle to thread right now and i have confidence that she will do the best that she can. i am also

deeply concerned about the environment that any policymaker‘s facing in washington right now. thank you very much for your time. thank you. a little earlier i spoke to peter wainer. i asked for his reaction to the gsa's decision to allow the transition to begin. the tweet that donald trump sent out, he is almost doing everything he can to do brave and lasting damage to the country. he seems

to wa nt damage to the country. he seems to want to hurt the country that rejected him in the election and he is succeeding in that effort. thankfully a little bit after noon on january 20, that damage is going to stop, but it is a lot that has to heal thanks to donald trump and his supporters. and yet, surely the lasting damage is in him encouraging the 73— 7a million people who voted for him, to distrust the entire process. that is right. this is a kind of chaos that he is creating. he has created a different reality for his supporters and he keeps promoting it and agitating them and inflaming their passions. as you say, this has been one of the crown jewels of american democracy, the peaceful transfer of power and it really wasn't stated. these were understated rules,

but they were followed up until donald trump. a lot of democracy, a lot of self—government is people being able to act without the law telling them how to act but when you get a republic, a free country, where people are living in different realities, you can't agree on as common set of facts, that makes governing and life really hard anti—trump is promoting that and he is unfortunately successful in it. how do you expectjoe biden taking power and after that? -- and trumpism promoting that. without grace and without class. i said at the beginning of the trumpet era, even before he was president, the fundamental thing you have to understand about donald trump, he is a sociopath. if you don't understand that, the things that he does our borrell during but if you do understand, the

other things that he does, at least follow a certain pattern. —— will he is going to go out the way he came in except that there is an added anger and an added tetanus because he is a loser. he lost an election, he is one of the few actually incumbents to lose in an election over the last century and four donald trump, being a loser is about the worst thing that you can be so his psychological condition which was very worrisome to begin with is it simply getting worse and you are maxing this kind of legal and constitutional freak show with rudy giuliani and his lawyers drawing up his unbelievable conspiracy theories that are completely detached from reality. if your analysis on mr trump is correct, how do you expect that to play out going forward now? presumably he will carry on

attacking from the sidelines, presumably he is not going to —— attend the inauguration, do you expect him to stand in 2024? i really don't know, it is impossible to tell. there are so many factors that would go into that and my sense is, having lost, he won't take a chance again. i think what he might do is try and freeze the race and do everything he can to stay front and centre as a political figure and at least pretend that he is going to run in 2024 so that he doesn't have any competition. look, the good news here is the institutions in american democracy have held off, the courts and all the rest and joe biden will be president and this trumpian effort to overturn democracy is not going to succeed, that is a really big deal was not having said that, trump is not going to go gently and he is going to continue to agitate from the outside and he's got millions and millions of supporters who are basically going to do what

he asked them to do and so that doesn't dwell for the of american democracy. stay with us on bbc news, still to come: joe biden is no longer waiting and he's building his team — and the message is, steady as she goes. president kennedy was shot down and died almost immediately. the murder ofjohn kennedy is a disaster for the whole free world. he caught the imagination of the world. the first of a new generation of leaders. margaret thatcher is resigning as leader of the conservative party and prime minister. before leaving number 10 to see the queen, she told her cabinet, "it's a funny old world." angela merkel is germany's first woman chancellor, easily securing the majority she needed. attempts to fly a hot air balloon had to be abandoned after a few minutes but nobody seemed to mind very much. as one local comic put it, "it's not hot air we need, it's hard cash."

cuba has declared nine days of mourning following the death of fidel castro at the age of 90. castro developed close ties with the soviet union in the 1960s. it was an alliance that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, with the cuban missile crisis. this is bbc news, the latest headlines: donald trump has accepted that a formal transition of power to president—elect, joe biden, can begin, but stopped short of conceding. the president—elect says the transition will begin with meetings with government officials on a response to the pandemic and national security issues. let's speak to lawrence douglas, professor of law at amherst college, who wrote a book earlier this year called ‘trump and the looming election meltdown‘, which warned

of a less—than—peaceful transition of power. professor, does this transition meet your definition?” professor, does this transition meet your definition? i mean, i think we have certainly dodged a bullet, that is, one thing we can say is that trump is never going to concede defeat, that is, i don't think he's ever going to recognise the legitimacy of biden‘s victory. 0n the other hand, i do think that he will submit to defeat, recognising that the struggle would be futile and we will never see a situation where for example, he would have to be frogmarched out of the white house come january 20, after joe biden‘s inauguration. house come january 20, after joe biden's inauguration. so, how much does all this matter, really, do you think? it is not unusualfor really, do you think? it is not unusual for countries to be divided after an election, for millions of people to have a president that they didn't want. it is surely unusual for the president to be defeated to tell them actually, you didn't really lose and the process that says you lost is broken, is corrupt? yeah, i do think

thatis is corrupt? yeah, i do think that is a tremendous danger, i think that to the extent that we do see a peaceful transfer, our democratic system has also taken some very, very serious head. constitutional democracy presupposes that the people have faith in the integrity of the electoral system and that they can trust the outcomes of that system, and donald trump has now convinced tens of millions of americans that the system is corrupt and rigged, and he is not going to back off from that narrative, even when he submits to defeat. and that puts a huge burden on the incoming biden administration, doesn't it? how doesjoe biden, how does kamala harris bridge that gap with 74 million americans who don't want them there? it is an incredibly difficult task, and all i can say is thatjoe biden is dedicated to the project of

bringing americans together, and that means a lot. in certain ways, one of the chief tasks of a president is to be a storyteller in chief, and if he can tell stories that bring us together as opposed to divide us, and after all, a signature of trump's presidency has really been a politics of division and chaos, but at least having a president who was going to try to bring us together, is a helpfulfirst step, though it isjust a together, is a helpfulfirst step, though it is just a first step. mr trump insists the fight continues, his lawyers say the fight is not yet over. 30 legal challenges have been thrown out so far. what is the legal position, can anything change the outcome of the selection? no. there is nothing that can change it and all the lawsuits to date have proven themselves meritless if not directly frivolous, so there's no chance that they're going be any kind of material impact on the outcome of the election

through continued litigation, and all it does is itjust continues to allow the president to muddy the waters, thatis, president to muddy the waters, that is, to tell his supporters that is, to tell his supporters that the election has been rigged, and it also now permits him to posture himself as, in a sense, kind of taking the high road, that for the good of the nation, inr submitting to defeat, even though we all know that the election was rigged. is quite an ironic stance for the president now to be adopting. professor, thank you very much. my pleasure. i'm joined by seth weathers, donald trump's former political director in georgia. very good to talk to you, i know you are on the inside of the party, as it is. can you help us, this was a little unexpected, given the mood music recently, what changed?” think, before that, i would love to have debated your previous guest, whoever that was. i could hear him but they couldn't see him, but the

discussion of trump damaging democracy and transfers of power, it is all complete nonsense. the president has used the legal system, which you are allowed to do after an election. you can do this if you lose an election or have a close election for a dog catcher or the us presidency. so all the stuff about norms being destroyed is nothing but nonsense. seth, he hasn'tjust done it, has he? he's told all those voters, millions of them, that the system is corrupt, that the system is corrupt, that you didn't really lose. well, i think that the problem is, because of the corruption that does exist in this system, it's hard to know what the reality is. the reality is, there is no evidence, that we know of, of corruption. that's actually not true. is sydney powell a nut in the nonsense that she put out insanity? yes. i have nothing to do with that and was happy to see the trump campaign distance themselves from her formally, but

campaign distance themselves from herformally, but in campaign distance themselves from her formally, but in the actual reality of things that have happened, here in fulton county, georgia, being the democrat stronghold of our state, at 10:30pm on election night telling all republican poll watchers go home, we are done counting, we will come back and began counting again in the morning. they sent them home, they continued to count ballots from 10:30pm to 438 mthe next morning with their republican oversight. at election law that you are required to allow the opposing party to witness the counting of ballots. forgive me, seth, all of this is going to be thrashed out in court, you know that, we can't thrash it out here. but at the same this is evidence that will be used in court. cannotjust let you a nswer court. cannotjust let you answer the question that actually ask you, what makes the difference at the moment, why the announcement now some certification that the votes in michigan had an impact on the president and his campaign team. also from georgia, your

speciality, that perhaps his attitude was hurting the crucial battle for the senate in georgia? yeah, i think obviously the michigan thing, probably added a bit of closure, in his mind, who knows. at the same time, as we know, from this president, there could be a tweet tomorrow morning saying no way in hell doi morning saying no way in hell do i concede and the fight goes on, who knows if it comes to that. i do think that he will follow through on any place where he does think he has a legal battle like the one here in georgia with the ballots in fulton county, i think they will follow through with that and do what they can do but i think he also understands that this is the greatest democratic republic in the history of the world and the transfer of power is extremely important here, and for all the crazy people that thought he was gonna go kicking and screaming and refusing to leave, that was never going to happen and i think he was making that clear. as you know, it's also a democracy that's in the grip of

a raging pandemic stopping 255,000 deaths from covid—19, 12 million confirmed infections, what is the president actually doing about that? he is still president and he will be until the middle of january. he seems to be playing a lot of golf, seems to be recovering from the campaign. is the actually working on the pandemic? i think we all know that he has been and i think even you should know that stopping the reality is, he did more in the light of the pandemic when he was coming in the first of the year when democrats were screaming from the rooftops that what he was doing was xenophobic and racist. he shut down flights from china. what did nancy policy and chuck schumer do? they went to chinatown and said eve ryo ne they went to chinatown and said everyone come out in new york, it will come out, it's safe, this president is a xenophobic, we should never shut down travel, he was willing to make the tough decisions at a time when it was clearly not viewed positively in the us media, so he's done an incredible job fighting this, and at the same time... sorry, i can't let that stand. you know that people

came from china and elsewhere supposedly after the lights we re supposedly after the lights were shut down, and if that's the case how did he end up with more recorded infections and deaths than any other country in the world? you also have to look at the size of our nation and that is obviously going to play and have a factor and at. per head of population.” play and have a factor and at. per head of population. i don't know the exact number of nation but obviously we are still going to be on the top regardless of because of the size of a nation, but at the same time, but also to be realised here, the pandemic is horrible, i have lost friends, family members, even, to this pandemic, but the reality is, we lose more people in the us to obesity then we will lose this year to the pandemic. well, it ain't over yet. i understand, but i'm counting it and assuming that those numbers will go up and that still would hold. try to step aside from the party politics for a

moment, wejust said the party politics for a moment, we just said there's something like 74 million people who don't wantjoe biden to be president. in fact think, thanks to mrtrump, to be president. in fact think, thanks to mr trump, that he stole the presidency. what do you when those people need to hear from you when those people need to hearfrom a biden administration, what you need a biden administration to do to somehow heal the country? i'm going to love my butt off every day thinking about it, if he's concerned about 73 million people thinking it was an improper election, because the reality is, he and the other democrats spent the last four yea rs democrats spent the last four years claiming that president trump was everything from a traitor, a foreign spy, russian collusion and put in place by vladimir putin, so for them to come around and now say for trump to follow the legal process a couple weeks after an election, and spying on a president and accusing him of being a traitor is not a concern, i think we all know is just political drama one way or the other. good to talk to you, thank you very much.

the asian financial markets have already reacted to news that the transition is under way — the bbc‘s sharanjit leyl is in singapore for us. how's it looking? it is looking good, most markets are higher on that news and in fact the nikkei is trading at its highest level since 1991 although i will see the others haven't seen the same kind of gains, if you look at that board you can see the hang seng is flat, the us president donald trump seems to have accepted what will be a formal transition that can begin for president—electjoe biden to ta ke president—electjoe biden to take office. i was speaking to lots of analysts to say the markets are welcoming the news, although of course they are also reacting to other things, the positive news around the astrazeneca vaccine. the fact that president trump has refused to concede is an uncertainty so this news is certainly being welcomed, that

president—electjoe biden can finally get on with the job, and let's the biden can get on with stimulus plans for the virus ravaged economy. thanks very much for being with us. hello there. monday was really quite a chilly day, particularly so across central and eastern england, where temperatures quite widely only got to around 7—8 celsius — just six there in north yorkshire. but one of the things that brings us the biggest temperature rises this time of year are warm fronts. and we've had one of those across the country, south—westerly winds have been following, and hour by hour we've seen those temperatures rise recently — such that by the time we get to tuesday, 6am, those temperatures will be far higher than the highest temperatures we had all day yesterday, at around 10—11 celsius quite widely. so milder air is on the way, south—westerly winds to thank for that. but we'll also have this weather front which will be one of these slow—moving weather fronts — it's bringing rain at the moment in northern ireland and scotland,

and it will continue to rain for these areas through much of the day on tuesday, as well. now further southwards and eastward across england and wales, it'll be a mild start to the day, with temperatures 10—12 celsius in places. quite a brisk south—westerly wind, some low cloud over the high grounds, some mist and fog patches higher up, a bit of drizzle around as well. but as we go through tuesday morning, i think the cloud may well break up at times across england. the best chance of that probably in the morning, really, across east anglia and south—east england. 0therwise, probably keeping the cloud through most of the day for most areas. and the rain continues to come down for northern ireland and scotland. whether you see sun or cloud, temperatures around 11—13 celsius — a little bit cooler in the far northwest of the uk. that colder air is behind this cold front sinking southwards over the next few days. as it pulls away, we will get that colder air lingering around the uk for much of the rest of the week. so here's the chart

for wednesday — here's our cold front, bringing clouds, still a bit of rain moving southwards and eastwards into east anglia, southeast england, a few showers for scotland and northern ireland, it may be 1—2 sneaking down the irish sea, as well. you notice those temperatures cooling off — highs more typically around 8—9 celsius for northern areas, still around 11—12 celsius in the far southeast. the pressure then rises, giving us clear skies through wednesday night. there'll be a frost with high pressure around towards the end of the week. lots of dry weather with mist and fog patches in the morning, a few patches of frost, but it's a mostly dry picture, perhaps generally turning a bit more cloudy as we head into the weekend. of nuclear war, with the cuban missile crisis.

this is bbc news, the headlines: a key us government body, the general services administration, — has written a letter tojoe biden saying that his transition as president—elect can formally begin. analysts say the gsa statement means that the trump administration must now co—operate with the incoming biden team. president trump has said he has given the go—ahead despite plans to continue with legal challenges to the election result. mr biden's team has said the transition will begin with meetings with government officials on a response to the pandemic and national security issues. the head of the world health organization says a new coronavirus vaccine developed in britain is more evidence that the light at the end of the tunnel is growing brighter. 0verall results from oxford university and astrazeneca's vaccine trial — show it protects 70% of people