britain is to roll out a mass vaccination campaign against coronavirus from next week, after regulators approved a vaccine in record quick time. prime minister boris johnson has acknowledged it will be a massive logistical exercise that has never been attempted before. millions of doses of the pfizer—biontech vaccine will arrive in the next few days an election official in the us state of georgia is pleading with president trump to dial down the rhetoric levelled against his colleagues over the election result. mr trump is angry that a second recount has made no change tojoe biden‘s victory there. one of the most influential european politicians of the past half—century, the former president of france, valery giscard d'estaing has died at the age of 94. his family say he died of complications linked to covid—19.

as we were saying, running out the vaccine will be huge logistical exercise and can also be effected by post brexit l. because a supply comes from belgium. those likely to receive the jabs, including nurses who went through the first wave know how important that is. working, a lot of the nurses were living away from home and were concerned about it home to theirfamilies. concerned about it home to their families. if we do get a vaccine, it means we can get back to living more normal is not normal for the past several months. care home residents and carers, followed by the over 80s and frontline workers and young adults with young conditions that it will be nhs

staff who get it first. hospitals will be the focal point next week. the idea for the first phase is we concentrate on nhs hospitals delivering this vaccine because particular requirements of the pfizer vaccine. but care homes are wondering what this means for the residents and why they do not appear to be top of the list. it is really disappointing and potential implications of residents as well should we get another outbreak of covid, they are more likely to suffer serious consequences. one reason is the way the doses are packed. approval by regulators are still required to allow them to be broken down to smaller consignments. as soon as we have the regulatory side of that we can do that and get the jabs to the care homes so that they can be given to care home

residents, we will do that. in northern ireland, officials have set aside another hospital department is one of seven designated vaccination sites. the scottish government also plans to prioritise health stuff. the first vaccines against covid will be administered in scotland on tuesday the 8th of december. so, you can perhaps understand why i have probably smiled more in the last few minutes then you have seen me do in several months. there is now an accelerating drive to set up vaccination hubs for the wider population, including one at epsom racecourse. even a village hall in surrey is being prepared as a site for vaccinations in the local community. the new vaccine is on the way from pfizer's belgian plan. it's a shot in the arm for ministers. they'll hope that brexit doesn't affect the continued smooth running of this vital supply chain in the new year. hugh pym, bbc news. to celebrate 100 women, click

is providing the most historic and influential women in technology. this week, a global click gathering... ..high—tech ivf hopes... ..and a robot ballerina with no left feet. hey, welcome to click. hope you're doing 0k. now, we've met some pretty incredible female tech pioneers in our time, but this week's programme is going to be particularly inspiring. we're dedicating it to women in tech. and one female—led tech company, benevolentai, has had a spot of good

news this week. yes, so this is the company that you visited earlier in the year, isn't it? they're using al to try and predict which medicines — which are already on the market — might be repurposed to treat coronavirus. is that right? yes, that's right! just nine months ago, they spotted the initial indications that a drug usually used to treat rheumatoid arthritis could have potential. and it turns out they were right! baricitinib has received fda emergency approval in the us for those who are hospitalised and on oxygen or need ventilation. in a trial of 1,000 seriously ill patients, the medicine, combined with anti—viral remdesivir, was shown to help reduce coronavirus deaths by nearly 3%. there was also a 5% reduction in those needing ventilation, and on average, hospital stays were reduced by a day. the company behind this uses ai to crunch massive amounts of data, beyond what would be

humanly possible, to understand the mechanisms of disease, as well as the properties of already approved drugs. now, a lot of people were looking at virals, anti—virals, and how they might potentially treat the disease. we looked at it from a completely different way. we said, "what are the other types of approved drugs that might inhibit the progression of that disease in the body?" so we surfaced a number of drugs, and then we did some experimentation based on that further research. and then we came up with this one drug that we think is best suited. it has both anti—inflammatory properties as well as the ability to stop what's called endocytosis, which is what enables the virus to enter the lungs, which is the most potentially dangerous outcome of the coronavirus. a brilliant use of ai there. and baroness joanna shields, ceo of benevolentai,

is the first of many women in tech featuring on this week's show. every year, the bbc 100 women project celebrates women from all walks of life and highlights their stories. and as part of that, we invited more than 100 women who are just starting out in their careers in tech to meet three female leaders who have already made it big. kitty knolls from our team hosted everyone virtually from our bbc studio in london. hello, everyone, and welcome to this very special click virtual event. joining us from their corners of the world were serene 0w from singapore, who's head of data science at grab, a multibillion—dollar ride—hailing giant dominating southeast asia. erica joy baker, who set her alarm clock very early to dial in from silicon valley. formally a pioneer at microsoft, google and slack,

she's now the director of engineering at github. and nicola mendelsohn, whojoined us online from here in london. she's facebook‘s vp of europe, middle east and asia. her work has been recognised by the queen. 0ur audience beamed in from over 30 countries across the globe. each nation with its unique set of challenges, but united over the shared experience of being a woman in tech. i'm robyn mckenzie, i'm 18, and i've just started studying product design in cardiff. hi, i'm sara. i'm 21 years old, and i'm from tehran, iran. i'm an undergraduate student in computer engineering. i'm bo, i'm 2a, and ijust finished my degree in computer science in seoul, south korea. my name is susan, i'm 24, and ijust recently started working as an ict officer for the health department in kenya. i'm alice, i'm 26 years

old, and i'm currently living in birmingham. there's a kind of atmosphere of fraternity or "bro—grammer" culture, and i sometimes feel i'm not welcome. i'm just one of the few girls in my course. and throughout pretty much my entire education, i've been put in situations where the guys have behaved a bit like they're better than everyone else. it kind of makes the prospects of being one of the women in the tech industry not only scary but kind of terrifying at times. should i present myself a little bit differently to fit in that male atmosphere? just be yourself. you are who you are, and you should be proud of that. so, you know, don't feel like you have to fit in a particular mould, or even worse, a male mould, just to get the job. and i think, you know, first and foremost, like i always say, i think capability should speak for itself, where i think personality is another thing all together. so, you know, let your personality shine, i think that's important.

you can choose to try to change yourself to fit in, but that is costly. over time, that's going to end up wearing on you pretty hard because you're going to be a completely different person at work. you deserve better than that. you deserve a company who can see you for you are, value you for who you are and support you in that. and so if you get to a company that has that "bro—grammer" culture, who's demanding that of you, skip it. if you are having trouble finding a job with an ml background, let me know, i have many for you. when we get to university, it's kind of expected from us to fail. and when we don't, people automatically assume that we have probably had inappropriate relations with our superiors or professors or our tas. that needs to be called out. you need to find somebody in a leadership position that you can share the concerns with, and you need to rely on others. and i have had in earlier times in my career where i've had

difficult situations, where sometimes i might not be able to approach the manager, in your case, you know, the professor or the lecturer. and so i've gone around and tried to find somebody else to be there. but i think it's very important that, post—university, post—studying, that you place yourself in a situation where you are able to thrive, where you are able to feel confident in the work that you're doing. lara: but getting the job is just the first hurdle. bias in the workplace comes in many forms, and both race and gender can introduce challenges. we are meeting a new client for the first time and he walks into the room and he just starts addressing the oldest—looking male in the room at the time. and what i've learned is that, eventually, if you actually focus, just cut out the noise, and just focus at really becoming good at what you do, eventually, i think, in the long run, that will prove itself and show itself.

i would really like to know how it is to be a minority in tech where you are, or to be a mother in tech, and what challenges you have faced. while i'm not a mother in tech, i am a minority in tech, and i can touch on that some. i'll be really honest, it's a challenge sometimes, you know? there was a while where i was the only black woman in my building because i'm an engineer. and it can get isolating. it's super—crucial to be able to find community outside of work. so, right now, i have a very strong network full of women from many races, and we connect quite frequently. you know, we'rejust sounding boards for one another. my dream is to work at a big tech company in the uk or in the us and also to have a big family too. you can absolutely do that. i'm working at facebook, and i am mum of four kids. and i am very proud that i am able to do both.

and guess what? mums are using our products and so we want to be hiring more mums as well. so, give us a call, susan. why not? lara: and there isn'tjust one route into the industry either. i'm halfway through a coding boot camp right now, which i'm really enjoying, and i feel like programming will be our language of our future. it's a field that i wish i'd gotten into earlier or had more access to at a younger age. so, how do you guys feel about hiring people from boot camps as opposed to traditional education? i am absolutely thrilled to hire people from boot camps. in the us, at least, we have some biases in our school system that select young girls out of mathematics and science and we need to do better at supporting them as an industry. so, apprenticeship programmes are really popular right now at tech companies, and those are great ways to get started once you've finished your boot camp, to get your foot in the door. countries around the world actively need more people, notjust women, but boys

and girls to learn these languages. often, people think that if you're in engineering, then you have to just be in the engineering side of it, they don't understand that there is a design side, and that it might notjust be in a tech company, you could be in a fashion company, you could be in a retail company. there are going to be jobs all over the place. both gender equality and the diverse workforce are essential for better technology too. quite frankly, if we're trying to build software for the entire world, the entire world has to be represented in the room. and so, if you're building software with only men in the room, you're going to end up with problems where the software fails for women, just flat out. applause thank you, everyone. thank you, everyone. that is all we have time for. a huge thank you to our expert panellists and to our fabulous audience, those who've spoken and those who've looked in as well. it has been such a blast. take care, and we'll

see you soon. hello, and welcome to the week in tech. it was the week that elon musk passed bill gates to become the world's second—richest person. the cryptocurrency bitcoin hit a new record high, $19,510, exceeding by $60 its previous high in 2017. and apple's head of global security was charged with bribery. thomas moyer is accused of offering ipads worth over $70,000 in exchange for concealed firearms licenses. china launched a lunar probe from the southern province of hainan.

a report from bloomberg quoted an announcement made earlier this month could impact 20% of its workforce. the chang'e—5‘s mission is to bring lunar rocks to earth. it's the first mission of its kind for the chinese space programme, and a first attempt to gather moon material for 44 years. and finally this week, if you can't get out of your house, here's a robot that can do your yard work for you. the yardoid robot looks like a small tank and cuts grass on its own. it has a water gun for targeting weeds and pests, can refuel its own water tank, and even change jobs to work as a security guard. baby cries at five pounds and 12 ounces, louisejoy brown proved for the very first time in vitro fertilisation actually worked.

42 years on, and some eight million babies have been born the same way, after an egg has been fertilised in a lab. but ivf costs thousands. it remains an expensive gamble and emotionally stressful. just one in three women get pregnant after their first cycle. so, we met two women who've turned to tech to help. going through infertility is one of the most difficult things ever that i've ever had to experience. you're constantly in and out of hospital, you're having to make up kind of excuses as to why you're not in work. it literally feels like you're just throwing money down the drain. to go through the ivf, and then to get a negative test result is just heartbreaking. i think i sat in bed for about 3—4 days, just pretty much nonstop crying. with such a heavy price placed

on failure, anything that improves the chances of success could have a huge impact for would—be parents. here in israel, one teen believes that al can change those odds. traditionally, a human embryologist grades how viable eggs are. but this is a time—consuming, manual and subjective process. there are many decisions that are based on gut feeling and personal experience. and even if you go to the same ivf centres, two experts can give you different opinions on the same embryo. instead of relying on human expertise, this system uses geometric deep learning — the branch of ai that goes beyond just visual images, the written word, or voice recognition. it's been trained on data from tens of thousands of videos and images, as well as patient data and environmental data from the lab. in geometric deep learning,

you're not limited to the type of information that you're trying to analyse. for example, you can analyse graphs and 3d figures, and many other types of information. a clinical paper presented by the team this year suggests its methods are almost 20% better than human experts at selecting a viable embryo. the ai is also potentially 30% better at identifying an embryo that wouldn't result in a successful pregnancy. patients like anna are already benefiting from this type of ai egg selection. translation: of course, i'm very happy i'm pregnant now. when i told my husband the news, he cried. this is all promising, but embryonics will need to continue piloting in the wider scientific community. we can use this technology and really create good prediction models through artificial intelligence. and it's proven that it works. it can help embryologists

pick the right embryo, so the patient achieves a pregnancy a lot quicker. it can help inform a patient to whether they keep having treatment, if their chances are very low. and a prediction model will say that it may influence their decision to move on to other types of treatment, or move away from treatment. so, it really will give good choices for both the clinical staff and patients. but what we do have to do is just be a little bit cautious. it's early days, it is emerging technology, and patients just need to work out whether, if this is something they'll be charged for, that this will make a difference for them now. while ai egg selection is still being piloted, many other technologies are also helping people to become parents. third time lucky, and ligia did finally get pregnant — with support from the world's first online ivf clinic.

this uses an app to offer 24/7 support to those trying for a baby, and can cut hospital visits down to just two. the clinic has also now launched an ai tool that it says will help more couples to conceive. this uses half a million data points from the government's fertility clinic regulator, and looks at a patient‘s age, weight, and lifestyle. after giving these three elements, we'll actually give you a score, telling you what are your chances to conceive, and you will be able to play on the parameters to actually see, "0k, if i quit smoking, "how does that affect my fertility? "if i drink a bit less, what is the effect? "if i lose weight, what is the effect?" the tool estimates a woman's chances for natural conception or ivf with an egg or sperm donor, whilst keeping personal data safe. the idea is to leave the data in the clinic to have it anonymized, and that the algorithm

actually travels. if you use something like waze, you know that actually, it's not all of the data from all of the people using waze that is collected and centralised. actually, the algorithm is learning on everyone's phones and becoming more clever for the others to benefit. and for patients like anna and ligia, their high—tech ivf journey isn't over yet. translation: if i want to try for another baby after this, i will ask the doctor to use artificial intelligence. we have considered having a second child, because we'd like to have siblings. i mean, it's automatically a friend, isn't it, for your child? wow, that was literally life—changing stuff. it's not always about practical outcomes, though. some technology is just about pushing the boundaries of creativity — as this quantum physicist, trained astronaut, and ballerina has been showing us. so, my name is merritt moore, and i'm a ballet dancer and physicist. as a young kid, i never spoke a lot. and so, then, when i found

dance at 13, i became instantly hooked. i was going to quite an academic school. and following those lines of not being particularly verbal when i was a kid, and also loving puzzles, i then fell into physics. all this time, it's been — i've had to pursue physics and dance, like, totally separated. and after i graduated from my phd, ijust had this feeling of, like, "why not both? " i had access to, like, this amazing robot, a universal robot in norway that

i would start to work with in between performances and after rehearsals, late at night. and that developed, and i was working with the robot, and i wasjust so inspired by the way that it moves and how it inspired new movement from me and the collaboration of technology and human and bringing that together. working with the robots and including dance, ithink... ..part of the important part is — and the mission is to open up the conversation and to discuss, break down the stereotypes, and to show that, a, you can have fun working with tech, you can be super—creative and imaginative. it's not — science is not being given a book and memorising in the corner. it's all about collaboration and bringing ideas. and the more creative you are, the better you'd actually be

at tech and science. so, when i was at norwegian national ballet, i got covered in motion — i went into the motion capture suit, and i was dancing to music, and we were storing my movement as data points to then train ai and to see what kind of new movements it could come up with. and from there, we then wanted to map that onto the robot, and see what inspiring choreography it could come up with. ai and tech, and the robots can be used as a tool to inspire new creative ideas for us humans, to allow us to be more creative. tech and science is for everyone, especially for girls,

where they might feel that they're excluded from pursuing that as a career path. i would say no. i want to break down that stereotype and say, "look, you can be super—creative, "you can be artistic. "it's all about imagination, it's all about pushing, "breaking down those stereotypes and being free. "and whichever path you want to take, "you and whatever passions you have, "you can combine them to be uniquely you and pursue "what really drives you." that was one of the most beautiful reports i've seen all year. wasn't that great? absolutely. oh, gosh. anyway, that's it for this week. butjust before we go, have you heard click is doing a live show online — and you're invited? it's happening on thursday the 10th of december at 12:30 gmt, where we'll be celebrating 20 years on air!

yes, and we want to share our 20th birthday with you. and let's face it, who doesn't need a virtual party right now? so, for your chance to be in the live audience, to share the memories and have a chat with the click family, then send us a direct message via instagram or twitter at @bbcclick. click at 20, a live celebration, is coming soon. in the meantime, thanks for watching, and we'll see you next week. bye— bye. hello. an increased risk of ice and snow over the next 48 hours in the north and lower levels of

parts over scotland and further south could be a smattering of snow over the welsh hills and theice snow over the welsh hills and the ice risk is a real risk this morning for northern island and scotland in particular and further south rain cell thrilling in on top of the welsh mountains giving way to heavy showers with how and under in the afternoon in the west. across scotland and northern ireland, showers diminishing and dry and sunny weather but pretty unsettled at least to start and colder. and it's particularly wet as well as we head into southern and eastern areas of the afternoon. as we go the coming night, thursday night, a risk of ice and snow. details and warnings on the website.

a very warm welcome bbc news. my name's mike embley. our top stories: britain is to roll out a massive vaccination after it being approved in record time. when you consider the damage that i was saying earlier, the damage that this virus has done, it is a fantastic moment. it has to stop. an exasperated election official in the us state of georgia pleads with president trump to dial down the rhetoric levelled against his colleagues over the election result. the french president who oversaw sweeping social reforms, valery giscard d'estaing, has died at the age of 94. and one of britain's most celebrated artists, tracey emin, says her painting "has kept her alive"