the headlines. the us doctor leading the fight against corona violence has apologised for questioning the speed at which a vaccine was approved. he said he had confidence in the uk medical regulator and only intended to highlight differences between the processes . differences between the processes. he is due to mejoe biden‘s transition team for the first time to discuss the incoming administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic. he has said he will ask americans to wear masks for 100 days in order to curtail the spread of coronavirus. warner brothers has announced that because of the pandemic its entire output for next year will play on a streaming service at the same time that the films are released in cinemas. hollywood is struggling with the near colla pse struggling with the near collapse of film distribution in the united states. four

people have died and one of them has been injured after an explosion at a waste water treatment works in avonmouth near bristol. fire crews and police were called to the side of the blast this morning. a major incident was this —— declared. 20 past 11 and a major incident. just one quarter of a mile from the m5 motorway. a blaster had torn aparta motorway. a blaster had torn apart a silo holding bio solids at the wessex water sewerage treatment works. it was gentle wear and treatment works. it was gentle wearand a treatment works. it was gentle wear and a loud explosion. this lorry driver had been delivering goods and then was tripped on a neighbouring site. it sounded like a large colla pse it sounded like a large collapse or something. nothing i had heard before and i did not know what it was. emergency teams from six fire stations attended what they described as attended what they described as a very challenging incident.

tonight, it was confirmed that this was no longer a rescue operation. sadly, despite the best efforts of all those involved, we can confirm that there have been four fatalities which includes three employees of wessex water and a contractor. our thoughts are with the family, friends and collea g u es with the family, friends and colleagues of all those affected at today's incident. it isa affected at today's incident. it is a terribly sad incident. and fifth person has been taken to hospital but their injuries are not life—threatening. police say the incident is not believed to have been terror related and there is no risk to the wider public. to what was ina the wider public. to what was in a warehouse one mile away. ice heard an explosion and i felt it. you felt it? it was shaking. have been terrifying. it was a bad moment for everyone. in a statement this evening, wessex water described the incident as tragic, saying

that staff were absolutely devastated. tonight, the prime minister and the mayor of bristol have both paid tribute to those who died and to the emergency services. the police have promised a thorough investigation as four families begin to grieve. now i bbc news, a special edition of witness history. hello, i'm ciru muriuki, and thanks forjoining me here at the arboretum in kenya's capital nairobi for this special edition of witness history celebrating some extraordinary women. coming up, we will hear about the fight for equal religious rights for women at the western wall in jerusalem... ..how the american space agency nasa first allowed women to take an active part in its missions in the 1970s... ..and the campaign to make the contraceptive pill available in japan.

but first, we go to sri lanka in 1960, when sirimavo bandara naike was elected the world's first female prime minister. mrs bandara naike entered politics after the assassination of her husband. witness history has been speaking to her eldest daughter sunethra about her mother's remarkable political achievement. you are the first woman prime minister in the world. does this have any effect? do you think it makes your influence less strong or more strong? i should say more strong. do you think women would be more capable of solving the problems of the world than men are so far? that's left to be seen. my mother was incredible. she shed her reticence, her shyness, she came forward and on every political platform she spoke. my father was prime minister first from 1956 to 59, of sri lanka or ceylon, as it was known then.

sadly, his enemies assassinated him. my mother had no intention whatever of going into politics. her three children were fatherless, and she wanted to devote all her time to bringing them up. but there was such a pressure from the party and the people in general that finally she agreed, because she was convinced that it was her duty. my mother's party won the election in 1960, but right—wing forces started saying the nastiest possible things. running down women, how can she lead a political party? but she was utterly unruffled. she said, "don't worry about it." she carried on. as for us, we three felt, my god, we have lost our

father to politics. now are we going to lose our mother as well? but she never forgot that she was a mother. she took on the mantle of the world's first woman prime minister very co mforta bly. she took to it like a duck to water. i myself was quite amazed how she became passionately fond of the international scene. she played a very important role there. the first woman premier of mrs sirimavo bandaranaike of ceylon. i noticed in no time at all the way she was carrying herself with a great sense of authority, when she used to walk into cabinet meetings she had files clutched like that in her left arm, and walked with her head held high. she came across in

a very strong way. when she was negotiating one—to—one with leaders of other countries, i have never, ever seen her losing her temper. she would get angry, but in a very calm, stern manner. she would say what she had to say, which was far more effective. she was very proud of her second daughter, my sister, chandrika. my mother could see that she was a born leader. wearing a peacock blue sari, the new president took her oath of office in all three of the country's main languages. she was overjoyed when my sister became the president of sri lanka. she saw the legacy that her husband left behind, which she took on from there, the mantle had now fallen on her daughter, chandrika. the world's first woman prime

minister, sirimavo bandaranaike of sri lanka, has died at the age of 84. mrs bandaranaike had been voting in the island's general election. her daughter is the current president. being the world's first female prime minister was very important to her. she felt very proud that she had done it. do you hope to see more women in politics? yes, i hope to. sunethra bandara naike there remembering her mother, what a remarkable story. next we go to japan, where women had to wait until 1999 to get the right to control the number of children they had using the oral contraceptive pill. now, in contrast, a male impotence drug viagra was approved for use injapan injust six months, and legalised before the pill for women. witness history has been speaking to yoriko madoka, who has made it her life's work to fight for the right

of japanese women to access contraception. translation: the reason i started pushing for the legalisation of the pill was because before i became an mp i ran what i called a happy divorce class for women. i was not a professional counsellor or anything, i was a journalist. but i volunteered to help people going through a divorce. many women wanted to talk a lot about their abortions. divorce and abortion are actually closely related. if you have good communication with your husband you can say, "i don't want to have sex today," or "i'd like to use "contraception." but many women told me they were not having any conversations like that with their husbands at all. so they ended up becoming pregnant and not wanting to be, and so then having abortions,

and this would not be just once, but twice, even three times. it puts a lot of stress on the marriage. i thought, women have got to be able to control their own reproduction, not rely on men for contraception. women should be able to decide when they want children. butjapanese women have been taught for generations that it is better to know nothing about sex or even about their own bodies. it was all conceited, shameful. even now, some women don't believe contraception is a female issue. in the ‘80s, i became an mp and changing the law to allow the contraceptive pill became my big issue. i could not understand why it still wasn't allowed.

so i approach the health minister, i said, it's time to legalise the pill. but he told me, "ms madoka, "the pill is allowed in western countries, "not here because the body of a japanese woman is "different to a western woman." and i wanted to say, "are you crazy?" then in the late ‘90s, viagra arrived, the pill to cure impotency in men. it was approved injapan withinjust six months. that made us women angry. of course, the japanese parliament is dominated by men, that's why medication for impotency was approved straightaway and why we had to fight for decades for the pill.

japan's population is shrinking. the birth rate is among the lowest in the world. translation: the government says we have a low birth rate, and we need to have more babies, but the japanese system still doesn't support women to have babies. it's directly related. people don't want to more children because they can't afford them. education is so expensive. i went into politics because i wanted to change the law so that a woman can live the life she wants. can marry who she loves, and raise the children she wants to have, and be financially independent. there still are not enough women in politics, but better

‘representation is the only way to make sure the men's issues get addressed. yoriko madoka there talking about why we need women in politics. next we go back to the 1980s, when a group ofjewish feminists started campaigning for the right to pray as openly asjewish men at one ofjudaism's holiest sites, the western wall injerusalem. witness history spoke to annette hoffman, one of the founders of the so—called women of the wall. singing i have been the chauffeur more times than i would like to think of, taking women of the wall to emergency room. and of course endless eggs, water thrown at women of the wall.

when israel took over east jerusalem, they built a partition between men and women at the wall. the partition is not equal. men are encouraged to explore alljewish expressions. what some people allow themselves to say about us, and to us is quite shocking. what some people allow themselves to say about us, and to us is quite shocking. wrap them in their prayer shawl and bury them alive. and we are being called nazis

by otherjewish people. and when we went to court it would be 1a years later when we will receive a verdict. the court felt that our issue is so complex that it rocks thejewish world as we know it. cheering singing we won three out of our four strategic goals. women can wear a prayer shawl now at the wall, i won't say it's a pleasure,

but you can do it. i am waiting for the day when young girls going to be reading the torah, wearing her prayer shawl praying out loud and she will say to me, hey, old lady, it's always been this way. one of the founding members of the women of the wall. remember you can watch witness history every month of on the bbc news channel or catch up on our films with more than 1000 video programmes and online archive. we go back to the 1970s, when nasa put women at the forefront of one of its missions for the first time. but it was not into space. instead women were put under water to see how scientists would cope in a confined environment. they were labelled aquanauts. she's been telling about this forging away for women in an industry

dominated by men. the women's team was under tremendous pressure to perform. the role of women in undersea research was going to depend an awful lot on how well we did. we knew that we were in a glass fishbowl and everybody was watching us. you have to go back to the 1960s when the space programme was in full gear. nasa was trying to plan ahead in terms of how to send humans into space for longer voyages. the best they could do for an extreme environment on earth was to use the undersea environment. the department of the interior in nasa with general electric designed this programme to help nasa study human beings under isolation.

they designed text type two, which they opened up to working research scientists to submit proposals for projects that would specifically benefit from extended working time underwater. some of the nasa guys really did not want a women's mission, that did not think we were capable of doing the work. we were going to prove them wrong, we were like, "no, we are going to do this and do as good "of a job or a betterjob as the guys can do." we did have that chip on our shoulder. the training for going into the mission was pretty intense. we had to learn how to use rebreathers, these extra lectures, and on top of that we had to do these social activities because of the publicity. emotionally we just wanted to do what we are supposed to do, we are supposed to be aquanauts, can we just go down and get our projects under way? our mission was 1a days long. we probably spent six to eight hours a day underwater. like living in a tiny little

apartment, but you had this great undersea outdoors. the underwater habitat had these big lights all around the top, so it illuminated the reef around us. these fish really reflect the light, they are like gigantic scale silver dollars and they would come right up to these bubble windows that we had and it would be this big guy looking in at you. it was the most amazing thing. there were times where we got along just fine, and there were times where there was tension. and people were sort of trying to avoid each other as much as you could in such little space. they had cameras in each of the four rooms that could see what we were doing. in contrast to the men's group, you know, we were a little self—conscious about not being observed when we were in the shower, and there was no shower curtain when we first went down there. so during the training mission we said, no, we need a shower curtain here. by the time the mission was over we were all ready to come back.

we were looking forward to getting a pina colada or something. one of the major findings was that having visual communication between the land, control people and the astronauts or in our case aquanauts was very important. we found that when we can actually see each other and talking to each other that that made a difference in terms of people getting along, and the behavioural analysis showed we had less time in leisure and more time on work than the men's teams did. the sense of becoming more one with the underwater world was the thing that i loved. a remarkable story about breaking barriers. for a final film we're staying with space exploration. since that first underwater experiment in 1970 nasa has sent dozens of women in space.

including katherine sullivan, in 1990 she was one of the crew members of the discovery shuttle mission that put into orbit one of the most remarkable scientific instruments of all time, the hubble space telescope. she believes that changed the way we see the universe. hubble matters on a number of planes, the scientific, the astronomical and cosmological advances that it has delivered are legendary. fundamentally changing our understanding of black holes. showing us many dimensions we never knew before of how stars form, how the big gas clouds are nurseries of stars. i imagine astronomers have been dreaming since they first looked at the stars about some way to get rid of all these pesky clouds in the turbulent atmosphere. so that's really what hubble was about, so if you could put a really high performing telescope above all of that it really opened great

doors to astronomy. we launched on april 24th and with a few hiccups and bumps got hubble deployed on day two of the mission, and then as planned returned to earth on the fifth day. t minus six, five, four, three, two, one and lift off. special discovery with the hubble space telescope. our window on the universe. space shuttle launches were an amazing experience. you had five engines running at the same time as you lifted off the pad, it's turbulent, it's combustible, it's really a shaking kind of ride. hubble was bolted in the cargo bay of the shuttle and attached with an electrical connector, and the shuttle had a 50 foot long robotic arm that could grab onto the telescope at one particular specially designed point. continuing to take the arm... everyone on our crew wasreally

excited about when we might get to see the first images from hubble. time dragged on and then of course the next thing we knew there was a very ashen faced press conference with very senior nasa scientific officials coming before the public to have to confess that after lots of tweaking with the telescope, they had been forced to conclude the telescope could not and would not focus properly and the reason was because this very large mirror, eight feet in diameter, 2.4 metres, was supposed to have a very particular curvature to it and it was just ever so slightly too flat. at the outer edge. it was this design that was the death knell for nasa, lost its way in the woods. used to be able to put people on the moon and now can't even build a telescope. although the folks that built the mirror had messed up, they had messed up very precisely.

and therefore it was possible to calculate very precisely the difference between the shape it should have had and the shape it did have. hubble was designed from the beginning to be able to take out one scientific instrument, put a new one in so they used the precision that had been built into hubble at the beginning to be able to replace the scientific box quite precisely. i can't think of any other scientific instrument ever that has become so known, so widely known and so delightfully adored, a piece of pop culture as hubble is. the astronomical team decided to point hubble at a patch of sky that based on everything they knew, and everything they could see so far was empty. so they did that, a long exposure at this blank empty bit of sky. what came back was like a technicolor, it'sjust stunning and very

richly coloured. and when you look a little more closely all of those points of light aren't, turn out to not be stars. there are thousands and thousands of galaxies. so hubble let us see way further back in time come up much fainter objects and essentially i think taught us that there nowhere that's empty in the universe. some wonderful images of space to end on there. and that's all from the special women focused addition of witness history. we will be back next month with more first—hand accounts of extraordinary stories from the past. but for now from me and the rest of the witness history team, goodbye. hello there. the weather is giving us a real taste of winter. some places have seen snow

there is more in the forecast for friday for the real mix for rain, sleet and snow falling from the sky, it will be cold, it will be windy. and this big area of low pressure is really dominating the weather across western europe. bands of wet weather spiralling around. pretty cold air being sucked down from the north. that combination of cold air and wet weather, that is why we are still seeing sleet and snow. across scotland, snow falling for a time to quite low levels, could be a brief covering of snow through the central belt. and over high ground ten to 20 cm is possible. could be real travel problems for the high level routes, especially with ice in western scotland. ice possible in northern ireland as well as actually start but mainly dry. some showers for wales in the southwest. this band of rain could contain some sleet and wet snow over high ground across some parts of eastern england.

these various bands of wet weather will just continue to circulate around our area of low pressure. most of the snow becoming confined to the highest ground. rain at lower levels. a lot of rain piling into eastern scotland, that could cause one or two problems. something a little bit brighter towards the south. it will be windy with gusts around the coast. particularly out west with 50 mph or more. and it will be cold. highs between four and seven degrees. we will see further areas of wet weather with some sleet and snow mixed in over the hills as we go through friday night. but the weekend is a story of things very, very slowly calming down. it will turn drier but stay cold. on saturday there will be showers around which could again contain sleet and snow over high ground, particularly over the scottish mountains. but more dry weather developing through the day. some spells of sunshine. it still can be chilly with temperatures of

5—7 degrees without the winds will fall a little later. those winds will continue to fall during saturday night and mist and fog around which could be quite slow to clear. it stays dull in some places. many spots will see sunshine. just a few showers by this stage. still feeling cold with highs of 4—7 degrees.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the stop i am lewis vaughan jones. dr anthony fauci sets the record straight on what he thinks about the uk decision to approve the new pfizer coronavirus vaccine. i have a great deal of confidence in what the uk does both scientifically and from a regulatory standpoint. if i somehow came across differently, i apologise for that. us president—electjoe biden says he will ask americans to wear masks for his first 100 days in office to curtail the spread of coronavirus. the million dollar teacher. winning this years global teacher