a windy day for all, though not as windy as how the day will start. we'll see plenty of showers pushing into northern ireland and western scotland. some of these will be heavy. temperature, on the face of it, 9—11 degrees, which is fairly welcome to bbc news, mild for the time of year, my name is mike embley. but when you factor our top stories: in the wind, it might not a senior republican finally feel quite as mild. break ranks with donald trump, now, that rain eventually mitch mcconnell, the most powerful us republican, reaches the far south east after the president, during wednesday night. congratulatesjoe biden on his election win. safe, and 94% effective, medical tests open up a path for the approval it clears away and then we're into clear spells and blustery showers. some of these will be heavier of a second us vaccine. across some western areas. but because of the strength of the wind and the showers days before covid restrictions around, it's going to be are relaxed in england over a largely frost—free night, christmas, two leading medical with those lows of 5—7 journals say that would be degrees for many of us. so that's wednesday's low a mistake, and could to the north of the uk. we're in between weather cost countless lives. systems for thursday, so a brief respite before the next system arrives and a royal deal with spotify, later on thursday and into friday. the duke and duchess of sussex so, for thursday, we should see agree to produce and host quite a bit of sunshine around, some areas staying dry altogether across eastern scotland, eastern england. most of the showers will tend a series of podcasts. to be across western areas and they could pep up to produce longer spells of rain later in the day, particularly in the far west, as this frontal system arrives.

and it will be quite mild here, generally mild, but those values a little bit lower across scotland and eastern england. then as we head on into friday, the republican majority leader in the us senate, you can see plenty of isobars mitch mcconnell has formally and active weather fronts acknowledged thatjoe biden won right across the country. last month's presidential election. it's going to be very it's the first sign of a split wet indeed with some between the party's leadership heavy rain in places, and very mild, too, though and donald trump, who still maintains, as we head on into the weekend, without any evidence, that he is the rightful winner slightly cooler air will push of november's vote. in from the west. here's mitch mcconnell on the senate floor on tuesday. so friday is very mild, very wet and windy, the risk of flooding in places. so, today, iwant to congratulate we'll see sunshine and showers president—electjoe biden. as we head on into the weekend. it'll start to turn cooler, the president—elect is no particularly on sunday. stranger to the senate. he's devoted himself to public service for many years. i also want to congratulate the vice president—elect, our colleague from california, senator harris. beyond our differences, all americans can take pride that our nation has a female vice president—elect for the very first time. with more on the significance of this development here's our north america correspondent david willis. this is a very senior republican basically urging

members of his own party to draw a line under this very contentious election cycle and sign off on the fact that joe biden is in fact the victor. the electoral college has spoken, mitch mcconnell said today and he also went on to congratulatejoe biden and kamala harris on their victory. it does seem as though those remarks have made the dam burst in a sense anyway. we have had senior republicans, senate republicans coming out since than to offer their congratulations tojoe biden. as far as donald trump though is concerned, the white house press secretary kayleigh mcenany said today that they were continuing to pursue litigation, although what that litigation might actually entail following the fact that so many lawsuits have been dismissed already really is something of a mystery.

and david, we were saying before thatjoe biden, much is made of his reputation this is bbc news, the headlines: as a dealmaker, a guy who can mitch mcconnell — the most powerful us work across the aisle in congress, but mitch mcconnell republican, after the president is very, very tough. — has finally broken ranks with donald trump — and congratulated joe biden on winning the presidential election. mr mcconnell also urged fellow he made president obama's republicans not to object life very difficult. this puts so much pressure to the result when congress on the result in georgia. meets to ratify it. it is really important a second coronavirus for the democrats to win vaccine looks about to be control of the senate, approved for emergency otherwise joe biden‘s administration is in trouble use in the us. the food and drug administration says the moderna right from the start. jab is safe and ninety—four per cent effective — and can be stored at higher you are absolutely right temperatures than the vaccine and georgia is a southern state developed by pfizer and biontech. if approved shipments that was once solidly republican of course. it has now become something of a swing state, particularly could begin within 2a hours. bearing in mind thatjoe biden won georgia by about 12,000 votes, taking away from donald trump. there is everything resting on that special election pressure is increasing on the fifth of january, on the uk government to revise its relaxation of covid restrictions in england over christmas. just three weeks from now. days before the changes are due to take effect, two leading medicaljournals are saying they would be you're absolutely right. it could determine how much of his agenda joe biden is able to get through congress.

it could also have ramifications for his cabinet nominees. and there is a feeling that it is very important that democrats win there with those two candidates in georgia. of course, the republicans feel the same way and both donald trump and the vice president, mike pence have also been campaigning in the state of georgia. the us food and drug adminstration has opened the way for a second vaccine to be used in america. the moderna jab was found to be highly effective by health officials. in neighbouring canada, justin trudeau's government has been strugging to deal with a second wave of the pandemic. some canadians have already received the pfizer jab. the health ministry has also ordered 160,000 doses of the moderna vaccine, but is facing global competition to get the quantities of vaccine that it wants. let's speak to dr andrew morris, an infectious diseases specialist at the university of toronto.

good university of toronto. to talk to you, thank you very good to talk to you, thank you very much for your time. i know the situation is pretty difficult in canada, what difference do you think all this will make? i think and long—term, canada expects to see the result that most countries do in that (audio gap). doctor morris, i am really sorry. i don't know if you can hear me all right but we have not some problem with the connection and you are breaking up quite a lot. bear with us, we are going to try to fix this and we will come back soon if we can. joe biden has nominated his former rival pete buttigieg to be transportation secretary, a move that would make him the first openly gay member of an american cabinet. mr buttigieg is the former mayor of south bend,

indiana and campaigned for the democratic nomination for november's election, but later dropped out of the race and supported joe biden. let's go to indianapolis and speak to adam wren, contributing editor at politico who's spent a lot of time covering pete buttigieg. i know you spent a lot of time covering pete buttigieg, back to 2018, i think. what do you make of this? when you look at it on paper it really begins to make sense. president—elect biden is someone who has compared pete buttigieg to his late son joe compared pete buttigieg to his late sonjoe biden who passed away —— beau biden. he is taking ona away —— beau biden. he is taking on a position that he himself had under president 0bama in 2009 when he saw the distribution of the federal stimulus act money across the country and that is going to be potentially one of buttigieg's primary tasks hair if there is a stimulus bill passed around

infrastructure, so this is a position where he will go across the country doing ribbon cuttings as highways and bridges are opened and restored. mr biden has made it clear that one of his key priorities will be the transportation infrastructure bill. very different from being mayor of south bend? south bend has an entire city budget of about $300 million, and the transportation department's budget is roughly $87 billion, so budget is roughly $87 billion, so he is really moving into a position where he is going to be over about 55,000 employees and a really sprawling federal department, so he is really stepping up in terms of responsibility. and of course it shouldn't matter that he is has husband of course gay and has husband of course is also a big media figure but it puts down a marker, it is actually important. that right.

is the first lgbtq nominated cabinet official in the history of the country who is openly 93v- of the country who is openly gay. some lg bt of the country who is openly gay. some lgbt interest groups here in the united states expressed some frustration that biden hadn't yet picked someone who fit that profile but today's announcement has been welcomed with open arms by them. and he does say himself that he is a deeply nerdy figure. i know you pointed out before that he particularly loves a game that is actually very suited to his new brief. that's right, he likes the game ticket to ride, where essentially the goal is to draw cards and build a network of trains across a number of states or countries and provinces, so he will be doing that, but on a much larger scale now, and it is notjust a board game but real dollars and real trains, potentially, so he is kind of a nerdy person who has a technical love of policy

oriented stuff. good to talk to you, thank you very much. pressure is mounting on the uk government to revise its relaxation of covid restrictions between the 23rd and 27th of december. talks will resume later on wednesday to see if a four nation approach can be agreed upon. it comes after two of the uk's leading medicaljournals published a joint editorial for the first time, calling for the government to stop any household mixing. they describe the current plan to allow three households to gather at christmas as a "rash decision that will cost lives". many experts believe the christmas guidelines will provide the perfect conditions for a significant rise in cases. 0ur science editor david shukman examines why. # rocking around the christmas tree...# it's a precious time of year for restoring morale and scientists researching the virus recognise that. but they also know that spending long hours in packed rooms is the most effective

way to spread it. 0n the one hand, schools will be closed over the christmas break along with most workplaces and that should help to reduce infections. but on the other hand, having more people gather indoors is bound to increase transmission. this animation by an industrial modelling company simulates someone infected. researchers are worried. i think there's a big risk over christmas of essentially a transfer of infection from younger groups with more contacts into older age groups who might not usually have this level of mixing, especially in this kind of year. even in normal years we do see an increase in hospitalisations for things like pneumonia after the christmas period. the rule across the uk is that three different households can form what is called a bubble over the christmas period and should not be mixing with people outside it. scientists say it is within homes that the virus spreads most easily because people

are so close together. on average, someone infected may pass the virus to three others so the more people in a bubble, the greater that risk. and another worry is after christmas, when people who are newly infected return home to other parts of the country and start mixing with friends and family there. after the american holiday of thanksgiving last month, with 4 million people travelling, health officials are watching for signs of a new surge in infections. british scientists say that their studies show keeping gatherings small will make a big difference. it's easy to imagine a kind of terrible scenario but, actually, when you start modelling it, you can start thinking about how you would balance the increased risks somewhere else and how, if people who don't need to form a christmas bubble decide not to, how that actually improves the overall situation. and if you do get together, open the windows.

this animation shows how fresh air helps to disperse the virus. no one can be so sure of the impact of the christmas break but there are ways to reduce the risks. david shukman, bbc news. let's ta ke let's take you back now to canada and the rush for a vaccine. some canadians have already received the pfizer jab, and the health ministry has also ordered the moderna vaccine but it is of course facing global competitions to get the quantities it wants. let's try again to speak to doctor andrew morris at the university of toronto. there has been an absolutely brutal second wave in canada, can you set the scene for us, why so bad particularly? canada

includes four provinces, makes up includes four provinces, makes up one tenth of canada's population, has created a kind of bubble and they've been actually superlative and how they have been able to control they have been able to control the virus. 0n the other hand, the virus. 0n the other hand, the two largest provinces quebec and ontario have been quite hard hit and we have had many cases and we are experiencing a pretty massive second wave. quebec today announced that after the christmas holiday they are going to be going down into a total lockdown with stay—at—home orders. and 0ntario we don't have that at the moment although the ontario hospital association have gone into crisis mode as of this afternoon. 0n the other hand all the other provinces to the west of ontario have also been hardly hats, and one of the things for those provinces is that they had a very small minor first wave so they didn't really experienced much illness

01’ really experienced much illness or death in the first wave back in march and april, but they are all now being severely hit with cases and many of the health systems are being stretched to the max. and i think you are an advocate of very strict restrictions, until there is a zero infection rate 01’ there is a zero infection rate or widespread vaccination. why particularly? i wouldn't seo would go all the way down to zero. it would be nice but i don't anticipate that. one of the things they have certainly observed with the uk experience as well as the european continental experience has been an approach of mitigation, really trying to minimise the stress on the healthcare system inevitably ends up failing, because you end up going into exponential growth and once there is exponential growth, it is very hard to tackle that with linear increases to try to

improve your public health, testing capacity and healthcare system capacity. so the only places around the world that have been successful have been those that have tried very hard to keep the numbers extremely low and not tolerate any significant rises and cases. thank you very much, i hope we will be back to you on this. stay with us on bbc news, still to come: six weeks after the us election, president putin offers his congratulations tojoe biden, the man who described russia as, the biggest threat facing america. music. chanting. saddam hussein is finished because he killed our people, our women, our children. the signatures took only a few minutes, but they brought a formal end to 3.5 years of conflict, conflict that has claimed more than 200,000 lives. before an audience

of world leaders, the presidents of bosnia, serbia and croatia put their names to the peace agreement. the romanian border was sealed and silent today. romania has cut itself off from the outside world in order to prevent the details of the presumed massacre in timisoara from leaking out. from sex at the white house to a trial for his political life, the lewinsky affair tonight guaranteed bill clinton his place in history as only the second president ever to be impeached. this is bbc news, the latest headlines: a senior repuiblicans finally break ranks with donald trump, mitch mcconnell, the most powerful us republican, after the president, congratulatesjoe biden on his election win.

safe, and 94% effective, medical tests on a vaccine from the moderna lab, open up a path for the approval of a second us vaccine. the russian president, vladimir putin, has congratulated joe biden on his victory in the us election six weeks ago. the announcement was issued shortly after the us electoral college officially confirmed mr biden's win over donald trump. according to the kremlin, "vladimir putin wished the president—elect every success and expressed confidence that russia and the united states can, despite their differences, effectively contribute to solving many problems and meeting challenges that the world is facing today." these diplomatic words tell one story, but what can we really expect in the biden—putin relationship? here's our moscow correspondent steve rosenberg. i think russia is expecting a very different kind of us. —russian relationship now. for four years, donald trump went out of his way not to criticise russia,

not to criticise vladimir putin and at times openly praised vladimir putin. joe biden is very different. a vocal critic of the kremlin and someone who has for many years, expressed criticisms of russian policy and recently he labelled russia the main threat to america. angela stent is an expert on us—russia relations and author of ‘putin's world: russia against the west and with the rest‘. i asked her what we should make in this delay from the kremlin, and the decision to congratulate mr biden now. i think the russians were sitting back and enjoying the spectacle of all the polarisation in this country and the chaos. the official line was they were waiting until the wind was officially confirmed, which was yesterday when the electoral college voted and at that point they wrote that it voted that they needed to recognise thatjoe biden would be the next president

if they wanted to develop any workable relationship with him. waiting longer would have been bad. russian media really have been enjoying the stolen election theories and one host even offered donald trump asylum! something which some americans would also think was a good idea! and all the official media, many of them have been parroting conspiracy theories here, that this is a stone election and that donald trump actually won but if you look at sputnik, they have had a field day with that. that will presumably now die down. with significant things are to come? you two know each other but it is unlikely to be a loving, isn't it? they know each other butjoe biden has been quite explicit that russia is a major threat. he has been very critical of putin.

putin has been more reserved about him, may be. at best, the relationship will be normalised, we have had the strange situation where we had a president who wanted to have a wonderful relationship with russia and the rest of the executive branch of the congress took a tougher line is that you will have a unified policy and i think there will be a focus on arms control, the major challenge. the new start agreement which regulates the strategic nuclear weapons that the us and russia possessed between us, we have 90% of the world's nuclear weapons, that expires on february the fifth. and if we can agree to extend this in five years, no changes will be made to the agreement otherwise the senate will have to vote on that and get tricky. i think we will definitely see that will be one focus but i think beyond that, you are going to see tougher rhetoric and the space for cooperation will be limited but i think there will be

a normalisation of relations inasmuch as the traditional channels of communication say between the state department, the russian foreign ministry and other ministries will be restored. there has been real atrophy in the last four years. specifically about tougher rhetoric, the biting team have talked about money laundering, there is a built—in clash there. democracy promotion and the promotion of human rights and global anti— geography are important platforms of the biting team and that clearly will cause some frictions with russia. thank you so much. almost 400 religious leaders from around the world are calling for a ban on gay conversion therapy, that aims to change a person's sexual orientation. a statement signed by representatives of the world's majorfaiths is being presented at the british foreign office on wednesday. the british prime minister, borisjohnson, supports a ban but conservative religious

leaders fear it could impede on religious freedom. ryan thoreson is an lgbt researcher at human rights watch and joins me live now from new york. i know you cannot speak in depth on presented at the foreign office by generally, what you make this move?|j think what you make this move?” think it is a really important move in part because so much of the conversation around conversion therapy has been led by governments that are thinking about cracking down on the practice, and it is really heartening to see religious leaders speaking up and saying they are also concerned about they are also concerned about the effect these practices can have on young people in the ways they might make them cut off from their families or distrust their own gender identity. let's be brutally clear about there. we call it therapy, but to many people are looks like torture. yeah, it's a practice that has been announced by virtually every

major medical organisation, certainly in the united states because it often has severe psychological effects of people throughout the lifespan. it's not the medically accredited practice, it has been actually disavowed by both psychological and psychiatric authorisations. yet it can be banned but it is just important to be proactive to deal with it where it still goes on. certainly, a lot of countries are talking about banning the practice and it's important to expand the conversation more widely, it's important that trained mental health professionals know that this is a bogus practice, pa rents this is a bogus practice, parents considering spending their kids know that it is not widely accepted and that it is likely to cause the children significant harm. survivors certainly should have support networks at state set up to make sure people who are subjected to the practice are able to report that, are able to get the support they need, both at the time the experience it and later in the lifespan. and i guess surely, if parents

feel they can, to say to the children, honestly it doesn't matter how you define yourself in terms of your sexuality or gender, for that matter. certainly, i think that m essa 9 es certainly, i think that messages heard loud and clear by kids who were lgbt, that's an important message for pa rents to an important message for parents to pass on so kids can bring back to school. kids are internalising that message and they are also figuring out those interactions with those peers who might be lgbt, promoting a broader kind of social tolerance. thank you for talking to us. the duke and duchess of sussex have announced they are launching a podcast with their audio production company "archewell audio", on spotify , signing a multi year deal with the audio streaming giant. the announcement was made via a promo released on the platform and we can have a listen to some of that. should we, should we start? no, ladies first? no, say it cos i think it sounds really nice with your accent. what, archewell audio? yeah. archewell audio. imean... really? shall we? yeah, let's do it.

hi, guys, i'm harry. and i'm meghan. one of the things my husband and i have always talked about is our passion for meeting people and hearing their stories. and, no matter what the story, they usually offer you an understanding of where someone else is coming from. and at the same time, remind you in some way of a story about yourself. and that's what this project is all about, to bring forward different perspectives and voices that perhaps you haven't heard before. yes of course you will be hearing much more of that. a few weeks ago we brought you the story of ghana, the five month old spaniel puppy who survived this nerve racking the close encounter with a florida alligator, his owner was on hand to rescue him and he became a bit of a star, making it out with only a small puncture wound. we will bring you an update on this, not only is he making a speedy recovery, last week he was deputised by the lead county sarah's offers,

and will be enlisted to educate children about safety. thank you so much for watching —— sheriff's office. hello there. tuesday night started on a dry note, but it's turned increasingly wet and windy during the early hours of wednesday courtesy of this deep area of low pressure moving up from the south, the centre of it moving across the republic of ireland. a swathe of rain and gales spreading across much 00:26:28,109 --> 2147483051:49:58,770 of wales, western england, 2147483051:49:58,770 --> 4294966103:13:29,430 northern ireland