this is bbc news. our top stories: nigerian officials say more than 300 schoolboys taken captive by gunmen last week are safe and well and on their way home. a moroccan man is sentenced to life in prison for attempting to kill passengers on a french high—speed train. we speak to one of the passengers who overpowered the gunman. long story short, spencer stone choked him unconscious while i hit him in the head with his ak—47. us cyber security experts say a major hacking campaign uncovered this week posed a "grave risk" to the government's nuclear stockpile. politicians are blaming russian intelligence. and the british actor jeremy bulloch, who played boba fett in the original star wars trilogy, has died aged 75.

welcome to our viewers on pbs in america and around the globe. hundreds of schoolboys kidnapped in northern nigeria last friday have been released. the governor of katsina state says 344 children are on their way back from the forest where they were being held. the bbc‘s nigeria correspondent mayenijones is in kano, in katsina. she says the news obviously comes as a huge relief to the parents. so the state government has told the bbc that 344 boys have been released and are currently on their way from a forest in the nieghbouring state of zamfara to the state capital of katsina in north—western

nigeria. —— in the neighbouring state of zamfara to the state capital we are not clear whether that is the total number of boys who were abducted. there was always some doubt as to how many boys had been taken — the state government says it could be anywhere from 340—400 boys. boko haram claimed that they took 523 boys, so there are some questions about how many boys have been released and whether it's all of them. in terms of responsibility, the extremist group boko haram have claimed that they were responsible for the attack. the state authorities say that it was local criminals, kidnappers for ransom, with some connection to the extremist group. all of this news comes off the back of a video allegedly coming from boko haram on thursday that showed dozens of young boys looking distressed in the forest, begging the nigerian government to call back their troops and saying that some of their peers had been killed in airstrikes. according to state officials, that's not the case. all of the boys that they've recovered are alive.

this will be great news for their parents, some of whom have been waiting anxiously at the school where the boys were taken last friday, waiting for news. there have also been protests in katsina state, calling for president buhari to bring back security to the state. it is unclear what the authorities intend to do to avoid this type of incident moving forward. schools in the region are currently closed until they‘ re able to figure out how to keep them more secure. mayenijones there. a french court has sentenced a moroccan man to life in prison for attempting to kill passengers on a high—speed train. the attack five years ago was stopped by passengers, including off—duty american soldiers. they overpowered ayoub el—khazzani on the amsterdam to paris express train. well earlier, i spoke to alek skarlatos, former us army national guard soldier who, along with fellow americans spencer stone and anthony sadler, overpowered the gunman, i asked his reaction to the life in prison sentence for el—khazzani.

honestly, i'm just glad that he got the maximum allowed under french law. it's a huge relief that he will at least be locked up — for the foreseeable future, anyway. and large part of that, of course, thanks to your efforts, you and your friends on that train in those moments. if it's ok, just take us back to that moment when you first well, i mean, ijust heard a gunshot and breaking glass and a train employee running away from the noise and i looked back to see what he was running from, and there was a shirtless man with an ak—47. i ducked down behind my seat. spencer stone was on the aisle seat next to me, waking up from a dead sleep. he turned around and saw the terrorist and ducked next to me and ijust hit him on the shoulder and said something to effect of "let's go" or "go get him", and to spencer's credit, he ran straight at the guy and tackled him and then i followed him and then anthony sadler followed me.

and can you remember what on earth was running through your mind during those moments? chuckles. to be honest, ijust thought that there was just no way — it was like a sense of disbelief. like, i knew it was actually happening but my mind just thought "there's no way this is real life" but of course, it was, and there was just a sense of fear and dread of knowing that this is how we die. but fortunately, we got incredibly lucky. yeah, of course. butjust tell us, how did you eventually overpower and then restrain him? well, long story short, spencer stone choked him unconscious while i was hitting him in the head with his ak—47. that's pretty... ..well, comprehensive, yeah. and i have heard you say before that your training kicked in after that and you realised, right, there could be other

threats on the train, things like that? absolutely. i took the ak—47 and charged the weapon and realised that he had actually attempted to fire it but the ammunition failed, and then i checked the rest of the train to look for any other wounded passengers or even terrorists, and then spencer, who is an emt in the air force, crawled over and stopped the bleeding of mark moogalian, who was shot in the neck prior to our involvement attempting to disarm the terrorist. and then i suppose it must have been a pretty overwhelming feeling, once you had done all that and then suddenly you take a moment to think what could have been. if you hadn't have been there on the train carriage, what could have happened. absolutely. honestly, that didn't sink in for quite some time. we were just kind of in awe of what had happened. i mean, we were reallyjust doing it to save each other and save ourselves — that's why i don't really like to be called a hero, because we didn't really have

any other option. there was no escape for us. we just did what we did to save each other. i mean, we have all known each other since we were young kids and it all worked out, i think, the way it was supposed to. well, i am afraid that you certainly are heroes and you have the medals to prove it, so there's no getting away from it. can you just reflect on how life has changed for you since then? it has changed completely for all of us. i mean, we are still in touch with mark moogalian and chris norman, and i think, especially for the three of us — me, spencer and anthony — it has really changed the trajectory of where we thought our lives were headed and kind of turned them on their heads, i guess. and what now for you? you looked at politics, i believe? yep, i looked at politics. i ran for congress here in oregon and lost this november, but i haven't given up completely yet, so we will see what happens. our thanks to alex.

wildfires have raged across the world this year, with substantial blazes in australia, brazil and the united states. but as a paper published in the journal science notes, the dangers of these fires go beyond their destructive flames — the smoke they produce could be a significant route for spreading infections. so, in the past couple of years we have had direct evidence that has shown that not only is particulate matter and gas moved in the smoke but also microbial organisms — things like fungi and bacteria — so high concentrations of these organisms are being aerosolised through the combustion process and then being moved in a smoke plume and following the smoke plume wherever that smoke plume goes. and the problem is, i guess, is that these huge plumes of smoke can travel huge distances? we think that they do. we know that smoke plumes do, we don't quite know exactly how long the microbes kind of hitch a ride on the particulate matter in the smoke,

and that's exactly the reason that we put this article out, is because we really want to inspire people to look further into this question. now that we understand that smoke is alive — that it's actually notjust a physical potential ailment it is also potentially a biological ailment — we need to have more investigation and more different types of scientific disciplines working together to address all of the questions that this brings up. ok, so if you got these microbes, living organisms, whatever, floating in the smoke, what kind of damage can they do to people? well, we don't know yet. it might be that they are innocuous, it might be that they are harmful — we actually don't have the answer to that question yet. what we know is that they seem to be attached to the particulate matter, so if particulate matter is being breathed in by people who are inundated during smoke episodes, during fire seasons, then they are probably breathing in those organisms as well.

whether or not they are occurring to such a concentration that that would potentially cause damage to human airways, that is something that's unknown but we think it is very important to find out. the uk's brexit negotiator lord frost has suggested that progress in trade talks with the eu seems blocked and time is running out. much is resting on the talks for british businesses who are still not clear what the next few weeks hold. as the closest uk port to mainland europe, dover handles i7% of the uk's trade in goods. from there, simonjack reports. radio: there are long, long delays because of lorries waiting to get into the docks into dover. this might be the most important trade route in europe — the approach to dover. 9,000 lorries a day transport nearly a fifth of all goods bought and sold in the uk. avoid the a2 in that area at all costs. that wasn't an option for these drivers this morning. here on the road, six hours.

six hours in traffic? there are still two weeks to go before the biggest change in decades to trade with our biggest partner, so is dover ready? the port is as prepared as they can be. we've been at this for four years now. i think the most uncertain thing is how prepared is business to trade post january i? there's an aspect of our operation where certainly, if we add some additional friction to it, it's going to slow things down but the critical thing will be is at what point is that a tipping point? because it will take 24, 36 hours via other routes to do the same thing that we can do in about six hours via this route. dover is the most important artery serving the bloodstream of uk business and the challenge ahead is set against the logjam of other issues — disruption coming out of china, people bringing christmas stock, brexit stockpiling and, on top of that, in 14 days, a whole new set of procedures for the first time in decades, requiring paperwork that many businesses haven't mastered which they will need,

deal or no deal. at the moment, they seem to be stuck in calais. logistics director adam shuter said he's seen truck movements rise 50% as traders scramble to get stuff in before year end. he said his customers haven't been given all the information they need. the detail is not there and because the detail‘s not there, people are saying "yes, we need to get ready" but they don't know what to do and in lots of respects, i think they're just giving up and i think they're just saying "we'll wait and see what happens". brexit will mean 200 million additional customs declarations, requiring tens of thousands of customs agents that we don't have, according to a man who is training new agents. it could well be that we have a chronic shortfall of customs agents. but it's the export side of things, that's what really worries me, because if you want to take your goods to france, you've got to do an export from now on and if you've got no means of doing that, it's going to be hard to find that means when it comes to january i, because if you came to our

company, we'd almost certainly turn you away, and most other agents would as well. we just don't have the staff to take on the additional work. the government has provided grants for training new agents and will waive requirements for customs forms on imports tilljuly, but this isn't about lorries, it's about toys, car parts and building supplies going undelivered. supply chains are fraying before the uk's journey into the unknown. simonjack, bbc news, dover. stay with us on bbc news. still to come: we'll reveal what happened when our moscow correspondent got the chance to put questions directly to president putin. music and 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 world news. the latest headlines: nigerian officials say more than 300 schoolboys taken captive by gunmen last week, are safe and well and on their way home.

a court in france jails a moroccan man for life afterfinding him guilty of a terror attack on a paris—bound train in 2015. the two departments that manage the united states' nuclear stockpile say hackers have gained access to their networks. the us energy department and the national nuclear security administration are the latest government agencies to be targeted as part of a massive cyber attack that some analysts and politicians have blamed on russian intelligence. 0ur washington correspondent, lebo diseko, says the breach is serious. the department of homeland security's own cyber security agency saying that this poses a grave risk to the us government and, for days now, we have heard more and more and more agencies saying that they have been affected.

the treasury, the department of homeland security, the pentagon and, as you said, those two agencies that are in charge of the us nuclear stockpile. and this has been going on since march, so a full nine months that hackers have been really at the heart of the network and able to get this information. now, cisa also said that the hackers did notjust use one way of getting into the system, so it is likely to be wider than we think at the moment or wider than we have seen, and the attack is still ongoing so very serious. do we know who is behind it? as you said, russia is being widely blamed, that's certainly what the us media is saying, but the trump administration has not yet formally blamed moscow. moscow itself, the embassy here, has said that the allegations are baseless. and what about trying to protect this information, how does one go about doing this? i imagine it would be quite a job.

i mean, cisa and the fbi have joined up with another agency are they're trying to deal with this. cisa is working with the various affected agencies, and trying to tell them what to do but i imagine it must be huge. they've said that actually getting the hackers out and cleaning out the foreign agency or whatever the attacker is, is going to be incredibly difficult. the fbi is investigating and trying to find out exactly what happened but it is going to be quite a job and, as i said, the attack is still ongoing and we do not know how many other agencies, companies, people are affected. russia's president has dismissed claims that his security services had anything to do with the poisoning of kremlin critic, alexei navalny. vladimir putin said if they'd been behind the attack on mr navalny, they would have finished thejob. president putin was appearing at his annual news conference in moscow. steve rosenberg was there. this was something new — video conferencing with vladimir. due to the coronavirus pandemic,

for his annual end of year news conference, russia's president took social distancing to the extreme and stayed at home. forfour and a half hours, journalists competed for a chance to ask the kremlin leader a question. n0 audio translation available. "mr president," i ask, "after 20 years in power, don't you accept at least some responsibility for the new cold war between russia and the west? or are the russian authorities squea ky—clean? " translation: i feel responsible for what is going on in russia, for its people, and i will do everything in the interests of russia. as for being squeaky—clean, we are, compared to you. you promised that nato wouldn't expand to the east, but you didn't keep your word. shouting and chanting. i asked, too, about mr putin's most vocal critic, alexei navalny. experts in sweden, france and germany, confirm

he was poisoned by novichok. "can you explain to me, steven," president putin says, "why can't they provide us with an official report about the use of this novichok?" "you're asking me?" i reply. "i'm the journalist here," i say. "i ask the questions." "i'm sorry," replies mr putin, "i'll continue to answer it." now that is rare — an apology to a bbc correspondent from the president of russia. steve rosenberg, bbc news, moscow. the british actorjeremy bulloch, who played boba fett in the original star wars trilogy, has died aged 75. his agent said he died in hospital after living with parkinson's disease for many years. he was best known for playing bounty hunter, boba fett, in the empire strikes back and return of thejedi. our news reporter paul hawkins told me more aboutjeremy bulloch‘s career.

the role he's best known for was boba fett, who is on the left—hand side in this picture here, the bounty hunter, the mandalorian bounty hunter in the star wars films. not one of the main characters. for people who've never watched star wars, you've heard of darth vader, princess leia, luke skywalker all the rest of it but not the bounty hunter probably. he appears in two of the original three films, the empire strikes back return of the jedi, and he doesn't appear in many scenes, doesn't have many lines. the voice was actually done by another actor, like darth vader. jeremy bulloch didn't do the voice but he did play the actor and likewise as dave prowse who played darth vader, ha had to have some physical presence on stage. the way the character moved et cetera. so he actually based it on clint eastwood's

the man with no name, that infamous western character, because both had gaits, both moved slowly, the way they held their guns — he based it on that. so that's what he's best known for. there's actually one bit of trivia which is there's a famous scene where in which princess leia shouts out, "it's a trap!" to luke skywalker and jeremy bulloch also played the imperial officer, there you can see him the background, who then marches princess leia offset. so he played two different characters in the same film which not a lot of people know. and actually, they didn't have anyone to play that character so he went and grabbed the costume and 20 minutes later he was on set. good versatility from him and good trivia from you. what tributes have been coming in? mark hamill who played luke skywalker described him as the quintessential englishman, describing him as a fine actor, delightful company and so kind to everyone. billy dee williams, who played the original

lando calrissian said... " today we lost the best bounty hunter in the galaxy. the star wars creator george lucas has called him the perfect combination of mystery and menace, to his performance of boba fett. and his family have said he had a long and happy career spanning more than 45 years and was devoted to his wife, three sons and 10 grandchildren, and they will miss him terribly. also another bit of trivia, he appeared in three james bond films. a powerful snowstorm has swept through the north—east of the united states, breaking records in massachusetts, pennsylvania and new york. tanya dendrinos has the details. a dusting of magic. the sound of heavy snowfall... music to the is of anyone dreaming of a white christmas. —— music to the ears. the snowstorm was record—breaking. new york city received the same amount as it did throughout the whole of last year. central park a winter wonderland. pure last year. central park a winterwonderland. purejoy

last year. central park a winter wonderland. pure joy as families took a snow day, swapping schoolwork for sleds and snowflakes. i love it so much, it is so good to get out and time to get away from the city and come into this great park. you can have so much fun. a much—needed distraction from the challenges faced this year. ina the challenges faced this year. in a city and country so hard hit by covid—i9. in a city and country so hard hit by covid-19. 0h, in a city and country so hard hit by covid-19. oh, it has been so hit by covid-19. oh, it has been so necessary hit by covid-19. oh, it has been so necessary after what we have been going through here in the city and around the world, it isa the city and around the world, it is a really nice break right behind —— right before the holidays, it has been terrific. but, beautiful as it is, the snow which was around one metre deepin snow which was around one metre deep in some areas, also caused havoc on the roads and even on the runway with flights cancelled and delayed. this spirit airlines plane slid off the taxiway after landing in baltimore. passengers all safe and accounted for, bussed to the terminal. just another

reminder nothing trumps mother nature. this is amazing, smile! laughs. tanya dendrinos, bbc news. the author ernest hemingway is often credited with creating the six word story — a short work that has a powerful, often poignant, message. as 2020 comes to an end, we asked some key workers as well as some famous faces, to choose six words to say something hopeful. we begin with the impressionist alistair mcgowan. # joy to the world # gardening brings great comfort. thanks, monty. the vaccine's coming, and that's great news. midwinter miracle. blackbird song at dawn. hugging friends. sharing chocolate.

live performance. music is creativity peace, change. love. renewed appreciation for what's actually important. dearolder me .. don't look back. always remember, this too shall pass. trees, birds, sky, mud, dog, relax. covid vaccine, the best christmas present. thank god it's nearly over. ——thank god it is nearly over.

that's it from me. you can get me online at twitter. i'm lewis vaughan jones and this me online at twitter. i'm lewis vaughanjones and this is bbc news, goodbye. hello. our spell of unsettled and mild mid—december weather is set to continue for another few days yet, before things get a little bit cooler into next week, but certainly for friday, it's going to be a windy day, very mild once again with some heavy rain around. now, the heaviest of the rain will be affecting south wales, where the met office haveissued an amber rain warning. that rain could be bringing some travel disruption and some flooding, up to 100mm falling over the higher ground of south wales. now, through the course of the early hours of friday, that rain is moving its way in from the west. throughout friday, it's going to be heavy for the south west of england, wales, moving into northern england, into scotland as well. this is 3pm in the afternoon. not only will there be a lot of heavy rain, it will be drier in the south east. but the gusts of wind will reach

around 60 mph three exposed parts of the irish sea, 30—40 mph gusts of wind elsewhere. northern ireland will see that rain clearing to leave sunshine and some scattered showers, but a wet end to the day for much of scotland, northern england, wales and the south west. very mild once again, 13—14 degrees. we could see 15 celsius and one or two spots. that rain will continue its progression, across east anglia and the south east, during friday evening and overnight into saturday. so, again, it's an unsettled picture as we head through into the first part of the weekend. plenty of showers on the map first thing saturday, frost—free certainly once again with overnight temperatures between about 7—11 degrees to start off your weekend. so the weekend will be dominated by an area of low pressure sitting out towards the north—west. we're going to be seen showers rotating around that area of low pressure, driven in on quite a brisk south westerly wind, so still quite a mild direction, but a little bit cooler than it's been over recent days.

lots of scattered showers, most of them in the west and along some of these exposed southern coasts as well. sunny spells, nowhere immune to catching one or two showers, but generally driest in the east. temperatures still around about 10—12 degrees, a touch down on recent days. heading on into the second half of the weekend, and it's a fairly similar story, with a mix of sunny spells and a few scattered showers, again mainly in the north and west, but some coming in along the english channel as well. not quite as warm by this stage, temperatures around about 8—11 degrees on sunday. stays unsettled and a touch cooler as we head into the middle part of next week. bye for now.

this is bbc news.

the headlines: a senior official in nigeria says more than 300 schoolboys who were kidnapped last friday have been handed over to government security forces. the state governor says the boys, who were located in the zamfara forest, are safe and well and on their way home. a french court has sentenced a moroccan man to life in prison for attempting to carry out a deadly attack on a high—speed paris—bound train in 2015. ayoub el—khazzani was overpowered by passengers, including three off—duty american soldiers. the incident was later turned into a hollywood film. us cyber—security experts say a major hacking campaign uncovered this week posed a "grave risk" to the government's nuclear stockpile. the treasury and commerce department was also the subject —— the treasury and commerce department were also the subject of an attempted attack. several politicians have blamed the russian government but moscow says the claims are "baseless". now on bbc news, it's time for hardtalk.