and new year as it tries to halt the sharp rise in coronavirus infections. italians will only be allowed to travel for work, health, or emergency reasons on a limited number of days. all but essential shops will remain closed. americans will soon have a second coronavirus vaccine, developed by moderna, after it was approved by the us food and drug administration. distribution of almost six million doses is expected this weekend, with vaccinations possible as early as monday. a damning report has been published by the us senate, saying boeing officials "inappropriately coached" test pilots during re—certification tests after two fatal boeing 737 max crashes. the report also says boeing officials sought to cover up important information that contributed to the crashes. the government's plans to test millions of school

pupils in england when they return injanuary is undeliverable — that's according to teaching unions, school governors, the church of england and colleges. ministers announced the plans on thursday along with a staggered return to the classroom. but schools says it will be impossible to recruit and train the thousands of people needed to carry out tests in the next two weeks. our education editor bra nwen jefferys reports. think about what's gone well, first of all, this term... the last lessons before christmas, but not all pupils will be back at the start of term. well, we made it. can you believe where we started back in september? doing his best to be cheerful in assembly, but the head expects to work through christmas on testing. i feel absolutely physically and emotionally exhausted after what has definitely been the toughest term ever in 20 years in teaching. when i heard this news two days

ago, i actually felt rather broken, because ijust thought, how are we going to get all of this done in the timeframes that we've been given? it just feels overwhelming. to set up school testing means finding a large, well—ventilated room. separate swabbing and processing areas. staff to test, process, record and clean. these could be volunteers or agency staff. online training before testing starts. and getting consent from parents. it's a massive logistical exercise. we are testing, as i said, 5.5 million secondary school students. this is a very good news story. it's all about making sure we can keep the schools open. this afternoon, the government was warned it might not be possible. school governors, teaching unions, the church of england and colleges all saying this is rushed and chaotic, and telling schools that if they can't manage it, they don't have to have

testing in place for the beginning of term. parents now face some teenagers being at home, not in school, when term starts. it was sprung on us yesterday, so it's childcare in the new year if both of them go back, or if only one of them goes back. we don't know yet. goodbye, chaps. happy christmas. term is over, but not for all teachers. government advice on testing is due to arrive just before christmas. branwen jeffreys, bbc news. now on bbc news, guatemala's lost world. located in northern guatemala, the maya biosphere reserve is the largest rainforest north of the amazon, and one of the world's most important hotspots for biodiversity. it also was once the heart of the maya civilisation.

today, hundreds of houses, fortifications, temples and other structures lie hidden beneath the jungle. i like this part. but some archaeologists are determined to change that. they have devoted their careers to get the jungle to give up its secrets. and new technology has revealed that, despite decades of work, they have only begun to scratch the surface. there's a deep hole and that is where they are digging right now. don't let me down. this maya city has been

an obsession of archaeologist francisco for the last 20 years. he calls it the gift that keeps on giving. trying not to get stuck. in recent years, his work has been aided by the use of lidar, a technology currently transforming archaeology. i have come here, on the border with belize, to learn more about what estrada—belli has discovered. this was one of the most populous places on earth 1000 years ago. if you think about it. we are estimating 8—11 million people in an area of 90,000 square kilometres. and yet they were using very sustainable practices

so they could do this for 2000 years. and so you started excavating into thousand 7 —— and so you started excavating into thousand? —— in 2000? that was our first season. we did not have any cars and the roads were all flooded so we got out on horses. this city dates back to 800 bc. it was abandoned 1700 years later. one of its mysteries that estrada—belli has been trying to solve — its empty tomb. i think i know why they abandoned it. the date of the building matches with a guy who was supposed to be from here being sacrificed at tikal in the year 748. 0k. after that, pretty much all monumental construction stopped here. so tell me what that would have meant.

so tikal was defeating its arch enemy, the snake kingdom. they had already defeated the snake kings and now they were going after its former allies or vassals. this is historical archaeology. we do notjust talk about processes any more and theories. now we talk about specific events and specific people. because we can read the inscriptions. and yet, this tomb was almost destroyed before estrada—belli or any other archaeologists were able to discover it. here is the tomb chamber. wow. looters came and dug a hole right behind this doorway. and they mssed the structure with the frieze by 20 centimetres.

i will show you. that is the frieze right there. that's the corner image of one of the dead kings. you can imagine what they would have done. they would have thought there was definitely something cool behind this carving and they would just blast through it. he's all there. it goes for eight metres that way and another five this way. he has been damaged on purpose by the ancient maya. nothing else really is damaged in the whole carving. just his face, his necklace, ceremonial head. the maya believed everything had a soul, including images of people and things. so when they were burying something, they would let his soul out by killing the image. that is the god of the underworld. he is holding something. he is holding a hieroglyph. two words.

the first, and the food. so he is holding the first food. that is the eye? he has got blue under the eyes. he is tired. he's been up all night because he the god of the night the night sky. this glyph here...the snake kings. what did you feel in that moment when you realised? when i saw the glyph, i thought my career has just made a big turn. it was like, jackpot.

estrada—belli was lucky to find this frieze. the jungle does not make for easy archaeology. an archaeologist from harvard first came to holmul and discovered these temples, but he missed the oldest carving which dates all the way back to 350 bc. the notes were rather incomplete because the archaeologist died shortly after working here. by a mysterious disease that he contracted here. he returned from here with this massive sore on his nose that never healed. that is what happens with this bug. he died and never finished his reports. it was actually published by one of his friends at harvard. posthumously. they forgot to mention this tunnel. he had found a window of an earlier pyramid and stopped. so we kept digging and there is this massive carving that explained what the temple is all about. are these beetles still around? yes. it is called the assassin bug. good, i am glad we are going in now. welcome to the underworld.

let me see if i can turn the light on. watch your step. we are going to walk around the exterior and go to the front. and this is the front of the building. whoa! god, it is a lot bigger than i was expecting. yep, all perfectly preserved for 2&00 years. what you have is the massive head of an earth monster with the mouth open. these are the teeth. here inside the mouth of this monster is the face of an old man. even today, the maya in guatemala worshipped an old man. he has the same wrinkles and teeth like that. it is the image of the god of the underworld,

it is not going to change. jungle creatures and diseases are just two of the problems that archaeologists have had to face. but historically, the bigger threats to the rainforest and its archaeology have been logging and looting. this is el diablo. the devil. we do not know why they chose that name. i know! yeah! it is very, it is an early classic building, between 380-680. we are going to try and see some of the earliest version of this building. what was it used for? this was a funerary temple. here is where the remains of the first king rests. this "devil temple" was allegedly named

because the sites are dangerously steep. but maybe more fitting is that its king, who ruled in the late fourth century ad, was buried with the remains of six sacrificed children. two metres below you, we found the tomb. that is where we found him. two metres underneath. we are standing on top of a king's tomb? yes, from 378—380 ad. but nothing is in there any more? no, we removed and excavated everything. it is in a national museum. the looters had not got to it? everything was still there. the chamber was completely sealed. when we opened, there were still a cold breeze and the smell, like something was in putrefaction process when we opened it. in 2010, when we found the tomb of the first king,

we were working, unfortunately looters can come and they are really well organised, and they can take everything from you. one day, we hired a group of guards to protect it. but it didn't work because some of them tried to steal from the tomb. i confront them, one of them took his gunshot, at that time, i think i was a good liar, i said this is a computer, we have internet — that we did not have — and i said we were filming everything. then he stopped. another major challenge for the maya biosphere reserve is illegal logging, often tied to drug trafficking. and when the jungle is cleared, it does notjust affect the rainforest and the animals, but the maya sites which are often irretrievably damaged. they will clear around

the archaeological sites, grow marijuana, loot the sites, and then collect to harvest. and they put all they have got on small planes to go to the us. several illegal activities are still going on in guatemala. illegal logging, which is not a problem here specifically, but in other parts of this region it is a big problem. drug—trafficking. we are fortunate here, but out in western guatemala, they cut the forest to grow airstrips, your planes from colombia land they are and it is a transshipment place to go across into mexico, and from there into the usa. they burn all the forest in the process. this area has done much better because it was given in concession to local communities for sustainable logging. in the last 20 years, local communities have stopped the drug—trafficking,

the land invasions, deforestation, and that is why science like this is still covered by forest. we think the model that we have in place here works much better because the local communities are empowered, they have an incentive to protect the forest, which is the sustainable logging, and for as long as that can continue, they will protect the forest. freddie molino san cino is vice president of the arbol verde concession, which has been given to local residents for sustainable logging. while logging might seem anathema to saving a rainforest, it turns out that concessions like these can have quite the opposite effect. by giving local residents economic incentive to conserve the rainforest and by being run with strict adherence to sustainable management principles, community concessions like this one have actually protected the reserve.

one of the biggest challenges to archaeologists in the maya biosphere reserve is not narco trafficking,

logging or even looting. it is the fact that it is extremely difficult to find or identify structures in a jungle as and wild as this one. and that is where a technology that is relatively new to archaeology, lidar, has been transformative. so, this hill is supposedly a pyramid. they think it might be as big as the great pyramid. it's definitely steep, but it looks like a hill, so it is pretty amazing that they are able to find that out through lidar. we are right here. 0nly10% of tikal has actually been excavated and discovered.

this feels very indiana jones. lidar is a type of remote sensing technology that is used to create extraordinarily detailed 3d maps and representations. in the reserve, lidar is being employed in two ways. from aircraft, to create topological maps, and from hand—held scanners, to build better 3d models of a particular site or structure. the project that involves beaming lasers from aircraft, the largest archaeological survey ever taken

in the maya lowlands is the initiative of the foundation for mayan cultural heritage. this is amazing. probably preclassic structure. it has never been researched, and it is massive. this is one of the biggest temples in tikal. what is lidar, what makes it such an useful tool? it really strips off the forest company. there are billions of laser beams that map individually. each return every time they hit something in the surface. that will give tremendous use for understanding the forest and the biomass. you said billions of laser beams, how many billions of laser beams? our first dataset had 60 billion returns. that is an incredible amount of data. how long did it take to collect that? only a couple of weeks. it was something like eight flights. it is a 2100 square kilometres of area that was covered in that time.

you obviously have a great appreciation for understanding how sophisticated the mayans where, but that the lidar increase that understanding more? yes. the lidar showed without any doubt that we totally underestimated their engineering capabilities, in terms of landscape modifications, to make the land more sustainable, to irrigate and bring water to places that they cultivate, to stop erosion. it's pretty mind blowing. that is how i felt. and i thought the maya were pretty sophisticated already, but not at this scale. one of the sites where lidar has been especially helpful is here.

lidar is the first step. it shows is everything, gives us the footprint, but then archaeologists still have to go out, get there, check it. lidar makes it so that as archaeologists we do not have to spend all of our time just figuring out what is there. instead we can focus and excavate and address questions that we want to. so much of our time is spent mapping and trying to find places. what lidar has shown us is that we weren't very good at it. a lot of sites around here were abandoned at the end of what we call the classic period. around 900, something like that. but el zotz had people living here up until the 13005. we're probably somewhere near the old camino real, the new spain road that passed down through central america. it was supposedly built on top of a major pre—columbian through—way.

but nobody has pinpointed where that ran through. we wonder if lidar will eventually reveal that to us. that would be amazing. the first king of el zotz was such an important character that a temple was created for him so he would never be forgotten. be careful with these things. they are supporting the roof. when you are here, be careful here. if you are going to fall, fall this way. so don't fall on the sculpture. so this was all for one king? yes, for the first king. this king was powerful, but he was an extension of power. they were on the top here and we say yes, that has to be defensive.

lidar is helping us to recognise everything that this king did to protect him, his family and his legacy. it was the creation of a dynasty. so a find like this tells you that there is a king, then the lidar helps you realise what the context is and the whole landscape and how much more powerful he was than you knew from this? yes. everything that they built, we can make more sense about it. and so you have been coming here for 20 years and knew the area really well, but you still had not suspected that this was a major wall? right. i could see there was a wall, but what was the wall doing here? when you see it in the context of many other fortifications in the lidar, it makes more sense. myjob typically is to map things. i mapped a section of the causeway thinking it was a 100m—long wall and had no idea that it continued for 7km. as a causeway, not a wall. when you got that data back and started to put those pieces together, what did you say?

i was like oh, my god, for hours. oh, my god, look at this. it's very humbling. because you have been mapping and you think you know what you are doing, for all my career, and this thing is so much better than any of us can do. it can do what we do in 20 years in two days. the same work, and it's better. the lidar shows how big the rainforest is and how many trees there are with much greater precision, which can be instrumental in conserving the rainforest.

hello. friday brought us another wet and windy day. the rainfall was particularly heavy and persistent in the west. river levels have been rising across parts of wales, south—west england, scotland, too. this was the picture in ceredigion.

we've had plenty of flood warnings around and there could still be a bit of disruption with flooding as we head through the weekend because there's a bit more rain in the forecast. it won't be persistent. it will be scattered showers and some sunshine in between as well. so friday's rainfall was courtesy of this cold front, which is going to be clearing away towards the east. low pressure to the north—west of the uk, so showers rotating around that area of low pressure, and the winds coming in from a slightly cooler direction, so the bluer colours returning to the map. still mild for the time of year, but not as mild as it has been. so we start saturday, then, the early hours, some rain across eastern england which slowly pushes out of the way, and then a return to sunnier skies and plenty of scattered, blustery showers blowing in. always most frequent in the west and along the south coast as well. gusts of wind around about 30—110 mph for some of us, perhaps touching 50 mph around those exposed coasts in the south—west. a blustery sort of day. again, mild but not as mild as it has been with temperatures about 10 or 11 degrees for most of us. we could see 12 celsius there

down towards the south—east. but there could be some hail and some thunder mixed in with some of these scattered, blustery showers as they rattle through on that brisk breeze. they're going to continue overnight, so clear spells and scattered showers moving through into sunday. it is going to be a slightly cooler night than we've seen recently. still frost—free, really, across the board, with temperatures getting down to around about 5—7 degrees first thing sunday morning. through the day on sunday, pretty similar to what we'll see on saturday. again, some sunshine, some scattered showers — perhaps fewer showers compared to saturday — and it looks like they will tend to fade away later on in the afternoon. a touch cooler as well — temperatures around about 8—11 degrees on sunday. the next patch of rain waiting there in the wings. moving on into monday, looks like this area of rain, a low pressure system, will move its way in from the west. some uncertainty about exactly how far north that gets as we head into the middle part of the coming week but it is looking unsettled to start this coming week. certainly some rain,

some blustery conditions to around about wednesday. heading towards christmas eve and christmas day, things turn a little bit drier and a little bit cooler, too. so there could be a bit more flooding for the first part of this coming week, and then cooler and drier conditions by the time we get to christmas. bye— bye. to go to the us.

this is bbc news. i'm lewis vaughan jones. our top stories: italy imposes a nationwide lockdown over christmas and new year as it tries to halt the sharp rise in coronavirus infections. translation: we must intervene — and i assure you, this is not an easy decision. americans are to get a second coronavirus vaccine, as the moderna injection is approved. a us senate report finds that boeing officials "inappropriately coached" test pilots during a review of the 737 max aircraft after two fatal crashes.