more than a0 countries have now put restrictions on travel to and from the uk, after the government here admitted the new, more infectious coronavirus variant is out of control. european union officials are trying to agree coordinated, strengthened, health protocols — for people travelling from britain. 32 years after the pan am disaster over lockerbie in scotland, the us has announced that terrorism charges have been brought against a libyan man accused of making the explosives that brought down the aircraft. 270 people lost their lives. us president—electjoe biden has appeared before the media to receive the covid—19 vaccine. mr biden and his wifejill were given their first doses publically in an effort to boost confidence in its safety and encourage others to take up the vaccine ahead of its widespread distribution next year.

now on bbc news, click this week — electric rails. kitten tails. and football fails. spencer, and you — you can barely kick the ball without falling over. in that way, you can, for sure, keep yourjobs. hey, welcome to click! hope you're 0k. it is nearly the end of 2020 — insert cheering here — and for the first time since march, you and i are together at the bbc at the same time. hello, mate, how are you? it's great to see you, even though you still feel quite far away, but hey, things here are festive,

it is feeling pretty cold, but we are together in the flesh. yeah, a bit more flesh than there was in march, let me tell you. hey, you've got legs! i'd forgotten! yes, i couldn't get away with slippers now! how was yourjourney here? you've travelled further than i have. yeah, i came up on the train for the first time in months. it was quiet, let me tell you! and in fact, that's what we're going to talk about first. you mind talking a bit more about trains? i'm fine with that. excellent, love a good train. you see, train travel might be different these days but some things never change and in the autumn and winter in the uk, trains face delays caused by something very natural but very difficult to deal with. so paul carter has been taking a look at the solution to a very british problem — one that's been around since the victorian era. "leaves on the line" — it's that dreaded phrase that every british rail passenger is familiar with. it may get a few laughs but it's actually a bigger problem than many people realise. here at this test track in wales, they're trialling

a new technology that has the potential, at least, to revolutionise our railways. existing methods of track cleaning have remained largely unchanged since the victorian era, but it's hoped that plasma could finally be the solution to an age—old problem. this new method involves blasting the leaves with a high—energy electrical plasma beam — basically, a bolt of lightning. plasma track hopes to attach these concentrated plasma rays to the front of trains, which will burn off the layer of compacted leaves. the energy comes from regenerative braking on the train itself, or spare electricity from diesel trains. there are 10 million trees that line the uk's railways and every autumn, thousands of tons of leaves fall onto the tracks. as trains whiz over them, the wheels compact the leaves into a black, greasy paste that sticks to the tracks. the safety aspect — there are a number of incidents that can occur when trains are struggling to brake,

so things like station overruns, where the train fails to stop at a station because it's been unable to brake and stop in time. from the performance side, trains struggling to pull away from stations incurs delays. this disrupts the network and can cause knock—on delays for passengers elsewhere, notjust in the area affected. plasma track‘s solution can clear the residue on tracks and restore them to a dry, clean and uncontaminated state, enabling trains to run as if it were summer all year round. but it's back at plasma track‘s laboratory where we can really see the lightning—like power of the system. plasma is generated from a high—energy electrical beam combined with compressed gas. the beam can be as hot as 10,000 degrees celsius but it doesn't melt the track because the train is moving so fast that the contact is fleeting and hits just the very surface layer.

so the problem is obviously from the trees, leaves fall onto the track but it's not a slippy leaf like you would have on the footpath. it's actually the train running over it, crushes it, creates heat and pressure and there's a biochemical and chemical reaction with the top of the railhead. you imagine it's like driving on black ice. aside from lightsabers obliterating leaves on railheads, there's also less dramatic technology being used to tackle the problems caused by trees and bushes along railways. transport for wales have been working with one big circle to fit smart cameras on trains that automatically record, analyse and report vegetation that could cause safety risks to trains, such as hanging trees obscuring signals or hazardous leaf falls. it's a constant battle as vegetation naturally changes every time a train runs a route, but the smart cameras track these changes. machine learning rapidly analyses the videos and provides early warnings so resources can be allocated quickly.

we are principally starting with vegetation, so along the line side next to the trains, there are plenty of trees and bushes that cause a potential safety risk to our trains. we deployed this camera in place of the human eyeball, basically, to allow us to sort of grab more data and sort of do things in a much, much quicker and safer way as well. that was paul carter, who used to sit here, right next to me. this was my desk. i haven't been here for nine months. when we left this place in march, no—one really knew how different countries were going to be affected by what was coming. turns out, the uk hasn't fared at all well. and so throughout the year, i've been talking to experts from around the world to try and learn how different countries have handled things better. now, at the end of 2020, i've been back in touch with them to find out what they've learned over the past few months. iceland's decode genetics

is at the forefront of genetic research and it's managed to sequence infections so accurately that scientists can tell who has passed the virus to whom. and the taiwanese government, just a stone's throw from mainland china, managed to leverage its high levels of trust amongst its population to stop the virus from ever getting out into the wider community. when i spoke to its digital minister audrey tang back in may, taiwan's coronavirus death toll was seven. when i spoke to her recently, that death toll was still seven. after nearly 250 virus—free days, life in taiwan is thriving. parades, businesses, schools and universities have remained open and an economic boom has followed. the only new infections have been from incoming visitors. this near—unblemished record has been achieved by all communities within taiwan taking responsibility for themselves and when outbreaks do occur, finding their own solutions

to get back on track. and as for the people who are found to have spread the virus, audrey says it was important they were able to be honest so the people they've been in contact with could be properly traced. as a case in point, she told us the story of someone who did not initially want to admit who she had been in contact with. initially, in the interview of the first day after she gets diagnosed with covid, says that she stays at home, didn't meet anyone, she didn't know why she would contract the virus. and on the second day, because of the interview — interviewer's skill, i guess, she eventually admitted that she is a professional worker in an intimate hostess bar. now, there was a very large kind of social pressure around that time in april for the cecc, the command centre, to essentially threaten to put people in jail for refusing to collaborate with contact tracing, or threaten

to shut down entire businesses by a top—down order. instead, the authorities got these intimate bars to close down and brainstorm their own plan for dealing with the local outbreak. this is very fortunate because around the same time in nearbyjurisdictions, we have seen the second or third wave because of the nightlife district that went underground. meanwhile, iceland's population, who were already used to having their blood taken and stored for future genetic research, were helping scientists to track individual mutations of the virus as it passed from person to person. this meant that researchers could work out who was infecting who and it helped pinpoint the cause of the most recent wave — two tourists entering iceland in august. we have sequenced the virus from every single person diagnosed in iceland. it's important to know how the virus is spreading

because on the basis of that, you can modify your containment effort. should i close down the health clubs or should i close down the coffee shop, all right? i mean, if the experience is that the people working in the coffee shops got infected in the health club, you have more reason to close the health club than the coffee shop. but basically, this gives you the certainties of data needed to make decisions, and it's very important when you're making your argument before the politicians who eventually have the power to decide what is done is to be able to show them how this spread. and taiwan's use of data has also been crucial to their efforts. for example, in digital fencing that tracks those quarantined using mobile phone signals.

but would this approach work in western countries, where people seemingly don't like governments knowing their business or being told what to do? i think in taiwan, people really don't like being told what to do and had we introduced new data collection methods, we'd probably fail. instead, it's been from the bottom up with taiwan's tech community designing mask maps to make sure everyone got their allocation, while messaging about wearing masks was conveyed slightly uniquely by the government's spokesdog. remember the dog memes? because this is a, you know, a very, very cute dog and who can be against to a cute dog telling you to physically distance from one another? the same tactics were part of a recruitment campaign, for which audrey dressed up. the cat version of the digital ministry is far more compelling than the official version of the digital ministry. right, well... chuckles. anyway, back to the serious

stuff now, and iceland's research has shown that children are only half as likely as adults to get infected in the first place, or to spread it once they are infected. other research from iceland now shows that people who have been infected retain antibodies for longer than previously thought. but why some people are vulnerable to infection and others are not continues to elude even the experts here. there will probably be an awful lot of extraordinarily rare qualities that make a very, very small percentage of the population resistant, and there's probably fairly rare qualities that make another small percentage of the population vulnerable, but the most important determinant in all of these societies is behaviour. and this spring, the epidemic was sufficiently dangerous to convince icelanders, this unruly nation, to behave properly.

and is itjust a learning curve that we all have to go through until all of us, as individuals, improve our own levels of knowledge? i do think it is necessary for a liberal democracy to go through this collective learning process because essentially the top—down shutdown, lockdown measures only go so far. people really do need to understand epidemiology. that is to say we don't make this false dilemma choice between human rights and democracy on one side and countering the pandemic, public health on the other. but with these lessons learned, 2021 is looking a bit brighter — especially with the vaccine now on our doorsteps. it was amazing to see sort of in, for example, in the pharmaceutical industry how competitors turned their back together. we are absolutely convinced that we were working towards a common goal. i think that we are much, much better prepared to deal with the next pandemic

than this one. hello and welcome to the week in tech. it was the week that facebook said it will move uk users onto us agreements as the country prepares to leave the eu and its data protection rules. it says these accounts will not see privacy changes. video app tiktok has come to tv after sealing a european deal with electronics giant samsung. and china's ehang hit europe, receiving a long—term permit to trial its autonomous aircraft in austria. in wearable tech news this week, a new smart ring could help diagnose the coronavirus before users have symptoms. the smart accessory the 0ura ring is being worn by more than 65,000 study participants, and us researchers say it can detect subtle changes in a wearer's temperature. zoox, the self—driving carfirm amazon bought in june, has unveiled its first robo taxi. the all—electric autonomous cab can hit 75 miles an hour and drive bidirectionally,

meaning it can move forward and backwards and side to side. and finally, how about an a! christmas chorus? all sing operatically google‘s blob 0pera can make totally new sounds, thanks to artificial intelligence trained on 16 hours of real—life singing. sings operatically an additional machine—learning model helps out with the harmonies. all sing operatically applause now, i don't know whether you've noticed, but the price of top—end smartphones has been creeping upwards and upwards. the latest folding phone from samsung will set you back £1,800. what? i can't believe how many people actually buying them. of course, that is a high—end phone, and you are paying for the fact it folds,

but what if you just want a phone that allows you to make the odd phone call and take the odd snap? for the past few weeks i've been trying eight phones priced between £70 and £379, to see what you can get for your money. all of these phones are android phones. the cheapest iphone costs more than any of these, but we have got contenders from nokia, tcl, xiaomi, honestly, it's been like a phone shop in here — as i work out what these phones can do and what, if anything, you miss out on. first, i wanted to test their performance. generally speaking, the cheapest smartphones don't have the latest and greatest chips inside them, to keep costs down. so, i did some basic tasks on all of them — all of these phones were able to do these tasks with no problems at all, even the cheapest one, the nokia 1.3, although this particular phone was noticeably sluggish, and that made it quite frustrating to use. and i feel like that's falling at the first hurdle.

and it doesn't have to be like that, because for £10 more, the alcatel phone was buttery—smooth. to push the phones a bit more, i played the hit game among us, and it wouldn't open at all on the nokia 1.3, but here it is running on the alcatel1s — absolutely no problem. the next challenge was to see if i could play fortnite, which is a much more demanding game, with 100 players online and 3d graphics. and the two cheapest phones straight up wouldn't even install it — they don't have enough memory. but it ran just fine on all the other phones. even the ones that the app warned weren't officially supported. and here i am getting a victory royale on the tcl10l. i did one more test, this time with some cloud gaming on xbox game pass ultimate, and most of the heavy lifting there is done by the remote computer server, but this was pushing the three cheapest phones beyond their limits, the games just stuttered too much to be playable, but it worked beautifully on all the others, both with the touchscreen, or with the xbox controller connected.

here's the report card — and it shows you don't have to go for a top—end phone for console—quality gaming. let's take a look at the cameras. that's an area that the premium brands focus a lot of attention on. in a cheap phone, i think ‘if this was my mum's phone, and the only way for her to send me pictures or videocall me — especially right now — would i be happy with the picture quality?‘ that's my measure of whether these phones take good photos. well, the pictures on the cheap nokia 1.3 were fairly poor. i don't think anyone‘s buying this for the camera. the rest of the phones all took what i would say are "satisfactory" shots that pass my mum test, with the tcl one here probably being my favourite. that shot was taken in broad daylight. what about a low—light shot? we took some of those as well. these were all varying degrees of ‘0k'. not mind—blowing but not disappointing. they all managed to take a clear, fairly bright photo, which i don't think you would be able to do any super—cheap phone ten years ago. of course, the front—facing camera has never been more important with all those video calls we're doing. as with the other shots, the cheapest phone took a fairly low resolution selfie, and the alcatel one was slightly better.

and the rest of the phones took nice, sharp selfies. let's talk about features. what do you lose to keep the costs down? the two cheapest don't have nfc for contactless payments, none of the phones have wireless charging, although some of them do have fast charging, so you can top up your battery quickly. sometimes, paying a bit extra get you a newer technology or something a bit fancier. so, the two most expensive phones can connect to the new 56 phone networks, and while all but one of the phones had a fingerprint reader, the samsung and 0neplus phones had it embedded in the screen, which is a bit more fancy. i want to touch on software updates. because, buying a cheap phone shouldn't come at the expense of your security. so i asked all these companies how long they intend to provide security updates for these devices. so, what conclusions can i draw from this? well, if this is going to be somebody‘s only phone for taking family pictures or staying in touch with video calling, then i would say it's probably worth leaning towards the more expensive end of this scale just for that better camera.

but if you want something really basic for, let's say sending e—mails or messages, or browsing the web, the alcatel1s proves you can do this for under £100. chris fox there, proving that you don't need to break the bank to get a great smartphone. yeah. now, as we said, this is the first time in nine months that we haven't recorded our bits together over zoom — i can't think how many video calls we shared since then — thousands, millions! a lot! but i think you've missed the trick. really? throughout the pandemic, tv presenters, singers and reality tv stars have been making personalised videos and charging a fair bit for them. they've been using apps like memo or cameo. how much do you think i could charge, then? i don't know — you would have some stiff competition. snoop dogg and caitlynjenner have been doing it, some of the biggest names have been charging up to £2,000. cristina criddle has found finding out more. ever wondered what happened to lindsay lohan or the child actors from harry potter? well, they're at home —

like us, but they're making personalised videos for theirfans. this is t. tom felton. i'm lindsay lohan! i've been looking at new platforms that let you order a video from a celebrity. you can ask them to film whatever you like, but it comes at a price. and if you want a good one you're going to have to pay quite a lot. hey, what's going on, man? this is your boy, akon. for around a fiver you can get a video from a celebrity you don't really remember — from big brother, or you could have singers like h from steps. hello, there, you lovely lot. celebrity drag queens, you can get animals from the zoo, you can even get rap royalty snoop dogg. get your shoutouts, let's go! it's really easy to do. all you have to do is send a script to the celebrity, they then film it on their phone and they send it back to you, and people are buying these for all sorts of reasons, whether it's a birthday, christmas, congrats on your new job, and some really weird ones. we're your favourite talking dogs! and we're here! so, why would celebrities do this? i mean, what's in for them?

i definitely think this is the new kind of autograph. social media has democratised a lot of this and made the connection go more directly from the fans to the followers. we definitely have seen the desire to send more heartfelt messages, and cheering—ups for isolation, but also on the celebrity side, many feel they want to give back, against covid, for instance. and also just be there and connect with their fans. i think many have more time on their hands, now. happy birthday, megan! what the hell? you're 18?! websites have been popular, with cameo saying it has seen a 300% increase in ordersjust this year. and his companies taken 5% of the profits, quite a lot when you consider the average video only last 75 seconds. singer lily allen is even using hers to make a new album. and you can get a video from her £300. so, i'll be using these funds to finance my musical output. of course, websites

like these are a prime opportunity for pranking. carole baskin from tiger king, the netflix series, well, she got caught out on cameo. she was asked to film a message for paedophiles jimmy savile and rolf harris. now, the companies say these instances are rare and celebrities can always decline a request if they want to. so, memo let me try out the service with sven—goran eriksson, who is a former england football manager, now turned memo star. his videos are 50 quid but he donates it to charity. first of all, it keeps up my english, second, it doesn't take me the whole day to do this. it takes me an hour. it's an honour for me. it's a nice way to keep in contact with the england fans. so, given his expertise, i thought i'd get him to see what he thinks of lara and spencer's football skills. hello, lara and spencer! i have seen some old clips

of you, both of you, playing football. lara, your distraction tactics... stephen, look over there! ..are good, but the co—ordination is awful. spencer, and you, you can barely kick the ball without falling over, that way you can for sure keep yourjobs. yeah, i am happier on the sofa than on the pitch, it has to be said. but we've just been critiqued by the great sven, how about that! 0h, brilliant, but never mind our lack of skill. why were you wearing a suit? when have you ever known me to dress appropriately for anything? ok, that is true. anyway! that's it from us at bbc new broadcasting house. next week, it's our click—mas party. now, it's gonna be different this year, but we are having a party, one way or another! it's gonna happen online and we would love you to join us. absolutely. in the meantime, you can keep

up with the team on social media, on youtube, instagram and twitter at @bbcclick. thanks for watching, and we'll see you soon. bye— bye! hello there. the next couple of days, we are going to hold onto this north—south divide with northern areas seeing the colder, drier, brighter weather with some sunshine, a few showers, wintry on the hills. further south, it will continue to be fairly mild, but rather cloudy and wet thanks to low pressure nearby. this is the pressure chart as we head on into tuesday. we still have this weather front straddling southern areas, further north, though, we have got higher pressure. so, here, plenty of sunshine for northern ireland, scotland, much of northern england, midlands and into north wales.

more cloud, though, across the south of the country, some spots of rain at times, and here it will be milder. further north, it's going to be another chilly one with temperatures into single digits, some of these showers could be wintry on the hills because of the temperatures being quite low. but, again, double figures in the south. as we head through tuesday night, we see a new area of low—pressure push—up from the south—west. that's going to increase the cloud, outbreaks of rain across the southern half of the country. further north, it will tend to be clear again, there will be a few showers, which will be wintry, as temperatures will fall to around freezing for many — a touch of frost here. further south, though, you can see 4—10 degrees. so into wednesday, we've got this area of low—pressure, quite a vigorous system. more isobars on the charts, so through the day, it start to get windier. but, there is still some milder air with this area of low pressure. so, the southern half of the country stays cloudy,

wet and mild, further north, it will be colder. but the cold air will win out as we move on into the christmas period. so, this is the chart for wednesday. much of england and wales, perhaps even southern scotland will be cloudy with outbreaks of rain, some of it heavy in the south, and there is a chance of further flooding, as the rain is falling on saturated ground. another mild day here, 6—11 or 12 degrees in the south, but for scotland and northern ireland, a bright one with sunshine, one or two showers, wintry on the hills and low single digits. 0ur area of low—pressure begins to slide away into the near continent, it allows this high—pressure to topple in and bring us colder northerly winds. it pushes the rain away from the south—east. we could see showers in northern areas, particularly around the coast, and these will be wintry because it will be cold. but for many, it will be dry with more sunshine around, noticeably colder, particularly in the south 4—7 degrees. so that's for christmas eve. christmas day, a cold start, could see some frost around, and with high—pressure around, it should be dry with variable amounts of cloud and some sunshine. but then it starts to become more unsettled again into boxing day.

and backwards and side to side. welcome to bbc news — i'm mike embley. our top stories: more than a0 countries put restrictions on uk travel, as the country concedes it can't contain a more infectious variant of coronavirus. 32 years after the lockerbie disaster, america charges a libyan man with making the bomb which blew up pan am flight 103. a shot made for the cameras — us president—electjoe biden becomes the latest leading figure to get a virus vaccine on live tv. russian opposition figure alexei navalny says he tricked security agents into revealing details of his attempted assassination, including that the poison was in his underpants.