the funeral of a young woman killed in protests against the military coup. mya thwe thwe khaing was shot in the head just before her 20th birthday. two other protesters were killed in mandalay on saturday when the security forces opened fire. mapping the way out of lockdown: on monday, the british prime minister borisjohnson —— later on monday, the british prime minister borisjohnson will outline how and when restrictions in england will be relaxed as coronavirus cases continue to fall. it's believed schools will reopen on the 8th of march. and remembering the victims of the christchurch earthquake: new zealand prime minister jacinda ardern leads a memorial service in the city devastated ten years ago. 185 people lost their lives and thousands more were injured, the community spending the past decade rebuilding. now on bbc news,

dateline london. hello, i'm shaun ley. this is the programme that brings together leading commentators, bbc specialists and the foreign correspondents who film and report for audience back home from the dateline london. this week, how patient will people be as the number of covid patients declines? peaceful but persistent in myanmar, but what will make the generals listen? and the not—so—splendid isolation of north korea. the dateline panel this week — we're hoping to bejoined shortly by the italian journalist and documentary film—maker annalisa piras. jef mcallister is already with us.

he's a former white house diplomatic correspondent and ex—london bureau chief for time magazine. he is also a lawyer, so i will be minding my ps and os. and with me in the studio, celia hatton, the bbc�*s asia—pacific editor. great to have you with us again, celia. now, let's begin with the practical questions of the world not being able to vaccinate itself out of the covid pandemic. so although the uk's progress inoculating its citizens has been widely praised, the statement expected on monday from boris johnson on exiting lockdown is likely to be heavy with caveats. jef, saturday's newspapers were full of good news. some speculation, but a concrete commitment that the government has confirmed, that people in care homes will now be able to meet a relative indoors and hold hands for the first time, for some of them, in nearly a year. do you, though, suspect that this may be an attempt to sweeten the pill? actually, i mean, from

the other indications, of course, we do not know until borisjohnson says what the plans are, there is talk of a wholesale return to school in a few weeks as well. actually, i think it is more than sweetening the pill. it looks like the trend lines of hospitalisations of deaths, of the r rate, those indicators are positive — and quite steeply so. and this appears to be not so much a consequence of vaccination — although that has been a success — but of social distancing measures. but the vaccinations are also starting to make a difference, and that will be a geometric progression too, i think. so i think the government is in a sweet place here as long as the trendlines are good. i think they will be getting a lot of running room from the public. i think what the public does not like is stop,

start, reverse. but as long as things seem to get better, i think people are quite tolerant of the mess. i mean, the labour party focus groups, as keir starmer was trying to figure out how to get some purchase on boris johnson, said "we don't like you to attack the government. we want you to work together. but we don't think you guys would do any better anyway." and i think there is a large baseline of ease — as long as the numbers keep going in the right direction, i think the public will be ok. in this country, in the us and elsewhere, of course, other countries where things are not as advanced, it may be different. annalisa, thank you for being with us. vaccination has been a problem in much of continental europe. we've got at least one governor in italy saying this week he is looking to purchase vaccines of his own, he is so frustrated by the slower pace, and italy had a hellish start to this pandemic last spring. it's got a new government has just taken office. the man they used to call

super mario, mario draghi. they called him that a decade ago during the financial crisis. how difficult a balancing act do he and other european leaders face in easing lockdown? it is a gigantic challenge, of course, because we are all in the same situation, basically, trying to understand when is the right moment to ease the restrictions when it is safe and at the same time, we have this race against time to vaccinate most of the population, especially the most vulnerable. but of course, the answer cannot be everyone own, so the governor of veneto is now backtracking. he tried to buy vaccines on his own and it looks like it was possibly fraud, a con. we did not know where these vaccines were coming from.

so the entire very sad episode highlighted how, in the end, it was the right decision to try and do it at an eu level — to avoid exactly this kind of situation in which people, understandably, they are dealing with methods of life and death, so they want the vaccines. but the answers cannot be go and get them wherever you can because they may not be safe. in fact, it looks like the governor of veneto was ready to pay five times the price. you understand that having a black market for vaccines, everybody on their own, it would be a recipe for disaster and it would be unsafe for the people. so the eu did the right choice in trying to centralise and keep a tab on this, avoiding a vaccine war across regions and countries in europe.

the only problem is, as everybody knows, the eu is not a country, it does not have a national health service, so it has to provide vaccines to 27 countries, to more than 400 million people. it cannot be done overnight, so there are logistical problems. but as you say, the arrival of super mario at the head of the italian government, that does bring with itself consequences that go far beyond italy, because he is seen as an extremely capable manager. he managed, after all, the european central bank he has solid experience. and he is almost managing as many political parties as he tries to cohere together the coalition! let me bring in celia.

because annalisa spoke there about the risk of a vaccine war. we, in a sense, are starting to see worrying signs of that globally, aren't we, just in terms of the stresses that this causes? i think emmanuel macron saying on friday at the munich securoty conference that if the british and the americans and the europeans don't give vaccines now to help health workers in africa, the african countries will look to china and russia and they will get vaccines that way and any confidence or faith they have in the western way, if there is such a thing, will be evaporated. and that is already happening. we have been hearing for weeks now about vaccine deals that. china — is striking with, first starting with regional. players near china but, of course, china hasl been giving vaccine — offering big vaccine deals for several weeks now, . ever since they were ablel to announce that they had three workable vaccines. now, of course, there are some challenges with those vaccines i

and there _ have been questions about the release of data from phase three trials . from those chinese—made vaccines but of course, i what is interesting are some. of the countries that have said " look, we're actually not - going to bother with vaccines. we know we won't get them for quite some time." - vietnam was one of those i countries that has done quite a good job at keeping - the virus at very low levels and maintaining lockdown. they threw up their hands quite early and said "we're not- going to try to contend for any of these quite - expensive vaccines". theyjust announced this week that they are getting 30 - million doses through the covax scheme, the who—run schemel that's supposed _ to give vaccines to the world's 20% most vulnerable. so i think the message coming from vietnam is that you can l sit tight— and wait and you will get vaccines eventually. you do not have to go - through the beijing route.

jef, that raises an interesting question doesn't it? it's whether one of the consequences of this pandemic is that parts of the world will emerge sooner than others and that a different sort of global competition, both political and economic, will come from that uneven emergence from the restrictions of the pandemic. i think you are right. i think it is inevitable. like any gigantic event, both health and economic, this is going to have lumps and things will be different in the end. the idea that — i mean, i think it is almost old—fashioned geopolitics that is getting the western leaders now to make a bigger noise about getting vaccines out to developing countries, but china and russia are already quite far advanced in this, and i think we have to get used to the fact that china, in particular, has a lot of cards to play and it will be playing them in a sophisticated fashion and, of course, if it is putting vaccines into people's arms, who is really

to complain? let's move on and talk about a country that has had its share of the headlines over the last three weeks — peaceful protest inside myanmar. diplomatic pressure and sanctions against military leaders from the outside. and on friday, the first recorded death — a woman in the capital naypidaw shot in the head as police dispersed a crowd there. can any of this, though, restore civilian authority? it was never really control, extinguished by the army those three weeks ago. and of course, one forgets how quickly events move, jef, but it was only, what, 12 days afterjoe biden took office as us president, the first significant foreign policy challenge he has faced. how realistic is it, the aspiration expressed not least by his secretary of state antony blinken, that myanmar should return to civilian control? i think the statement of secretary blinken

was more of a kind of a statement like those made by president biden about nato. it's that the old us is back. we will put human rights in our foreign policy. we will not just say nothing when bad things happen to democracy, as would have happened in previous times. but in practical terms, there really is not a lot that the us has leverage to accomplish here. trade with myanmar is small. the trade between myanmar and china, the 1200—mile border, much larger. china has much different interests in consorting with the generals than the us does. there are some old sanctions but there have already been sanctions. so i think this is symbolic more than anything else. i think the interest — you see the young people using the internet and using social media and other kinds of social protest to signal that this is not your parents' kind of demonstrations but,

still, the government has so many tools of repression and, after all, aung san suu kyi was under house arrest for 15 years. i think we must expect a very long and messy attempt to try to put pressure on them to accommodate their own complex domestic political forces. annalisa, jef mentions aung san suu kyi there and of course she is a political prisoner again — perhaps seen differently than she was the first time around. a lot of criticism of her willingness to defend the military over its suppression of the muslim—minority rohingya people, many of whom are course now in neighbouring bangladesh. do you think that affects, at all, the calculation made in european capitals about how to treat what has happened in myanmar? i hope not. of course, there has been serious damage done to the reputation of

aung san suu kyi and it is very sad because she was a symbol well beyond myanmar. but i would not expect world diplomacy to take that into consideration. after all, what matters today more than ever is the respect of democracy and she has had a resounding mandate from the electorate to lead the country. and this must be defended and upheld, regardless of what are, probably, serious flaws in her leadership at times. celia, china referred to this coup — of course, the myanmar military said it was not a coup, they said it was a corrective of a defective election that they say was fraudulent. the chinese called it a major cabinet reshuffle.

which i suppose is a bit akin to calling the english war of the roses a small family dispute. is it possible that is is actually a coup that was approved in china, that china may have there have been questions raised about that but i don't get that feeling because the chinese ambassador came out a few days ago, the chinese ambassador to myanmar came out yesterday and said, "look, we had fairly good relationships with both sides, with aung san suu kyi's party and also with the military". frankly, china has always had a very complicated relationship with myanmar. in this case, i don't think china is really happy about this and the ambassador said very clearly, he said "this situation is absolutely not what we wanted to see". we should point out china is myanmar's largest trading partner — of course they're very important — but myanmar also needs to think about its biggest investors, and in the region, its biggest investors are japan, thailand, singapore. those are some of the countries it will have to start paying

attention to, and those military generals — this is not the myanmar of decades past. this is a myanmar that's much more integrated into the global economy and so, if the generals really want to ignore the calls of many of their own people — three quarters of civil servants are on strike at the moment in myanmar — if they want to push on with this and try to impose their own ruling, they will have to think about the region in general, notjust china. that's a really powerful point, isn't it? you have made much of your reputation as a documentary film—maker. this time we are seeing something we never saw during years of military oppression in myanmar, we're seeing images and pictures, some extraordinarily powerful ones, those flotillas of small boats, for example, marshalled in protest, the buildings covered in the colours of aung san suu kyi's party. how much difference can that make in maintaining international interest in myanmar?

i think it was during the first world war that virginia woolf saw the photographs coming out of the war and said, �*we will never have war ever again because now that people can see that, we willjust stop it, because we can see it.�* unfortunately it didn't work that way and it doesn't work that way now, but images and footage still have extraordinary importance. the problem is that with the fragmentation of the media system, with social media, with the internet, with facebook, we are seeing enormous controversy now between facebook and australia, images and news are not any more kind of delivered to the people with authority and credibility. so there's a risk that even with those images that have an extraordinary potential to wake people up

to the reality of what's happening, when they get dispersed into the noise and the confusion, now, with technology, we also know that with deep fakes you can fake them. so there's growing distrust in what you see. so i think that your question points to a very fundamental problem of our times, which is information and how you can transmit those really meaningful images of the horrors of the things that are happening to wake people up from their slumber. jeff, that raises a really interesting point in relation to what you said at the start of the section about human rights. lots of people saw images as part of the case for suggesting that war crimes were committed in the suppression of the muslim minority in myanmar. i spoke to a former head of the british army who said he wondered if that had been a partial motive for the coup, that the military were worried that maybe the civilian government, when it had full power, would be willing to hand

them over to international justice. is there an appetite in america now underjoe biden for internationaljustice to take its course? i think as always, there is more of an appetite i forjustice for one's - enemies than one's friends. the failure of the - united states to be part of the international criminall court, which i think would be very difficult for even - a democratic administration with human rights interests like joe biden's to try- to return to, that means that i think it probably will be not| unserious attempts to try to link human rights backj into foreign policy more. but with the usual caveats - and hypocrisies that are always involved in this. i think it's probably likely- to be better than not doing it, but it's never going to bel

purely or the sole or even the major influence _ on what the united states does. jeff, thank you. let's stay in the region. for almost 50 years myanmar was isolated internationally. the borders with china and russia have been shut for more than a year now. covid—i9, say the propagandists in pyongyang, have been kept out. it has still applied for a share of shots to poorer countries. south korea even claims its neighbour has tried to steal the intellectual property behind that. in a sense, some countries might feel a bit of sympathy if you did try that, because they're so frustrated they can't produce the vaccines at home. but parking that thought, do we have any sense at the moment ofjust how fragile north korea is? i think north korea is a country on its knees at the moment. it has often been said north korea's in the perfect storm at the moment. this is a country which even before covid—i9 hit the world, 40% of the population

was going hungry, 7 out of io babies were not getting the minimum amount of calories needed. that's according to the united nations. so north korea was one of the first countries to lock so north korea was one of the first countries to lockdown its borders with china. it did so in late january. and it has maintained that lockdown — against its own interests, really. its major trading partner is of course china, just over the border. but we have seen trade with china dropping down 75%. presumably that is the official trade? there have always been, bluntly, sanctions as well, haven't there? absolutely. and this is a country which normally has a very porous border between china and north korea. that border, by all accounts, has been locked down. so we have sanctions, years and years of sanctions imposed by the united nations and regionally, we have the imposition of a quite strict covid lockdown, and we have some natural disasters that have been battering north korea, drought coupled with typhoons. so kim jong—un appears to be in a difficult position, he has been in powerfor nine

years now but seems to be shovelling senior leaders more rapidly than ever. he appointed a new person to be in charge of the economy and then just last week he took that person out of power and said, you haven't been doing enough. some targets are too high, some targets are too low. he seems to be floundering, he has apologised repeatedly to his own people for the economic missteps, where do we go from here? i think he will try to do whatever he can to get a vaccine but also to get some of those sanctions lifted. donald trump saw an attempt to do something fresh with north korea. do you thinkjoe biden sees any kind of potential in north korea? i think the potential for a lot of trouble. | i don't see what the grounds are for a big deal. _ the us holy grail for decadesl was denuclearisation in return

for some kind of lifting of sanctions in terms l of the world economy. i think the nuclear programme is too far advanced, _ and the dependence of. the regime on the nuclear programme for its survival, that's just way too intense i to think that might be possible. - i think it's a concern - that there might be sabre rattling, as there has been before, in order to get- attention from the west. and try to break sanctions. it's interesting that one - of the good ways north korea is now making money is computer fraud, which doesn't require - the infrastructure of- old—fashioned sanctions busting — they're i quite effective at it. they're stealing from central banks, atm networks, - currency trading networks, they have to spend - the money, but the nuclear- programme appears to be robust and even though it does seem to be a perfect storm, - there doesn't seem to be any graceful landing. -

is there a spring, no. is there going to be some kind of effort to make the best - of something using| nuclear diplomacy? that seems more likely. this isn't the most stable part of the world at the best of times, and there are those among china's neighbours who think it's doing its best to stir things up, with its actions around the south china sea, with its rhetoric towards taiwan. do you see much changing in the region in the nearfuture? before christmas you were talking about the possibility of an invasion of taiwan, well, china wouldn't see it as an invasion, it says it's part of china anyway, but quite a lot the world disagrees. i think this is a region that really has all its eyes on washington at the moment because we haven't quite seen howjoe biden's strategy for the region might play out. he has a lot of people who were in office in obama's time, he has brought many of those same people on the team to come and work with him. the idea that, as he has said, he will try to unite with his allies, unite with other world leaders,

other democracies and like—minded countries, in order to put pressure on china that could really change the region, but how will beijing react to that idea? i think a lot of players in the region, taiwan included, are really looking to see how much of the trump administration's policies will be carried over through the biden years, and how much of the tone will really change with joe biden in office. however much the world changes, for now at least the world still waits to see what washington will do. we will wait to see ourselves. let me ask one final thought. we are almost up to one year since the first lockdowns began. a tip from each of you, briefly, the one thing that has kept you going during the pandemic, during those lockdowns. tiramisu! italian cake, which can be very

easily done at home, it takes a little time and it makes everybody happy. so you can do it in a kind of kid—friendly version, you can do for the grown—ups with a bit more rum on the bottom. highly recommended. it has cheered us up. jeff? gin and soda has been my. new reform, rather than gin and tonic, less calories - and therefore more survival. i always noticed that people would have a full gin and ask for a low—fat tonic, but it's often the gin that's the real problem. some great regional gins around the world, by the people are improvising distilleries of their own in lockdown. celia? i've been planning a series of trips. i don't know when i'm going to take them, but i want to go back to india to see friends,

i want to go on a big backpacking trip. i like planning trips so that's what i have been doing in lockdown, tojust remind myself that one day this will be over. one day it will. and we're over now, dateline london for this week. dojoin geeta and her guests at the same time next weekend. for now, have a good week. it's felt very mild over the weekend, almost springlike. and in fact, the temperatures are going to rise even more as we move through this new week, particularly tuesday and wednesday. this is the temperature anomaly map. you can see the temperatures well above the seasonal average, especially for parts of england and wales. but with this very mild air will come a lot of moisture,

and it's going to pour down, in fact, across many western areas for tuesday and wednesday. some parts of western scotland, perhaps north—west england could see over 100 mm of rain, with a risk of localised flooding. eastern areas of the uk will actually be drier than average. for the start of the new week, though, it looks mainly dry with plenty of sunshine, but we still have some rain around thanks to this weather front which will be affecting northern and western parts of england, eastern wales, to start the day. it will transfer towards the eastern side of england and tend to fizzle out, leaving a legacy of cloud here, with other areas brightening up. so, quite a fine afternoon for many. plenty of sunshine for scotland and northern ireland and mild, 10 to maybe 14 degrees. that front clears away. underneath clear skies, it will turn a little bit cooler, in fact, but then this next area of low pressure will move in to bring wet and windy weather to northern and western areas. and those temperatures will range from around 2 or 3 across eastern areas, 7 or 8 in the west. now, this area of low pressure is here to stick around, i think, for much of tuesday and wednesday, and expecting

to bring some very wet weather with this weather front, which will become almost stationary across the north and west of the country. lots of isobars on the charts, so it will be windy as well. dragging this air up, though, from the subtropical regions, which is why it's going to be extremely mild. so we start off dry. central, southern and eastern areas, it'll stay dry through the day, but lots of rain across scotland, northern ireland, perhaps north—west england, the north and west of wales, and gales up the irish sea coasts and in towards western scotland. despite the wet and windy weather here, it's going to be mild. double figure values for all, but we could see 14 or 15 across the south and the east given some brightness. it'll stay very wet and windy across the north and the west on wednesday, extremely mild across the south east, 17 or 18 celsius. and then there's signs of it calming down a little bit as we end the week and head—on into the weekend, as high pressure builds in. so, for this upcoming week, it's going to be very mild

for a time, but wet and windy across northern and western areas, with the risk of localised flooding, and then signs of it drying up for many of us by the end of the week. welcome if you're watching here in the uk or around the globe. i'm james reynolds. our top stories: a new martyr for myanmar: crowds pay their respects to mya thwe thwe khaing, who was shot during protests against the military coup. remembering the victims of the christchurch earthquake a decade on: new zealand's prime minister jacinda ardern leads a memorial service. mapping the way out of england's lockdown: details on the government's plans to ease measures as coronavirus cases fall. and much more than some fun in the snow: meet the polish community rallying for a good cause.