warning storm are is heading weather warning storm are is heading our way at the moment and the met care this is the area of the warning. stay away from these areas if you can. there will be large waves to come. the storm is heading out into the north sea, but it is a package of that storm that those strong winds, sweeping down across the whole of the country. we amber warnings widely windy weather in eastern scotland and the north—east of england further inland. now we have an amber warning for northern and western parts of wales. the winds pick up here overnight with gusts of 60 or 70 miles an hour.

those strong winds have yet to arrive. we have got sunshine and showers and it feels quite chilly out there. we have also got close to the storm a mixture of rain and snow in the scottish mountains. blizzards are likely here as well. wet weather will sweep southwards overnight bringing snow onto the pennines, the welsh hills, may be over higher parts of the midlands down towards the cotswolds as well. some wet weather driving its way southwards and that is not the main story. those are the temperatures we are looking at, but it is the strength of the wind that is the more significant feature of the weather. there will be impacts from snow on higher ground, but it is windy widely overnight and into tomorrow. we have got a mixture of rain still for england. some sleet and snow over the hills for a while and that wet weather retreating to the far east of england. elsewhere brightening up, some sunshine and

wintry showers in northern ireland and into scotland and temperatures struggling up to around three or four degrees. when you factor in the strength of the wind, it will feel significantly colder. things start to calm down overnight and into the second half of the weekend. we start sunday with a widespread frost, the storm moves away and a weak weather front arrives into northern ireland, threatening cloud and rain. otherwise we are in the cold and there will be more wintry showers in scotland and the winds gradually ease. it will not be as windy on sunday, but it will still be cold, temperatures struggling to three or four degrees. briefly, next week, we change the wind direction and get more of an atlantic wind and that will only slowly turn things milder from the west. ahead of that storm arwen will bring significant impacts with widespread gales developing overnight and it continues into saturday with snow over the hills

and disruption is expected. we have that red warning from the met office for coastal areas of eastern scotland and the north—east of england. more the health secretary says a new, heavily—mutated covid variant could pose substantial risk to public health and is of international concern. that's all from the bbc news at one, so it's goodbye from me and on bbc one we nowjoin the bbc�*s news teams where you are. good afternoon, here's your latest sports news. with the ashes less than two weeks away, australia have announced that tim paine will be taking a break from all forms of cricket

for an indefinite period of time due to concerns over his mental health. paine resigned as captain last week after details of an historical investigation into texts to a female colleague were revealed. but he had remained in the squad. however, he's decided now to step away from the sport, with paine�*s manager saying they are �*extremely concerned for his, and his wife's well—being.�* meanwhile bowler pat cummins will captain the australian side for the series with england, which starts on the 8th of december. former captain steve smith will take up the role of vice captain. cummins admits scrutiny around the role is scary — around the role is scary, but he was never going to turn down the opportunity. some parts of it are daunting but you can't stay in bed all day worrying about some of these things. concentrating on more of the... there's so much positive with this role, so much i think i can bring to it. trying not to overthink it

and just trying to be me. eddie howe will be in the dugout for the first time as newcastle head coach after returning a negative covid test today. he missed what should have been his first game in charge against brenford, he watched on from home, but he has now been cleared to be with his team, when they take on arsenal at the emirates tomorrow. the task is a tough one for howe, newcastle are bottom you newcastle a re bottom you newcastle are bottom want your leader, you want�* manager you want your leader, you want your manager with you and we've missed him and i'm sure the players and the staff are missing the manager out in the grass and the training ground and out on the sidelines and we are certainly looking forward to having him back and the sooner that can happen the betterfor him back and the sooner that can happen the better for the group of players and staff at the pub or club and i'm sure the fans want the manager out there on the touchline. dash—mac at the club. meanwhile. michael carrick will be in still be

charge of manchester united for sunday 5 trip to chelsea. the club are currently sorting out the final details of ralf rangnick s move from lokomotiv moscow. the german is due to take charge for the remainder of the season. leicestershire police say 12 officers were injured and seven people were arrested following disorder at leicester's europa league match against legia warsaw at the king power stadium last night. a number of flares were set off in the away fans section in the second half, and officers responded to disorder in the area. some home fans then attempted to breach the segregated line assaulting officers in the process. the legia warsaw fans were held back in the stadium at full time and no further disorder was reported. �*have fun�*. that's the message from england women's manager sarina weigmann to ellen white. the striker is in line to win her 100th cap for her country — when england face austria in a world cup qualifier tomorrow. despite the occasion though, weigmann insists white isn't being distracted. she is only focusing on the game and

it's going to be a special one and she is now focusing on the training thatis she is now focusing on the training that is coming up and for the game and hopefully she will get a great performance for herself and for us as a team and then we are all having fun and then she will have an amazing journey. she has had an amazing journey. she has had an amazing journey. she has had an amazing journey already. when you play hundreds of caps that are so impressive. the draw for the men's world cup play—offs takes place today. that means scotland and wales will find out who they'll be facing. the sides will play a semifinal, and if they win, a final. both the home nations have home advantage for their semis which will be played in late march. and head to the website to read more on matthew weston who claimed skeleton gold in a remarkable three—way tie forfirst place

at the world cup in innsbruck. it's britain's first world cup winner in the men's skeleton since in almost iii years ago. winner in the men's skeleton now on the bbc news channel — winner in the men's skeleton it's your questions answered. winner in the men's skeleton with me is our health correspondent, jim reed also i'm joined by professor peter openshaw, an immunologist from imperial college london. we are hoping to bejoined by professor tulio de oliveira, director of the centre for epidemic response & innovation, south africa. he is currently in a world health organisation meeting discussing the

nu variant. what is so concerning about this variant? there are so many new mutations in this virus. many seems likely to change its biological behaviour. it is early days. we know so much more than we did 2a hours to go questions will have about this will take a bit of time so i think we but it is certainly not a time to panic. and of course scientists have built up a

lot of expertise in looking up coronavirus and its variants over the best part of the last couple of years so they will apply all of that knowledge now in the situation. absolutely and i think that is the most remarkable thing, how quickly this is all coming out. and it is a real tribute to the south africans they are being so open with data which is just fresh off the analysers and are letting everyone know exactly what they are finding very quickly which is enormously helpful. jim, in the uk will this cause the government to tighten restrictions further? the restrictions at the moment have been around travel. the uk government along with some other ones around the world have restricted flights from six nations in south and south eastern africa.

south africa, botswana, lesotho, eswatini, zimbabwe and namibia the six countries involved. from this weekend flights will start up again but anyone coming from those countries will have to self isolate to make sure they have not had the virus. the health secretary was asked if other countries might be involved in future and he did not rule it out. we have had news this morning that israel had banned flights from a slightly different group of countries and said there had been two cases of people detected with this variant coming in from malawi, in south—east africa. that is not on the uk list so there could be some extra restrictions on some countries going forward. why has this variant emerged?

we have heard well through this pandemic that if the virus was allowed, transmission was allowed to continue in community in different parts of the world that would more likely give rise to mutations, so why has this variant emerged in south africa particularly? we don't know exactly. we know that the rates of vaccination are very, very low in some parts of africa and in south africa are too low, or something of that sort. that is by comparison, our own vaccination rates are extremely high and we did very, very well early on with getting a lot of people vaccinated. i think this absolutely reinforces the message

from the world health organization none of us are safe until all of us are safe and really need to redouble our efforts to ensure vaccines are rolled out globally otherwise we will see a lot of new mutations occurring in the virus because that is what it does, mutates co nsta ntly. jim, another question is if the nu variant has also been found in hong kong, why have flights not been suspended from there? it was first detected in hong kong detected in travellers coming from south africa, a single traveller coming from south africa and that person entered a form of hotel quarantine in hong kong looks like they were able to pass on the _ virus to a canadian man in the room opposite to them. it hasn't actually been found in the wild in hong kong yet, it is been found in travellers coming from a different part of the _ country. as the professor was saying, i think all these travel israel in place like this, even the british government will say they

don't think these kind of restrictions will be able to stop the virus or this variant of the virus appearing potentially in the uk at some point. all you're doing is slowing down the spread and potentially giving yourself a bit more time to research it and put in place other measures to protect the spread. very unlikely to stop it spreading completely by these measures. we have talked about what is uncertain, about what we don't know. what do we know for certain at this stage? you have mentioned there has been an awful lot of work done even in the 2a hours. we do know there are a lot of mutations in the virus which are obviously bad because we have seen them before in other variants. there are at least nine mutations which have been seen in previous variants of concern. in addition there are at least three other mutations that look as if they could alter the biological qualities of the virus in ways that could be adverse but we still need to learn a lot more about that. and then there are 11 other mutations that look like they could possibly be

functional but that again is going to need more work. there is a particular concern about alterations in the binding site and also the cluster of mutations around the binding site of some of the antibodies which are being used therapeutically. we do not know what all these mutations mean in terms of the performance of this virus in the rapid lateral flow test antigen detection test stroller that needs to be worked out very, very fast. we don't get too far into any discussion of this before we get into what we don't know. do you think the uk and other governments around the world will introduce more stringent measures? i mean hands, face, space we talked about at the beginning of the pandemic as a belt

and braces approach to this while scientists work out exactly what is going on with this variant? as the professor has said i think we are at a very early stage here. we do not really know if this variant of the virus will behave much differently from other variants out there such as the delta variant which is no prevalent across the world. that is what scientists need to find out and there are different ways they can do that. the first thing they will do will be to take serum, a form of blood from people either infected by the virus in the past or have had a vaccine and then testing this variant on_ that serum to see if the antibody response is different. you get an indication that this variant might be better at evading vaccines which is one of the key thing is i think scientists will be concerned with and they will look at how this variant responds and spreads in the _

real world. it is very difficult to know if the increase in the proportion of cases we have seen in south africa is because there is something about this variant which makes it fitter and spread more quickly or evade vaccines in some — way or if at the moment it isjust slightly down to chance. that this variant starts spreading in a pocket of the population, it looks like it is spreading more quickly? for example students in this area of south africa. so the first thing we need to do before putting in place new restrictions is to work out if this variant is acting any different. what can we say at this stage? we can't say very much at all. i think it is extremely unlikely this will be able to evade vaccines completely.

it is been extremely reassuring vaccines licenced and in common use are remarkably effective against the variants out there but we would absolutely need to get more laboratory and real—world data about whether we are seeing a lot of infections in people who have been multiply vaccinated and maybe that is not going to come necessarily from south africa. as i am talking to you we are seeing the united nations tourism organisation based in madrid making a statement saying consciously to decide today on applying travel restrictions over the emergence of this new variant and make the rules uniform, especially in europe. the secretary general

of the united nations world tourism organisation saying if it continues to spread as we expected it will be late and make no sense to apply restrictions. developing that question on restrictions, what else are we likely to see emerging from governments around the world beyond the obvious immediate travel restrictions? i think the travel industry will be quite hard hit by this in the short term. you see the share price of the owner of british airways down 12% today and the price of oil around the world is down. we often get this knee jerk reaction and can draw too much into one days worth of movement in these prices but obviously people are looking at this, not just from a health point of view but they are slowly building back confidence in international travel and if you have a situation where people just for the christmas and festive breaks think if ijump on a plane, could

there be a danger i might have to quarantine when i come back and pay extra to be in a hotel and so on? obviously it will put people off so i think that is why governments have _ got to be really careful and to a certain extent tread slightly lightly here in terms of the impact not just on public health but also in the wider economy and i think they will be thinking about that as_ well. as professor, people are properly thinking if there are new variants will we ever see the end of covid and will be need new vaccines and boosters every year? if you go back to the start of the pandemic and new variants emerging wave after wave and people have been trying, even although the party members have been increasing again, trying to live a more normal life so when there is news of a new variants, new what and new concerns, it is pretty hard to deal with. it is. i think all of us would desperately like to go back to where we were before all of this started. but i think we must not lose sight of the fact that

delta is already taking an appalling toll in many parts of europe and we are running hot in terms of case numbers in the uk for sometime. the nhs really is at its limits at the moment in terms of what it can cope with and we do need to really try to get the levels of the existing virus down. in terms of the future of vaccines and so on, i think the third dose, the booster dose as it is called, does seem to raise immunity right back up to the very highest levels, even against infection, asymptomatic infection or very little symptomatic infection so i think we must not take the foot off the accelerator in terms of doses if they are eligible.

i am pleased to say i can bring in the professor from the centre in south africa who has been at the world health organisation meeting now discussing this nu variant. thank you forjoining us. tell us how the meeting went and what did you discuss? thank you for inviting me to your programme. that is what we call the technical working group on virus evolution and that normally happens every seven weeks. there are 25 members across the world with many of the top virologists and biologists and we have been meeting since the beginning of the pandemic. we started meeting to really discuss the emergence of mutations and source and transmission. around three days ago,

just as we identified the nu variant in south africa, and the suggestion to have a meeting. we had a large group of specialists and had a discussion about this nu variant that has emerged in south africa and discussing also which kind of classification should go. what will happen is that 4pm geneva time the world health organisation will convene a media briefing where they will highlight the category they will put on this variant, potentially a variant of concern and then they will decide on the naming of it following the greek alphabet system. how possible is it to say at the moment, professor, in terms of the speed of the spread of this variant in south africa and its transmissibility? the speed of transmission

at the moment, there are many ways to calculate that. one of the most effective ways is the reproductive number and people will be aware in the uk and in south africa is around two, relatively very high, especially in one province. every day we have many more infections in previous days. the absolute number yesterday we had around 2,400 and the previous week about 1000. although the numbers do not sound very large, especially for the uk, all the indicators point for a very fast and direct increase of positivity rate from less than i%

yesterday to close to 7% and also the sg droput and we can detect the variant by pcr and we can see that emerging many different provinces. the s gene dropout suggests that it's the new variant when scientists are studying pcr samples? we normally would do three steps,

pcr, then they must test. withh 100 samples really confirm and we are really confident the s gene dropout but we are also utilising| samples over the next few days. and it went from 1% to 7%? in what period? that is called the predictive rate of testing. it was less than 1%, you need 100 test to get one positive and it grew to around 7% and that happened in the last six days. almost increasing 1% per day. that's a really fast rate of transmission. that is a very fast increase in positivity rates. professor openshaw, what is your reaction to that data? it is remarkable how fast

the increase in positivity rate has a low rate initially, so i think we need to really watch for this in other parts of the world and see what happens over the next few days. i hope that is in agreement. jim, i think the watchword for governments looking at this data and waiting to know more about this variant is one of extreme caution? after the emergence of the delta variant governments around the world will look at this and think it is better to act early and maybe act too much than actually and therefore allow something to spread that you do not want to. jim, thank you very much for answering those questions and also to both professors. thank you very much

for your expertise and bringing us up to date what we do know about this nu variant. thank you ever so much. thank you to viewers for sending in your questions on this nu variant emerging in south africa and hidden bbc news we will keep you up—to—date with any developments through the day. the met office has issued a red warning for the strength of the wind in coastal areas of eastern scotland. gusts of 90 mums per hour can team into tomorrow morning, there is a danger to life, please stay away from these areas a few possibly can. maybe some snow this from there and five other african countries have been suspend few just in the high ground in scotland, from there and five other african cou in es have been suspend few from there and five other african cou in the rave been suspend few onto the pennines, welsh hills, may

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from there and five other african