strikes is "achievable" as his members took part in afresh 48 hour walk—out. but tens of thousands of passengers have been left frustrated. nasa has launched a mission to undertake the first survey of all of the earth's surface waters from space. data gathered will be used to improve weather and climate predictions, and to help manage fresh water resources. fifa is to reconsider the format of the 2026 world cup in the united states, mexico and canada. fifa's president said plans would be looked at, after the success of this years�* tournament. you are watching bbc news — now it's time for newscast. chris, put your phone down and stop whatsapping rishi sunak or whoever it is. no, i wasjust... because... oh, yeah. yeah, good point. just on self—promotion? yeah, it was actually. guilty as charged. so, in this episode of newscast, we have got the world premiere

of the newscast christmas advert. so the words were crowd—sourced from newscast listeners. yes. the music has been provided by the grammy award—winning king's singers, who sent us this from their tour injapan. here's a little snippet... # on the first day of christmas. # newscast explained to me. # on a podcast on bbc sounds. # on the second day of christmas. # newscast explained to me. # two heads of state. # on a podcast on bbc sounds # on the third day of christmas # newscast explained to me #3pms # two heads of state # on a podcast on bbc sounds # on the fourth day of christmas # newscast explained to me... pretty good, eh? that is pretty good. and you will feel even more christmasy by the end of today's episode because we're going to play a whole lot more of it on this episode of newscast. newscast. newscast from the bbc.

hello. it's adam in the studio. and it's chris in the studio. chris, for the next part of this episode, we have to put on our christmas jumpers. headphones off, right? jacket off. you look really cute. oh, thanks. yeah. so we're now going to have a bit of a pre—christmas end of year vibe, and we've now got the three wise political editors, chris mason, who's rapidly getting his christmas jumper. this thing flashes, you know. oh, come on! i can flash forwards. the battery's flat though. so also beth rigby from sky news. and robert peston from itv. and obviously, people were too scared to send me the christmasjumper memo, so i'll buy in thatjumper. i think it's just that robert's too suave. i don't think he's got a christmasjumper, do you? no, but i would had to procure one just to, you know, you were making a joke

about your batteries needing recharged. but what are your battery levels after this year? i think they're red, low. i'm thinking that battery advert with the excitable pink bunnies and and the ears for me going yeah. we started like duracell bunnies and we ended. so i don't know, we're definitely jackson brown running on empty, aren't we. yeah. rob, i was going to say you've been around these parts longer than most of us because you've had a few stages. experience. put the events of this year in context of other mad years. like nothing i've experienced, lived through, worked through. on my way over, i was comparing it to the other most mad time in my professional life, which was 2007—2008. you know, i've done sort of two biggest strands in my career, business, economics and politics. and this has been essentially the equivalent of the great,

you know, banking crisis, great financial crisis for politics, you know, three prime ministers in two months, pa rtygate. i mean, in a way, i sort of feel we have to go back to what many tories refer to as the opaz affair, because it's sort of that's really when the madness kicks off, when borisjohnson tries to, you know, break all parliamentary privilege by protecting his mate owen paterson from being sanctioned by the house of commons. and itjust got crazier and crazier and crazier and crazier. and we're all exhausted tonight as well. this is the week where we all sat in the studios and boris johnson won an 80—seat majority. and i remember coming back injanuary and saying to my editor, you know, politics is going to be pretty dull. i mean, he's got an 80—seat majority. yeah, yeah, i know. i nearly gave up reporting

westminster in the january of 2020. we didn't know that. the independence referendum. elections every 45 minutes, we've had brexit, we've had all of the rows around brexit. we've had a general election campaign in the depths of winter and then an 80—seat majority. so jeopardy�*s left the building, so maybe it's time to go and find another patch and then... not literally. i mean the news patch. and then a month, a month later, a month later, pandemic strikes and that rams home that the brexit arguments were arguments and intense arguments, but it was about a battle of political ideas. how we're governed. not confining us to our homes. and then everything that's happened this year. and they are all linked, of course. and i think that, you know, the way that i think of it is you had these

extraordinary, you know, obviously health shock, but broadly an economic shock which intensified because of some of the crazy mistakes that truss and kwarteng made. but then when you set that against the personality of the last but one, as it were, prime minister borisjohnson, who never followed the rules, that, that combination of economic shocks. and, you know, ithink it would be to flatter him to call him a maverick, but, you know, somebody who, you know, doesn't play by the normal rules. it was obviously going to be hugely unstable. and so it turned out to be. two things where i'm going to pat myself on the back, one, with the majority. i remember coming in the next morning, having stayed up all night going, guys, it's not really an 80 seat majority, it's the tory party, so it's probably a majority of 20 and it will vary from issue to issue to issue. so don't sit back. second of all, the owen patterson, i think i was there for the absolute

borisjohnson peak, which was the third day of cop 26 in glasgow, just as all the world leaders went home. boris johnson's team were in their hotel and they were all quaffing champagne, apparently because they just felt that they'd had a whole series of victories. i wasn't in the hotel and then i went home, got a call saying on the today programme, tomorrow morning you're going to be talking about this owen patterson thing, which i hadn't heard about until that night. i think that's very astute. thank you so much. and then just another moment, not so much a turning point, but the bit where the skids properly kicked in. i remember when we got back, beth, from the trip to. we'd been at the nato summit in madrid. were you on that trip? no, because, remember,| you could only do one bit. the two by—election losses. and he had this press briefing where he got all the pack- in and being johnson and optimistic, he'd kind of gone, "well,

"i don't just want to do i a one term or two terms. "i want to do three times." oh, my god. you've just lost a couple - of by elections and you're in a bit of bother back home. that might not be the right message. and i remember his press secretary trying to go, - he's onlyjoking, he's onlyjoking. and i was like, you can't putj the genie back in the bottle. and then off he went to germany for the g7 and then onto madrid for nato. and obviously the questions from back home followed him. asking him about the loss of support on the back benches. and then i got back i think it was the thursday night, i went to my local kebab shop and i'm stood in the queue. and i get a text and it's the, and it was the sun and it was chris pincher, former deputy chief whip. do i need to come back and do

the 10 o'clock news, and that was it, the final straw. i hope you had your chicken shish? i did, i absolutely did. johnson was never happier, was he, | than when he was on a trip abroad. | he loved nothing more, did he, than being on the world stage? | i mean, very early on, i remember i think it was going to america with him on, you know, he hadn't been in the job very long. and ijust said, how is the job? and he said, oh my god, it's better than i could possibly have dreamed of. did he say that in the orgasmic way that you just did it? i mean, he loved, he absolutely loved it. but but nonetheless, that explains some of the other bits of madness, like trying to come back, you know, after the liz truss debacle was not an example

of great astuteness, shall we say. let's listen to you guys being very astute in your dayjobs. beth, this is you interviewing borisjohnson back in the covid era because he's got a face mask on in a hospital. and this is just after some of the most kind of dramatic partygate revelations broke out. and here is the interview. this is first time we've seen you since reports emerged in the daily telegraph not denied by downing street about two boozy parties held in the garden in the buildings of number ten. the night before prince philip's funeral, when the country was in national mourning. was having to apologise to the queen about those parties the night before she put her husband of over 70 years, she laid him to rest. was that a moment of shame for you? i deeply and bitterly regret that that happened, and i can only renew my apologies both to to her majesty and to the country for misjudgements that were made and for

which i take full responsibility. that was what we call a pull clip, isn't it, where you kind of interviewing him on behalf of everyone? and normally they're only there only like a couple of minutes. but you had them like a fish wriggling on a hook. well, that was an extraordinary moment in that we hadn't - seen him for a while. and dominic cummings, the day before, i think, i had made all these public- allegations about boris johnson, knew about these parties. he's lying. we also hadn't heard from him since all the revelations had i emerged in the daily telegraph l that there had been these parties in downing street the night before prince philip's funeral. _ so there was this wealth of material, really, - that i had to put to him. and i rememberthinking, well, what i'll do is i'll— start off with cummings. he'll do obfuscate, deny, like, kick into the long i grass, wait or whatever.

and then once we've done that, then i'm going to bring up the queen, - because then he cannot get out of this interview because - he can't not answer— the questions about the queen. what surprised me was a couple of things. - number one, and i think. it was a sign of the turmoil in downing street, normally those | things are very carefully mapped. | you know this and you know this. you know this as well. it's like someone's - tapping your shoulder, like physically dragging you away, physically dragging you away- after three or four questions. but somehow he wasn't able, i there wasn't really anyone doing that, and he wasn't able _ to extricate himself from the room. so he was a bit stuck. and that's interesting because things like, simple things like that are a sign of things breaking down because we know it's normally super slick. we know how slick is. and then the second thing that i surprised me about that interview wasjust how he seemed in himself. normally you get lots of different versions of boris johnson - when you're interviewing him, - but what you don't normally ever see is contrition and...

heavy breathing. and and the sort of... yeah, and i did actually think in that moment that. - he was struggling. and i wondered afterwards, l was it because of the dominic cummings betrayal that, - to have your closest adviser? it's like someone that knows all your secrets telling - the world your secrets because they want toi try to destroy you. had that actually begun to get - to him and did he think, you know, they always call him the greasedl piglet, don't they, that whatever, whatever bind he was in, - he could slip out and escape? and did he think that this - was the moment where he couldn't find an exit route? i don't know. right, chris, let's listen to the denouement of the borisjohnson story, which was broken by you on the today programme after you very rudely walked out of the today programme to answer the phone. i'm glad you did. in fact, michel, as i speak to you, i'm getting a call from downing street.

so i'm going to take this call and i'll come back onto you in just a second. chris, you take that call. let me tell our listeners while you take the call that the defense secretary... tobias ellwood, forgive me. we're going to interrupt you because chris mason has news. yes. chris, let's go - straight back to you. you were just talking to downing street? i the prime minister has agreed to stand down. he has spoken to sir graham brady, the chair of the backbench 1922 committee this morning, and said that it is appropriate for him to stand down and for the party to pick a new leader in time for the party conference, that being at the beginning of october. yeah. what was that like, intoning those words? did you practice it beforehand? well, no, i didn't have time. i was incredibly lucky because i'd been on the today programme all morning basically saying nobody in downing street's picking up the phone, abject failure ofjournalism! but by the end of three hours, we were able to say, well, look, i mean, this is a bit strange. i end up sort of saying to the editor, i remember at one point saying, i think i'm just going to say, let's just show our workings here that, you know,

the likes of beth, robert and i make these calls every morning. it's entirely standard. and you speak to the labour party and others as well and they give you a sense of the day ahead and all that. and they might not pick the phone up straight away, but they might ring back half an hour later. nothing for three hours when the obvious question was, is he going to resign? so i said, i think it's reasonable that we can start saying it looks like there must be conversations going on and if there aren't, i said, i'm going to say on the air, and if there aren't, if there's anyone listening in downing street and i'm wide of the mark, ring me up and tell me and i'll come back on the radio and i'll say just that. and then at ten to nine i said, look, something's going to happen. he's going to go, i don't want to be stuck in my back bedroom with my headphones on for much longer. i want to get to downing street and they said, we're thinking of staying on until 10:00. should we? and i said, yes, as long as you're comfortable with the idea, we might get to 10:00 and nothing still happens, but you should stay on. and then they said we wanted you at two minutes to nine, then classic today programme, they overran. it was fraser nelson was on and he overran.

"will you stick around till five past?" i said, go on, then, i will and then i'm going. if you insist. so at five past i go on and say a version of what i've been saying all morning, which is that they're not answering the phone. then the phone rings and not physically rings because i had it on silent. but i said, you know, on the air, the phone's ringing. took the call. i was told he was going to go. you think, right. and then one of those moments, which i suspect you don't get very often in a career where i shout down the line, put me on the air! we've had it a few times. it's a great sort of film, movie moment. it's the movie of that. but what i love about that, if it had been any other day, you would have been maybe having to interrupt in our time and saying to melvyn bragg, stop talking about it. itjust wouldn't have happened. sack of rome. or if i'd set off to work and well, if i'd been on the air on my phone, i wouldn't have been able to take the call that brought that news. so itjust wouldn't have happened. so it was completely good fortune. it's funny. i would just, i think we should just remind people, though, that the 24 hours before that, i thought was going to be

the most extraordinary, at least the most extraordinary, you know, political debacle of the year, if not the decade, which was seeing 60 members of his government, starting with sajid javid, resigning, something none of us ever expected to witness with any prime minister. and yet that wasn't the most extreme or extraordinary, you know, set of events of the year. ijust remember that week not being able to remember who the chancellor was, and i couldn't remember if he was still there or not because it was also because nadhim zahawi threatened to resign. but in my mind, because i'd listened to it first thing in the morning, i thought he had. anyway. now, robert, let's listen to one of your good bits. and actually, this is worth listening to in depth, because it's the pause when liz truss struggles to answer. and then what happens at the end when she walks off as well. uh, robert peston. prime minister, the former tory chancellor, philip hammond, has just said that you have totally trashed the tory party's

election winning reputation for economic competence. will you apologise to your party? well, i am determined to deliver on what i set out when i campaigned to be party leader. we need to have a high growth economy, but we have to recognise that we are facing very difficult issues as a country and it was right in the national interest that i made the decisions i've made today to restore that economic stability so we can deliver, first of all, helping people through this winter and next winter with their energy bills, but also making sure that our country is on the long—term footing for sustainable economic growth. thank you very much, everybody. prime minister, are - you going to say sorry? i mean, that was the press

conference that, for the last few people who had faith in liz truss, it basically dissipated after that, wasn't it? i mean, my heart was slightly in my mouth actually, with the sort of way that she answered. you know, all of us at various times ask prime ministers and politicians if they are going to apologise to their party or to the country. but i thought she was going to burst into tears. and it was, i mean, i was ijust thought, oh, my god, what have i done? and then, you know, and we'd all been sitting there thinking, because this was a huge announcement. i mean, you know, she'd sacked kwasi kwarteng, her chancellor. she had reversed a $20 billion effective tax cut because she said corporation tax was going to go up after all. and we all gathered in downing street, assuming we were going to get, you know, half hour, 45—minute press conference. she was on for, you know, eight minutes.

and after my question, you know, visibly shaken, she walked off and actually, interestingly, sort of talking to somebody very close to her only yesterday, because i actually recounted all this to him, and he said, actually, she had been in floods of tears shortly before the conference. really? wow. so the intuition in the room was not completely wrong about that. that was someone in a position to actually know, somebody was with her? somebody was with her at the time, as it were. yeah, it was one of the most... i mean, you were there. it was it was one of the most extraordinary press conferences. you were both there. i mean, it was. and the most incredible thing was how short it was. yeah. yeah, i think it was seven minutes 20. | i mean, i was furious that day, as you know, because... - you can hear you at the end. she didn't call me. you know, she took, you know, i was, as robert said, - this this had been a massive u—turn. she'd sacked her chancellor. she was reversing her mini—budget. and this was her moment to tell.

the country why she had done that and made a pitch for why she should stay on... - and take every question going. she had a room full ofjournalists - and she took the sun, the telegraph. she took you. and then robert was the final question. i and then she walked off. and i remember sort of, i'd formulated, carefullyj constructed a question _ and i remember shouting as she left, are you out of your depth, - prime minister, which was sort of the question that i wanted to ask. - but i remember texting one of my editors after that - and i said, this is it. this is there's no way back. we all, we all knew. everyone was agog in the room. it was a question of whether it was a week or whether it's a few days. and, you know, it was very, very fast from that moment. but i remember one of our colleagues in the room ringing the news desk afterwards and saying she is insert word beginning with f.

yeah, well, let's say toast. yeah, yeah, yeah. we were in the front row, weren't we. - i remember she walked out. we all kind of... what? you can't, you can'tjust go like, you can't... - and then i turned around, - as you said and all our colleagues and everyone was just looking, . everyone was genuinely stunned. i mean, it was the most shocking i press conference i had ever been in. and it's so interesting that you say that now, robert, | because it explains quite a lot of what was going on for her, | which was maybe it was just she needed to extricate, - like it was too much. very quickly, if like commentating on the wacky races. now we have rishi sunak, who is not nearly as exciting. do you have to kind of change your modus operandi? i think the hardest thing, whenever you have been living with a period of that kind of excitement, living on adrenaline essentially, when it drains from your system, you feel sometimes you feel quite ill, actually but you certainly feel exhausted.

and it is a struggle, i think to just get back to doing the dayjob in a sort of steady way, there is a sort of psychological and emotional challenge. there is a big altitude shift. it's a sort of, i was using too many superlatives, when they were no longer as appropriate when they had been a couple of months before. and big stories now feel like small stories because we have had the biggest new stories ever. that's a big deal. and ijust wonder, what are all the things, the big things facing the country, that sort of no one has looked at because everyone... well, i mean, but i mean, i worry about. so it's notjust in the country. you know, we're not reporting very much on afghanistan, where awful tragedies are going on. extraordinary events in iran that in a normal time would be leading the news every night are basically lucky to get on the news. i mean, you know, there are, there are big things that, as news organisations, we're not getting on in the way that...

even domestic policy that would normally be scrutinised. one thing i'm quite excited. about for next year, though, is to go back to the idea - of actually looking at policy again. because we haven't, we've just stopped doing policy. - yeah, exactly, exactly. but i'm quite lookingl forward to doing that. and also for me and i think for both of you, it's time to take _ a real look at labour, - because if labour are going to be in government... next year, because they look as though they're going to win, essentially for the first time in years, what labour now says really matters. and so you're right, there's a whole new strand of interesting and important stories, but they still will not be sort of, you know, the theatre. well, thank you very much for coming in. thanks for keeping us company and for keeping us entertained and informed. i've got some presents. not only do we get to come on - newscast but you give us a present.

pass them along, pass them along. one for each person. you've got one from me. oh, thank you. now open them up. 0pen them up. listen to that beautiful radio sound effect. oh, my god. all my christmas dreams. 0h. look at that. and i've got some beard, oil and some tiny scissors. perhaps i should get rid of this. that's so funny. oh, thank you. don't get rid of it. thank you very much. i mean, that was the highlight of my year, growing this! thank you very much for everything. i hope you wear your t—shirts with pride over christmas, whatever you're doing. and i seriously hope you get a good break, all three of you, because, i mean, we wouldn't survive as a country without you telling us what's going on, so. merry christmas to all of you. merry christmas. thank you very much for watching and for listening to the newscast. i'm desperate to take this christmas jumper off because it's not got a lot of natural fibres. but while i'm doing that, i'm going to leave you with some more of the king's singers singing

the exclusive newscast christmas advert. # on the 12th day of christmas newscast explained to me # 12 days at cop, # 11 tory leadership candidates # ten hour plus queues to see the queen # nine interest rate rate rises, # eight billion humans seven weeks of truss, # six by elections # five education secretaries # secretaries # four chancellors, three pms # two heads of state # and a podcast on bbc... we clearly ooze stamina. # sounds.# hello there. change is on its way as we head through the weekend, with some milder air pushing in from the west. but today, bitterly cold again with some more snow around, especially in scotland.

here's st andrews, as recorded by a weather watcher. further south and east, lots of blue sky and sunshine, but even here, temperatures didn't make it out of low single figures yet again. so this weekend it will be turning milder, but there's some more snow in the forecast, and very icy conditions around, as well. this is the radar picture showing us the snowfall from earlier on today — so you can see across the higher ground of scotland, still continuing, to lower levels, turning back to rain, but still the possibility of some more hill snow here overnight tonight, and also a few centimetres possible for the pennines too. a bit of a wintry mix in some of these showers out towards the west. clearest of the skies tonight again for east anglia, the southeast of england. temperatures here could drop as low as perhaps —7—8 celsius. but there's more of a south—westerly breeze, and that should help to keep any freezing fog at bay. still, these showers across western areas of wales, a line of showers just drifting southwards into the midlands, and again, a bit more hill snow across scotland. northern ireland on saturday should see a largely dry day, the chance of 1—2 showers out towards the west, and temperatures starting to creep up into mid—single

figures for many as our weather front approaches from the southwest, and we've got the milder air tied in with this wind and rain. so the milder air — represented by the yellow here — will gradually squeeze out that colder air, but it will still linger on towards eastern areas, even into the end of the day on sunday. some really hazardous driving conditions on sunday — if you are travelling then, do take care. the risk of some freezing rain and an awful lot of ice, as well. some of this rain, particularly on the leading edge, is likely to fall as snow as it bumps into the colder air — that's especially true over the higher ground, of course, but it's gradually pushing its way eastward, subzero temperatures on the ground. so as the rain hits it, it will freeze, some slippery surfaces around, and these are the temperatures by the end of the day on sunday — look at devon and cornwall, 10—12 celsius. and these will be the temperatures with that mild air pretty much across the board on monday morning. so a lot milder as we start off next week, and the mild air looks

as if it's set to last. still some uncertainty, so keep an eye on the forecast.

this is bbc news with the headlines. i'm lewis vaughan jones. civilians forced underground as russia hits ukraine with more air strikes, its energy grid once again under attack. the leader of britain's biggest rail union says a deal to avert further strikes is "achievable" as his members took part in a fresh 48—hour walkout, leaving passengers frustrated. they need to sit down and talk to each other and stop being a pain to everyone else, basically. lady susan hussey, who repeatedly asked black british charity boss ngozi fulani where she was from during a royal reception, has apologised to her in person today. elon musk is threatened with possible sanctions by the eu

afterjournalists are kicked off twitter.