this is bbc news, the headlines... russia has continued to shell various regions in ukraine despite calling for a 36—hour ceasefire for orthodox christmas celebrations. president volodymyr zelensky said vladimir putin's offer of a truce, now ended, was deceitful. he said peace in ukraine would only be restored when russian forces were expelled. british prime minister rishi sunak has called on health leaders to take "hold and radical" action to reduce the extreme pressures on the national health service. he called the meetings in downing street "highly valuable", but the opposition labour party called it "just another talking shop". kevin mccarthy has been sworn in as speaker of the us house of representatives after 15 rounds of voting.

a small group of republican rebels had derailed each previous attempt. the new speaker says it was the influence of former president trump that helped him secure the position. now on bbc news, extreme conservation: turkey. i'm michaela strachan, a wildlife presenter who is passionate about conservation. my work has taken me all over the world, and in that time i have seen huge changes, many due to climate change. in extreme conservation, we meet inspirational people who have dedicated their lives to protecting the natural world. this time, i am in turkey. this country's stunning forest are facing devastating losses.

but it is notjust the trees that need saving, it's also the creatures. i'm meeting the remarkable people trying to save honeybees. you are a bee whisperer! and those building turkey's brown bears a safe place to roam. this is extreme conservation turkey. turkey is huge — a vast and varied country stretching over 1500km. turkey is surrounded by water on three sides — the mediterranean sea, the black sea and the aegean, and then in the east it is mountainous and rugged, and all that influences the climate in different ways. it's a country that is so rich in natural diversity.

its sweeping pine forest are one of its key assets, but as temperatures rise, these forests are being destroyed by wildfires, that are getting ever more intense. i start myjourney in mugla province on the western coast, a short boat ride from the coastal town of bodrum where thick pine forests stretch all the way to the beaches. like so many places around the world, summers here have got hotter and drier, and recently they have had horrendous forest fires that have completely changed the landscape. all of this used to be green forest, and now look at it.

here in mugla, an area bigger than 100 football fields was wiped out in days. and these most recent fires were more ferocious than any wildfire turkey has ever seen before. huseyn aydin is one of the many thousands of people who have lost almost everything in the fires. people rely on these forests to make a living,

not from the trees themselves but from the creatures that live in them. these trees are vital for the survival of one of the most important insects on the planet, an insect you might not immediately associate with forests — the honeybee. a stroll down a street in this port town in the region and you can see how central honey is to the economy here. this is the honey that is pretty unique to this area, it's not flower honey, it's pine honey. it's produced from pine trees and almost all the pine honey in the world comes from this little corner of turkey. i've never tried pine honey before, so i am looking forward to this. apparently it tastes very different. ooh, that is so good!

it tastes woody, almost spicy. but pine honey is not made by a bee alone, a small grub called marchalina hellenica has a big role to play. i'm meeting yonca tokbas, a bee expert, to find out more about these intriguing insects and how they contribute to making pine honey. hello! yonca has dedicated herself to preserving the bee�*s way of life even running ultra marathons to raise the profile of the bee—focused cause. what a beautiful forest. this is a healthy forest. you get the smell and the sound of the forest. this is the bug. that tiny little thing there?

yeah, it's taking the sap from the pine tree and creating this liquid, can you see? and that is what the bee is taking from the pine tree. is the magic creator of the whole process. more than half of these essential grubs were wiped out by the fires. if you don't have this insect, you do not have food for bees and you don't have pine honey. with natural food sources dwindling and many hives destroyed, yonca warns that some honey producers are putting too much pressure on the remaining bees. we encourage their sicknesses, like treating them with chemicals or trying to feed

them unnatural sugary stuff to produce more than they can. we are exploiting bees? exactly, it's an abuse. alper kuyucu comes from a long line of bee farmers. to him and his family, bees are notjust a source of income but a way of life. they aren't even bothering you. they clearly know you. you are a bee whisperer! mm—hmm. alper uses traditional methods to look after his 10 million bees. amazing!

alper�*s way is simple, he believes the bees should be left to do what they do naturally — collect the nectar from the wild and return to the hive to make honey. this is not the optimum production method. intensively farmed bees just come out of the hives and drink sugar water left for them, and then go back into produce what alper calls false honey. they do not travel around the ecosystem as they should, pollinating plants, including our fruit and vegetables. he says they get unhealthy and die sooner. this is a pot of alper�*s honey, naturally produced and it really, does taste delicious. it's interesting how we are all familiar with battery farming and exploiting chickens for eggs and meat, but how many of us have thought

about the exploitation of bees with intense beekeeping and the damage that is doing? it seems to me that the extreme conservation for bees is to go back to basics, go back to this — the traditional way of beekeeping. for alper, the recovery of the pine forests is crucial. until then, these bees have limited resources to survive. what are the main things people need to understand about bees for their future conservation? plant, for example, some of the flowers they love. it's a food resource for them. this is the amount of honey that a bee can produce in a lifetime. for one bee? for one bee. just in that? just in that. don't waste it. finding out a bee producesjust 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey has

made me think about how much we use. for yonca, she is determined to save the bees by inspiring the next generation. the youth is amazing. they are much more aware than we are and they're working on trying to help nature more than our generation, i would say. all sing. when we think of forests, we think of that importance to fight climate change, but they're equally important for biodiversity. so much of our wildlife lives and thrives in a forest. as we have seen with the honeybee and that tiny bug, marchalina hellenica, it wouldn't survive if it was not for all these trees, it's a precious ecosystem that desperately needs protecting.

continuing myjourney of extreme conservation, i'm in the mountains of east turkey. i've travelled 11100 kilometres from the aegean coast to sarikamis, near turkey's armenian border. in winter, this area is popular for skiing, but it's mainly a farming region. over time, lots of forests have been felled for pastures, leaving just a patchwork of trees behind. but i'm here as this is home to turkey's majestic migrating brown bear. naturally, the bears would live in these mountains during the spring and summer, and then, when food becomes harder to find in the autumn, some of them travel over 100 kilometres to the black sea region, where they fatten up and then, come back

here to hibernate for winter. but this natural pattern of behaviour has now been disrupted. researchers aysegul and emrah have been observing the bears for over a decade and have dedicated their lives to protecting them. i'm joining the duo in the hope of getting a glimpse of these magnificent creatures. hello! hi, i'm michaela. hi. hi! you're listening for the bears? we are searching for the signal of one of the collared bears. if the bear is moving, we understand the signal is moving. emrah and aysegul have been collecting detailed data on the bears to understand human activity is impacting the migration habits of the bears. the forest they live in has become fragmented, dramatically changing their behaviour.

we're here before dusk to increase our chances of seeing them. and we're in luck. this has been really exciting. we've seen seven bears come out of this forest, including two cubs, but the only reason we're seeing so many of them together is because they're on their way to this, the dump site, and they're going there to feed. the bears are here to scavenge. some of their forest have been overtaken by urban development, so they're forced to feed on our rubbish. oh, my word! look at them.

there's so many of them! and the cubs are there as well! 18. is that what you counted? just in this bit?! this is really depressing. oh, look. and you can see the cubs, even. for me, it's exciting to see bears but not like this. i mean, this is really, really sad. now here is too much food. they are not fighting. they are trying to eat leftovers but they are many times eat the plastics. the young cubs copy the adults, and so learn this scavenging behaviour. cub are learning eat in the garbage. yeah. it's walking off with a whole bag of rubbish. some bears are very fatty and very lazy because of there are not moving too much. this is a really sad sight

and it's an all—too—familiar sight across the world. as habitats are being destroyed, wild animals are forced to come into built—up areas to find food. a massive problem that needs a massive solution. the team has come up with an ambitious plan to lure the bears away from the dump. they want to create a new travel route for the bears. taking existing patches of forest, they're planting 11 million trees to fill in the gaps. this forested route will stretch over 160 kilometres, right up to the georgian border, creating turkey's first wildlife corridor.

they hope it will entice the bears to migrate once again. this is perfect for bears — it's thick, healthy forest — but then, it just stops and there's this vast expanse of nothing. and the next forest is 1a kilometres away, so this habitat has become really fragmented. the bears have a big role to play in this ecosystem. they keep the balance amongst the animals that roam these forests — the lynx, the wolves, even the rabbits. they all have a kind of silent agreement with each other. if you take out one species, we could think about this as the health of the agreement would not exist any more. we're tracking along the bears' route, looking for any clues to show that at least some

of them are still trying to make the journey. look. 0h! are they the prince? yeah, this is footprints. this is rubbing trees. oh, this is where — you can see. this is where the bears come and rub? some hairs and scratching. i can see there. yeah, like this. some bears scratch, but almost bears like this. this. oh, that must be great to see! this is the sort of information emrah and aysegul have been painstakingly collecting for ten years. this is like our eyes in the forest. they've installed around 50 of these cameras which help them document the animal's natural behaviours and their relationships with each other, and they've also collared some

with gps trackers so they can map how they move around in this patchwork of forest and see where they're running into trouble. this is the bear movement. it is recorded every hour. we have the information of their movement, their behaviour, the time they're spending in the spot. it tells us these animals need more space to move, to go further. also in their way are the pastures cleared for farming. these are the gaps that are planned to be planted. aysegul and emrah�*s data shows some of the braver bears still move between forests, and they hope more tree

these are the gaps that are planned to be planted. aysegul and emrah�*s data shows some of the braver bears still move between forests, and they hope more tree cover will encourage others to migrate. the initial trees in the project were planted only a few months ago. i'm joining bulent aydin

to plant one of the first saplings in this area. hey! well, i've played a tiny part of a huge and exciting project. it's going to take years before it's finished, but wouldn't it be amazing to come back here and see this whole area forested, full of bears, full of lynx and wolves and so much other wildlife and become an incredibly precious ecosystem? only when the wildlife is roaming freely in the forests and can find food in nature can this dump be safely shut off to bears.

20 years later, i hope everywhere�*s trees, not open area like this, and bears do not eat the trash, just eating healthy foods. and can you imagine that these large carnivores we are working with, just hanging around here and then, having the fun of being in the real wildlife. yes. yes, we hope so. we hope so, yeah. during my time here, i've met incredible individuals fighting to protect the creatures living alongside them, desperately trying to manage the delicate balance between people and nature. rewilding the forest will take time, but it also takes care and consideration of all its inhabitants, big or small. we've pushed so much of our wildlife into unsustainable pockets and we've lost whole ecosystems already.

climate change and our insatiable appetite for development has destroyed so many habitats and it's up to us now to try and find ways to recreate them. what they're doing here in turkey is ambitious but if it works, hopefully, it'll be an inspiration for other projects around the world. hello there. the weekend so far has brought some strong and gusty winds. it has also brought a lot of rain for some parts of the uk,

and there is more to come. this is the rainfall we are expecting to accumulate over the next five days, particularly in the west, there is a lot of rain to come, some parts of wales for example likely to see well over 100mm of rain, so that could cause some flooding issues. there is more rain to come on sunday, it will come in the form of showers, blustery showers at that, blowing around this area of low pressure. and as we get onto the backside of that low, we will start to pull in some slightly cooler air from the north—west, nothing exceptionally cold for the time of year, just a slightly chillier feel through sunday. a mix of sunny spells and showers, some of the showers heavy with hail and thunder, perhaps wintry over the highest ground in scotland. confirmation of another windy day, particularly around western coasts, and temperatures between seven and ten degrees. so, certainly not unusually cold for the time of year, but as i mentioned just feeling a little chillier than it has done. moving out of sunday into monday, our area of low

pressure still to the north of us, this north—westerly wind just adding to that rather chilly feel. monday, a day of sunny spells and showers again, some heavy, thundery showers and some wintry showers but again only really over the highest ground in the north of the uk. and those temperatures once again between six and ten, maybe 11 degrees in the far south—west of england. now, as we move out of monday into tuesday, here comes another frontal system from the atlantic so that is another dose of heavy rain, the heaviest rain always over high ground in the west. and between these two weather systems, between this warm front and this cold front, we have what we call a warm sector, a wedge of mild air. so, through tuesday, this heavy rain splashes its way northwards and eastwards, maybe some snow over high ground in scotland, but that milder air rushing in from the south—west on some brisk winds so temperatures in the south up to 13 or 1a degrees, very mild indeed. but that cold front sweeps through during tuesday night and into wednesday. we end up in this flow of brisk westerly winds, that will bring further

showers, maybe longer spells of rain at times as the showers tend tojoin together. and we will be back into something just a little bit chillier by this stage. so you can see from the blobs of white, there may be some wintriness in the showers, but again that will be over hills and mountains in the north, particularly in scotland. and we are back to those temperatures of between seven and 10 degrees. this brisk westerly flow continuing to bring frontal systems in our direction. by thursday, it may be that we see another dose of more widespread rain pushing northwards and eastwards, another one of these wedges of mild air, another warm sector likely to develop so cardiff, london, plymouth at 12 degrees, even further north we are looking at eight there, aberdeen should be a mild feeling day. that very mild feel probably won't last. as we look further ahead towards the end of the week into the weekend, low pressure is likely to be to the north of us, and again as we get on the back edge of that low, we are likely to bring in a north—westerly wind, perhaps more other northerly wind developing injust for a time. there are signs as we go further ahead in our

forecast that we could get into something just a little bit colder, again nothing exceptional for this time of year but temperatures are likely to drop awayjust a little. and with colder weather at this time of year, there is of course always the chance that we could see something a little wintry mixing in with the rain.

this is bbc news — i'm vishala sri—pathma with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. despite promises of an orthodox christmas ceasefire, russian missiles continue to strike eastern ukraine. there is still a heavy shelling coming down from the russian side. ukraine is holding onto the city, and it's not going to want to let go anytime soon. at the 15th attempt, kevin mccarthy is elected us house speaker — after making concessions to the right of the republican party. iran faces international condemnation after executing 2 more anti—government protesters. chinese social media platform, weibo, has taken down more than 1,000 social media accounts that criticised the government's covid policies.

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