the country had previously used thejulian calendar, also used in russia, with christmas falling on 7th january. president zelensky changed the law back injuly to, as he said, "abandon russian heritage". the danish shipping giant maersk says it's preparing to resume shipping operations through the red sea and gulf of aden. the announcement comes as a us—led international military operation was deployed to prevent the targeting of commercial ships by houthi—controlled drones. now on bbc news nobel minds 2023: episode one. hello and welcome to nobel minds with me, zainab badawi, from the royal palace in stockholm. we'll be hearing from this year's nobel laureates. in the audience, we're joined by some of their family and friends, as well as students from here in sweden.

joining us are their royal highnesses, the crown princess victoria of sweden and prince daniel. your royal highness, you want to say a few words of welcome and to tell us a little bit about where exactly we are in your palace? well, thank you. so nobel laureates, ladies and gentlemen, viewers, i'd like to wish you a warm welcome to the royal palace here in stockholm and to the bernadotte library. this library holds over 100,000 books that used to belong to the kings and queens of the house of bernadotte. this is a very special library in that sense. but we're not here to read.

we're here to listen. and we're here to listen to the nobel laureates, to their knowledge and wisdom and their contributions to science and economics. so thank you all forjoining today. thank you for hosting us. thank you, your royal highness. thank you. welcome to nobel minds and the first of our two programmes. laureates, this is the first time that you've been brought together in discussion on television. renewed congratulations to you all. but do you know what? just looking around the table, i'm very struck by the fact that, for once, i'm joined by three women, a very rare occurrence. and it's got me wondering, why do you think that there are so few women at the top in both the sciences and the social sciences? professor katalin kariko, you're the first hungarian woman to win a nobel prize. what do you think?

well, you know, what i think is that when whenever our career is moving forward, that's the time, the child—bearing age. and many of the women decide to have family. and it is difficult for, you know, advancing their research, for example. and that might be one reason that they give up... ..on the fact that it's women when they have children. yes, they give up their dreams because they want to have children. but i have a daughter and anne has two sons. so that, you know, we can show here that they can do both. all right. moungi bawendi, you're one of the chemist laureates. what's your take on this? it seems to me that when we look at the nobel laureates, for instance, it's about research that was done decades ago. and what we have here are pioneers, women that were pioneers in their field when those fields were being opened up more and more to women,

where the attitudes towards having women in those fields were beginning to change. i hope we've made progress since then, and i hope that having three women will no longer be seen as an anomaly, but rather a straightforward, common occurrence. so do you agree, professor anne l'hullier, you are the first french woman who has won the physics prize since marie curie 120 years ago. yes. fast—forwa rd now. do you think this is going to be getting better? yeah, i really think things are improving for women. i think, for me, the fact- that there are very few women, especially in science - and technology, is very much a lack of role models. for me, marie curie has played a very important role. - so it's fantastic to be the woman after marie curie to get -

the nobel prize in physics. professor drew weissman, you are also one of the laureates in the prize for medicine or physiology. what's your take? so i think it's a combination. i completely agree with moungi that 20, 30 years ago, women were just breaking into the field and were just getting recognised. but if we look at our modern society, women are still not treated equally. i'm sure claudia can tell us quite a bit about this, and i think that's a problem with society in general. and it applies to women, it applies to minorities, it applies to so many different groups. and to me, the bigger question is, how do we solve all of these problems? how do we get all people to be treated equal? professor ferenc krausz, one of the physicists here, how do you solve it? i mean, you've got to start pretty early, haven't you? well, i would agree with everything

what was said and would perhaps add that there are also some stereotypes out there where...girls might have the feeling that these activities, like working in the lab, doing experiments, are mainly, mainlyjobs for actually men and not so much for women. and i think our role models here can provide the example that this may not be true. and we can do, of course, proactively a lot to actually reach out to high school pupils and invite them to our laboratories. really, you've got to start that early? absolutely. that's where we have to do this, because just a too low percentage of pupils actually choose this subject. physics, chemistry, biology. professor louis brus, you're one of the chemist laureates also. i know you've got three children, including two daughters

and some grandchildren. how do you think they... how do you see it from their point of view? do you think things are going to get better in the future for women who want to go into science? yeah, definitely. there's been steady progress, you know, during my lifetime, you know, just as been said at the table here. and i think role models are critical. you know, young students in high school looking at some scientists in the front of the room, they're thinking, how could i possibly fill that role? and if it'sjust white men, it's, you know, it'sjust... they're going to conclude it's not a possible career for them, no matter what we say. so role models are critical. claudia goldin, what i'm hearing around the table is that the importance of female role models to encourage females to go into science and social sciences seems to be the crux. do you agree? i don't think it's the whole thing at all. so the first thing is, as we've heard, is that

i would really like to look ahead rather than looking behind. and if we look ahead, we do see, as we've heard, a lot of change. but we also know that there are impediments and it's incumbent upon us to understand the impediments. so, first of all, if we look at the various fields, what's pretty amazing is that the field of biology has become disproportionately female. and so we have to ask, why has that gone in one direction? physics, engineering, chemistry has moved a bit. economics is a little bit slower. why are those being held behind a bit? in addition, even those who go through don't necessarily go into academia. they go into big pharma, for example. the finalthing, i mean, we've talked about issues concerning home, family and work,

but we also know that the time that it takes to get a phd and then to get tenure has expanded enormously. that disproportionately impacts women versus men. so, in fact, we have added something that is more of an impediment as we've made progress. really interesting. well, gender equality in the field of work and pay goes right to the heart of what you won your economics prize for. so let's just take a short video and just remind ourselves of what it was awarded for. claudia goldin receives her nobel prize for uncovering key drivers of gender differences in the labour market. by charting how women's work has been historically under—reported, she's shown how human and societal development is intertwined with gender equality.

for instance, the factors affecting demand for women's labour and their opportunities in the labour market. she also examined the influences that affect women's desire to get an education, as well as how parenthood has been and continues to be a watershed when it comes to work and pay. so, claudia goldin, it's clear that gender pay inequality has narrowed, although it still exists. butjust give us a brief account as to why gender inequality still exists in the workplace. women do disproportionately do childcare and elder care relative to men, and therefore they're going to be taking positions... it's not necessarily that they're going to stay in the home, for example. they're going to be taking positions that enable that type of flexibility.

and those positions often pay less. they are less demanding in terms of hours and in terms of days, and therefore, they're going to be disproportionately being paid less. what steps can be taken then to get greater parity in the workplace in terms of work and pay? so there are many fields that have figured out ways to get around it. so it's sort of interesting that if you think about it, all you need is one perfect substitute for yourself. so if you are working at 11.00 and the phone rings and you have to go to the school to get your child, but you have a client waiting for you, just pull in your perfect substitute. that's all you need. and so therefore fields in which that are built

on having teams of workers, paediatricians, for example, anaesthesiologists, veterinarians, pharmacists, certain of forms of tech work have very good substitutes. so more teamwork, right? because that's kind of what you say, that not work as individuals in the workplace, but work as a team and help each other, right? and support each other. i would like to add a little thing for a little bit what it is to work as a woman in academia. i think as a professor you are incredibly free, and that helps as a woman with small kids. it's a flexiblejob. it's extremely flexible. you can come whenever you want, you can leave whenever you want. you run your own agenda. and as a woman, i have found

this incredibly helpful. and i think this i would like to advertise to the young woman — you are incredibly free, and this is helpful when you have small children. let's look at another impact on work and pay in terms of the gender debate. what do you think might be the impact of technology and ai onjobs and how it might affect women? because you were saying, claudia, that fewer women go into subjects like technology, computer science and so on. and these are the jobs which the economies are beginning to favour, aren't they? so could that exacerbate the problem and arrest any progress? yeah? it might help. you think it might help? because you can work from home. we realise that technology helps. but you've got to learn it in the first place. and if there are not enough females going into computer science.... |yes, but, you know, the technologyj helped us during the pandemic also, that we could work from home... that's interesting, yeah.

..and that it would also help a parent, because let's say, | you know, a scientist'sjob is not family—friendly. - drew weissman, you were nodding. i mean, i think it's a bigger problem. and i don't know the source or i don't think i know the source, but i think in general... ..in our society, women do not work as much as men. but the question is why? wait, wait, wait. women do not work as much as men? no, no. no, the percentage of women working outside of the house in paying jobs. just seeking that qualification there! my wife's going to murder me! yeah, yeah, yeah. i've saved your life just then. no, but i think getting at the source of that is really critical to understanding it and fixing it. so, we've got a question in the audience for you, claudia, about your work.

let me go to clara peloma. clara, what's your question, please? yes, i would like to ask- claudia goldin, when you were carrying out your research, did it ever strike you that i you would get a nobel prize? and how was it to get that call? well, thanks very much. i think that each of us would say, and we've said it, no, that it never struck us that we would get a nobel prize. that's certainly not what was driving our passion and our curiosity. that doesn't mean to say that we're not pleased to receive it. and receiving it meant a tremendous amount, because there was an outpouring to me ofjubilation and joy and appreciation and a sense on the part of a large number of people that their work was validated. and for me, this means

that my award isn't just for me. it's been magnified many times, and for that i'm very grateful. what a lovely answer that was. thank you. good. well, i think we talked about how working from home has increased flexibility and has perhaps made it easierfor women. professor katalin kariko, you brought that up. and, indeed, that takes us to our next category, because, of course, covid—19 was when working from home really took off. and that was central to the nobel prize in medicine or physiology. let's just look at this video telling us what the award was made for. something that we had worked on for 25 years was now being stuck in our arms. for decades, there have been attempts to speed up the time—consuming process of developing vaccines by using viruses, genetic information, messenger rna, or mrna.

discoveries by katalin kariko and drew weissman fundamentally changed our understanding of how mrna interacts with our immune system and allowed vaccines to be developed, produced and updated quickly as well as on a large scale. that work received a lot of attention and funding when the covid pandemic hit the world, and it has the potential to treat many other diseases in the future. so, drew weissman, just remind us of what your words were when you were told that you had won the nobel prize for medicine or physiology. so i talked to kati, i think around 4am eastern time, and kati sent me a note. "did you hear from thomas?" and i said, "thomas who?" so we started talking, and she said, well, somebody called her and said

they were from the nobel assembly and that we had won but, "they didn't have your phone number." kati gave them my phone number, which we'll talk about later. but we then talked and we said we didn't believe it. we thought somebody was pulling our leg and playing a joke on us and we really hadn't won it. and then, at six in the morning, we saw the video, and we were both incredibly ecstatic and surprised. now, you've had such a close working relationship, and both of you said that you sometimes have trouble sleeping, so talking to each other in the early hours of the morning is not unusual, right? no, we do that all the time when we're working together. it was usually by emails. we were not sure that the other person... we didn't want to wake up the spouses or the kids. yeah. so, i mean, you know, you came up with mrna, which uses a completely different approach from traditional vaccine technology.

and of course, it paved the way for covid—19. and we salute you because, of course, that saved countless lives. i think we ought to give them a round of applause. yes, absolutely. you know, but the really sad thing is actually you both were working on what was seen as a scientific backwater and you really had to battle to get to where you are. i mean, one of you pick that up. yeah. i mean, i started to work on it ten years...on messenger rna before drew, and then i couldn't get funding. zero. and you were also thrown out of a laboratory? yeah. laid off, rather. ten years ago. ten years ago, because they thought what you were doing was just... because i couldn't get the funding, and that was enough. but you went back to your native

hungary, didn't you? and you had this heroine�*s welcome. yeah. how did you feel when all those young people, multitudes turned up to see you? i mean, that was one, two months ago, you know, in october, when i went back. and i wasjust unbelievable that people gathered. and they were so happy. they were like celebrating a rock star or somebody, and it was just unbelievable! but i know we were talking about female role models and how important that is. and all your stories are so inspiring, but yours, kati, really is, because you came from a very economically deprived background, and, you know, your father was a butcher and you lived in very modest accommodation. and really, you know, your brilliance now has brought you to the top table. yeah, i hope that the girls will think that their parents not

necessarily has to be professors. they can be coming any kind of background, and then they can study, believing something, working hard, and then their dream comes true. mm. ok, so we got the covid—19 vaccine. but even though, obviously, as i said, it saved a lot of lives, we have had this phenomenon of both vaccine scepticism and also vaccine hesitancy, two slightly different things. but why do you think there was this scepticism? and do you think scientists were also to blame? so, hindsight is always a great thing. looking back, scientists should have done much more to promote vaccines, to promote their safety, their efficacy. but i think we were against an enormous headwind of social media. and the problem with social media is it gives any person with unusual thoughts the ability to forecast those to the entire world.

in the old days, crazy people would sit on the corner with a megaphone and yell. now you've got hundreds of thousands or millions of people who are reading their posts, and a large number of people who are looking for conspiracy theories wherever they can find them. and i think this was just a great conspiracy theory. they could blame everything in the world that was bad on rna vaccines and use that as a tool to attack the ruling parties, to attack politicians, to attack scientists. so the politicisation of the vaccine is a huge factor, you think, how it was used by politicians as a football? i mean, in the us that was an enormous problem, but it happened across the world. but does it also boil down to a lack of scientific literacy, perhaps, that, you know, a lot of people in the big wide

public out there don't really understand science too well? professor louis brus, your thoughts on that? yeah, i think that's our number one problem in the us, - the fact that the science is blackl magic to much of the population. it's a shame. you know, climate research in the us is highly politicised _ as well as the vaccines. and all of this comes _ from politics in taking advantage of situations, basically. you want to name names? laughter. no. 0k. but, i mean, science literacy is certainly a problem. but i think we scientists and the scientific community has a great deal of responsibility to actually deal with it, because i think it's our task and even duty, i would say, to reach out and try to explain in simple terms what we are doing, what it is good for, and in particular in the case

of these new vaccines. and science should actually provide clear answers. "what is my risk if i'm doing it? "what is my risk if i'm not doing it?" and i think we didn't do a good job on that. i think this is an issue also - about the scientific process that louis was talking about, the scientific literacy. i there's uncertainty in science, and we're all comfortable - with the uncertainty. but the politicians, you know, they really don't like that, - so they want to be able to say something is yes or it's no, i you know, not, "well, i i'm going to hedge here, "i'm going to hedge there." and, you know, if somebody is not trained in understanding _ the scientific process, they are completely . confused with that. drew weissman, i know that you and your family have done a lot to try to persuade people to take the covid—19 vaccine. your wife, a psychologist, mary ellen weissman, and your daughter allison, actually offered to be guinea pigs for the vaccine.

actually, just before you answer that, can we just see if they're in the audience? i think they are in the audience. and maybe you'd like to stand and we can say hello to you. good. did they become guinea pigs for the covid—19 vaccine? they were early entrants into the covid—19 phase—three vaccine trials. one of the tools my wife would use is she would go with friends to church services, to community meetings, and they would say to her, "well, we heard the vaccine "gives you cancer," or it makes you sterile or does a variety of things. and she would look at them and just bluntly say, "do you think my husband would have his daughters and his wife "take a vaccine that's going to make them sterile?" and that was a very strong message to people, to encourage them to join the trials. i think we should give them an applause. don't you?

i think we all salute you. that's a good point to end this first programme of nobel minds, with the winners of this year's nobel prizes. join us for the second programme, when we'll be looking at the awards made in the field of physics and also in chemistry. for now, from me, zeinab badawi, and the rest of the team, from the royal palace in stockholm, goodbye.

hgppy happy christmas, hope you are having a lovely day. the weather for the rest of the day is very cloudy. snow in the hills of scotland in the north. for boxing day it will be sunnier and cooler. today we have these weather fronts in the south and the north and they were pep up during the course of the day and when they engage with the cold air, especially in the hills in scotland, will produce some snow. about five centimetres above 200 metres. the heavier rain coming in across wales will push into central and southern england and also into eastern england and also into eastern england where it is still mild. highs of 1a degrees, colder across scotland. this evening and overnight the rain clears away from southern england, but a few showers in northern ireland, southern scotland and northern england, but a lot of clear skies. and northern england, but a lot of clearskies. it and northern england, but a lot of clear skies. it will be called in the north and there will be frost and ice across parts of scotland.

that takes us into tomorrow. tomorrow in northern england and southern scotland we will have a legacy of cloudy showers. that will break up and we have got a lot of dry weather and a fair bit of sunshine. the cloud bills in the south—west and here we will see some rain and the wind. to strengthen. it will be a cooler day than today. that is courtesy of this weather front which is pushing northwards and eastwards overnight tuesday into wednesday bringing heavy rain, it will be windy and we can see some snow as well. the strongest winds are likely to be across the south east of england and in the english channel, gusting 50 to 60 miles an hour. but there will be heavy rain around as well and as that pushes across the pennines and into scotland we will see some snow. in scotland we will see some snow. in scotland we will see some snow. in scotland we are likely to see snow above 200 metres. strong winds as well, so that will be blowing and in some heavy bursts we could see some on lower levels. colder in the north

and comparatively mild in the south for this time of year. then through the latter part of the week on thursday it remains unsettled with showers and snow on the hills and thenit showers and snow on the hills and then it turns a bit cooler. live from london, this is bbc news. israel's army says it's reviewing reports of an air strike, after gaza's hamas—run health ministry said at least 70 people were killed in a blast targeting the maghazi refugee camp. for the first time in a hundred years, ukraine celebrates christmas today, in a further shift from russia. king charles is set to deliver his festive message to the nation,

while standing beside a replantable christmas tree. hello. at least 70 people have been killed by an air strike in the al—maghazi refugee camp in gaza, according to the hamas—run health ministry. body bags have been piled outside the al—aqsa hospital — where many of the victims were taken. israel says it is investigating the incident. it comes amid scaled—back christmas celebrations in bethlehem and across the occupied west bank. let's take a look at some live pictures this morning. this is the scene in southern israel, on the border with israel. 0ur correspondentjoe inwood has been monitoring the latest developments.