between serbia and kosovo. hostilities threatening to break out into open conflict. also coming up on the show, concern over the health of a former pope. doctors are monitoring his condition around-the-clock area

exit is from the limited -- liberated ukrainian city as it faces a blistering onslaught of russian shelling. some people are deciding not to risk becoming the next casualty. a big cleanup after the blizzard of the century. the severe winter storm has claimed dozens of lives. ♪ hello to our pbs viewers and those watching around the world, very warm welcome. pe you and u.s. have urged kosovo and serbia to immediately de-escalate tensions on the border. kosovo closed the biggest crossing. serbs have also erected barricades. tensions have been running high since last month, when there was

a dispute over license plates. >> usually bustling with trucks, this border station in northeastern kosovo is deserted. it is the largest crossing point to serbia. for now, it has been shut down. in response to roadblocks set up by kosovo serbs. the minority group makes up lessons and percent of the sigil -- population. the blockades i nuisance for many residents who have to take long detours to enter or exit the country. the government says it will not put up with this. >> the establishment of barricades is illegal, unacceptable, and it will not be tolerated. we have given them the necessary time and space to act but time is running out.

these barricades cannot stand. >> nato forces are urging calm for both sides. the serbian president ordered his army to stand fully ready for combat. he accused the west of stoking tensions. >> all of you want conflict. you want serbs to be killed. you will be glad if serbs get killed. >> they fought a war more than 20 years ago. kosovo declared independence in 2008, something serbia does not want recognize. tensions between the two countries are often high. there was the arrest of a former serbia police officer in kosovo.

a court has released him into house arrest. many hope this will defuse the situation. and perhaps bring calm to the region, if only for a short time. >> i am very pleased to welcome the deputy head of the mission in kosovo. he is credited with having averted a violent confrontation in april of 2012. thank you so much for taking the time to speak to us. how concerned are you by these developments? >> it is a volatile situation. it is a recurring crisis. very similar to the crisis we had when i was in kosovo a decade ago. we saw barricades that lasted for months. this is the same crisis. a dispute between serbia and kosovo. kosovo wants to assert administrative control throughout the territory, including the north.

where serbs have a dominant position. belgrade refuses to recognize the sovereignty of kosovo. the population is the real victims here. the ponds caught in the middle. >> serbia has now put its army on its highest alert. do you think that is just saber rattling or could we see serbian troops crossing the border? >> it is unlikely we would see troops crossed the border. that doesn't mean that this is not a very serious and provocative act. belgrade has escalated. it is a very weak response by nato that actually encourages

the serbian president to take these steps. the u.s. and eu issued a statement suggesting that putting up the barricades is a form of legitimate, peaceful protest. a senior u.s. official said serbia has the right to ask for troops to enter into kosovo when everyone knows it is native versus that are solely responsible ultimately for security and kosovo. the data also suggests that serbia has a right to bring these forces close to the border. it may have that right but these steps are highly provocative and they do not attribute to the restraint that nato says they want to see. >> in your view, what would it take? to defuse these tensions? you have been involved in previous negotiations.

>> there are steps that need to be taken in an immediate sense. but there is also the larger problem which is actually straightforward. it is not a complicated problem. this has a very clear solution. the u.s. and eu when they speak to the parties need to remember that both sides are listening. they cannot just send signals of softness toward belgrade. it is very important that they send an equal single of intolerance for provocation and for these types of steps. that they both assert their presence in the north and make it clear that the real issue here is the question of rule of

law. there can be no tolerance for breaking the rule of law. that message has to be sent consistently and equally to both sides. that is ultimately the problem here. the reason these crises continue with such regularity is because belgrade has no interest in resolving this dispute. serbia owns the leverage over this problem. until that is taken away, we explained that until serbia does not have that leverage given to it by the nato countries that do not recognize kosovo, these crises will continue. >> thank you very much for taking the time to speak with us. that was the former deputy head

of the mission in kosovo. >> thank you. >> the vatican has confirmed that the health of pope benedict the 16th is deteriorating. he is very ill. he has received around-the-clock medical attention. he has been on was entirely out of the public eye in recent years. he was born in germany. he steps down as pontiff in 2013 because of declining health. >> i would like to ask all of you for a special prayer for pope benedict. he is sustaining the church in silence. he is very sick. let's ask the lord to comfort him and support him in his testimony of love to the church to the very end. >> that's get more on this from

our religious affairs correspondent. can you tell me what the latest is on his condition? >> much seems to have changed since we heard from pope francis. the condition has been deteriorating over the last couple of month. this was put out by his assistant. we do know this has become more serious. >> can you tell us a little bit of the background between the relationship between pope francis and former pope benedict. i must be an interesting dynamic. >> it is interesting to see pope francis did not make him disappear. nor has he completely disappeared from the scene. he has remained an emeritus pope.

he has the moral and religious authority although not the official authority. he set a precedent for future popes to be able to actually step now before the end of their lives. this action is quite important. the further point is that it really has emphasized the fact that the papacy has a very strong development. it has to do with modern-day matters that have to do with administration of the state. the ideas that he has shown that he has defined the possibilities for the pope being somebody who

is so capable of doing the work of administration. >> in addition to setting this president of the first pope to resign in 600 years, what else can you tell us about his papacy? what will people think of when they look at in? >> i think sadly his papacy will be remembered to his relation to the sex abuse scandals. there is no direct relation. it was a vatican out-of-control. there were too many actors. he could not keep them in line.

he tried to increase relations with the muslim world. i think get is very important. that is why this is very significant. >> thank you very much. an iranian chess player has taken part in a national -- international tournament. that has become a flashpoint in protests in the country. italy has imposed mandatory

covid-19 tests for travelers. including for tourism abroad. ukrainian troops pushed out occupiers this november. there were scenes of celebration. russia fired 33 rockets at civilian targets on wednesday. many civilians are fleeing. >> this is a city being slowly reduced to rubble. moscow is deployed more tanks and armored vehicles to the area. in further stepping up its bombardment of the city. people here have seen their fair share of this brutal war.

this woman says she lost her son in an overnight raid. >> i must've thought that something would go wrong in the morning. our lives are ruined. >> the relentless shelling is destroyed google infrastructure. and taking a massive toll on civilian life. a mortar attack on christmas eve killed 11 people and injured dozens more. some say they cannot take it any longer. they are getting out while i still can. >> we stated this entire time

and thought it would pass. it is too scary. >> there were celebratory scenes as the city center was retaken. now moscow is trying to retake it. >> the war has also sent hundreds of thousands of people fleeing russia. german politicians promised protection. but getting asylum in germany is not that easy. our correspondent met with a few men who are trying. >> i don't want to fight. no one is attacking russia. i headed military service card. i served in the russian army in

2011 and 2012. this is proof that i would be drafted again this time. >> he crossed the border into georgia on a bicycle and then flew to germany. he has been to three different migrant centers since then. we are not allowed to film on the premises. but it is right outside the former german orders. now abandoned. there are more than a dozen men like this year. they all have the same answer. >> the media reported that they would be granted asylum. we don't want to be drafted. >> a german interior minister spokesman said that russians who

refuse military service can apply for asylum. asylum-seekers must make their claim in the first country they set foot in. not wherever they end up. he has already been refused asylum on those grounds. now he is being sent to sweden. not all european countries are willing to grant asylum. these men are afraid that they will be sent back to russia. >> cleanup operations are underway parts the united states and canada in what is being called the blizzard of the century.

buffalo bore the brunt. emergency workers and volunteers have been going door-to-door to check on residents who are left without power. severe weather events are becoming increasingly common. extreme temperatures wreaked havoc around the world. it was one of the warmest years on record. >> this is no rowdy ski holiday. it is a research station near the south pole. it is the largest temperature anomaly ever recorded. glaciers like this one in the himalayas continue to shrink as india was hit by heat waves earlier. they were longer and hotter than

usual. pakistan also swelter. a third of pakistan was flooded. the floods destroyed farmland and killed thousands of people. >> my child died in the night. we do not have anything to eat. my husband is unemployed and poor. my two children have died in the camps. >> west africa also had an unusually heavy rainy season. months of flooding displaced up to 2 million people. in east africa there was the worst drought in recent history. 36 million people are affected in somalia. more than 5 million children are malnourished.

>> most of the time they go to bed on it md stomach. i just feel terrible. >> in madagascar are, the seasonal rains failed. after four years of drought, the south of the island is facing a food crisis. in some places, residents have had to dig into the dry riverbed to find water. this year also saw china suffer its longest and harshest heat wave on record. >> for more on the current situation in the u.s., i would like to bring in a meteorologist and atmospheric scientist based in washington. was this the blizzard of the century? >> it most certainly was.

it intensified very quickly. it picked up moisture and dumped it on buffalo and watertown, new york. couple that with very heavy snow that we got. we had 37 hours of blizzard conditions. >> a lot of these regions are no stranger to cold weather. what does this tell us about our preparedness for these extreme weather events? >> people base their future actions on what they have known before.

people kind of two now when i talk about the impacts. they say i have been through snow before. i will just do what i did last time. because i was fine last time. it is called survivors bias. everyone who we talked to has lived through it. we are not always aware from a public standpoint of the repercussions of not heeding advice. people did not listen. >> knowing about this, what you think needs to be done to help people prepare for more extreme weather to come in the years ahead? >> i think the national weather service in buffalo did outstanding job using very direct messaging. the unfortunate reality is no matter how good a forecast gets, the people do not listen, this will not help them a lot.

there is a disconnect between the planning of public officials and what the national weather service was putting out. the travel ban went into effect only two hours after the blizzard began. businesses need to close at a certain time. people got trapped on the roadways. >> it is always a pleasure speaking to you. >> my pleasure. >> during the holiday season, you might be fighting hard to exercise. u.s. researchers may have found that it is not all down to sheer willpower. they discovered that get bacteria placed a huge role in motivating animals and hopefully humans to get a move on.

it plays a fundamental role in human health. researchers at the university of pennsylvania gave it a starring role. they studied mice to try to see what they can tell us about the motivation to work out. more than one in four adults worldwide do not get enough physical activity to stay healthy. they wanted to find out if mice could show them why. >> we took a large cohort of genetically diverse mice. >> the researchers looked at what impact genes, metabolism, and gut bacteria had on their willingness to exercise. they did that by being given no gut bacteria at all.

the animals could run as much as they liked on wheels in their cages. >> exercise capacity is reduced by about 50%. this is a really strong overall contribution. >> after running on the wheel, dopamine searched. -- surged. the discovery of this connection and how it influences exercise is new and could prove groundbreaking. the science is eye-catching. but will it hold true for humans ? >> it is extremely similar.

it might be present in humans. >> the study is already underway to see if it can make us exercise just like the mice. >> the first votes are cross the finish line in a australian yacht race. it came down to a sprint. this is the fourth time this yacht has won the race. that is the news update at this hour. thank you so much for watching. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit icap.org] ♪

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culture, on encore.t and ♪ >> as beijing list covid rules, the u.s. becomes elitist country to impose new controls on passengers arriving from china. in milan, italy, testing found that half of the passengers were infected with covid. france's defense minister travels to kyi to et with ukrainian president zelenskyy. during his visit, he promises more military aid for ukraine, including army equipment and 200

million eu