Hello, this is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service with reports and analysis from across the world. The latest news, seven days a week.

BBC World Service podcasts are supported by advertising, they says the global news podcast from the BBC World Service.

Hello, I'm Oliver Conaway and we're recording this at 14 hours GMT on Thursday, the 10th of December. Our main stories, Europe sets out contingency plans in case of a no deal Brexit. The U.S. has reported a record number of coronavirus deaths, more than 3000 in a single day. We hear from hospital workers at the sharp end.

We need leadership. We need leadership in the hospitals. We need leadership in the government. We need transparency. And we need everyone to listen to the nurses. You need to listen to the nurses.

And France imposes multi-million dollar fines on Google and Amazon for violating privacy rules.

Also in the podcast, the Australian government announces an audit of koalas.

But how do you count these solitary creatures? And we go to Nigeria for a rise fashion week, which is using a supermodel to attract and support young designers from across Africa.

The optimism of a week ago has long since faded and now all the talk points to a likely no deal Brexit. Britain left the EU nearly a year ago and its transition arrangements come to an end in three weeks time. The two sides have been trying to work out ongoing trade and security arrangements, but they remain far apart on fishing, the rules governing disagreements and perhaps most fundamentally, how close the UK will have to match European regulations. Negotiations are continuing, but the mood can be summed up by the Swedish prime minister, Stefan Levein, on his way into an EU summit.

I'm a bit more gloomy today as far as I can hear. There's no progress made in the recent days. It's it's problematic, of course. So so that is that is a huge challenge. We've always said that we are preparing for the worst, hoping for the best. And it seems it seems difficult.

It's a difficult situation as the chances of a deal fade. The EU has published contingency plans, as I heard from our Brussels correspondent, Nick Berg.

The EU has actually been resisting publication of these documents for the past few weeks or so. Individual member states have said that it needs to be done so that businesses will get a bit more clarity about what they can expect come January the 1st if there is no trade deal. But what has happened today is the commission has taken the decision to put this into the public domain and they've got a few solutions as they see it. If no agreement is reached, they say this isn't prejudging.

The talks, which we know are in a difficult position, but it's still ongoing for now. But for example, they're saying when it comes to aviation planes taking off and landing, you know, from the UK to the EU side, they're suggesting a six month extension period to allow this to happen. Also for hauliers to be able to keep on moving between the two sides. And when it comes to fishing, which, of course, is a really contentious subject in the wider trade talks, they're suggesting a period of a year whereby the access remains the same and they say that is to protect and give reassurance to coastal communities both in the UK and the EU.

Yeah, but isn't that a little bit controversial? Wouldn't that favour the EU keeping the status quo, which is getting more fish from from British waters than the British do from from other waters?

Well, this is why we're waiting to see what the UK makes of this, because on the one hand, you could see this as an olive branch being presented by the EU. But if you dig deeper, they say all of this is dependent on the UK accepting these sort of emergency terms, if you want to put it in that sort of language. And within that, there are some guarantees the EU wants on competition rules or the so-called level playing field that we've been hearing about so much.

So, yes, I think the British will have to make a determination whether they think this is the best thing they should be doing or whether, as you suggest, when it comes to fishing, it looks far too much like the status quo. And of course, taking back control was, you know, the big thing for Boris Johnson and fishing was a very vivid way of illustrating that.

But if they keep things like fishing the same and perhaps some of these other things might be a way of extending the transition period by the back door.

Well, I think certainly some of Boris Johnson's politicians in his own party would be making that point to him that the idea of a clean break from Brussels would completely go out the window. So I think it's interesting how this sort of feeds into the wider talks, which we know are continuing today, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. At that point, both sides agree on something. They say a decision needs to be made. Now, the health warning is these Brexit deadlines, as we know, come and go.

But it does seem that they've got four days left to try and make agreement on key areas which the chief negotiators failed to do so over the past few months. I don't mean that in a dismissive way. It's just they've been going round and round in circles and it's not at all clear whether they can bridge the gap next week in Brussels.

A UK spokesman later said Britain would look closely at the EU's latest proposals.

But if there is a no deal, what will it all mean for business? Our economics correspondent is Andrew Walker. Deal or no deal?

Trade is going to be more difficult and more expensive because the UK's leaving the EU single market. And that means various customs procedures and documentation and showing that goods comply with EU rules, whereas currently they automatically do. The big difference between deal and no deal is whether there would be tariffs. That's taxes that are applied to imported goods. And they very, very widely I mean, in many cases the EU has relatively low tariffs. But there are areas, particularly agricultural produce, where they are really high in equivalent terms, 50 per cent or more in some cases.

And that's something that many people in British business are very keen to avoid. Many of them, frankly, wanted to stay in the EU in the first place. But if we are leaving. I think it's fair to say that many really do want to see us avoiding this situation of tariffs being imposed on goods going in either direction. Tony Danker is the director general of the Confederation of British Industry.

The price of a deal is real. The cost of a no deal is significant. So all I would say is the difference between a deal or no deal is incredibly real in GDP terms. It's incredibly real for businesses, particularly in certain sectors. So we have to be in getting to. Yes.

Tony Danker of the Confederation of British Industry. But Andrew, if it stays in no mode, as it were, who will this hurt more, the UK or Europe?

Tim Palmer. Well, supporters of Brexit are very keen to emphasise the fact that the EU has a trade surplus with the UK. That's to say they sell more to us than we sell in the opposite direction, which they argue means that there is more EU trade at risk of of any disruption. On the other hand, the EU is much bigger so than in percentage terms. I think there's no question that the damage to the UK would be significantly larger.

Do you think the British government's own figures published a couple of years ago now, they reckon the long term damage to the British economy from no deal would be like something like seven point six per cent of it, total economic outlook. Now, that's not ten point six percent poorer than we are now, but compared with where we would otherwise be with all the growth that happens. In the meantime, other analysis done by the International Monetary Fund, for example, suggests that the impact on the EU in percentage terms would be much smaller, although it does vary a lot between countries with those that trade more with the UK being more severely exposed.

The most obvious example of that is Ireland.

Andrew Walker, the US recorded 3000 seventy-one coronavirus deaths on Wednesday, more than were killed in the 9/11 terror attacks and the highest 24 hour covid total for any country during the pandemic. The number of people hospitalized in America also hit a new high, and some intensive care units are running out of beds. So why have things got this bad?

Tommy Iqbal is our correspondent in Washington.

One contributing factor has been the return to school for students. So there was a recent study from the US Centers for Disease Control on the almost 100000 coronavirus cases that were reported between the second Vogues and the 5th of September. That was when college students began to return to school. They found that weekly cases among those aged 18 to 22 had increased by more than 50 percent nationally. But also, there's not enough enforcement of rules going on either. You do me Americans in different states who say, well, I'm going to make my own decision about what precautions to take if I'm going to take any at all.

And then you've got the other compounding factor, which is the change in seasons. The weather is getting cold in most of the states and the pandemic tends to thrive in those cooler temperatures. But of course, hunkering down isn't going to be easy because the cold basically means that people are just driven indoors. The closer quarters in many parts of the country, there are people who live in accommodation where there's not very good ventilation. And so and then you've got the risk of the spread getting worse.

Nameable in Washington, California has been particularly badly hit in this current wave, and there are fears that hospitals there will be overwhelmed. Medical staff say they need more support, as Reagan Morris reports.

Outside a hospital in Los Angeles, nurses demand respect.

I tell you, there is something seriously wrong when nurses have to take to the streets to beg for protection in the middle of a pandemic.

Nearly a year into this pandemic and nurses across the U.S. say they still do not have adequate PPE to protect themselves from coronavirus.

We need proper PPE. We need to ensure we have proper testing not only for the staff members, but also for the patient's family members that are coming in.

They want the Trump administration to invoke the Defense Production Act to start producing more and 95 masks and surgical gowns. Mary Turner is president of the Minnesota Nurses Association.

These masks are meant for a single use. I know of nurses that have had their masks literally degrade and fall off their faces, thus obviously not offering any protection. This kind of thing puts health care workers and patients at constant risk of exposure that covid-19.

Hey, hey, hey. How are you? Oh, I'm OK. Not too good. I just just found out I got hold of it like an hour ago.

Sherri Antoinette is a travel nurse based in Atlanta, Georgia.

Yeah, definitely got it in Miami because it was horrible PPE.

Shreyas young and healthy. She survived covid and was back at work within a few weeks as a travel nurse. She could make a lot of money heading into covid hotspots. But she says all nurses to. Deserve more pay during covid and that they all need better protections at work is a matter of national security because this is a war we're at war with a deadly, deadly virus. It is not something simple. I'm tired of seeing people guess from air they can't breathe.

I don't think anyone is listening to any medical professional. What they're doing is surrounding himself with yes. Men and people who will tell them that what they're doing is right because they want to uphold their delusions. But people are dying. They're dying because a disease that will not contain took them out.

We've seen now covid overwhelmingly, disproportionately affects black and brown patients. The numbers are higher for catching it and the outcome is worse. What has that been like for you?

Is really heartbreaking to see. It's almost like seeing the same patient over and over again. And I'm the type person I don't get numb and I don't get desensitized.

It impacts me deeply and profoundly and it hurts to see that it's affecting lower income and people of color.

I don't know how much longer we are going to be able to hold this. We need everyone to wear a mask. It has to happen.

Consuelo Vargas is a nurse in Chicago.

You know, the last week I reached a point where I was numb. I didn't feel tired, I didn't feel happy. I didn't feel angry and frustrated, and I didn't feel sad. I literally felt nothing. And that is a scary place for nurse to be. And I see my coworkers faces, they're so tired of fighting that they don't have that much more to give. We need leadership. We need leadership in the hospitals. We need leadership in the government.

We need transparency. And we need everyone to listen to the nurses. You need to listen to the nurses. Nurse Consuelo Vargas talking to Reagan Morris, this is the Global News podcast.

A test launch for a new space X rocket has ended in a spectacular and destructive fireball. The unmanned vehicle exploded on impact when landing at the company's test site and the U.S. state of Texas.

However, the firm's founder, Elon Musk, was upbeat about the performance of his starship spacecraft.

As the BBC's Gareth Barlow explains, the starship is the firm's latest venture will become its main focus going forward. It's a development on the Falcon nine rocket, which has been hugely successful in taking crew and cargo to the International Space Station, for example. And what the Falcon nine did was pioneer the reusability of these rockets. They go up into space and then come back down again. Boosters first slow the descent. They land on the pad. You then go and refurbish them, reuse them.

It makes space exploration much more cost effective. Well, the starship does something similar, but rather than come down bottom first, it does a belly flop and then comes down parallel to the ground. So if you think of a pan rather than it going down, step down or or kind of the rubber end down, it comes down parallel. And then just a few hundred metres before the pad, it flips around its boosters, slow its descent and it lands smoothly.

That's what's supposed to happen. Today's test in Texas, it reached about 12 and a half kilometres in altitude, 41000 feet, roughly where airliners fly, does the belly flop, comes down, uses its fins and stabilizers, which hopefully give it a more controlled and accurate descent. But it hit the parent to quickly and like you say, exploded on impact. But SpaceX hugely excited by the amount of data that they can pull from this. We're all told as kids, aren't we?

You only learn by making mistakes. And what they'll now do is feed this in to the next prototype and hopefully then use it to get to both the moon and also to Mars.

Says that the objective for Starship when it's finally approved for missions.

Yes, Elon Musk said he wants to get people to Mars by 2026, a hugely ambitious target, but he's set ambitious targets in the past and has achieved them. He has also been asked by NASA to explore using the craft to get people to the moon as well. And this all comes on the day that NASA revealed the eight astronauts that it plans to send to the moon under its Artemis program for the year 2024. Gareth Barlow talking to Emilio Sampedro.

Still to come on the podcast, we brought up music right to your for. And all we hear from a theater performance in a rainy London streets. Facebook has accused American regulators of engaging in revisionist history after they filed lawsuits accusing the company of anti-trust practices, the social media giant's general counsel, Jennifer Newstead, said the legal action from federal and state regulators would have a chilling effect on innovation, sending the message that no sale is ever final. The lawsuits, which could see Facebook forced to hive off Instagram and WhatsApp, argue that the company has used its monopoly position to crush competition over the past decade.

Facebook says both acquisitions were approved by the relevant antitrust authorities. The New York State Attorney General, Letitia James, is leading the legal fight by the states for nearly a decade.

Facebook has used its dominance and monopoly power to crush smaller rivals and snuff out competition, all at the expense of everyday users. They've reduced choices for consumers. They stifled innovation, and they degraded privacy protections for millions of Americans.

Our technology correspondent James Clayton in California told Emily Sampedro more about the lawsuits.

So what they're accusing Facebook of is something very specific, which is two deals in which they acquired two companies. One of them was Instagram in 2012. One of them was WhatsApp in 2014. Specifically, what they're saying is that they deliberately targeted those companies because they saw them as a threats and essentially they were buying up the competition. So in 2012, Instagram was growing massively. It had really killed it in terms of that sort of mobile offering. And Facebook were a bit behind the curve.

And so Facebook decided, rather than compete with the competition, that they'd buy it. And once again, with WhatsApp once again in 2014, it was doing incredibly well. It was two, three, 400 million users. Facebook has a very popular messaging app, but WhatsApp is clearly a threat to that. Facebook bought it.

And sort of where Facebook is now is if you look at the top six messaging and social media companies in the world in terms of monthly users, Facebook owns four of them, Facebook itself, Facebook messaging, WhatsApp and Instagram, all of them. Each one individually has more than one billion monthly users. So what these states are saying, what this commission is saying is Facebook is monopolistic. It's a bully. It owns too much of this sector. And when it can't compete, it just buys up the competition.

And it's saying that it did that in those two cases illegally.

And what's Facebook's defense against these accusations?

So Facebook's defense, they've taken real umbrage to this, as you can imagine, if someone saying we want to split you up, their main issue is that the commission has already approved these two deals. They approved the deal in 2012 with Instagram and the 2014 WhatsApp deal.

So what they're saying is you're trying to retrospectively punish us. They also saying that when they bought these companies, so they bought Instagram for a billion dollars, it was a tiny company. What they're saying is don't punish us for building up these companies into strong American companies. And you can't I mean, literally what the words the words that they use in their press release, revisionist history, that they're going back to a time when they made a decision five, six, seven, eight years ago.

I'm trying to reverse that decision. They say that there's no legal precedent for that and they're pretty confident of winning.

James Clayton in California. Meanwhile, France has imposed record fines of 135 million euros on Google and Amazon for breaching rules on Internet privacy. The French data watchdog said both companies had failed to provide users with proper information about cookies being placed automatically on their personal computers, cookies or small pieces of software for tracking browsing history and can be used to target advertising. Hugh Schofield reports from Paris.

The placing of cookies on computers is permitted if there's informed consent by the computer user. But the French regulator found that this was not the case in dealings with Amazon and Google. It said the companies had placed advertising cookies automatically on computers without getting prior agreement and that the information they provided to users was inadequate. Both Amazon and Google have recently stopped the automatic placing of cookies, but the French regulator found that still there was not enough information available about how to refuse cookies.

Both companies dispute the ruling and say they do their best to protect the privacy of Internet users. New EU wide privacy rules are due to come into effect in the coming months, which will be even. On Internet operators insisting, for example, that they have an easy to access, reject all button for cookies as well as the acceptable which they currently offer, Hugh Schofield next to Nigeria and an event showcasing the best and brightest of fashion and style in Africa.

The theme of a rise fashion week is 30 under 30.

The supermodel Naomi Campbell is a supporter of the event, which is being staged in Lagos but also being streamed online. Naomi Campbell has been talking to the BBC's Princess, irate about Mary. So why was it important for her to be in Lagos?

If I can help connect and bring awareness to those with talent that deserve to have and be on the platform, Attisso and working with allies gives me that ability to be able to do that.

I've done stuff. I've connected designers from South Africa, from Kenya, from Ghana, with fashion brands and fashion houses that will help guide them in their careers. I think you have to do that. You have to invest in the youth of today and the new young generation outside of you.

Would you say that there is that opportunity for African designers to, you know, be recognised internationally?

They have to be recognised globally. And I think it's a disgrace that they haven't. And, you know, and you want people to recognise them for the right reasons, not because it's like, oh, we forgot. We need to fill that space. You don't want that. You want them to recognise them because they really have the talent.

And as someone who is really passionate about the exposure of the next generation of African fashion designers, how can they build and strategize following this pandemic? Right now, a lot of young designers have lost so much support. And this is why we've changed the structure of a race. So they've all been given prize money. And then you have the top three that will be given obviously more. They need this support for their brands, for their business. You know, it's a struggle for them.

You know, I'm very happy to be here. The fashion show is one thing to get them the recognition that they deserve. But then you want to mitigate and make sure that they are doing the right things along the way and not been taken advantage of at the same time.

Naomi Campbell, according to experts, one of Australia's best loved animals, the koala, is living on the brink of climate change, destruction of habitat and Australia's recent bushfires have left koalas struggling to survive. The Australian government has now announced funding for a national audit.

But how exactly do you count these solitary creatures in such a vast landscape? A question for Roman Kritsky, a koala ecologist from the University of the Sunshine Coast.

We are an ecologist faced with the difficult and, you know, looking for a needle in a haystack. We have that little graybeal of fur in the tree, very quiet most of the time. Doesn't move. And, you know, it's not like a monkey jumping from branch to branch. And to be honest, when we just look with our own eyes, we we miss most of them about 80 per cent. So we throwing everything at it because it's such a difficult and, you know, survey.

So we are helped by our dogs. So we train detection dogs that sniff quite a pool or scats. And the reason we do that is that everywhere koala live they put and ecologists we love because it's, you know, stay in the environment for a while and call up a lot about 100 little pellets every day. So that's much easier for us to find. And with the detection dog, because they've got such great news, they're zooming in across the bush and then they find a poo, they drop, they tell us here it is, and then we play with them and we record that data.

So that's great for koala habitat mapping. And then we take it to the ER and we have heat seeking drones that actually look for the animal itself. So, you know, the beauty of that is because it's in the air, we don't have to walk the whole area, difficult terrain and we just cover many, many square kilometre and just look at them like a hot little bubble if you want in a tree.

Raymond Kritsky of the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia. Finally, there should be the busiest time of the year for theatres. And while some are trying their best to put on socially distant shows, many remain dark. However, some people in Britain will get to see a professional performance over the next few weeks in their front garden. Doorstep Productions is taking performers from some of the biggest Western shows and getting them to strut their stuff in car parks, gardens and streets, as David Sillitoe found out in a wet London suburb.

It's pretty cold, very wet. And I'm standing by the bins, guys. I know them coming out. We've got a surprise for you. On come on, guys, come to the door. In the end, in the wind, in the trees. It's almost like music of the cold spirit. It's a special occasion. Emily, come on, Daisy. Jacob and Ethan, the family being entertained today are a safe distance away from me standing in the doorway of number 14.

We brought up music right to your front door and at the garden gate, it's Mary Poppins. I'm trying to express myself. It's frankly quite absurd to leave.

This is Doorstep Productions, Real Westend actors doing songs from the shows in the Rain.

You need to know the way to say precisely what you mean. Supercalifragilistic Haxby, Alexeyeva.

It's not quite the Palladium, but for Adam Bailey and Claire Foster, it is work drenched.

But it's wonderful. It's wonderful to be performing again and doing something to the people that, you know, we're really grateful for. How long since you last performed in public? March 16, 2010. Has it been it's been rough, but we're we're here and we're making the best of it, I'm one of the lucky ones.

He's had some support from the government, but not everyone has got a fragile X, really does. Just the deer came from Maria Friedman, a director who wanted to find something for performers who've been out of work for months.

All the shows are shot. All my friends are unemployed. Some of them lost their homes. A lot of them are working, packing pizza boxes and driving trucks. And I thought, hang on a minute, I could get some people some work.

And now with the backing of Cameron Mackintosh and Andrew Lloyd Webber, Fantham and a host of other shows can go door to door I.

They probably have to still do their jobs, but they get to do what they do best and remind everybody that we are not nonviable and we don't need to retrain really good at what we do.

They'll be singing a song and meanwhile, back at number 14, Emily Campbell and family are being treated to a bit of news.

Oh, I love that.

So brilliant. So much fun. Like when you have to face it, it's just so nice to see professionals singing and dancing and doing something for you or your tools that we've done talking on our doorstep to party on our doorsteps. Now's the time for the musical's.

These are the dream girls. It should be to land's busiest time, not this year, the only standing ovation this Christmas is going to be found in places like this, cowpox driveways of doorsteps.

David Sillitoe And that is all from us for now.

There'll be an updated version of the Global News podcast later. I'm Oliver Conway. The podcast was produced by Alice Adalian and engineered by Nick Jones. The editor is Karen Martin. Until next time. Goodbye.