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.

This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Jackie Leonard. And at 14 hours GMT on Tuesday, the 22nd of December, these are our main stories. Britain and France are hoping to announce a deal to allow the resumption of cross-channel traffic without risking any further spread of a new variant of coronavirus. Russia has imposed retaliatory sanctions against EU countries in a continuing dispute over the poisoning of the opposition leader, Alexei Navalny. And FIFA is taking legal action against its former president, Sepp Blatter, over the creation of an extravagantly expensive museum of football.

Also in this podcast, you ask me, does he want me to be in Spain?

The winning number of the world famous Christmas lottery, with prizes totaling up to two point four billion euros has been revealed.

The British and French officials are holding emergency talks to try to resume the transport of freight across the English Channel. More than 1500 lorries are currently waiting to make the crossing, with many drivers having spent two nights sleeping in their cabs. French ministers say the ban will remain in force until midnight on Tuesday, French time. More than 40 countries have now imposed travel restrictions on the UK amid fears of a new coronavirus variant. Florian Catana is a driver from Romania who is stuck near the port at Dover.

Very difficult. We are already here at secondees. We tried to find some place to sleep. It was so difficult for us. We are tired, we are disappointed and we are afraid. We will miss our Christmas with families and we don't know what to do. We are asking. We have called everywhere to ask too, if they can help us and not answer. Nobody knows. No, we have to wait.

There is concern about toilet and hand washing facilities for drivers stranded in their vehicles. Our correspondent Simon Jones is in Dover.

I think hauliers are used to delays. They're used to spending nights in their cabs. That's not unusual for them. I think what they are finding frustrating about this is they simply don't know when this is going to end. And for many of them, being hauliers based in the EU and other European countries, when exactly they're going to get home or if they're going to get home in time for Christmas, because the talk is they may have to undergo coronavirus testing before they're allowed back into France.

If that is going to happen, that is going to be a huge logistical operation. When we're talking about potentially thousands of drivers here, you have to wait often a couple of days or even longer for test results. So that means the clock is ticking towards Christmas in terms of facilities as well. If you're parked up in places like here, well, there are pretty much no facilities, people to have access to toilets. They've had to go into town to try to find toilets there.

In terms of food, it's very difficult. Some hoteliers have told me the only provisions they've been provided as part of the emergency planning is a cereal bar. So for them, pretty difficult circumstances. And they've been asking me, when is this all going to end? What's going to happen? How do we get home? And the answer is at the moment for them, they simply don't know.

So how close to a resolution are the British and French ministers? And question for Gavin Lee, our correspondent in Brussels.

First of all, the French Connection, I think nothing will happen today, that's for sure. The French side saying that they will review after the 48 hour period. So that 48 hour period ends at midnight tonight in Clement Bourne, the deputy Europe minister, telling reporters that there will be an announcement today. You know, he has said for certain it has to be tests and they want a priority order. They want to see, you know, freight drivers of vital transport first, and then they want to see cross-border workers, health care workers, urgent staff on both sides be able to move quickly.

So it's how long it takes to get that in place. Pretty Patel suggesting that that could be fairly rapid, almost airport staff. So that's something that seems to be feasible, is just how soon they can do it. Also, the wider issue for the rest of Europe, you've got the European Commission this afternoon expected to come up with a set of basically what they say is technical recommendations on how to best coordinate the flow of goods, not just from the channel, but also cargo for other countries that are seen to be vital, are setting up this sort of contact emergency point for all 27 countries that have suddenly got issues of of stuff.

You know, that transport of produce is stuck at sea er rail crossings, and they want to work out how their member states can repatriate their nationals who are trying to get home. The Latvians, for example, are thinking about setting up repatriation flights.

It can take a very long time, can't it, for for 27. Member states to agree on anything, so finding a coordinated response, how difficult might that be?

Yeah, I don't think they're going to be anything nada. I mean, basically, the member states say it's just not enough time before Christmas to work this out. The commission that has taken the lead in the past and saying let's have a single set of rules. I'm told by many sources within the E.U. they have been reluctant because they didn't want to seem to be politicizing a situation where the commission are already negotiating and Brexit. And if they start setting the rules, they could be seen to be getting in the way.

So they've stepped back a bit. What we're expecting is all countries will continue with their own rules. I think obviously the most pressure at the moment is on the French, given the closest connection and the channel connection. Also, bear this in mind. You've got every single EU country now that have blocked passenger flights into their countries apart from Greece, Cyprus and Slovenia. Slovenia can't get direct flights there anyway. And you have to have quarantine if you get that Greece and Cyprus, you need a test to get in and then you face up to 10 days quarantine.

That was Gavin Lee with a new variant of the virus spreading rapidly. There have been calls in the UK to extend the current regional restrictions nationwide. Sir Dave King is the former chief scientific adviser and heads a group of some of the country's top scientists who have formed an independent alternative to the Scientific Advisory Group for emergencies in Britain.

Right now, we're only in lockdown in the south and southeast and we must have a national lockdown because this new virus is across the country. We will see this rate of spread over the rest of the United Kingdom go spiralling upwards. So far, we've had nearly 70000 deaths. We're likely to have 30 or 40000 more deaths. Now we are likely to see the economy once again shut down.

So how far is the new variant spreading to other European countries? Dr Passey Pantanal is principal expert in coronavirus at the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control in Sweden.

What we know today is that the UK has by far the largest sequencing capacity in Europe. In fact, globally, I think about half of the sequences submitted to the global databases are coming from the UK and this particular variant has been found in a number of EU member states, but only individual cases of that. And many of them are actually linked to to exploitation from from the UK, given that there is more limited capacity in the sequencing in many countries.

We cannot say for sure now that this variant is not spreading outside of UK. And that's what we are trying to understand right now.

I think all the focus is trying to ensure that in those areas of UK where the experience has been clearly detected and has been spreading at a much faster speed than the previous sars-cov-2 virus, the situation is contained, contained or at least controlled in a good way. And that's what the UK government are based on. The advice from from from the local scientists is doing right now. All the efforts that we are doing outside of the UK right now are trying to support those those local efforts and make sure that we don't create opportunities for this virus outside of UK.

Dr. Percy Paignton and 27 EU countries will start rolling out the Pfizer Bion tech coronavirus vaccine on the 27th of December. It has been labelled European Vaccination Day. Around 300 75000 people in the European economic area have died within 28 days of contracting. covid Alan Kissinger spoke to Gillian Deutche, a health reporter at Politico, and asked her for more details.

The commission president herself underlined, has really tried to make this December twenty seventh day kind of a big show of public EU solidarity and with all European countries vaccinating all at the same time and most countries have signed on to this December 27 states, it's not really clear, actually, if shipments do arrive earlier than the planned December 26 date, if countries will actually just proceed ahead without waiting for each other. Denmark has said that they're willing to do that. They're going to vaccinate as soon as they get vaccines arriving in their borders.

And other countries actually like the Netherlands, they had a logistical problem setting up their registration process. So they're actually going to wait until early January to start vaccinating. We also saw other countries like Hungary that have not made the vaccination plans public. But we'll definitely have to see if this big show of EU wide vaccination solidarity, I'm really becomes a reality.

So who gets the vaccine first and how is that going to work? Well, it's actually each country is going to choose it themselves. So so health is really up to each member state. And so, you know, some countries like saying health care workers, other countries are going to vaccinate vulnerable populations like the UK did first. So you won't see a very harmonised approach. And who gets it first across the EU?

That was Gillian Deutche, a health reporter at Politico, a leading Chinese scientist at the centre of rumors that the. Rhinovirus originally leaked from her laboratory in the city of Wuhan, has told the BBC that she is open to any kind of visit to root it out. The surprise statement from Shirt Zhang Li, a virologist who has spent years studying coronaviruses in bats, comes as a World Health Organization team prepares to travel to Wuhan next month to begin its investigation into the origins of covid-19.

But as our China correspondent John Sudworth reports, the Chinese authorities appear far less keen on scrutiny.

The origins of this pandemic may well lie in the jungle covid hills of China's Yunnan province.

It's getting dark and already we can see the bats flying overhead, swooping down as they catch the evening mosquitoes.

The bat populations here are known to harbor hundreds of coronaviruses, some of which can pass to humans.

And it's been quite a journey to get here, partly, of course, because we've been followed and surveilled the whole way down from the city of Kunming, four, sometimes five cars following us and not just followed roadblocks prevent us from driving into villages.

And when we approach on foot. Come on, what did you come up? Come to my place, say the whole mountain there. It's not I mean, this isn't this isn't about your land. This isn't about anything else. It's trying to stop his reporting.

It is the years of scientific research, the collecting and the experimenting on those viruses in humans cave that is suddenly highly sensitive because many of the samples extracted from bats have been taken back to a laboratory almost a thousand miles away in Wuhan. Suggestions that this virus leaked from the Wu Han Institute of Virology have so far been met with angry denials. But now the institute's lead scientist, Professor Should Zhang Lee, when asked by the BBC whether she'd welcome a formal investigation, replied by email, I would personally welcome any form of visit based on open, transparent, trusting, reliable and reasonable dialogue.

But the specific plan is not decided by me.

Now, she is correct, of course, with Wunan now back to normal for. The government is busy promoting another theory that the virus didn't come from China at all. It is unlikely to have much appetite for a lab investigation, but nor, it seems to some members of the WHL team as they prepare to begin their mission to set up a system.

Peter Darshak, a British zoologist who runs his own pandemic surveillance group Eco Health Alliance, is one of the group of 10 scientists preparing to set off for China next month.

I've yet to see any evidence at all of a lab leak or lab involvement in this outbreak, and I have seen substantial evidence that these are naturally occurring phenomena driven by human encroachment into wildlife habitat, which is clearly on display across Southeast Asia.

It's a very simple thing, isn't it, just to ask for that access to rule it out? Well, that's not my job to do that.

The WTO negotiated the terms of reference for the team and the terms of reference, say we're going to follow the evidence.

Many scientists agree that a natural origin for covid-19 is the most likely with the BAT virus perhaps passing to humans via another animal in a wet market. But some are starting to wonder why one year on China has published so little about any studies that might help prove it. Dr. Daniel Lucey is a physician and infectious disease professor at the Georgetown Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and a veteran of many pandemics from SARS in China, Ebola in Africa and Zika in Brazil.

Why would anyone think that China has not done these investigations? Of course they've done them. They have the capability. They have the intelligence. They have the resources. They have the motivation. So here we are, 12, 13 months out since the first recognized case of covid-19 and we haven't found the animal source. So to me, it's all the more reason to investigate alternative explanations, if only to, you know, rule that out.

But ruling out a lab leak seems an unlikely prospect when even basic questions about the research that's been carried out here on bats is met with roadblocks.

That report by John Sudworth in China. The Norwegian Supreme Court has rejected a case seeking to stop oil exploration in the Arctic. The case was brought by environmental organizations who had argued it breached the country's constitution. Our Europe editor Mike Saunders told us more about the case.

Campaigners place an ice globe outside the Supreme Court to make the point of the fragility of the environment above the Arctic Circle. And this case dates back to 2016, and it's already been through two courts and they were rejected by those courts. But the campaigners allege that it breached Article one on two of the Constitution, which is the state shall protect the rights of future generations to a safe and healthy environment. Now, the judges disagree. The case is called the people versus Arctic oil.

The Supreme Court ruled that there was no procedural error in the earlier two judgments. And 12 of the 15 judgments dismissed the complaint. They said that the parliament, when it awarded the licences for exploration in the Barents Sea, it had regard to the emissions levels it had already set and that therefore there was no error of judgment in awarding those licences. That was Mike Saunders.

Still to come, this was a herd of elephants crossing a narrow road in the dark and one of the calves was hit by a motorcycle. And we will tell you what happens next later on.

Russia has expanded its response to EU sanctions over the poisoning of the anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny. The Russian foreign ministry didn't disclose any details, but summoned European ambassadors to inform them of its latest retaliation against the EU travel bans and asset freezes involving close associates of President Putin. On Monday, Mr. Navalny released a recording of a phone call which appeared to show him duping a Russian agent into confessing to state involvement in the attack on him in August. Steve Rosenberg in Moscow says the Russian reaction has been as expected.

But whenever the Russian authorities are accused of something, whether it's poisonings or whether it's meddling in U.S. elections or sending Russian troops into eastern Ukraine, the reaction is always denial. And we heard a denial yesterday from the FSB, the Russian Internal Security Service, which called the reporting a fake. It said it was a provocation organized by foreign intelligence services. Today, President Putin's press secretary said that Mr. Navalny suffered from delusions of grandeur and a persecution complex.

Steve Rosenberg in Moscow and staying in Russia when Paul Whelan was convicted of spying there this summer, the British American had high hopes that he would soon be released as part of a prisoner swap. He has always insisted on his innocence. The U.S. ambassador in Moscow says high level negotiations over his fate are underway, but they've been unsuccessful so far, leaving Mr. Wheelin facing Christmas behind bars. Over the past few weeks, he's been speaking to our correspondent Sarah Rainsford from his prison camp, telling his own story in detail for the first time since his arrest.

And learn what Moscow calls this man an American spy. For Paul Wheelan has told me he's a political hostage.

Still the sleep deprivation thing at night. But in recent weeks, he's been calling me to relate his story in detail for the first time, phoning from inside prison camp IKAR 17 for the most dangerous convicts to go to camp.

Now, things are very overcrowded. It's a very, very kind of grim existence. There's a James Bond on a spy mission. In reality, they abducted Mr. Being on holiday. I've been following Paul Williams case since his arrest two years ago. He's a former U.S. Marine who has British parents and he pronounced his innocence time and again that custody hearings.

I'm innocent of any crime. We would try to talk through the bars of his cage, but the guards always force me out of court.

Isolation continues in order to avoid you. Now, Mr. Wheelin has told me a story of deception and betrayal. It began when a Russian friend he'd known for 10 years arrived at his hotel room in Moscow unannounced. Moments later, FSB security officers burst.

Then I thought at first maybe it was some sort of joke or a trick or something. But, you know, it became real quickly. They enter by themselves, grab me and we dance. I actually asked the person who seemed like he was in charge and what they were doing and why I was being pinned down like that. And he said he was from the Federal Security Service, now under arrest for espionage.

Paul Wheelin was accused of receiving Russian state secrets, a case he says was built entirely on the word of his supposed friend. That man also claims Paul was employed by American military intelligence, the DIA.

They had absolutely no evidence of that. So they made it up. They said he's a brigadier general who works for the US CIA and that was enough. But that was enough to convict me. I mean, it's really a farce. I mean, you hear about these things during the Soviet period and, you know, people being taken out and shot. Well, that's that's the same thing. Why would you to go after a closed trial, Mr. Wheelan was sentenced to 16 years in the program.

He's a citizen of four countries, including Britain, thanks to his family ties, a high profile prisoner then. So he had been confident that after the verdict, he'd soon be going home in a prisoner swap.

But that was more than six months ago, that Crimea belongs to Ukraine and that the resolution that Russian actors were involved in trying to interfere with the 2090 symptoms was not as good as retroactivity.

The problem is the context. Mr. President, I'm looking in your eyes and you have no soul.

Russia's relations with the West haven't been this dire for decades. And one man's fate is now tangled up in something far bigger.

There's nothing more that I would rather do than pick up Paul and give them a hug and wish him a happy new year and send him home.

The US ambassador, John Sullivan, has now confirmed to me that American officials are in talks with the Russian government about Mr. Wheelan.

I have no higher priority in what's left of the Trump administration than to advocate for Paul and to do all we possibly can to get him released. We're not giving up, but we also need a willing interlocutor to engage in discussions on what would be remotely possible and acceptable, something that an American president could agree to.

The Wheelin family have been urging Russia to move quickly if it does want to strike a deal, not wait for Joe Biden in the White House and his promise of a tougher approach to Moscow.

I'm reminded of that American student named Otto who went to North Korea and he came home basically in a coma. But I don't want to end up like that. I want to be able to come home, see my family and live my life. They've abducted a tourist and they're holding a tourist hostage. This whole case has totally made up.

Paul Wheelin is now preparing to spend Christmas in custody, sewing prison uniforms in the workhouse of a Russian labor camp.

Sarah Rainsford reporting. What happened to Karima Ballout, a Pakistani activist living in Canada. She was a critic and campaigner from Baluchistan. Now she's dead and rights groups are demanding to know what happened. Our Pakistan correspondent Secunda Kamani explained what's known so far about how Karima Baluch died because is still very unclear at the moment.

What we do know is that Toronto police feel for information after Karima Bloats went missing on Sunday afternoon. They later said she'd been located but didn't provide any further details. But her friends and fellow activists have said her body has been recovered, some suggestion that it was recovered from a body of water around Toronto. But we're still waiting on more details from officials now. As you said, lots of Pakistani activists and Pakistani dissidents are accusing the Pakistani intelligence services of being behind this death.

Coming up was a vocal critic of Pakistan's powerful military and its actions in the western province of Baluchistan, seen, in fact, Canada back in 2015 saying her life was in danger. Well, there's no evidence yet of any kind of state involvement in her death or or even at this stage of whether this was a murder. But but the. The hours should bring us a bit more clarity on this, on this mysterious and very worrying development by another activist from the region did die in a rather mysterious circumstances in Europe this year, didn't he?

Yeah, that's why soldiers are saying that, because journalists who had been granted asylum in Sweden, he went missing earlier this year, his body was found drowned. Lots of suspicion at the time. The intelligence services were involved in that. The Swedish authorities said they did investigate. And in the end, they said they found no evidence of a crime. But but some activists still have their suspicions in this latest incident is, of course, you know, fueling that even further.

That was Secunda Kamani in Pakistan. World football's governing body, FIFA, has launched a criminal complaint against its former president, Sepp Blatter and others over a museum project that will cost more than half a billion dollars. Mr. Blatter denies wrongdoing. More from Alex Capstick.

FIFA has referred the matter to Swiss prosecutors following an audit into the funding of a football museum in the centre of Zurich. It's claimed the project was deliberately mismanaged by officials under the previous regime of football's world governing body, including the former president Sepp Blatter. The alleged suspicious activities involved spending 160 million dollars renovating a building it doesn't own and an unfavorable long term rental agreement worth an extra four hundred and five million. Work began on the museum in 2013, two years before Sepp Blatter resigned from FIFA amid a corruption scandal.

His lawyers have said the charges are baseless.

That was Alex Capstick. It was a moment millions of people across Spain and beyond had been waiting and hoping for the draw for the winning number in the country's world famous Christmas lottery known as El Gordo or the fat one. The annual lottery hands out up to two point four billion euros worth of prizes in total. Guy Hedgecoe reports from Madrid.

And not only does he want the money, the children sing out.

The winning lottery numbers live on television from Madrid's Opera House. Even though it's been an unusual year in so many ways, this particular Christmas tradition has been maintained. The winning number of this year's El Gordo seven to eight nine seven was bought in several different parts of the country, meaning that the massive jackpot will be shared out in a number of towns and cities. In Rales in Catalonia, for example, a group of local people has won 240 million euros.

With today's draw, sales of lottery tickets have dipped slightly this year, but millions of Spaniards have still taken part. Many people are superstitious when choosing ticket numbers. One of the most popular numbers this year has been 14 320, corresponding to the date in March of this year when Spain went into a strict lockdown.

That was Guy Hedgecoe. In Spain, frontline health professionals are known for going above and beyond to save people's lives. But a video that's gone viral on social media shows a rescue worker in eastern Thailand putting his holiday on hold to save a baby elephant. Peter often told his mother.

First, I want to start with a bit of a spoiler to this story by saying that it does have a happy ending because there are some scary moments we're going to be visiting along the way.

But this was a herd of elephants crossing a narrow road in the dark and one of the calves was hit by a motorcycle. Now the rider of the motorcycle was dazed and health workers did come to treat him. But the baby elephant was not moving. And it just so happened that an off duty rescue worker, this man named Manasseh Waite, was passing by on a holiday, a road trip, and he set to work doing CPR on this tiny baby elephant.

Now, Mr. C Weight has been saving people for 26 years, but this was his first elephant related emergency and he wasn't even sure where its heart would be, but he guessed where to do the compressions based on human anatomy and a video that he'd watched about elephants online. Now, video from the scene itself is heart rending in this tiny baby elephant is lying on its side. Its eyes are wide open and Manasseh Weight is working feverishly to revive it.

And here's a bit of the video. It's in Thai, but you can really hear the urgency in people's voices.

I can do whatever I can to keep it. You promise me a happy ending. What happens next?

Well, the baby elephant starts to move and tries to stand up, and Mr. Stewart and bystanders are patting it on the head, supporting its weight. Eventually, it takes about five or six people to lift the calf into the back of a lorry so it can be taken away for treatment. It didn't take very long for the elephant to get back on its feet, and it was brought back to the site of the accident where its herd came to collect it.

And there are photos online of mother and baby walking side by side back into the forest. So there, Jackie, your happy ending. Thank you, Peter. That was Peter Goffin.

And that's it from us for now, but there will be an updated version of the Global News podcast later, if you would like to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, do please send us an email. The address is Global podcast at BBC dot com dot UK for this edition of the Global News podcast. The studio manager was Pete Luff. The producer was Leah McAffrey. Our glorious leader is Karen Martin. I'm Jackie Leonard and until next time, goodbye.

Silent nights are the toughest. And right now, someone near you may feel that all hope is gone. It could be a stranger or the person right beside you. But one phone call, one person who understands could give them the help and hope they need. Please go to Peter Daae and give whatever you can to ensure that Peter's suicide prevention services are free and available for anyone who needs them tonight and every night this Christmas. Peter, ending suicide.

Beginning hope.