This is the global news podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Jonathan Savage. And at 14 hours GMT on Tuesday, the 15th of December, these are our main stories. Six weeks after the US presidential election, the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, has congratulated Joe Biden on his victory and said he's ready to work with them. Research seen by the BBC suggests that China is forcing hundreds of thousands of wiggers and other ethnic minorities to pick cotton. Pakistan has introduced new laws to deliver faster convictions and tougher penalties for rape following public anger over recent cases.

Also in this podcast, Nazanin Bahauddin, our national authorities, like others, are supporting the European authorities as best they can.

And the goal is to get approval before Christmas.

Germany sets a target for the EU's first vaccine approval as many European countries tighten controls over citizens.

Vladimir Putin has congratulated the US president elect Joe Biden on his election victory. It's the first time the Russian government has formally recognized that Mr Biden won last month's poll. The Kremlin had said it was waiting for the final results, which were confirmed by the US Electoral College on Monday. From Moscow, here's Steve Rosenberg.

Vladimir Putin had been in no rush to congratulate Joe Biden. The US election was six weeks ago, but only now has the Kremlin leader sent President elect Biden a telegram wishing him every success in the White House and expressing hope that Russia and America, despite their differences, could help solve the many problems and challenges which the world faces. He called for a relationship between Russia and the US based on equal rights and mutual respect. But that relationship is set to be a difficult one.

Donald Trump went out of his way to avoid criticizing Moscow. Joe Biden has already labeled Russia the biggest threat to America.

Steve Rosenberg. Well, Mr Biden launched a scathing attack on Donald Trump for trying to overturn the election result in a speech in Delaware. He said his rival had refused to respect the will of the people, the rule of law or the American constitution.

Here's our North America correspondent David Willis for Joseph R. Biden of Delaware, a Democrat, eyes 55, nose zero. The moment Joe Biden formally became this country's president elect, California's electors awarding him the votes he needed to clear the 270 threshold in America's Electoral College and having held off condemning Donald Trump's unprecedented attempts to overturn the election result. Now was the time to hit back.

The flame of democracy was lit in this nation a long time ago. We now know nothing. Not even a pandemic or an abuse of power can extinguish that flame.

Donald Trump had warned that certifying the votes would amount to a severely punishable crime in the light of what he claims was widespread voter fraud. But the claims are unsubstantiated, and courts across the country have failed to support them, as has the attorney general, Bill Barr. It's now been announced that Mr. Barr will be stepping down. Bill said the president in a tweet will be leaving just before Christmas to spend the holidays with his family. All this as front line health care workers became the first in the country to receive the coronavirus vaccine.

The vaccine is likely to prove a shot in the arm for the beleaguered American economy. But the most ambitious vaccination program in US history couldn't come soon enough as the country had passed another grim milestone, 300000 deaths from the coronavirus.

David Willis. Well, covid-19 is, of course, also dominating debate in Europe as tighter restrictions come into place ahead of the Christmas holidays. The Netherlands has just entered a five week lockdown, the toughest the country has seen so far in France. A lockdown is being lifted today, Tuesday, but strict measures remain in place and a nightly curfew is coming into effect. And in London and some surrounding areas, they enter England's highest covid-19 alert level, tier three on Wednesday.

This means indoor entertainment venues must close, along with restaurants, cafes and bars. Rick Campbell, who owns three restaurants across the British capital, told us of his emotions at hearing the news. Dismay disaster.

You know, this going back and forth between lockdown and tears begins to grind and everyone's morale. And it's is beginning to have its effects on both our customers and our staff. The run up to Christmas is always important for our industry, probably more so than some. And obviously now that's been written off. There's a long way to go, I think. I think we haven't really seen the reality of the full effects of this yet will still be thousands of businesses that will will not reopen.

And I think 2021 will still be a pretty grim year for those.

But Germany is to enter a hard lockdown from Wednesday as the number of deaths and infections surges. The UK was the first country in the world to approve the Pfizer Bion tech coronavirus vaccine it Canada. And as we've heard, the US have already started vaccinating their citizens. Biotech is a German firm, but frustratingly for many in Germany, the country is still waiting for the green light from the European Medicines Agency, along with every other EU country know. Germany's Health Minister, Ian Spaan has put the pressure on and said he wants to begin the country's vaccination program before the end of the year.

So that's a burden.

Our national authorities, like others, are supporting the European authorities as best they can, and the goal is to get approval before Christmas. We want to start vaccinating in Germany on New Year's Eve, actually before New Year's Eve as soon as possible after approval.

Our correspondent in Berlin, Jenny Hill, listened to what the health minister had to say.

We're told that hundreds of vaccination centres are now up, staffed and ready to go. But of course, they're just waiting on that final bit of approval. And Mr Obama speaking at a press conference he was asked about in a media report here, unconfirmed, it said that the European Medicines Agency actually might give that approval on the 24th of December. Now, he wasn't able to confirm that, but he did then, as you've heard, say that the expectation within Germany is now that they might be able to start rolling out vaccinations before the end of the year.

And until today, Mr Swan has been saying that vaccination won't start until the beginning of next year. He's also said that they hope to get 60 percent of the population vaccinated by the summer. So they've got this big programme all planned, but they're just waiting on the final go ahead.

Now, I think it was the second of September when Jens Spahn said that they won't close shops again, but stricter measures are coming into force on Wednesday. Tell us about that.

Yeah, a lot of things have changed. I mean, Angela Merkel was very keen not to to close schools at one point. But as of tomorrow, that's exactly what's going to happen. Germany has been sitting in what's called a lockdown light here for about six weeks. That's meant the closure of bars, restaurants, arts and leisure facilities. And it's not really done enough. And we heard more about that at this morning's press conference from the scientist whose institution advises the government on on the pandemic, the Robert Cock Institute.

Saying that I haven't done enough to reduce people's contacts, he estimates that people have reduced their contacts by about 40 percent. It needs to be around 60 percent, he said. And we know if you look at the daily statistics here in, they make for a very miserable reading. We're seeing case numbers rising and we're seeing record numbers of deaths being recorded. And in many 24 hour periods, hundreds of people deaths being recorded every day now. So it is a huge concern.

And and so as of tomorrow, schools and shops will also be closed and restrictions tightened. And that will have an impact on Christmas, too. And it means that fewer people will be able to get together than before, although there will be a little bit of an exception over the three days of Christmas here. But that relaxation won't be anywhere near what it was initially planned to be. And in addition to all that, the traditional Glühwein or mulled wine stands will close, too, because the government's also going to introduce a ban on drinking alcohol outdoors.

Jenny Hill, the BBC has seen information which suggests that China is forcing hundreds of thousands of people from ethnic minorities, including wiggers, to pick cotton in the western region of Xinjiang. The Chinese government says the claims are entirely fabricated. Our China correspondent John Sudworth has this special investigation from Beijing where foreign reporters are tightly monitored and controlled.

At the side of a road in Aksu County in Xinjiang, men are breaking a mountain of cotton a little further along the same road, and workers are still in the fields, twisting and plucking the balls of white fibers. It is hot, grueling, backbreaking work. Xinjiang makes a fifth of the world's total supply of cotton, and our investigation will only heightened concerns about the way it's produced. Although the evidence wasn't easy to find.

So how many do you think? The following? At least five, maybe seven. We're not going to show you the footage to show you that.

But it was obviously something they don't want us to see down this road that he's been told.

He's been told to stop until we are turned back at checkpoints, stopped from filming, questioned and followed.

Everywhere we go, let's go down there, turn right. One site we attempt to get to is a giant reeducation camp.

This accommodation here with a police station right in front of us on the satellite images of the site, we can see that more recently, something else has been built next door, a textile factory. Days after its completion, the satellite picture picks up something significant. A large group of people can be seen being moved between the camp and the factory.

Wow. And this is a factory here. It's extraordinary.

In the scale of it from the ground, it's clear that the factory and the accommodation blocks are all now one single unit, the giant slogans written on the side of it.

But when we get out to film, some of on China insists that all of this is nothing more than a giant benevolent job creation scheme. But if that's really the case, then you have to wonder why there's this extraordinary effort to stop.

Is documenting any of this in Xinjiang? Our whole culture is under suspicion. More than a million wiggers and other traditionally Muslim minorities are thought to have been swept into the reeducation camps viewed by China as potential Islamist separatists.

But others are being mobilized for something else.

Maryland state media footage shows hundreds of people at a time put onto buses and trains and taken to giant new factories and textile mills where up to two million. The evidence shows face strict controls and political indoctrination alongside the work they do.

I'm here to show you the first thing our workers have to learn is to love the Communist Party is factory bosses.

One day my family will disappear from this world.

Mahmut, not his real name, left Xinjiang three years ago, but his family still lives there.

And my mom told me, like in December last August last year, she's picking the cotton for the government officers and no one can refuse.

The newly discovered online documents show the scale 210000 pickers mobilized in one area, more than 100000 in another. They're given ideological education and the lazy, the authorities say, are being taught the glories of work.

In a written statement, the Chinese government said workers from all ethnic groups in Xinjiang choose their jobs according to free will and sign contracts in accordance with the law. It said accusations of forced labor were completely fabricated.

John Sudworth.

The Benin bronzes are some of Africa's greatest treasures looted by British troops in the late 19th century and now scattered worldwide, including in major museums in Germany and the U.K. They are not actually from the country of Benin. They come from the ancient kingdom of Benin, now in southern Nigeria. The Nigerian government has made formal requests for their return, but is that likely to happen? James Copnall spoke to Barnaby Phillips, the author of a book called Loot Britain and the Benin Bronzes.

He began by explaining the many of the statues weren't actually bronze, most of them James and operands.

It's confusing. Many of them are brass, but they include magnificent ivory carvings as well, looted, as you said, from the ancient kingdom of Benin today, centred around Benin City, part of Edo State in southern Nigeria in 1897, brought back to London by soldiers and sailors, many of them put on auction. And in fact, it was the Germans who reacted with particular alacrity to those auction sales in London and starting in the summer of 1897 and appreciated the artistic and historic value of these carvings that they denoted a wonderful civilisation, a long history, all the sorts of things that Africa was not meant to have according to the prevailing European values of the time.

And German dealers and German curators bought up hundreds and hundreds of them, which is how today Britain and Germany happen to have still the best and the biggest collection of Benin bronzes. But increasingly controversial, obviously.

Yeah, and that demand for them to be returned is not a new one, but it does seem to have new momentum right now. It's not a new one.

The kings of Benin City or called the others who were toppled by the British in 1897 and then restored in 1914, the same family, and they're still there today. They have been calling for many decades in a in a dignified and consistent way for the Benin bronzes to return. But I think the whole climate has changed in Europe quite dramatically, probably really even in the last five years or so. Until then, European museums tended to just bat away these sorts of claims from countries like Nigeria, countries that were looted during the colonial or pre colonial period.

What changed the situation? A lot in twenty seventeen, you might recall, President Macron of France was in Burkina Faso and he made a rather electrifying speech saying that effectively he was fed up with seeing African heritage in European museums. This had to change. He commissioned a report. The report was a lot more radical, a lot stronger than people thought it would be, saying that all these looted objects had to go back. The report pertained only to France, but it undoubtedly has put museums in countries like Germany and indeed in Britain very much on the spotlight.

Barnaby Phillips still to come. There's loads of amazing animals and they store lots of carbon stock picking up in the atmosphere. All that could be scoured if this iceberg goes onto the continental shelf in the South Atlantic, an iceberg continues to raise environmental.

Concerns in Pakistan has brought in new anti rape laws which aimed to deliver faster convictions and tougher penalties. The move follows a series of cases which have sparked outrage in the country. Jill McGovern reports.

Pakistan's leaders promised to take action after public protests demanding tougher laws on rape. Many were galvanized after a woman who became stranded on a motorway with her young children late at night was robbed and then gang raped. The anger was compounded when some officials seemed to blame her. The law stipulates special fast track courts and a national sex offenders register. Chemical castration of repeat offenders will become possible in some cases, and there's better protection for victims of rape to.

Four days ago, armed men abducted schoolboys in Katsina State in northwestern Nigeria know the Islamist group Boko Haram has published an audio message saying it was behind the crime. Our correspondent Brian Jones is in the neighboring state of Kano.

In a few minutes, message, an audio message. A man claiming to be the leader of Boko Haram, Abubakar Shekau, said that they were responsible for the kidnapping of some hundred boys, a few hundred boys on Friday night. Up till now, we had thought that the kidnapping had been carried out by armed gunmen looking to make money off of the kidnapping because Boko Haram traditionally has been active in the northeast of the country as opposed to the northwest where we are now.

Now, Abubakar Shekau says they are responsible to carry out the attack because they are against Western education. They say that despite the fact that the boys were enrolled in school, they were against Islam and they want to send a message out that they do not support this. It's a very worrying sign that Boko Haram influence is extending from the northeast to other parts of northern Nigeria.

And have they said how or when they'll negotiate on releasing the boys?

Not yet. The governor of Katsina state had said that they were negotiating with the gunmen. Now, many are asking if that means that they are negotiating with terrorists. We're still waiting on a statement and a reaction from the government to this worrying sign, particularly as many parents still say that they haven't heard anything from the authorities. They're desperate to be reunited with their children. Some of them are even as young as 10 years old. Yeah, it's very worrying finding a traumatic experience for the children and awful for the families of those involved.

But Boko Haram have done this before, haven't they? Yes. And when this attack happened, the sheer scale of it, the fact that it was hundreds of children really made people think back into the 2014 abduction of the Chibok girls. Since then, the Islamist group had also abducted one hundred schoolgirls in Dutchie in the Northeast. And eyewitnesses we spoke to in Katsina yesterday told us that as the armed gunmen arrived at the boys school on Friday, one of the things they asked, where where are the girls?

So all of these details are really reminding people about previous attacks by Boko Haram on school children. And it's quite worrying that over the years, the government doesn't seem to have been able to tackle the issue and to stop these attacks from happening.

Melanie Jones in northern Nigeria talking to my colleague Samantha Simmons. For decades, many Native Americans have called on some US sports teams to change names considered racially insensitive. In July, the Washington Redskins announced they were rebranding as the Washington football team. And now another big franchise is doing the same. Charlotte Gallagher reports. A swing and a little jab.

Jab shall or left. It is dropping the scale of diving catch Obama still with a diving catch in the Cleveland.

Indians are one of America's top baseball teams, but their name is seen by Native American groups as offensive and racist. In the summer, as racial justice swept across the U.S., bosses announced a review of the team name. Now, as expected, they've confirmed it will be changed, saying that while Indians will always be a part of our history, it is time to move forward. The new name is yet to be decided. The decision comes after the NFL's Washington Redskins changed their name to the Washington football team.

Pressures also mounting on the Kansas City Chiefs and the Atlanta Braves, though both have resisted calls to rebrand. Vincent Schilling is a Native American journalist and says it's not only the names that people find upsetting.

If you have a name like that, you're going to have five percent of the people that show up to games wearing a culturally appropriate headdresses, face paint going to, you know, doing the tomahawk chop.

You can say all day long, you know, we're going to reach out to native people, but it's about the appropriation that occurs even a year ago.

Major U.S. sports teams changing their names like this would have been unthinkable. People like Colin Kaepernick, who protested against injustice, often found themselves ostracized by fans and teams. But the Black Lives Matter movement and the threat of sponsors pulling funding has changed that to an extent. One person who isn't happy with the decision taken in Cleveland, Donald Trump, who complained that it was canceled culture at work.

Charlotte Gallagher, it sounds like the plot for a disaster movie, a giant iceberg, has broken off an ice shelf in the South Atlantic and is on course to collide with an island, the British overseas territory of South Georgia. If the 3800 square kilometre monster does run aground, it could pose a very real threat to thousands of penguins, seals and other animals. There are also a few dozen scientists there, Professor. Guarente towelling is part of a research team heading to the South Atlantic to study what effect the iceberg is having on the wildlife.

There's loads of amazing animals, sponges, brittle stars, sea urchins on the seabed, and they store lots of carbon, do a fantastic job of locking that in, stopping it being in the atmosphere. All that could be scoured up if this iceberg goes onto the continental shelf. But it does other things as well, like blocking the path of penguins and seals to get out to their feeding grounds. And that's particularly important this time of year when they have to get back to land quite quickly to feed their chicks and pups.

So just how worrying is that iceberg? A question for our science correspondent, Jonathan Amos.

Well, we have to wait and see. At the moment, the iceberg is moving in a fast stream of water, which is coming up from the Antarctic. Interestingly, this is the same stream of water that you will have heard that great story about the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton, who escaped from the sea ice in the Whittlesey down in the Antarctic and used the currents to get to south Georgia in order to raise the alarm and rescue his men. Now, the iceberg is moving in that same stream of water.

What it tends to do is when it arrives at south Georgia, it does a kind of loop around the island. So we're expecting the iceberg to do the same to go in this loop. The question is, because it is a draft, you know, the amount of ice below the waterline, because there's a draft of about 200 metres, it may get caught in the shallows around the island. And if that happens, then it can cause some disruption for the wildlife.

But at the moment, we're not sure that will happen. We're watching using satellite tools that we've never had before. We're watching day by day to see just where this iceberg is going to go.

I said that there are scientists heading there to study what effect the iceberg is having. Is there anything that science can do about this iceberg?

Not really. I mean, this is a natural event. This is what happens. The Antarctic kicks out some monster burgs every so often on decadal time scales. This one just happens to be the latest. If it gets stuck at South Georgia, then it could do some harm to the wildlife. The last time that this happened was back in 2003. 2004 was a big bird called a 38, and it got stuck on the continental shelf and there were loads of dead penguin chicks and seal pups on the beaches of South Georgia.

It's one of those things. Nature can be cruel sometimes, but, you know, the iceberg just missed a lot by and it may not have have the effects that we're concerned about.

Jonathan IMOS money doesn't come cheap. That's what the Reserve Bank of Malawi has found this year, spending 19 million dollars replacing damaged bank notes. It wants Malawians to take more care with their currency and consider electronic payments instead. Our correspondent Nomsa Maseko visited Malawi to find out why banknotes are getting damaged so frequently.

A busy market in downtown, along with a variety of goods are sold here, food, car, parts, brooms, picks, anything you can think of. On average, a single banknote can be used by different people hundreds of times.

Take one example, a 50 kwacha bank note being passed between a lot of people stuffed in pockets, dropped on the floor, folded in a wallet or placed on damp surfaces. It's bound to get damaged at some point. And in a country where cash is king, it's difficult to preserve the life span of banknotes. Howard Levinson is a market vendor who sells fish, which comes from Lake Malawi.

He also sells baking ingredients and cooking oil over and over and over the river. So I make between 15000 and 20000 kwacha every day and I use that money to go and buy more merchandise. I spend my money as often as I can, but while I'm here at the market, I keep my money in the safe to protect it from getting damaged. I also try my best to take my money and put it in my pocket while I'm here and bake it later.

Malawi's Reserve Bank head of currency, Joseph Milnor, says his department has rolled out a campaign to stop this and to the international standard visa between 18 and 24 months.

But our notes, if you look at the lower denominations there will last four to six months. The higher denominations, they persist to be nine, 10 months. The problem is the way we handle money. If you go into a market, for example, vegetable or fish sellers, they will usually put their money below the mission. Those are wet surfaces and therefore the banknotes get wet and they develop molds or they even catch bacteria. And that's the end of them.

The Reserve Bank of Malawi wants most money transactions to be done electronically, and Malawi is following in the footsteps of countries like Kenya and Zimbabwe, where the use of mobile money services has grown rapidly. Kenya has MSA and Malawi has etto money and Bumba, which means capital in the local church. Our language, up to five million Malawians are now using the phone based bank services. The covid-19 pandemic also saw a slight increase in users as the movement of people was restricted.

More challenging for the Malawi government is the fact that more than 50 percent of the population does not have access to formal banking services, and they're hoping to change this.

That report by Nomsa Masago. And that's all from us for now. But there will be an updated version of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is Global Podcast at BBC Dot CO2 UK. I'm Jonathan Savage. The producer of this podcast was Alison Davies. The studio manager was Jolies and the editor is Karen Martin. Until next time. Goodbye.