>> organizing themselves. >> people say they're finally fed up. >> weeknights, on al jazeera america primetime. >> translator: our thoughts are with the families of those suffering this terrible loss today. >> 150 people feared dead after passenger plane crashes in the french alps. ♪ >> hello there, you are watching al jazeera live from london. also coming up the governor of yemen's third biggest city resigns saying security forces loyal to the houthi rebels around following his orders. we're in libya where one

city could hold the key to peace talks. and we'll meet the cartoonist who has been credited for giving a cynical voice to the people of bangladesh. ♪ hello, 150 people are feared dead after an airbus a320 passenger jet crashed in the french alps. the german flight was flying from barcelona to dusseldorf. it took off at 10:01 local time. by 9:45 gmt the plane has reached hits cruising altitude of 30,000 feet but a minute later it nose dived for eight minutes. the last radar contact was at 9:53 gmt. shortly after that the plane crashed in the french alps.

barnaby phillips has the latest. >> reporter: in the southern french alps a rescue operation is now underway. the emergency services pooling their resources. but this is difficult terrain and the weather a cloudy. in these mountains they have located the crash site, but retrieved the bodies could take days. relatives and friends have gathered to receive more information about absorb the terrible news. germanwings flight 9525 never showed up. it was traveling from barcelona to dusseldorf but crashed in the french alps. this is thought to be footage of the actual plane that crashed an airbus 320 filmed on a previous flight. the french president was hosting the king of spain on an official

visit that has now been cut short. >> translator: we will do everything in our power to understand the cause of the accident and recover all of the victims from the crash site. the accident has taken place in an area that is especially difficult to access and it could take some hours for rescue services to reach the site. >> reporter: it's owned by lufthansa. it flies mainly short-haul journeys around europe. it has an excellent safety record. the passengers are thought to include german spanish, and turkish nationals. >> translator: the flight of our daughter company crashed at around 11:00 am in the french alps now our thoughts feelings, and prayers are with the passengers and crew on board. >> reporter: the rescue operation will be dangerous and challenging. the most it can achieve will be

to bring some comfort to those who lost loved one, and to determine why the flight ended in disaster. al jazeera's david chater is in the down of dean around 70 kilometers from the crash sight. >> reporter: when the night goes down it's going to be extremely difficult to carry on with the search mission for the victim's bodies. there's a large school in the area, which they are going to used to collect the victims. perhaps that's where they will be taking the relatives to identify the victims if and when they find them but the one big question at the moment is what on earth caused this crash? it's the work horse of the aviation industry. the fascinating thing is in the last few months or so we have heard there was no distress called issued from the cockpit of this plane. and it went into what was described as an 8-minute descent

before any contact was lost with airport control. so what was happening during that eight minutes? why no contact with cockpit? so one of the main things after the bodies have been recovered is to get the voice recorder and the black box. difficult days away mostly for the families who are watching with complete incomprehension. >> dominic kane is at the headquarters of where germanwings is based. >> all levels of the government have expressed their condolences to the relatives of those involved in this accident. angela merkel says she will go to the site tomorrow to see the site for herself. the ceo of germanwings has gone into great detail about the

aircraft, and indeed about the pilot of the aircraft, who he says had more than 10 years experience, and 6,000 hours experience flying this particular aircraft. the makers of the aircraft have expressed their concern about the incident and they are aware of the reports of this incident. and we no crash flight investigators have been deployed from a gurney. the crass site investigators will work with the french authorities. the french authorities will take the lead in this investigation, because the territorial element is in france because the plane was flying from spain to germany, over france and came down in france. the german media are reporting something like 67 german people very involved in this incident but that has not been con

flirmed. the spanish government said 45 citizens were on board the plane. >> thanks so much for coming into al jazeera. one of the things that has been quite confusing is whether or not the cockpit issued a distress call or whether it was the air traffic controllers put out a distress call? and that's crucial, isn't it? >> yeah. to not issue a distress call not send a transponder, implies a catastrophic failure. was it is a catastrophic failure with all that that implies, or was this something that was controllable? and until we know that we don't know which realm we're in.

>> and that is going to come down to the flight recorders. there's the cockpit recorder and the black box recorder. >> yeah, one of them is a rotating loop that record your conversation for half an hour and around around it goes again. if you have speem sleeking, or crying you'll get that. or if all you get is a quick boom you are in the catastrophic failure again. so you can develop them both. but again, it will take days to get that black box recorder analyzed. if you can run the tapes like they are doing now, listening, and saying i'm looking at the blip on the screen to see if it suddenly disappeared off of the

face of the screen. >> yeah. there are so many enthuses ands tweeting and showing how quickly the plane appeared to nose dive in 8:00s. >> and that will tell you whether this was under control to the extent that human beings are trying to get control back. an airplane doesn't go from straight and level benign flight into massive descent. so even if all four engines fail, or two engines or whatever many you have got it will go down in a controlled fashion. if on the other hand you hear nothing, then it's ifrnt worse than that, and you are into a major structural failure. >> the pictures we have been showing are indeed the area of the crash site. this is the area in which the

plane crashed, and gives us a sense of just how difficult it is for the emergency services to actually access that area to recover the bodies and of course crucially the wreckage of the plane. for the air traffic controllers who monitor all of the planes in their jurisdiction how quickly would they have realized something was wrong? >> what they see in front of them is a synthetic -- they don't see a glint from metal being affected. they see a transformer saying this is where i am and this is the speed i'm going, et cetera et cetera. now if you can press sort of the emergency swab button, it shrieks the control, if you don't have time to press the button in front of you, then clearly you have a problem. it might not click for a bit,

but really you are benignly carrying on, unless you are focusing on that four-digit number then, again, you might not notice for sometime. suddenly you look back and you said there is x there and now it's there at all. >> the airbus a320 was 24 years old. is that particularly old for an aircraft? 24 years old? >> it's -- it's -- well it depends how much flying -- this thing will have been flown and flown and flown, unlike military airplanes that play maybe two hours a day, this one will be flying for its keep. given that this is western europe spain, france germany,

and especially with the germans you can be insured that this will be maintained to the highest standards. >> yeah. the a320 is a proper work horse? >> yes, there are thousands of them. something happened to the airplane that the airplane itself would be saying my goodness what hit me. because the wings will not have dropped off, or it suddenly disappeared in this cloud of gas, unless something made it be. >> whefrn we have airline disasters, and we have seen quite a few in the last few months and that's what it has felt like including the airasia flight everybody thinks of the fear of flying for some people it is exacerbated by that. but air travel is still the safest way for human beings to

travel? >> yeah, you are 20 times more likely to die driving to the area. and the thing is you touched on we have seen one or two or three reasons. the fact that there are so rare shouts out and says this is very, very unusual. they are not happening like they were 20 and 30 years ago. >> andrew brooks thanks so much for coming in. thank you. still to come on the program, much more of the day's news including not enough women voters. nigerian voters complain about the lack of representation. and a good day for india's internet freedoms as the supreme court strikes down a controversial law.

♪ hello, again, welcome back and a reminder of the top stories here on al jazeera. 150 people are feared dead after a passenger plane crashed in the french alps the plane had been at its cruising altitude of 38,000 feet for just a minute before he began losing altitude. the plane nose dived for eight minutes before crashing. >> we have to investigate properly with all of the

professionals what went wrong. the moment we know what went wrong, of course there will be measurements immediately in place to have an incident like this never happen again. the governor of yemen's third biggest city has resigned saying security forces loyal to the houthis aren't following his orders. the houthis already control the capitol, and are pushing south towards aden where the embattled president is trying to hold on to power. the province has been the center of large rallies. several were killed and injured when houthi fighters opened fire trying to disburse the crowd. the chaos in yemen has forced the united states to scale back its so-called anti-terrorism operations there. and as kimberly halkett reports

this will limit its ability to conduct intelligence gathering in yemen. >> reporter: as the security situation worsened in yemen, the u.s. government tries to reassure mrerns its decision to pull out won't effect its ability to fight groups inside the country. >> those capabilities continue. >> reporter: just six months ago in a speech to the nation president barack obama held yemen up as an example of an effective u.s. counter terrorism campaign in the middle east. >> this strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us is one that we have successfully pursued in yemen and somali for years. >> reporter: but many critics argue that cooperation is gone. >> without that intelligence we cannot effectively stop it. >> reporter: as the u.s.

continues to back the yemeni president, it has called for a no-fly zone and military intervention from gulf countries. the u.s. urging a political solution to the crisis. direct foreign intervention is unlikely. >> this is a situation analogous to what we have seen elsewhere in the arab world where parties on the ground who don't see their interests as being proxies to some foreign power will accept help where they can find it to sort things out internally within yemen. [ sirens blaring ] >> reporter: increasing instability and sectarian division now hamper the efforts in an already volatile region. the u.s.-lead coalition fighting the islamic state of iraq and the levant says it has carried out eight more air strikes in syria and a further six in iraq. isil suffered heavy losses from

the strike east of fallujah talks aimed at establishing a unity government in libya are set to resume on wednesday. but fighting continues. the government continues to operate in tobruk and tripoli. as zana hoda support is key to any deal on a national unity government. >> reporter: it has long been criticized for acting as an dent state. it has been accused of using military force for political gain, and it has been labeled as an extremist strong hold. misrata denies all of that. but there's no doubt this city in central libya is not only powerful within its own borders,

its influence extended far beyond. to a large extend the government in tripoli relies on the libyan dawn military alliance to stay in power. and misrata's brigades are the military base and the political power of that alliance which seized the capitol last year. misrata has large armed group. it acquires mass amounts of weapons during the revolution of 2011. recently violence has escalated, and there seems to be a growing realization among members of the tripoli-based parliament that there is no military solution to this conflict. >> within the gnc there were some voices i considered

extremists to a degree. fortunately there are a lot of people who recognize that the only way to make peace in libya and to move towards democracy is to have dialogue with all sides. >> reporter: but they also have a red line. the libyan dawn alliance is at war with general haftar's forces who back the government in the east of the country. they have long accused haftar of being a dictator and are accusing haftar of disrupting u.n.-backed peace talks. >> translator: haftar only makes statements. he said the same thing about benghazi but he hasn't been able to take it. we tell him take benghazi first and then talk about tripoli. >> reporter: rival factions are now talking, not face-to-face

but the u.n. is trying to bring about a pollution. zana hoda al jazeera, misrata. tunisia museum briefly reopened its doors on tuesday. security was tight, and police stood guard outside of the museum. local tunisians waved flags to welcome visitors back. nigerians go to the polls on saturday to elect a president. africa's largest semi-is facing a silent struggle against the armed group, boko haram. goodluck jonathan is facing opposition from female voters who want more women to be on the ballot. >> reporter: maureen is voting in nigeria's presidential and

parliamentary -- elections. women make up just under 50% of registered voters. there are just under one thousand seats up for grabs, but only a couple hundred women are running. and only a handfuling on the parties likely to win. >> the men they will never give you a chance. they will never agree any woman to come in front of them. >> reporter: despite this she plans to vote for as many female candidates as she can. it costs colossal amounts of money to run for office in nigeria. many think a women's place is in the home and there is violence during the election. only one woman is running for president out of 14 candidates. on sunday she took part in a

televised debate with president goodluck jonathan. she is confident things can improve. >> women themselves are proving that they are capable in other spares of life. we have seen nigerian women rise to be ceo's of companies, several ministers, and so why should they be kept out of -- of politics? >> reporter: but the election umpire thinks more stringent measures might have to be put in place to increase the number of women candidates. >> reporter: some people suggest that [ inaudible ] reserve seats for women as is done in some other countries. [ inaudible ] maybe after election we'll keep reviewing -- >> reporter: the critics makes it the law for only women to run in some offices won't necessarily produce the best

candidates. india's supreme court has struck down a controversial law curtailing internet freedoms. it made it illegal to post content on line that was deemed offensive or menacing. >> reporter: one of the alarmest complaints is that this law was used arbitrarily. anyone could use this law to file a police complaint, and if the person making the complaint happened to be someone of wealth or influence, police many times would follow through with an arrest. one of the most infamous cases happened in 2012 after the shut down of the government after the death of a political figure. one woman questioned why they had to shut down another woman liked it and both women were arrested. many say this law was far too

vague and draconian, which the supreme court agreed with today, and struck down. indians do have a lot more freedom currently to post what they have on line however, even though they don't have to worry about the legal consequences there are social and cultural consequences. many groups use hired thugs and goons who threaten to intimidate people who say things they don't agree with. parliament will now have to write a specific law for the internet now. chile has issued an orange level allart after activity in the south of the country. the volcano erupted earlier this month. al jazeera has been exploring the role that cartoon characters play in social commentary in countries across the world.

and in bangladesh it's a wisecracking street urchin. >> reporter: all it takes is a few strokes to create an image that resinates with bangladeshians young and old. pot bell lived and prematurely balding. he was drawn to the straight-talking ways of the street children he knew during his childhood. and recognized his potential as a social commentator. >> translator: many people called me after a strip is released to say that they were thinking of the exact same thing. that they were glad he came out and said what they were too hesitant to say. >> reporter: he has been a huge success. he realized that seemingly power les street

urchin could get away with saying things. he got his start in comics while making political cartoons in the 1960s, during bangladesh's independence struggle. but today galleries and collectors seek out both of his strips and paintings. for long term fans like this he should be considered a national treasure. >> translator: what is special about him is that his character is not only a good sense of humor, but all thes for protests against all of our societies injustice. >> reporter: these days he is focused less on cartoons and more on his painting compositions that reflect the chaos and bustle of bangladesh.

yet his most popular creation continues to exert a strong pull. much more about all of our stories over on our website. the address to click on to is aljazeera.com. aljazeera.com for all of your latest international news. >> new dawn in beijing, the ancient capital of the world's fastest growing country, home to the 2008 olympics. it's the vibrant centre, the super power, where the old wrestles with the new. communism clashes with capitalism and a new global