after nearly two weeks of intense bargaining and years of negotiations, a final draft on a climate deal is now ready. you're watching al jazeera. also coming up on the program an historic election, saudi arabia hold a poll where women can run and vote. the taliban attacked attack an area in kabul killing seven people. >> reporter: i'm andrew tom is as in sydney on how the cruise

industry is running so fast that this city is running out of spots to berth the ships a new global deal is getting closer. the final text is expected to be released within hours. the french foreign minister says he is home for an agreement. this comes after years of tough negotiations. nations first agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions in 1997. that's when the kioto protocol was signed in japan, but the u.s. didn't support it and developing nations were exempt. they claimed they didn't contribute to global warming, even though china and india were amongst the biggest emitters. by 2009 many felt a new agreement was needed, but the copenhagen failed to bring

results. a binding climate treaty was not to be signed. in lemar leaders there agreed on plain for voluntary targets to reduce emissions. back to paris now and we will cross over to our environment editor nick clerk who is following developments from there. tell us how close we are to that deal and to that announcement. >> reporter: pretty close. so at 11.30 the new draft text will be releaseed and it will be presented to the ministers of the nations involved in this ongoing debate in an effort to try and reach a climate deal. then if there are no objections it will go to a full plenary which are all the parties here who will go to the same plenary, which is a room over there, and they could formally adopt the final agreement, but we will see how it pans out. it could stretch on into the day, possibly into the evening.

it's anyone's guess. more on this from jennifer morgan. these things are never straightforward, but give us a process. that scenario i painted there but there are one. >> there are. in that 11.30 meeting, he could say there it is and he is confident that everyone is on that board, he closes that in and brings it into adoption into the full plenary or he allows them discussion. >> reporter: taken to the full plenary, there is still more room for negotiation. >> yes. for parties to state that they are not in agreement with certain provisions of the draft agreement and sometimes a little huddles happen where they try and get countries together to solve different pieces of texts.

it can be quite high drama actually. >> reporter: they have been working extremely hard as three straight nights on the trot working through the night with the ministers. is that unprecedented? > reporter: they just had to work like that, didn't they?

>> reporter: which would provide the launch pad, the beginning of the road to getting to the point at which we get below 2 degrees c start? > reporter: that's the implementation, especially transparency over how nations implement their voluntary carbon emissions reductions >> yes. the question of getting a common transparency system. what they're trying to do here for the first time is get a universal agreement so all countries would have to report in on their emissions and be verified. having a little bit more flexiblity for the poorer countries, of course, to fulfil the requirements over time. >> reporter: thanks very much. great to get your perspective and understanding of what's happening here. it's always a tricky one to unravel. we will have more in an hour or so, but all looking ahead to that meeting in about two and a half hours time when the latest

possibly final text will be released thank you nick for the time being. polls have opened in saudi arabia in a landmark election for the first time. female voters and candidates are allowed to take part. around 900 women and six thousand men are running for office in the elections. the legal voting age has been lowered from 21 to 18. many from the younger generations are welcoming this move. >> translation: it was difficult in the past to communicate with men, but with the presence of a woman now i can speak to her directly and raise my demands with her to our correspondent. they are being described as landmark, they're being described as historic for a woman, but how much impact will the polls actually have on women's rights going forward in the kingdom? >> reporter: i mean, time will tell from that perspective, obviously. these are local elections.

this is still an monarchy and the way this country is ruled is the same since its establishment, but it is important to note that what is significant about those polls, not only is the fact that women are apartment have participating both as candidates and as voters, but this is the only third time in this history that any sort of poll has taken place. so that in itself, that form of democratic practice is something that people are bihar allowing as a-- saying is a major time t between people aren't used to it, looking at the voter intake or those who have come out to vote, because it's the early hours, but it has been very weak comparative to other countries in the region, but that doesn't take away from the significance in terms of the path towards reform that was set out by the late king and a lot of people are saying this is one of the major achievements that his

reign brought about in terms of women's participation and bringing them more into the forefront of society here >> reporter: when is it that we expect to see the results from these municipal elections? >> reporter: 24 hours from now. tomorrow, sunday, the electoral commission will hold a press conference and it will announce those results. as you say, there are around five thousand male candidates to around just under a thousand female candidates. what's interesting, however, is that you have to register to vote and there's about 1.3 million women eligible who have the right to register. only about 10% of them have registered. only about 130,000 which is also reflective of the fact that while this is ground breaking in terms of allowing them to vote, it is going to be a long path to bring about full participation, both for women and just general citizens in terms of any democratic process thank you for that update.

a taliban siege has ended leaving 7 people dead. it came to an end after hours of gun fire. the diplomatic district houses several key buildings such as the u.s. embassy and u.n. offices. gun fire erupted after a car bomb and afghan troops cleared the area. two span yards and four policemen and civilian were killed in the attack along with the attackers. >> reporter: it started with a car bomb explosion that could be heard around the city. it went off just near the spanish embassy. >> translation: i thought it was a gas balloon explosion and then i sawdust coming from the back of a bakery. i don't know where it was but i saw two wounded. >> reporter: taliban fighters exchanged gun fire with afghan

police and security forces. the taliban says the target was a guest house for foreigners. fighters claimed to have them trapped inside the building. >> translation: a car was blown up. after the blast happened we turned off the lights in the area and our night operation special forces started searching the vicinity and nearby houses. >> reporter: the area is heavily guarded. home to senior governor officials, ngos, medical conclude clinicings. it was closest to the spanish embassy. >> translation: would can all be targets, all of us, any western company. >> reporter: this was the taliban's third high profile attack in four days there is growing hope for peace in libya after the two rival governments agreed to sign a deal. the country has been in turmoil since 2011 when gadaffi was

taken from power. >> reporter: this is where the world leaders will meet on sunday to give a push to efforts to bring about a national unity government. a u.n. draft deal has been on the table for months and now members of the rival parliaments say it will be signed on december 16. that follows last week's agreement in tunis which saw the warring parties agree on the urgent need to work together. this announcement was made in last minute discussions with the two sides and can be seen as a break through. even he said the way forward won't be easy. >> many problems remain, but this has to be solved by the new government in place. that's what governments are there for. that's why the implementation phase will start with many open problems and united nations is always ready to support the new

government of national accord. >> reporter: libya has been at war since the overthrow of gadaffi. there are armed groups who have rejected previous attempts to disarm. it is not clear if all of them are backing the u.n. deal or whether all members of the two arriving parliaments will give their support. no deal is perfect, but he is hoping the majority of libyans will put their differences aside. >> this is the goal of the conference, is to have the more inclusive possible solution. we will not have hundred per cent. i hope we will have 90% because we need, obviously, an inclusive solution. those against a solution supported by all the international community will have the responsibility to contrast something-- construct something that is strategic for

the libyan people. >> reporter: for the international people ending the interurt vacuum in libya is their strategic authority. that is why world leaders are throwing their weight and pressuring the libyans to unite. >> reporter: the west is growing concerned about the growing strengths of i.s.i.l. some say libya is becoming what they're describing as a fallback position for the armed groups since it has been coming under pressure in syria and iraq. italy is particularly concerned, not just because migrants and refugees use libya ace transit point to reach europe, but i.s.i.l. is just a few hundred kilometres away. >> reporter: i.s.i.l. has been trying to take more ground and attempting to push into more areas where oil and gas terminals are giving it a source of revenue. the u.s. has already carried out a few air strikes against i.s.i.l. in libya and the international community hasn't ruled out the option of concerted military action. >> i think that we have now to

concentrate not on plan b, but on the effort or the international community to reach a diplomatic agreement. the only solution, the only stable solution, is a libyan unity government to stabilize the country. >> reporter: for now there is an agreement. the days ahead, however, will give an indication on whether the u.n. deal has the quorum to form what can be called a national unity government, a deal without libya's main political and military actors on could be a recipe for p even more violence here is what is coming up. chinese internet giant alibab bys the post. scientists are preserving the cultural heritage of syria. syria.

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the top stories. a new global climate deal is getting closer with the final draft expected to be released within hours. it has already missed one deadline but the french foreign minister says he is hopeful for an agreement. polls opened in saudi arabia in a landmark election in which women are allowed to vote and be candidates for the first time. around 900 women and six thousand men are running for office. a nine hour taliban siege in the afghan capital has ended league

seven people dead-- leaving seven people dead. alibaba is buying the south china morning post. it is the biggest english newspaper in the country and one of the oldest and respected rub publications in asia. >> reporter: not surprisingly news of the long anticipated sale to alibaba was front page at the newspaper itself with its 112-year history the post is considered by many the paper of record in its china coverage. in an open letter to readers the bop group pledges to uphold the paper's editorial independence. our reporting will be fair and balanced, it says. when covering the country, the group warning of a western bias in much of the mainstream media.

under jack marr that will translate into a self censorship of china stories. >> jack marr is very close to the party and state leaders of china, so it is most unlikely that he would want his newspaper to run critical articles about individual leaders or major policies. >> reporter: a former china editor of the post who says many colleagues still at the paper are unhappy with what they see as an erosion of hong kong's press freedom. >> for the chinese communist party, the propaganda is very important. if necessity can control the mass media in hong kong, it will facilitate their effort to enhance political control of hong kong. >> reporter: the post joins other media entities being acquired by mainland owners, but the trend is also leading to a rise in online news alternatives.

in both cantonese and english. >> if you look at what we were intending to do, record breaking funding and traffic, then the appetite for free press in hong kong is certainly still there. >> reporter: changing technology, opening up new fronts in the developing battle for the control of hong kong's media india and japan have signed a preliminary agreement on civil nuclear energy and finalised the deal to build the country's first high speed train. the indian prime minister has described japan as a friend as well as an important strategic partner in realising his country's economic ambitions. modi and his japanese counterparts met in new delhi for a bilateral summit. japan will invest in the construction of rail projects which will be based in the west of india.

>> we greatly proceed with, approximately, ten billion u.s. dollars and technical assistance on very easy terms for this project. this enterprise will launch a revolution in indian railways and speed up india's journey into the future one of the son's of lib yea's deposed leader has been hand over to security forces in lebanon after he was kidnapped. he was showed during his captivist. he was being held by a group demanding information about the fate of an imam who went missing in tripoli in the 1970 says and gaddafi is blamed for his disappearance. the former prime minister in

britain. he has been giving evidence to an inquiry into british government policy in libya. from london our correspondent. >> reporter: a british parliamentary inquiry with questions about libya for former prime minister tone tony blair. emails revealed that me tried to save gadafi in phone calls as war surrounded him. he told him to leave for a place of safety in order to stop the blood shed. >> my concern was not for his safety. my concern was to get him out of the situation so that a peaceful transition could take place. >> reporter: the pair had formed a relationship. he brought him back into the international followed during a meeting in the libyan desert in

204. gadaffi agreed to give up his weapons of mass destruction. they also struck oil and trade deals worth hundreds of billions of dollars, but the mps wondered at what price for justice of the british victims of libyan crimes in london. >> if we didn't set any of these issues aside, but we did believe there was a huge prize in bringing them from a position where they were sponsoring terrorism to a position where they were fighting against it, and then, secondly, creating the circumstances in which they voluntarily gave up their chemical - nuclear weapons program >> reporter: tony blair knows a thing or two about military intervention in foreign lands.

was libya better or worse off as a result of the western bombing campaign? > reporter: packing up 3d cameras and all the materials volunteers in syria will need to photograph important sites of

cultural heritage. we can't show the low-cost cameras they will use because it might endanger the photographers. it is a race against time to send the cameras to syria. trying to keep one step ahead of i.s.i.l. fighters and their destruction of ancient sites, including the 2000 year old temple in palmyra that they destroyed in i.s.i.s. >> they leave rubble behind. we can put these structures back and people can get on with their lives. when they walk down the street they see the familiar vistas and they go back to their lives. that's what these photographs mean. >> reporter: if in the future they decide to rebuild the structures, then a 3d printer takes over.

finishing touches from local artisan stone cutters. >> this is 1 ah metres high. it's not small, and it also has a fair bit of surface detail. we can go from the photographs to an actual physical structure in a period of three months. it's a much shorter time than it would take from scratch. >> reporter: the items of the regions can't be underestimated. many represent a meeting between east and west. palmyra interested various issues. >> it was a symbolic representation of what it should become, not of what it is today. cultures living together in a are mown use fashion. it being destroyed, it represents a disunity, fracturing if you will, and the symbolic of the ruins in syria.

>> reporter: being around beautiful architecture and a rich cultural heritage becomes part of a person. who that is gone, they lose a little bit of their identity. that is why this project is so par because they're preserving history and an integral part of the region for the next generation cubans are being allowed to post a letter direct to a family in the united states and vice versa. direct postal services are restarted more than 50 years after being stopped because of the cold war. since then letters have been rerouted through a third country. the resumption is in the latest of improvement between relations between the nations. with christmas right around the corner, many are looking at the peak summer seen in australia for cruise ship holidays. it is a tight squeeze for ships sailing into sydney as andrew thomas has been finding out. >> reporter: every day during

summer a monster nudges its way through sydney's city center. most days there are more than one. the smaller ships fit under the harbour bridge and berth to the west. the giants get the spot right opposite the opera house. however all, space in sydney is running out. its two cruise terminals can handle three ships at the time, but there's enough demand for more berths >> there are discussions taking around the infrastructure. >> reporter: cruising is growing in popularity. more and more people want to get on board. to describe a ship like this as a floating hotel is to underplay its size. the vessels that are coming in and out of sydney harbour are huge and they're getting bigger all the time. >> reporter: cruising among australians has never been more popular with 20% market growth

every year for more than a decade. 3.6% of all australians take a cruise each year. a higher percentage than in any other country. >> you get on and unpack for the next couple of days it's here on the ship >> you instant relaxing. >> reporter: on board these mega ships are swimming pools, bars, lots of restaurants and crew from all over the world. >> any nationality here on board. >> reporter: four years ago off the coast of italy the cruise industry suffered its worst disaster for decades when the costa concordia hit a rock and sunk. 32 people died. that didn't put people off cruising. the amounts of tourist is more

than 50% higher than it was at that time. it's cruising read much more about that as well as the day's other stories and the top stories as well on our website at al jazeera.com week. >> they are traveling more than passion palveling more than even 10 years ago, they're being asked to sacrifice more they're asked to treat their sport as a year-round endeavor. so the demands on them are so intense that it has put them in a situation where it's like a fight or die situation.