and if it comes to our doors that it is. these areas apart a solid being governorates and the governor of solid dana has completely rejected the referendum the city council here including the arabs and the turkmen also rejected it they didn't even vote on it therefore we are rejecting the referendum here in the city of kirkuk and other disputed areas in fact we don't want to held in kurdistan either. russia and belarus are holding large scale military exercises osco says december thirteen thousand personnel have been participating through western and the western observers rather believe the number is far higher it's the first exercises are being held since russia annexed crimea in two thousand and fourteen and nato eastern members are concerned but as our correspondent rory chalons reports some in belarus are on easy as well. it takes some noise to overpower the din of military jets but weeks of political arguing over joints

russian better russian exercises have come close nato countries and allies are spooked particularly the baltics two thousand and seventeen stretches right across russia and better reeses western borderlands europe's doorstep russia's been accused by western political and military leaders of preparing for a big war thievin of using the drills as possible cover for an invasion but foreign observers watching it's a training ground in battery seems comma quite impressive we have seen some defense systems and some like firing we. would miss arms and we've got good explanations all the time on what's happening and and what i didn't do it so that we there are fourteen international observers here to each from the baltic countries ukraine poland sweden and norway but they haven't been invited by russia they've been invited by batteries. seem somewhat uneasy about these drills despite its close

partnership with moscow it doesn't want the same stormy relationship with the west as russia has according to this better russian analyst for the leadership of belarus after crimea started to carry a new foreign policy a position of neutral party between russia and ukraine and russia and the west these drills destroy the us image in a sense their own pleasant for the leadership and i'd like them to be wrapped up soon as possible further complicating belorussian feelings had two thousand and seventeen scenario envisages russia helping to quell separatism in a fictitious breakaway region of better reschooling noria better russian which have since come up with a vision or in foreign ministry twitter account passports even a national anthem. behind the humor this blogger says there are concerns that if russia could turn on ukraine the slavic countries shouldn't take anything for granted. when such large scale drills are held it's normal for

people to feel tension disbelief and fear because after crimea you cannot guarantee anything one hundred percent no one could have predicted the crimean scenario so civil society in belarus is quite nervous for vladimir putin though it's just one of the years many military exercises as he watches over the culmination of two thousand and seventeen joints drills with china are beginning far away on the other side of the world rory chalons al-jazeera better or worse. that's a film that's been denounced by israel's culture minister but that didn't stop running best picture at the country's annual movie awards the film had already won international acclaim and is tipped for oscar success reports from the israeli film industry awards and. it's the biggest night of the year for the israeli film industry the off year awards but this year's show biz is being edged out by politics some real mousers film foxtrot has attracted glowing reviews abroad and at

home it won the jury prize at the venice festival and is nominated for thirteen israeli officers but israel's culture minister has launched a bitter campaign against it accusing mao's of anti israel slander. yeah well create the faux will to. form love after the place left at the reproductive who are left to sit in office and doris foxtrot examines israel's relationship to its army charting a couple's grief when told a soldier's son is dead but he has sometimes surrealists been on life at an isolated checkpoint and crucially depicting a killing and a cover up the victims a group of palestinian civilians. in response rego this threatening to change the rules on government film funding not invited to the awards instead she addressed foxtrot's director live on facebook at the beginning of the saying you know israel you know the israeli army and you know how morally it

is look when a paradise of established in a dark middle east and you dare to present israeli soldiers killing arabs at a checkpoint and then burying them and you call this horrendous lie and metaphor for all the ire that we regulate is directing it foxtrot it's far from the only artistic endeavor that she has a problem with israel's culture minister is taking aim at targets across the cultural landscape anything that she deems to be anti israeli. among them a place staged two years ago by one of israel's highest profile palestinian theatres parallel time told the true story of a palestinian prisoner killing an israeli guard the army down theater found its funding frozen been withdrawn at a citizen it's challenging in the courts its chairman calls it an attack on palestinian cultural life. they just want us to be unsigned and. full over and any time that anyone is doing anything that this government and those people

that's not for them is they close the budget they don't give you the budget that the officers palestinian talent was celebrated. as was foxtrot winning a towards including best film automatically making it the israeli standard bearer for next year's academy awards are a force that al-jazeera israel. is al-jazeera and these are the top stories more than one hundred people are confirmed dead after an earthquake struck central mexico a seven point one magnitude quake hit publish city just after one p.m. local time it was actually the second earthquake in mexico in over two weeks at least one person has been killed in the second category five storm to hit the caribbean and a month hurricane maria has made landfall over several islands with tuner sixty kilometers an hour winds the french island of guadalupe was hit by the storm so it

was neighboring to mimic our country's prime minister describes the destruction as mind boggling the u.s. president made his debut at the united nations taking aim at north korea and said he'd destroy the country if they threatened the u.s. or its allies and also had strong words for iran accusing it of sponsoring terrorism and destabilizing the region the united states has great strength and patients but if it is forced to defend itself or its our allies we will have no choice but to totally destroy north korea rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime. the united states is ready willing and able but hopefully this will not be necessary that's what the united nations is all about that's what the united nations is

for let's see how they do. and kottaras america shake to main then how many mad at the u.n. to discuss the gulf crisis they merit described qataris relationship with the u.s. as very strong earlier in his address to the u.n. general assembly the emir renewed his call for unconditional dialogue to end the blockade on his country the tension is rising around iraq's kurdish region ahead of a vote on kurdish independence on september twenty fifth the town of two karma two is where kurdish control and said iraqi control the gangs it's population is a mix of kurds and turkmen there's other headlines news continues here on al-jazeera after inside story keep it here.

censoring social media saudi arabia or a snap chat to ban edges either should social media companies down down to any country's political agenda and who decides where to draw the line between freedom of expression and silencing the media this is inside story. we're . we're we're in the. i'll welcome to the program has them seek a snap chat is blocking al-jazeera content in saudi arabia more than seven million saudis use snapchat every day it is one of the most popular markets for the social media platform in the middle east now the company says it's blocked the discovery

channel that's after a request from the saudi government on the grounds of violates local cybercrime rules the edges in a t.v. channel as well as its news website also blocked in saudi arabia and the united arab emirates in response to criticism of sense the ship snap incorporated responded by saying we make an effort to comply with local laws in the countries where we operate as a snap chat content was as popular in saudi arabia as sky news arabia and a lot of am i just that it has condemned the band as an affront to free speech. unprecedented i mean. other countries such as china have tried with google and google you know what we're going to stand by the freedom expression and we're out of europe they're the ones who have invited us to be one of the schools of parness news publishers for the region because they understand the audience we bring into into the mix and with this move there definitely in our not allowing our audience

on snapchat to be able to see our content let's bring in our panel now from london we have three who is a lecturer a senior lecturer in the department of informatics at king's college london from copenhagen trenberth she is the co-founder of data ethics dot edu and with me in the studio is mohammed el masri who is the chairman of the journalism program at the da institute for graduate studies welcome all of you so the chance us to let me start with you many people would not be surprised that saudi arabia is doing this but they might be surprised at snap chats role in all of this what kind of precedent is this setting and are they now a party to censorship. so so this been several different cases where different companies have been asked to comply with different laws and this is part

of the problem of being a global multinational social media company is that you have audiences in usa in europe in the arab region across a shelf traded every day a lot around the world and so you need to comply with local laws and in this instance that piers that saudi arabia has asked snap chat to block a particular title in this case i just need a channel and it's and then as you know presenter previously said there's two choices that the company can make one if it can say no i'm out of here because this is not something that i want to be party to arctic and say i still want to be part of this geography creation and therefore i'm going to make whatever request the government of that region makes up me and say this case it appears that snap chat has decided that it's going to block the u.s. handle and one thing which is which it probably. should make

a distinction about is where exactly it's blocking. if it is within just the at of beijing and or if it's just within saudi arabia then the government of saudi arabia has legal jurisdiction over it and therefore perhaps it does have a right to stop it to do so but it wouldn't probably be able to say snap chat please block a visit from usa or europe or elsewhere in the adaptation even let's say egypt or. so it's entirely possible that. the users in the large out of the gin. still being able to receive snap chat but just within saudi arabia there does appear to block on chat. peninsula transit what's your what's your view on this i mean snap chat is a private company and they made

a calculation here but what does this tell us about the saudi public's right to know. well of course it is it's a violation of their freedom of speech and that's what snapchat is part of but i'm not surprised about it and that's what we have to think about because snapchat is not. it's not. a non-governmental organization fighting for our rights to freedom of expression it's a it's pure business it's a commercial company and if they want to do business in saudi arabia the of course listen to the government and don't want to be closed down so i the problem is that as citizens we often look at snapped at facebook and all these wonderful platforms as if they're fighting for our rights to democracy but they are not their businesses and they make hard business calculations and that's obviously what snapchat is doing you can't even say it's kind of violating freedom of speech freedom of speech because that's what saudi arabia is doing

a private company can really violate what is only as instantiate a party to that's dying or being true what the saudi government wanted yes they are but i wouldn't expect of snapchat to fight for our rights to freedom of speech i would never expect that from snapped out of facebook by anybody on any private company like that all right muhammad musri should should media companies comply with the individual governments or should they be complying with global censorship standards and if they don't is that going to hurt their brand name as a as a business right when when i saw the story i thought about all the other cases that have arisen over the past several years and i also thought about all of the extensive literature new kind of the academic literature about the internet and about new media and about social media and how they're supposed to be this kind of liberating power associated with these new platforms but we end up having at the end of the day at least in many cases is that power ultimately. ends up in the

hands of in the hands of the governments now the companies. as the other guests of have said have a very sort of difficult decision to make they can either decide to say well no we're not going to compromise on our principles of freedom of expression and we're going to leave this market or they can decide to play ball in which case people will say well you know you're sort of you know compromising your standards and so on and so forth but at the end of the day we have to remember that these are these institutions are not fundamentally moral institutions or ethical institutions they are businesses they are profit making enterprise is so what matters at the end of the day is the bottom line and these companies don't want to lose access to massive markets we've seen it with other companies we've seen in just this past year with apple and amazon in the chinese market compromising right to you know for the chinese government and we see it here with with snap chat they don't want to lose

access to many millions of users in saudi arabia and possibly possibly beyond in the u.a.e. or egypt or elsewhere we'll talk about some of what you just said in a moment but we'll also want to talk about the way some of these laws have been directed at individuals because it is illegal to express sympathy for qatar online in several gulf countries in the united arab emirates it can mean up to fifteen years in prison and a one hundred thirty six thousand dollar fine behind has a similar law and a potential five year sentence along with saudi arabia both bahrain and the u.a.e. block the qatari sports channel b. in in june the u.a.e. lifted its ban in mid july but the channel remains blacked out in behind and saudi so mohammed if i could turn back to you then what does this move say about the power of media and particularly social media in this region. i think it's a number of things i think on the one hand you see that social media sites like

snap chat like facebook instagram and others have an inherent power to the extent that governments. to one extent or another fear them in this case you have saudi arabia clearly worried about their citizen citizenry resorting to the facebook or i'm sorry the snap chat channel al-jazeera snap chat channel so there is that recognition that these sites have a type of liberating power governments particularly in this region in the arab region are not necessarily fans of people being able to transcend these pre-defined limits and bounds that exist on freedom of expression the saudi arabian government is quite used to journalists and news organizations toeing the government line they don't necessarily tolerate deviations and they want to make sure that there is a singular narrative snapshot poses a problem other sites pose

a problem for governments like saudi arabia ok we're going to broaden this out now and talk about some of the some of the previous precedents to this social media sites and frequently face pressure from governments to restrict potentially controversial or sensitive content and facebook refused an egyptian government request to block pages on the arab spring revolution six years ago the facebook complied with a similar request in pakistan the telecoms authority there says facebook has removed eighty five percent of what is considered to be blasphemous content the chinese government has completely blocked facebook since two thousand and nine despite found bugs efforts to change the minds of china's leaders and twitter is about to government requests by geo blocking specific uses depending on where they live russian uses can't access the page of the political right sector because the kremlin says it promotes fascism and google along. with its subsidiary you tube also receive censorship requests from governments most are from russia so popular

trend but let me turn back to you then what responsibility do these companies have i mean you talked all the earlier there about their bottom lines and all the rest of it but doesn't this come with a responsibility to uphold free speech as well well of course they have a responsibility but we have to i think the big problem is that we have given them too much power social media social media commercial entities but for example traditional media like al-jazeera or the guardian or these traditional media companies they are using social media as distribution and that's where the problem is because traditional media will fight this traditional media will do everything for the freedom of speech where as a commercial media social media they they will do everything for likes and shares

and money and that's fair enough but of course they do have responsibilities but they don't want to pay for it look at what is happening at facebook i mean all this really horrible stuff coming out of that social media as well do they have to stop that are not i don't they don't want to pay for that it would be very very expensive for them to do kwanten moderation in the same way as a responsible ethical traditional media company is doing today. mission suster you were saying earlier that snap chat is is is trying to comply with the laws. of saudi arabia and perhaps in that sense they didn't do anything in wrong here and that people are still free to access. in other ways but i guess my question is more about the fact that snap chat has gone along with this. policy and the kind of questions it throws up about.

how how reliable they are as. a broadcaster of free speech. yes so so so i'll be mentally the power is actually as the previous person said. they're all businesses but ultimately the governments do put pressure in various different ways on the parties who have a stake and it will put pressure in various different ways but ultimately the power is still best in some senses with the people because that's not checked cared about it cares about the people it gets support its users that it cares about making sure that it has as large a share as it does now and that its share of users keeps growing now if that it's what it says i think as a comment about the ad a vision as a whole is kind of the balance of power between the government and the people and also the extent to which people care about things like free speech now if somebody

tried doing this a in the western europe or in the usa there might probably be a larger outcry about freedom of expression being violated and so forth the fact that this is not happening it is happening but the fact that it's not happening to the extent that it might have happened in the past and will probably say something about. the other people cared about are rather the position that they had and now these are the. men and their freedoms of expression and the way i view it is that check facebook and others are our core hard businesses but they are just platforms on which users can express themselves and the question is whether the governments allow them to express and the question is whether the users that are serving themselves and their rights and their needs to express that is something that's a larger issue than platforms i think. there are ways to get around this their i

mean if your if your sad if you're tech savvy enough there are things like v.p. ends and all all the rest of it to get to access the content that you want yeah i mean there are but as you said that you have to be particularly tech savvy and i think that if we look at other cases what ends up happening is that people that were using snapchat or accessing older zero they'll find another way you know to to get around the restriction and to access. content one way one way or another but looking at it from another perspective in some ways you could say that the government has already won in this case that the saudi arabian government because they're forcing people to sort of exert extra effort to access information that arguably should be at their fingertips you know regardless of what the government what the government thinks. in the end is this is this kind of policy does it end up being counterproductive both for governments and for private companies won't

people find always find a way. to get the content that they want yes they will but it will be the minority the met the masses the majority will be restricted just like in china there are lots of chinese who but it's a minority of chinese who will get access to western media for example so they will have success i believe the countries in restricting the masses but there are ways around and that's what we could work for than is helping them to use until governments would block that. emission you were shaking your head a little bit oh you don't believe that there are there are ways there are enough ways for people to get around this. oh there are ways i mean as a technical person i can tell you that are hundreds of different ways in which you know people can get around it but what it does is it did during the digital divide it perpetuates different more free. way of expression for

people who can find it on for people who can create we peons for people who know that the opposite is not the only channel maybe there are other different channels maybe. al-jazeera itself can create a completely different channel and there are numerous stories for instance of how dissidents in china are using home and ems to get out on the fact that some of the governmental program firewall programs are looking for certain dangerous words of the look for a home and they use those words but not in the way not with the spellings that the government would expect them so there are different ways in which people can get around it but the point is it's it needs us to be clever creative on expecting us and we're using our creativity towards getting around this is stiction star then in finding solutions to the problem and then expressing ourselves and that that i think is a much more hard thing that we should be worried about because it shouldn't be that

we're creating this very nice social and new media infrastructure and that it's excluding a large proportion of the population who also have things that they want to talk about things that they care about things that are important for the rest of the society and instead it only enabling people by that are able to get around these distractions that that's what he. had what about the digital divide and the fact is he kind of separating people into the ones who are able to navigate and all of these attempts by the government or whoever to block sites but there are you know the vast public who who aren't as. to this you know what does it mean for them . right well i mean i think the professor is absolutely right i mean there's a ton of evidence for the digital divide not only in countries like saudi arabia or countries in the arab region but even in the united states and western europe and

other societies and it's a big problem. because it you know it sort of you know gets right to the core of what these modern societies are about which is you know quality terrorism and so on and so forth but yet you have this this massive gap between the technological haves and the technological have nots or the people who are tech savvy and who can get around government governor strict restrictions and those who can't so what ends up happening is that you have this massive difference in information and knowledge and that affects how people make their decisions in democratic societies but also in non democratic societies. are we seeing a kind of clash of narratives here in terms of the control of information and our social media is this just the case the social media companies are getting caught up in this particularly in the middle east no i think i think

it's a it's a problem all over the concern in the digits and divide we were just talking about is really really interesting because it's not only a question of getting around government restrictions it's also a question of getting around it konami and political manipulation for example just in the western world it's you get totally different prices if you note these different tools like. so if you are tech savvy you can get so many more advantages if you're not take seventy so the problem is all over also in the in the western world so. ultimately whose job is it to decide what what is acceptable and what is not here. so. ultimately no one is going to help us as people we need to help ourselves and i think you know we should stand up for what we believe in and if we believe that freedom of expression is something that we should fight for and so in some

subsidies that is a much bigger issue that is a much bigger plank on which people talk about which reelections are for and one some other societies there are other things which are of interest to maybe traditional way of life it may be following a certain religion it might be other things and we have to decide what is of importance to us and then make our world for ourselves and in ski in this case we're talking about an issue of whether or not people are able to express themselves whether or not other media companies are able to use social media platform to express themselves and if i said and done meant to say that it can't express that that is not something that's allowed then it is in some sense expressing a will of the people now i know that saudi arabia is not democracy so it's not exposing that actually the will of its people in that sense but in the larger

modern society that's kind of howard's supposed to work in theory at least and if it does not work then you know if it's an issue that's very far worse than we should take to the streets and it's happened widely happen even in that world with the arab spring revolution and so forth so it's not something that people care about then it's something that will happen i think that in that sense i'm an optimist. if i know this is a little hypothetical perhaps but if snapshot had said no to this request from saudi arabia. authorities would likely still have found a way to block you wouldn't they and if that's the case then then why did why did snatch and agree to. well look like i said earlier it's kind of they're kind of between a rock and a hard place if they would have said no then saudi arabia would have blocked snapshot all of snapchat not just the al-jazeera channel but the all of snapchat in

saudi arabia so there's the risk of losing quite a lot of business right and then there's you know we understand that this is part of the blockade against against qatada so there's the risk of also losing business potentially in the u.a.e. and egypt and bahrain and possibly possibly elsewhere so you know for me i think this underscores that this blockade against qatada has very little probably nothing to do with terrorism or fighting terrorism it's really about information and ideas just briefly where do you think this fits into the whole crisis at the moment this is just another kind of layer i think it's more evidence that saudi arabia the u.a.e. behind in egypt are opposed to caught on are opposed to al-jazeera for ideological reasons because of ideas because of independent foreign policy right because of al-jazeera is independent coverage sometimes critical coverage of these august autocratic governments and has nothing to do with the blockade has nothing to do with terrorism or fighting terrorism all right we're going to have to leave it

there a thank you to all three of you muhammad musri here in doha nish ancestry in london and piniella tran back in copenhagen thanks very much for being on inside story and thank you as always for watching remember you can see this program again any time just go to our website at www dot com and for further discussion you can go to our facebook page that's facebook dot com forward slash a.j. inside story you can also join the conversation on twitter handle there is at a.j. inside story for me has a peek at the whole team if i found out. in

the next episode of science in a golden age i'll be exploring the contributions made by scholars during the medieval islamic period in the field of medicine. science tend to be a good subject to bring different people from all over the world together with hopkins such like a magical and the more i now know about the more i respect science in a golden age with professor jim attorney at this time on a. a new level of a get me just get they to the initial to be shirley shirley or that they too may be may get the very rich a deal just about indies. but he feel if you look at relieved by look at the shit beautiful meats you don't just go to the fat you. like but. but

he gumball of stuff it doesn't seem like a shell or feel that some of these get out just that i did at a shit. for a man who's decided to break with tradition and train to sail competitively maybe not that we want to present a positive image and to use this to your typical expectation of women for them it's about more than just racing yes you can still be a good amani woman and also a very talented sailor going off around the world showing everybody how strong omani people are al jazeera world meets the first female same crew in the gulf sailing stars at this time on al-jazeera. we understand the differences. and the similarities of cultures across the world so no matter how you take it al-jazeera will bring you the news and current affairs

than much of. al-jazeera. a search for survivors in mexico after a magnitude seven point one quake kills more than one hundred thirty people. i'm richelle carey this is al jazeera live from doha also coming up we will have no choice but to totally destroy north korea u.s. president donald trump takes aim at north korea and iran are his first address to the u.n. calling on the scourge of our planet's. hurricane maria strengthens as it roars to the care they end leaving behind what's being described as mind boggling

devastation plus. you don't wish to pursue what you think it's a shot. the film picked as the best picture of the year israel was denounced by the country's cultural minister i'll tell you why. powerful seven point one magnitude earthquake has hit mexico more than one hundred thirty people are confirmed dead several buildings collapsed and around mexico city and rescue workers are sifting through the rubble searching for survivors earthquake happened shortly after one p.m. local time near published city it was felt in the capital which is about one hundred twenty kilometers away and estabrook reports. the earthquake was powerful and within seconds the swaying buildings began to crack and some crashed to the ground around the capital there was panic inside buildings as people fled to the streets not only that their home when i was on the roof as rescuers tended to

the injured others tried to clear the path for emergency crews. trying to place cars on the edge of the street to allow firemen through so that people are more protected dramatic video showed smoke rising from several areas around mexico city many buildings were reduced to rubble including a school which was destroyed when its upper floors collapsed on to lower ones near mcgill angel mansehra said there were people trapped in some of those buildings throughout mexico city people stood in the streets consoling each other as alarms blared seismologists say more than thirty million people likely felt the quake the u.s. geological survey said the epicenter was near the public town of rabbo so about one hundred twenty three kilometers southeast of mexico city the quake comes just a week after another major earthquake shook the country killing ninety eight people seismologists say tuesday's quake was too large to be an aftershock from the earlier one official say it's still too to early.