and the health costs. china's communist party is holding its annual congress what would it mean for the country and its people. on al-jazeera. is not just phone is contributing to sound funk bumper profits if we look at the u.s. economy the moment it does seem to be in pretty good shape up until around two thousand and five greek debt levels were basically stable we bring you the stories that are shaping the economic world we live in counting the cost at this time on al-jazeera . after iraqi kurds vote to secede the government in baghdad turns up the pressure.

again you're watching al-jazeera live from our headquarters here in doha also ahead the u.s. defense secretary and nato secretary general arriving in kabul trying to sell a new afghan policy but may not be all that. verdict guilty local media in thailand say the former prime minister yingluck shinawatra has been sentenced to five years in prison for corruption. new accounts of sexual violence targeting women and. the kurdish regional governments transport minister has rejected a demand from iraq to relinquish control of its ports baghdad says it will ban international flights from landing in kurdish regional airports from friday it follows monday's session vote unofficial estimates say the referendum was passed

russia hold on iraqi and kurdish leaders to avoid pursuing actions that may further destabilize the region let's get more on that for you joining us live from bill is our correspondent key question i guess is what happens next. well that's the key question here when it comes to the airports which is really the . conversation today in this part of the world. civil authority has also notified the foreign airliners. international flights to both the airport and the minister from fifteen hundred g.m.t. on friday our every did say that domestic flights will continue. as . borders as we know as of now the borders are still open whether those are the

ones with iran or with. open and actually the prime minister of the kurdish region . has been as we are talking now just confirmed everything at the moment is as normal what will happen next he asked. this question and he said we're waiting for the developments from the regional governments we're waiting to see what baghdad will actually do beyond the public statements and then we will take. action. any further as we're having this see that the iraqi prime minister has demanded the unknown moment of the kurdish vote so given that seems to be happy or content to go for some sort of stranglehold if needs be on the region of kurdistan how would that be perceived. when i don't think

that would be perceived in any positive light i mean just listening to the words of the prime minister he said the real question is not why did we go ahead with the referendum the real question is why did baghdad let this. why did it we told them more than once that we did not feel heard that we had real fears. everybody ignored it he gave us he gave two examples he said well he was talking about the shia paramilitary forces and he said well we have these forces who have been working and were being secured this part of the country since two thousand and three we took a leading role in the war on mosul and he said well up our military forces have been have been put now on the official umbrella of the security forces they're giving financial support they're given military equipment and we're not given anything he said the same thing about for example the financial aid granted by the

i.m.f. . he said the kurds aren't receiving anything so why are we supposed to feel kurdish now he went on saying that he was hoping that they will be negotiation he did sort of. wasn't very worried about what would happen with the international borders especially the one with turkey underlining that there was a lot of trade going between the two countries that there was a pipeline and. oil that already functioning from here to turkey and is one gas that is in this final stages and is going from here to turkey to europe and that turkey has a lot of financial. gain out of that pipeline so you didn't seem too worried about that but about the relations in baghdad. that is exactly the reaction of baghdad underlines exactly the fears of the kurds and this seems for him that that government in baghdad is a thick terry in government as he put it and that the more they act like that the

more the kurds will become stubborn on their referendum thank you. has taken thirty iraqi federal police officers hostage in ramadi on government controlled areas fighting remains in the city despite security forces retaking it from the group nearly two years ago now last week iraqi forces launched offensives against the last major eisel strongholds near the border with syria and around the northern town the a wheelchair. i woman has died in a rocket attack near the airport in the afghan capital kabul just hours after the u.s. defense secretary james mattis arrived there for a visit two children were injured the tour by masses with the nato chief u.n. stoltenberg fall as u.s. president donald trump's promise to send more u.s. troops afghan security forces are struggling to defeat the taliban the group has been on the offensive since the u.s. led nato combat troops started withdrawing in twenty fourteen we will suffocate any

hope that al-qaeda or dash or carney or the taliban have of winning by killing i want to reinforce to the taliban that the only path to peace and political legitimacy for them is through a negotiated settlement we welcome those who commit to a peaceful future for afghanistan we should port afghan led reconciliation is the solution to this conflict and the sooner the taliban recognizes they cannot win with bombs the sooner the killing will end and recall were not taught the strategy of america and nato is now clear and general mattis has decided that they will send new troops to afghanistan other members of nato as has been requested by secretary-general start and will take part in training and supporting al forces that's how the ban and other terrorist groups have used our people as human shields i have instructed all our security forces that during the operations they have to protect the lives of civilians. thailand's former prime minister yingluck

shinawatra has been jailed for five years for corruption she was convicted of negligence over a rice subsidy plan her government set up before she was toppled in a coup in twenty fourteen the scheme to help farmers lost billions of dollars in law wasn't in court to hear the verdict as she fled the country last month when he has more now from bangkok. it took the nine supreme court judges four hours to deliver their guilty verdict for the former thai prime minister yingluck shinawatra and to hand down a jail sentence in absentia of five years of course the verdict was greeted with sadness and disappointment by supporters of yingluck shinawatra had gathered outside the supreme court here in the thai capital bangkok but there probably also was an expectation that they would be a guilty verdict and some sort of gjelten given that on the twenty fifth of august which was the original date that the verdict was supposed to be handed down there

were some severe jail sentences handed down by the supreme court judges for others involved in deals linked to the rise pledging scheme like a former cabinet minister in china wants government and a rise exporter who are both given more than forty years in jail as being like you know what well her legal team says it will consider the verdict before deciding whether to appeal. ranger refugees who've escaped the military crackdown and me and . the army of raping women and girls four hundred eighty thousand fled to bangladesh in the last month the chief of the un's refugee agency is just back from bangladesh and heard the stories of sexual violence. the combination of limited health facilities who are sanitary and hygiene the conditions and the overcrowded sites you can well imagine he's a recipe for disaster in terms of possible epidemics unicef and probably

a chore working with the government to the ministry of health in stepping up. immunization campaigns that the risks remain very high the other. the other striking feature of this particular refugee flow is the trauma that these people carry with them i've spoken to several women who had been raped or had been wounded because they had resisted rape and most likely those are those who are survivors because other had been killed well in myanmar itself the government denies those rape claims but has also refused to allow in the national observers to investigate john hall has more now from could a polo long across the border in bangladesh. two sisters twenty five year old me and twenty two year old aziza share their story of escape from me and

my both say they were raped by soldiers. the military tortured they murdered our parents even our sisters they took us to the jungle they pushed us down on the ground there were two of them they raped me and then i became unconscious. some people came and rescued us and took us to a group of people who were going to cross the river to bangladesh but they wouldn't take us in the boat as we had no money we told them either you kill us or take us with you. it's estimated that more than a third of nearly half a million refugees who arrived in bangladesh in the past month are women and young girls i met survivors myself who've told me their harrowing stories about how one sister was gang raped and killed in front of her how one was raped and then a baby was killed in front of her they have experienced its extreme amount of pain

the fled some have walked for days not even if you say trauma it's an understatement they are severely traumatized it is of course impossible to verify the stories we've been told but n.g.o.s are hearing this sort of testimony every day now as this vast population of refugees slowly gains access to health and counseling services but despite the best efforts of aid agencies the task of reaching all those in need is nowhere near complete the sisters have had no direct help. we are young girls where can we go we don't have anything left they killed everyone only my sister and i are alive. whether or not sexual violence is being used as a weapon against the fleeing richenda is something that may be proven in time when dissident and sang suchi was fighting for democracy in myanmar she's on record as

saying that rape was used systematically by the army against minorities now as the country's leader she's had nothing to say about the latest allegations nor has her government granted access to international agencies to investigate jonah how al-jazeera bangladesh. in south africa tens of thousands of people are taking part in a nationwide strike against government corruption and unemployment is being led by the biggest workers' union and a branch of the governing african national congress which says the party is suffering from leadership failures the trade union has threatened to shut down the country since he holds banks and the chamber of mines it's demanding the president jacob zuma step down and an investigation into state corruption tanya page has this update from one of the rebels in johannesburg.

some of. the streets. and. her range of issues primarily president jacob zuma to step down. and one in which. to capture. that refers to understanding the belief that some private. decisions. by sight rising unemployment rising. simply unacceptable but the question is really how much influence does have its alliance with the african national congress and the south african communist party but even.

that hasn't. aligned. and that the saudis and is waiting. still to come here and out in this one more space to tweet you won't have to limit yourself to just one hundred forty characters. and it's a welcome break from the fear of an. there x.x. south korea holds a film festival calling for peace. had iran has been spreading from china to south korea and to japan at this combination band one camera from the south one from the north is fairly active and is given seventy six millimeters in the last twenty four hours on the island just the south of the major on to japan and of course it's going to be mostly honshu to see the

rest of that rain push through too as well behind it sounds come out so that in south korea now twenty degrees insall on thursday and a good part of china is finals as beijing is also dry but shanghai is in a rain belt and has been in and out of it for the last day or so whilst the sun returns to japan that rain belt in china brought probably stay more or less where it is drifting slowly south is given equal figures a sixty seven reason twenty four hours in the shanghai and and also the sichuan and near do as i say it's not moving far the same time with a feed of moisture in the south china sea hong kong right on the edge of potential development of thunderstorms again or at least rain showers that's three grand or right back to the border with vietnam so the drive it is becoming a little wetter whereas malaysia still frequently west is going to be joined soon by indonesia the showers are pretty widespread the wet season is showing itself with some force now as it develops.

determined to live life to the. very limited sight. that i can distinguish. because. for inspiring people. as they seek to prove that seeing isn't everything at this time.

headlining story so far today the kurdish regional government in iraq has rejected amman jordan. international flights for landing as of friday. yes from iraq in a referendum on monday. the u.s. defense secretary is in afghanistan told the president that america nato forces will not and. taliban. is in kabul with the. former prime minister of thailand has been sentenced to five years in prison corruption. last month the first ever female convict the. subsidies. the kenyan president to order kenyatta and the opposition leader riley meeting the electoral commission ahead of next month's rerun of the presidential election on tuesday hundreds of people protested outside

the commission's office calling on staff to step down let's go to latest now from nairobi and our correspondent stephanie decker i think it really does depend who you speak to kenyans a very much politically aware educated and they feel passionate about this you have diehard supporters on each side but i think there is also a feeling that people just want to get this done now the fact if you off people here they don't really like to talk about it on camera but the economy is suffering and businesses are suffering foreign investment also something that is pretty much being affected by this because it is this sort of air of uncertainty nobody really knows how this is going to play out nobody really knows what's going to happen to these elections if they do it and indeed take place of course is still a question mark they should but you know whoever loses will be accepted so there is this feeling that people just want to sort of get this over and done with and there is this constant back and forth has been saying of both parties you know in the media politicians accusing each other sorts of issues you know it can get quite aggressive language but the people yes this is

a country relatively on hold twitter is ending its one hundred forty character limits and giving twice as much space to tweet the social media giant decided to change all that after analyzing how much space different languages used to say the same thing increase to two hundred eighty characters is currently an experiment but it is likely to be rolled out to all of us twitter uses let's take that to kate bevan in london a technology and social media analyst great cates great to talk to you again do you think this will actually work. well it actually worked i don't even know if it's actually going to be rolled out actually peter i think there's a lot of backlash on twitter about it and i think as a strong sense that it has got other bigger problems to fix so i do wonder this will ever actually get beyond its pilot stage it's only a very small number of users at the moment is part of the issue here is one of those bigger problems are talking about the fact that twitter has never made money . there is that the reason it's not made money or one of the many reasons it's not

made money is this perceived to be quite a hostile place to users with abuse i'm trolling and of course increasingly of late the rise of the armies of bots who are trying to influence political discourse as well i think it's felt to be an increasingly unfriendly and difficulty use platform that drives away investors and advertisers what makes a facebook an easier platform to use and why the people on facebook say feel safer than they would feel if they were on twitter. i think it's because facebook is a symmetrical platform if you like twitter is asymmetric if your tweets are protected anybody can follow you and in theory anybody can send you a message whereas on facebook you choose more than you interact with you can choose who your friends are you can restrict in a very granular way who sees things i use lists a lot of facebook so for example my mom can't see half of the things i post so it's you have much more control over who sees things and who interacts with you on

facebook on twitter it's much more of a free for all you maybe never want your mom or my mom to see what you would see on facebook but that's a different discussion is part of the issue with facebook and this i mean this is a potential plus the way that facebook is perceived maybe as having softer edges and you can control it more because you engage with it in a different way twitter is there and then it's instant it's quite disposable i guess in a sense. it's disposable and it's a because of a broadcast medium it's also a conversational medium but increasingly it's a broadcast medium and it's a place to where discourse is going to broken down into tiny chunks of narrative but at the so actually very hard to engage with it's you know i have some great conversations on twitter but i've been there for ten years and i've got a nicer community of people there but it's hard it's hard if you're a new user to it to understand how it works in to get a sense of it and it's very frustrating as well because if you're following or trying to talk to somebody you don't know they might not even see your messages these days it's it's not very granular and it's quite hard to navigate in the way

that facebook is more intuitive to navigate and to decide whom what sees what you write do you accept that twitter is argument i mean just looking through some of the tweets that people have been putting up are now part of this experiment two hundred eighty characters in some of these are shakespearean sonnets they're a bit dull they're a bit boring but if your language means you have to use two hundred eighty characters to make the same point that you or i might make in our native tongue in english that surely is a plus there's definite plus for those languages but i think actually to at this point is it's the languages that use the latin alphabet english for example among them that's harder to compress down. it is say for example japanese or chinese where you can catch can very much more nuance in a single character it's actually designed to benefit the languages of the the ones we use most are immense languages i think ok we can count on most people seem to so eagerly and conversation on twitter absolutely kate you and i can carry on this

conversation on twitter when i come off the campus many thanks good to to talk. it would arrive as a marching in london against the company's working conditions the firm is facing major setbacks in the u.k. its license to operate was not renewed in london of a customer safety concerns and unemployment appeal tribunals ruling that it was forcing its drivers to give them a minimum wage holiday and sick pay tains as drivers are self employed and is appealing against both positions but is not just having problems in the u.k. the firm is pulling out of the canadian province of quebec labor will stop operations next month due to new regulations the new rules require drivers to undergo thirty five hours of training and to have a criminal background check validate validated by the québec police force instead of by a third party who is calling on contacts government to reconsider but the promises transport minister says the new rules are not up for negotiation in what's being

seen as a test for donald trump's political pull the president's chosen candidate for a senate seat has lost a runoff election in alabama lose the strange was appointed to fill a vacancy earlier this year but had to stand in a special election to complete the rest of the term he was beaten in the republican primary by roy moore mr moore is a former state supreme court judge who's been removed from office twice for defying federal court orders alabama is heavily republican and will be the favorite to win the seats in the coming election. told from plans to visit the u.s. on into puerto rico which has been devastated by hurricane maria the president's been criticized for his lack of sympathy towards islanders and tweeting that they must repay billions of dollars of debt to american banks if she have a chance of. widespread shortages and desperation now being reported across puerto rico six days after maria hit but at the white house donald trump was

congratulatory about the relief efforts everybody has said it's amazing the job that we've done in puerto rico we're very proud of and i'm going there on tuesday and i think we've done a really good job we're continuing to we are literally unloading on an hourly basis water food supplies the federal emergency management agency says it's provided millions of meals liters of water and shelter u.s. navy says it will dispatch a hospital ship to the territory yet amid criticism of the u.s. administration is not acting speedily to help on monday the governor of puerto rico felt he had to remind the mainland but his territories three point four million people were american citizens in fact a recent survey found that forty one percent of americans didn't think they were with a further fifteen percent unsure the speaker of the house of representatives attempted to change that perception this is our country and these are our fellow citizens they need our help and they're going to get our help on tuesday the governor said he'd spoken to president trump this was his response when asked whether he thought the president cared about his territory i am confident that he does and i fully

expect his support. this effort he has. made that clear to me personally personally so you know and again i want to thank him for acting quickly and some of these things over there also specials that the u.s. is priorities are not just humanitarian work to rico is massively in debt to wall street and don't trust monday night tweets appeared to reassure the bankers that no debts would be forgiven despite the disaster much of the island was destroyed with billions of dollars owed to wall street and the banks which sadly must be dealt with he tweeted in addition questions are being raised as to why the hundred year old jones act isn't being lifted under the u.s. ships and crews can dock in puerto rico with supplies which is long and the price of goods here is far. but on the mainland this also means neighboring countries are unable to give direct help now the administration dismissed such concerns you you

should just send them in because it has more space for. the fight to. bring its estimate of the puerto rico will be without electricity for between four to six months the u.s. congress is expected to begin discussing long term relief efforts sometime next month she had her town see al-jazeera a film festival perhaps the last thing you would expect to find on one of the most heavily defended borders anywhere on the planet but movie fans have been attracted to the demilitarized zone of course that's between north and south korea to explain why he's kathy novak to access this film festival you need more than just a ticket civilians must get military permission to enter this area near the border with north korea high security reminding visitors of the tense situation in this part of the world will you overseas guests see more worried about this location and they think we're hosting this amid heightened tensions but our festival transcends

political ideology. even with the ever increasing nuclear and missile tests from north korea the show must go on organizers trying to add a touch of glamour to opening night screened in the gym of an old u.s. base the feature film old marine boy tells the story of a former north korean soldier who defected across the sea border to south korea and his struggles to support his family. risking his life every day as a compression diver because he feels discrimination against people from north korea prevents him from finding other work some of the movies give viewers a look inside the country that is just a few kilometers away from here but out of reach for the south korean audience filmmakers have gone into north korea to tell people stories and even follow a foreign rock band thank you liberation day is the somewhat bizarre tale of the slovenian band live bach the first rock band to ever perform in north korea it's

one of more than one hundred documentaries being screened with the theme of peace and reconciliation. bringing a sense of kind of i hope there we saw koreans turn get more open access to north korea information and that we can do more to foster more exchanges and bring peace to the korean peninsula in old marine boy the central character of the host says he'll never forget the night when he crossed the border and wonders if he'll live to see the day when the koreas become one country and he can return to his hometown kathy novak al-jazeera camp grieves near the d.m.z. . welcome if you're just joining us you're watching al-jazeera live from your headlines the kurdish regional government in iraq has rejected a demond to relinquish control of its airports by that says it will ban

international flights from landing as of friday unofficial results in nearly ninety percent of kurds voted yes for secession from iraq in a referendum on monday the u.s. defense secretary is in afghanistan where he's told president gandhi that america and nato forces won't abandon afghans to the taliban and other groups james mattis is in kabul with a native chief stoltenberg enemy we will suffocate any hope that al qaeda or dash cannier the taliban have of winning by killing i want to reinforce to the taliban that the only path to peace and political legitimacy for them is through a negotiated settlement we welcome those who commit to a peaceful future for afghanistan we should port afghan led reconciliation is a solution to this conflict and the sooner the taliban recognizes they cannot win with bombs the sooner the killing will end. thailand's highest court has sentenced

the former prime minister yingluck shinawatra five years in prison for corruption she was found guilty of negligence in a rice subsidy case her government set up before she was ousted from power in twenty seventeen shinawatra the country last month. ranger refugees have escaped a military crackdown in me and ma accusing the army of raping women and go four hundred eighty thousand granger have fled to bangladesh in the past month in miles government denies the rape claims but has refused to allow international observers in to investigate. tens of thousands of south africans are holding a big nationwide strike today against government corruption and unemployment the country's largest union and a branch of the governing party who organized the protests they want the president jacob zuma to stand down and an investigation to be launched into those allegations of state corruption. drivers are marching in london against the company's working conditions the firm's license to operate wasn't renewed in london because of

customer safety concerns and unemployment appeal tribunals ruling is forcing it to give drivers the minimum wage and you are right up to date with all the top stories i will see you soon up next elizabeth see it with inside story button. because of all her voice within a referendum with hopes of getting their own homeland the votes rejected by the evocate government and neighboring countries so he's want to construct an ethnic wall so the better end of name for the region is inside story.