u.s. and british companies have announced the biggest discovery of natural gas in west africa but what to do with these untapped natural resources is already a source of heated debate nothing much has changed they still spend most of their days looking forward to from the dry riverbed to my case one five years on the syrians still feel battered or even those who managed to escape their country have been truly unable to escape the war. it's just race four and laughable. on the defensive the white house tries to stop the release of a controversial book about donald trump's presidency. and welcome to al-jazeera life in my headquarters in doha with the end of the brawn i'm

also ahead sign of progress north korea accepts songs offer to hold high level talks on tuesday a so-called bombsite clone sweeps into the east more from there to what states by simple record breaking cold and scrambling to fix a bug found on computer chips tech firms try to patch a security flaw but could affect millions of devices worldwide. the white house is threatening legal action over a damning book about u.s. president donald trump the upcoming book fire and fury inside the trump white house paints a highly critical picture of life inside the oval office and describes the president mentally unfit for the job don estabrook has more. president donald trump's press secretary came out swinging thursday saying americans are more concerned about policy then a new book on the white house i don't think they really care about some trash and

author that no one had ever heard of until today or a fired employee wants to peddle earlier attorneys for the president sent a cease and desist letter to the publisher and author demanding the book not be released they also threaten former white house strategist steve bannon with legal action for telling author michael wolff that donald trump jr was treasonous and unpatriotic for meeting with russians before the twenty sixteen presidential election after excerpts of the book were released wednesday and enraged president trump said of bannan. and he was fired he not only lost his job he lost his mind initially ban and fired off a tweet saying i won't speak about who lost their minds or ever had one but he later tweeted that the president was a great man that prompted president trump to downplay the vitriol at a white house meeting thursday don't really know me very bad last night so you know you obviously changed his tune pretty quick the book is a distraction for

a president who is trying to advance his policies in the face of a deepening special investigation into russia's meddling into the twenty sixteen presidential election author michael wolff says he spent eighteen months and conducted roughly two hundred interviews with president from senior staff during the transition and the first year of his administration in a column thursday wolf seems to question the president's mental fitness for office it used to be inside of thirty minutes he'd repeat word for word and expression for expression the same three stories now it was within ten minutes the book is prompting speculation that the twenty fifth amendment to the constitution could be used to remove the president from office but former federal prosecutor melanie sloan says that he is unlikely to imagine the majority of the cabinet and the vice president of the united states actually sending a letter saying that the president of the united states is mentally incapacitated is very hard to imagine and there are many commentators who believe this could lead

to a constitutional crisis sions sloan says impeachment is a more likely scenario but with the congress still controlled by the president's own party that two seems unlikely at least for now dion estabrook al jazeera washington well as i mentioned and have a port the book is diverting attention away from trump's new policies on thursday he pushed forward on some of them the attorney general reversed an obama policy on marijuana that kept federal authorities from cracking down on the drugs trade in states where recreational use is. loud the government also proposed new rules allowing small businesses then the self-employed to band together to buy health insurance and that as another attempt to roll back barack obama's signature health care law trumps also moving to expand offshore oil drilling under a new five year plan line two percent of the nation's reserves would be opened up to private companies including waters off the california coast torture being

restricted for decades or matley ashley is a senior fellow at the center for american progress and he says trump's plan for offshore drilling is already facing major obstacles. i think there are two kinds of challenges ahead for the trumpet ministration the first is political governors of many coastal states today came out including republican governors governor rick scott of florida and said no way not on our watch are we going to put oil rigs off the coast of florida same with governors of pacific states so it's it remains to be seen whether this plan will weather the political firestorm that it is experiencing today and will extend for months to come and secondly there are huge technological barriers and big safety risks associated with development off these in these areas . it's worth noting as well in the last few days the trip the ministration has weakened safety regulations for offshore drilling so going back to predict water

horizon safety standards so the risks for offshore drilling are simultaneously going up as the trump mr ations trying to push into areas that are on developed let's move on to other news now north korea has accepted the south proposal for talks on tuesday the missing will be held inside the demilitarized zone which is the area between the two countries earlier this week cross border communications between chong yang and some of the result and the first time since two thousand and sixteen kim jong un offered to take part in talks during his new year's address is set to focus on that north korea taking part in next month went to and then picks in the south well let's get more on the smell we're joined by robert kelly professor of international relations and diplomacy at busan university he's joining us on scott from the south and south korea a pleasure to have you with us on al-jazeera mr cattanach before we get to exactly what might be discussed at these talks is this a hopeful start to the can we be cautiously optimistic. yes it is it's always

good to talk to north korea north korea is arguably the most dangerous state in the world and its possession of nuclear weapons makes it even more dangerous so it's always a good idea to sit down with north korea especially when they ask maybe we can get some momentum from the olympics for these talks and we can actually get something that's really important like human rights or nuclear weapons so you know i don't want to get sort of too carried away absent some pretty governments got a little gotten a little bit too excited about this but it's certainly better than what we had in the last ten months well pyongyang kim jong un has said that they want to talk about participating in the winter and then pick seoul wants the nuclear issue to be on the table just how likely do you think that will be i think the south koreans will absolutely bring it up i think it's just a question of how long the north koreans will tolerate that before the talks break down to be perfectly honest i think the north koreans will probably want the talks to dance around for smaller issues like trade and i think north korea is feeling the bite of sanctions north your worries about its axis of global financial system particularly to chinese banks which is something the americans become the target my

guess is that's what the north koreans want to talk about the olympics is something of an olive branch to get that moving but what the south koreans really want to talk about are the nuclear weapons right i mean south korea could be devastated by those nuclear weapons the nuclear weapons could provoke the americans to strike north korea which could lead to a war. and that's what everybody's really worried about and so i imagine that's what the talks will be about in the southern side of the nukes first and the american administration have said that you know they're pleased that these talks are taking place and we've had the u.s. and south korea postponed and their joint military exercises which always aggravate the north the u.s. administration is saying that this isn't actually because of the talks it's because of the pics but is that a not very positive sign you know does that help sort of create a good environment for talks. yeah and that's the hope right i mean we're not really sure quite what will get the north koreans to the table right i mean we really we really are on the outside we really are rather desperate to get the north koreans to come and talk to us not just about sort of like what they have but also

is it safe and you know try to get them not political proliferate i mean a lot of questions we have about north korea's nuclear weapons program people worry about your noble style incident out here right so anything that gets them talking right if it requires the olympics or maybe like a family reunion thing or something shared music events or something like that there are lots of these kind sort of low level person a person thinks of north korean the past my it's my concern and the commander of u.s. forces in south korea said this to just in the past few days that we've had these things before these kinds of like good moments that didn't actually really go anywhere and that's ultimately what really matters right with the north koreans really deal when it comes to the table i mean it's nice that they're athletes column and everything it's good it's not bad but it's going to actually lead to something in the past it has not and could it lead to something do you think this time because you know you say that the world is desperate to on this issue to engage with north korea and to think that pyongyang is more desperate than it has been because of the series of sanctions that have been possible that will pasta over the last year yeah it's hard to know just how much north korean sanctions

actually bite i mean this is really really big debate out there my own sense is moderately so my own sense is that the sanctions make it harder for north korea to advance the nuclear program but can't stop it all together it makes it harder for the north korean elite to get access to luxury goods but can't stop it altogether so the sanctions cause moderate pain but i don't know if that pain is enough to get the north koreans to seriously deal on nuclear weapons the north koreans have a pretty big card now i mean nuclear weapons are really really big thing the world has tried for twenty years to stop them from getting them they got them anyway they're not going to deal in nuclear weapons unless they get some really really major concession they're going to ask for a lot and we just have to see what it is that's a kind of thank you as always for your time on those that set off a county that one has a life and there's some thank you. peru's former president alberto fujimori has been released from hospital he was pardoned last month by president kaczynski on health grounds triggering days of protests the controversy over his pardon also saw

three cabinet ministers resign in as many weeks fujimori was serving a twenty five year sentence for corruption and human rights abuses during his rule . large parts of the eastern u.s. on the grep of a historic one to storm system being called a bomb site on this map shows the areas that will see the worst of the record breaking low temperatures the national weather service says heavy snow can force winds and tidal flooding expected until late on friday when the storm moves towards canada well the extreme weather has travel chaos with thousands of flights canceled leaving many travelers stranded at airports. reports from new york. a large chunk of north america was already in a deep freeze now the northeast coast is being hit particularly hard from a winter blizzard massachusetts bearing the brunt of it blowing snow made printer white out conditions along the coastal regions of the state there was icy flooding . in the seaside town of scituate massachusetts boats were seen floating in icy

waters all of the northeast of the u.s. was hit with what meteorologists were loosely calling a snow hurricane it closed many schools and government offices in new york heavy snow and particularly high winds nearly brought the city to a halt and by afternoon most businesses had closed up for the day the mayor declared a winter storm emergency and asked residents to stay indoors. this is a serious serious storm between the very low temperature the strong winds the driving snow everyone should take this one very seriously and take precautions that conditions brought airports to a standstill thousands of flights canceled in the northeast leaving travelers either queuing up to rebook or stranded unsure of when they might be able to fly after it was canceled and we never got any information it would be canceled. or

delayed and we're not sure it would be on the plan to see further south than georgia waterfowl. ins were no match for the cold air site where temperatures this low are highly unusual this is the first time five years have seen snow even colder this much space but back up in the northeast the situation could get worse overnight the governor of massachusetts saying friday likely won't be any better a foot of snow wasn't enough the forecast predicts single digit temperatures to move in on friday a storm that hit hard when the temperatures now expected to dip down again to minus twenty degrees celsius and below there seems little chance of much melting away gave rosendo new york. you know lots more ahead on al-jazeera a good struggle to call it but the henge of behaves in crisis but tens of thousands of miles expected the seattle os. i'm going hey in northern thailand home to many

ethnic minority groups many people living in these hills have lived here for generations but still can't officially call thailand home. from long flowing island winds to an enchanting desert breeze. hello there are some of us in the middle east we're seeing some very heavy rain and a fair amount of snow to one system that's moving away towards the east that one's fizzling out but the system that we're really looking at is towards the west it's been giving us some heavy rain already to parts of turkey and now is stretching towards the south as well say through lebanon all the way up into turkey it does look very very wet and over the mountains we're looking at some snow that system who well give us a problem with flooding and landslides before eventually clears away and it should clear away quite readily so saturday should be

a brighter day by day getting to around sixteen degrees which is sixty one fahrenheit now a bit further towards the south and here in doha our temperatures hovering around twenty four but i think it will get a little bit warmer as we head through the day into saturday twenty six degrees will be the top temperature and then the winds will be help as we head into sunday i mean further towards the south and we've got all storm that we've been watching that's just grazing the east coast of madagascar that's going to give us some torrentially heavy downpours it is likely to give us a problem with flooding and with some landslides as well so major problems here in the eastern parts of madagascar and the main problem with this storm is due to the fact that it's moving quite slowly just edging a little bit further south which as we head through saturday but still giving us an awful lot of rain there with sponsored by the time. you are making very pointed remarks whether online the main u.s. response to drug use and the drug trade over the last fifty years has been criminal

minds or if you join us on sad no evil person just wakes up low within the morning and says i want to scour the world of darkness this is a dialogue and that could be what leading to some of the confusion online about people saying they don't actually know what's going on join the colobus conversation at this time on al-jazeera. good to have you with us on these are our top stories u.s. president donald trump has tweeted saying an upcoming book about him is full of lies the book paints a highly critical touch of life inside the oval office and suggests that the president is mentally unfit for the job the white house has threatened legal action

north korea has accepted the proposal for talks on tuesday leader kim jong un. said he'd take off during his new year's interests discussions will focus song north korea's participation in next month's went to olympics in the south and large parts of the eastern u.s. so in the grip of a historic winter storm system being called a bomb cyclonic new york's mayor has declared a weather emergency with forecasters predicting up to twenty five centimeters of snow. and explosion in the afghan capital kabul has killed at least eleven people and wounded twenty five others i still has claimed responsibility for the attack which targeted security personnel the blast happened as police but carrying out an operation searching for people who were suspected of selling alcohol illegally up the last. couple. a suicide bomber detonated his explosives among the crowd of protesters on thursday now the protesters were demanding their business is to be

. afghan police have been greeting businesses in shops in kabul. where these shops are reported to be selling illicit substances like alcohol which is banned in afghanistan. were demanding their shops being opened afghan police try to stop these protestors clashes broke out among the protesters and police and in these clashes number of protesters and to police wounded now taking the advantage as a suicide bomber detonated his explosive among the crowd of police and. protesters . and it turned the whole protest into a blood shed by killing number of people and dozens of people wounded. save the children says thousands of pregnant women and new mothers and one hundred

refugee camps. an urgent need of care the aid organization says it expects as many as forty eight thousand babies to be born in the camps the fear that's more than one hundred thirty women a day giving birth often in unsanitary conditions and without adequate medical help there are now more than eight hundred fifty thousand refugees and. it's estimated that sixty percent of children and almost five percent of pregnant women or mark a is a conflict and humanitarian advocacy adviser at save the children and he says there are limits to what aid agencies can. it is six hundred fifty thousand refugees who came over in the space of just a couple of months into an area that wasn't really prepared to to except them in terms of the conditions the size of these camps the sheer scale of it is like nothing i've witnessed was work as an aid worker and there is huge issues now there in these camps and just the die a living conditions that agencies like save the children are trying sure these one

will women vulnerable children dying perish from completely preventable causes there's just so many people who are desperate and completely in need of humanitarian support and there is only so much that agencies can do to to meet those needs and in fact on my last day in the camps just before i came home we had a very young child probably the smallest baby ever seen coming to one of our health centers a boy in by on and she'd been born prematurely. about three hundred meters away from the health center in and literally on the bamboo on the top pulled in and it was already too late and you know we were unable to rescue that child and they perished and unfortunately that was a real him home is tragic you know when you're working on these responses that actually there's only so much you can do and die situation now is that even the children who do survive those who are born who are healthy the conditions are so

bad that there's a real very large chance you know they'll be set for disease to money attrition and that they might not reach their fifth birthday now thailand is working towards its goal of eradicating statelessness by two thousand and twenty four more than four hundred thousand people without citizenship far very distant with the thai government but the actual number is thought to be more than three million many ethnic minorities living in border areas wayne haven ports from maytag. in the hills of northern thailand there are millions of people whose lives have been hanging in the balance for years people in this village in chiang mai province belong to the ethnic group whose ancestors migrated around the region centuries ago facing persecution along the way those living here now have been in thailand for generations but many still don't have type paperwork the village chief says he was the last person here to be granted citizenship sixteen years ago. in the past i

only had a car that identified me as a highlander but now i have a tiny nationality car i'm very happy when i have money i can buy everything i want i can buy a house a car i'm glad those things remain a dream for so many others like hmong tong d who was born in thailand to parents from me and my eight years ago he won a paper plane throwing competition and was granted a temporary passport to represent thailand at a competition in japan the government at the time promised he would be granted permanent status upon his return. he's now twenty and is still stateless he works part time in a drone shop and teaches stateless children how to fly them. i feel very sad because people promised they would give me time nationality they were senior people and had promised me when i was just a little boy but they broke their promise. last year the military government valid to grant time nationality to another eighty thousand people but that would still

leave hundreds of thousands if not more waiting there are many challenges facing stateless people in thailand they have to ask for permission before leaving their village they have difficulty accessing proper education or employment and can often become victims of corrupt government officials trying to take advantage of their vulnerability in fact in the last few years many people have had their id cards revoked after it was found they had paid bribes for them at this small government office alone four thousand corrupt cases were uncovered the government sent in more staff to resolve the problems but those in charge say the workload is huge. this is a very delicate job and it can slide into corruption before we have to be careful that's why we can only process two nationality cases per day. for people waiting it's not just a case of having an id card it's a matter of dignity pride and a sense of belonging after generations of uncertainty when hey al jazeera may turn

district thailand. to south africa now where eighteen people have been killed and more than two hundred injured in a train crash many of the victims had been on they were home after the holidays when a truck smashed into the carriages at a railway crossing tanya page reports from johannesburg. the shosholoza main is a popular train for families during the busy holiday season and it was hitting from the beaches of port elizabeth to johannesburg that civil hours south of the city it collided with a truck and trying. at a level crossing officials say the driver had tried to bache the train across the track he walked away with minor injuries you can see if we got the clock the driver was taking turns and we thought that he was going to go through. with you know the train was going to hit in the dark has caused

a lot of lives. half of the carriages were old and burst into flames the train was carrying about seven hundred people tourists families and workers who are just said goodbye to loved ones hitting back to their jobs after the christmas holiday stunned travelers waited by the road for buses to complete their journey conscious that for many families there will be no happy homecoming tunney a page out zero johannesburg and for the latest now in our series looking ahead to what we think will be some of the biggest stories of the year we had a can to bring in england the european union says it wants albrecht's that negotiations to be completed by a tub or that there was much to do before then i u.k. correspondent on a b phillips explains. on a busy holiday. the town's deep delicious tree and one which voted in favor of brecht's it by almost exactly the same percentage as the entire u.k.

so a good place to find out what people now think about breaks it and whether to reason may can meet the challenges of twenty eighteen she's tough. again she's not all madam i wear what i say she just rolled over for she they support our interests robert a first of them used by select in order to excrete tricked this law. also come quick. i think the economy i think it's embarrassing. i think. yeah. just like the people of canterbury the governing conservative party and the opposition labor party are badly divided over breaks in twenty eighty the realities of what it means will become much more tangible

a prime minister to resign may and labor leader. will struggle to hold their parties together. the prime minister faces a dilemma does she choose a so-called soft breaks it that keeps britain closely aligned to the e.u. to minimize economic disruption. or does she choose a heartbreaks it bore divergence from europe both freedom for britain to make its own decisions but also a risk that it becomes a poorer more isolated country. corbin is seen by his supporters as the prime minister in waiting but he too has dodged the most difficult decisions on bracks it if he wants to lead the country labor's ambiguous some say confused position will have to become much clearer in twenty eighteen. scottish nationalists and their leader nicholas sturgeon had a disappointing twenty seventeen support for independents dropping but if bracks it

talks flounder they will sense opportunity so which way will the political winds blow for the future of the united kingdom and not just its leading politicians a crucial year barnaby phillips al-jazeera countering. now tech firms have admitted a serious carol and chips that pallet billions of computer smartphones around the world so the experts are now scrambling to fix the issue the fourth sensitive information stored on the chips becomes vulnerable to hackers as rob reynolds reports. the world's biggest technology companies are scrambling to fix critical cyber security flaws that could compromise every computer smartphone and server sold in the past twenty years packer's if they are able to install some malicious software on a computer and then go the extra step to take advantage of this problem they can

access some really sensitive information including passwords encryption keys that let them access even more sensitive data security researchers discovered vulnerabilities in computer chips used in nearly all devices the flaws dubbed specter and meltdown by security experts would allow intruders to steal any data on the systems companies involved including apple microsoft and google the flawed chips are made by intel a r m and a m d google's project zero security team said it found the flaws sometime last year the company announced details of how it is working to protect users of google cloud and android devices it says a new version of the chrome browser debuting later this month will include fixes microsoft is also developed an emergency patch that will automatically be applied to all devices running on windows ten apple has not publicly disclosed any fixes

for its operating systems those patches will address the melt down bug but they could significantly slow down device performance in some cases by as much as thirty percent if i have news for a vote if you've got no device it'll become more vulnerable to hackers if you go to a new device. it may slow down if it's a government chip and saw that the other flaw specter is harder to fix and will ultimately require a redesign of the chips themselves. and again on the problem and the headlines on al-jazeera u.s. president donald trump has tweeted saying and upcoming book about home as full of lies the white house has also threatened legal action fire and fury inside the troubled white house paints

a highly critical picture of the current administration the author michael wolff also suggests that trump is mentally unfit for the job. north korea has accepted the south's proposal for high level talks on tuesday discussions will focus on the pyongyang's participation at next month's went to olympics in the south well the announcement came hours after the us said it's agreed to delay add your joint military exercises with south korea until after the games rose for the president alberto fujimori has been released from hospital as part of last month by president petro pablo kaczynski on health qualms triggering days of protests for the boy was serving a twenty five year sentence for corruption and human rights abuses during his rule . large parts of the eastern u.s. are in the grip of a historic winter storm system big court a bomb site clone new york's mayor has declared a weather emergency with forecasters predicting up to twenty five centimeters of

snow. an explosion in the afghan capital kabul has killed at least eleven people and wounded twenty five others has claimed responsibility for the attack which targeted security personnel the blast happened as police were carrying out operations searching for people who were suspected of selling alcohol and legally the president of togo has broken his silence following months of protests against his rule. demonstrations have been taking place since august with a dozen deaths reported protesters want. presidents to two terms in office and his father before him have ruled the west african nation since my nine hundred sixty seven. and china at least three airports have been shot and nine others are experiencing delays because of heavy snow fall the weather has been raised to its second highest level of the central northern and eastern regions could see up to thirty centimeters of snow. those are the headlines on al-jazeera but do stay with

us the stream is coming up next thank you for watching. valued as a gem of africa my ruby has gone through many changes over the past decades. travels to the kenyan capital to hear from those who witnessed the city's progress to becoming a metropolis and discusses where it's heading now at this time on al-jazeera. welcome to the new year of the stream. ok now. meet driverless cars and. all once part of some fantasy but the future is here right now today on the street. the story of.