because no one cares or if you join us on sat there are people choosing between. eating this is a dialogue i want to get in one more comment because this is someone who's an activist and has posted a story join the global conversation at this time on now does iraq. syrian government forces split to rebel territory and east and go into three reports of a new evacuation of fighters. and welcome to al-jazeera live headquarters in doha with me and as a purana also ahead. question elections indicate right

critical of the fock peace deal a leading. china makes it official lifting the limit on how long paying can remain in power plus. i'm. hearing from climate change to terrorism. syrian government forces have made major inroads into one of the last rebel strongholds east of the capital damascus that divided into three parts isolating the main town of their reports that rebel groups are considering an evacuation do you know what the government that anna holmes has more. for three weeks the syrian army's bombs have fallen on eastern good while its troops have moved in easing into rebel territory average lot of assault on many levels of all but some of the syrian

arab army continue their operations in eastern guta successfully day by day other areas in fast spaces of eastern ghouta are secured. and the last week rebel held territory shrank and split into what syrian state media saying the army had completely surrounded the town of duma now those same government forces have reported they kept the way even further into opposition territory splintering the rebel held territory into three. the bombardment has been ridiculous and indiscriminate monitors and activists say more than eleven hundred people have died since the government offensive began the syrian civil defense accuses government forces of using chlorine gas phosphorous bombs and napalm u.s. defense secretary james mattis wants syria against using chemical weapons situation in eastern good very very powerful and miserable. another rebel held area

feeling the bite of syrian government advances is edlund the largest chunk of syrian territory currently held by the opposition this footage shows russian and syrian government gets striking the same food bank an adlib city syrian government supporters sit it was the command center for the group in charge of it hyatt studied al shan an opposition tweet described it as the base for a syrian risk you teens. many areas in the province of being targeted al-jazeera arabic scurrah spondon to adam abou her same witness the bombardment of the town beneath them. were being at the among the targets where these residential areas several people were killed others wounded civil defense units have been trying to get people out from underneath the rubble there have been global calls for cease fire in syria but syria and russia have paid little mind to the outcry it's a familiar government strategy an intense unrelenting bombardment designed to

weaken and ultimately divide the rebel held region and this strategy appears to be working but at an enormous human cost million to zero now kurdish fighters have called on civilians to volunteer to form a human shield around the syrian city of offering as turkish forces advance turkish troops and free syrian army fighters have surrounded the free and warm they'll enter soon took a donation offensive and afraid in january to clear the area of kurdish why p.g.a. fighters alan fisher has more from gaza and have near the turkish syrian border. enough rain we are hearing that the y.p. g. the kurdish militia are calling on civilians to help form a human shield to place themselves between the y. p.g. and the advancing free syrian army which of course are backed up by the turkish military no it's not just cards who have responded to this call and we hear that there are buses heading towards africa but also groups here in turkey clued in

women's groups and socialist groups over how they will get across the border which is currently closed is another issue entirely in our friend city we see that there is no water no internet and up to three or four families are no sharing each house because families that move from the early stages of this assault are no seeking shelter with friends and relatives seeking shelter essentially where they can the leader of the council enough says the situation is dire and has called on the united nations not only to investigate but to intervene as they want to other news now and right wing political parties have performed strongly in colombia's congressional election they've been critical of the two thousand and sixteen pasting of fark rebels it's the first election allowing fark members to run for the polls serve as a preview for presidential elections in may and as alessandro reports a strong right when sharon could put the peace deal at risk. it's an image for the history books former shrike rebel commander even markets legally voting and running

for office in colombia law basic case does it with i did not think that this would happen so soon but we must recognize one thing that this is thanks to the peace agreement signed and have a momentous event all of us colombians hoped for but now everybody in the country agrees the peace deal guarantees the fark party ten seats in congress even if you colombians actually voted for them. and the peace deal still profoundly divides voters for candidates were pelted with tomatoes and rocks at campaign events. unfortunately our country is deeply polarized trying to repudiate violence a lot of people and or acting violently people have the right to protest but we should do it exclusively through voting these legislative elections set the stage for the upcoming presidential race in may results show

a strengthening of right wing parties the peace deal colombians also voted for two primaries on the right of the democratic center party of former president. easily one attracting over three and a half million votes. and we vote for a country where there is no class based hate but rather brotherhood we vote for a country that has development and that no productive sector is persecuted we vote for a social agenda to close the poverty gap to end poverty we vote for hope. well . controversial but very popular former mayor of and former give me a fighter of the in one thousand movement was the expected when they're on the left yet the right wing primary attracted almost double the number of voters this piped attention so this was probably the most peaceful election day in the country's history with former fired gravels taking part in it and still active rebels

serving a ceasefire yet it also proves that deep resentment many colombians feel towards the feyerick and establishment politicians the results seem to show that the most hard line conservative have a clear shot at the presidency putting at risk the already fragile peace agreement . but with that. to china now with the income. party has paved the way for paying to remain in office indefinitely as voted to abolish term limits for the president and vice president by china correspondent adrian brown has more from beijing. an army of chinese legislators came to the great hall of the people knowing what was expected of them a display of uniform loyalty to the man who could now be china's leader for life for the constitution is in accordance with our country's reality and the wishes of

all the people. this is a big event a very memorable moment in our political life. and historic and controversial moment as well the almost three thousand delegates had been told the amendments were needed because the challenges china faces require a strong leader and a united party. in china's version of legislative government new laws and constitutional changes are always passed unanimously and so it proved to be the case again on sunday when delegates approved twenty one constitutional revisions including the scrapping of term limits for the president and vice president but there was perhaps token opposition to votes against and three abstentions congress officials insist this process was transparent.

the chinese people have had no say in this historic moment critics accuse president xi jinping of building a personality cult indoctrinating the masses with his political philosophy just as chairman mao once did it was done shopping the other towering figure in recent chinese history who'd insisted on two term limits for the president he wanted to avoid a repeat of the cultish devotion that had surrounded mao but analysts say one party rule is once more turning into one man rule the fact of the matter is seeming has hijacked the entire communist party in the country. so we are back to just one person doing the talking one person making the decisions for the entire party and the entire country we are back to the period of the so-called one wars echo chamber. the president's influence is now felt in many aspects of life here she jinping thought is now required reading for all party members study groups of

spread to businesses and universities. parliament also voted to expand the president's campaign against corruption during a five year purge more than one and a half million party officials have been punished analysts say the campaign is a guys for getting rid of potential rivals for now at least though she would appear to have none adrian brown al-jazeera beijing well graham on the web is a research fellow at the institute for defense and strategic studies at nanyang technological university and he says the decision makes she move honorable in the long term. the chinese communist party today is a lot more different than it was in the past you have a lot more competent personalities within the chinese communist party all you have to do is look into the politburo the seven member standing political which is the core leadership of the party and you find the likes of you could jump in one one

tuning and others who are extremely savvy people. do you think of course since you came to power and when you the team was able to consolidate that over time by reading up rivals and getting people who are who support him to be on his side having said what i just did i'm not an apologist or supporting the idea how come the news that we seem yesterday i think on balance this is not a very positive step for china we're living in a very complex time a very complicated global economy and it shouldn't be left to just one person in any government no matter how small or large to precise over the matters of the military economics and society and so for and so the risks for teaching being have have grown tremendously he's put himself in this position where he's he's at the helm but really all of it falls on his shoulders in terms of the successful feel as the country has room for fear six trini little know if you make any missteps and the repercussions are going to be dire for

a country of sites i think it's going to lead to instability in china rather than most of the. still ahead on the bulletin boards in cuba cast ballots in a radical election after the for denying you will construct brothers and ted box office with election laws on the far right bashed the front pads a new name will bring new voices. hello there this is a fair amount of rain over parts of the middle east at the moment the satellite picture showing all the cloud that's marching its way towards the east and some of the wettest of the weather has been over parts of afghanistan three tell you can stand on up into kazakstan lots of rain here and a fair amount of snow to another system is following behind it that all sort of joined together really as we head through choose day more of us are going to see

some wet weather and some wintery weather to towards the west well dry for now in beirut but we do have another weather system that's pushing its way in through turkey so things here will be a little bit wet blustery cheering the day before the towards the south and there's a little bit of cloud is just sinking its way through parts of the arabian peninsula but it's not really bringing any wet weather really to speak of what it is doing is it's changing the wind direction so our maximum temperature will be around twenty nine degrees on chews day the could be a fair amount of dust at times and with an increase in the wind it will feel a little bit fresher than it has been recently found towards the southern parts of africa and here most of our wet weather is in the northern part of our map still stretching down through pulses in bob way and into parts of madagascar so plenty of showers across this region to the south of all of that plenty of dry weather to be found here just in the east this just the chance of one or two showers.

as poverty and despair sweep across ruhi just settlements women and girls are being bombed and given away your refugee camps one when used investigates yet another dark side of the crisis at this time on al-jazeera. al-jazeera where ever you. go to have you with us on al-jazeera these are our top stories so we involve the forces have reportedly divided

a rebel held east of goes into three parts three weeks of heavy bombardment has significantly reduced the size of the rebels territory and left the main town of the isolated rebel groups reportedly considering an evacuation deal china's one communist party has paved the way for xi jinping to remain in office and definitely exposure to abolish term limits for the president and vice president leaders to a maximum of two five year terms and right wing political parties have performed strongly in quite a number of us congressional election and primaries ahead of the presidential vote and may the groups have been critical of the two thousand and sixteen peace deal with fox rebels the elections marked the debut of fox as a political party. now the man expected to be cuba's next president is promising that the new government will be more responsive to its people cubans have been voting for a national assembly which will choose a successor to president raul castro julia galiano reports from havana.

no campaigning just one party and rarely any surprises elections in cuba are carefully managed and this vote the last step before cuba's national assembly chooses a replacement for raul castro was no different. with their ballots cubans essentially confirm the names of six hundred five assembly delegates and electoral process that began months ago and will end on april nineteenth that's when the new assembly forms the council of state which in turn chooses the next president. it's widely expected this man vice president. will be placed castro is the leader who is government that we are electing today will owe itself to the people the people will take part in the decisions that the government takes that government will work based on its relationships to the people and the people can also remove those who don't meet their responsibilities. to generational transition that the cuban government says will guarantee the continuity of the revolution and in

a country where the political power is largely in the hands of the communist party castro won't be stepping down entirely he's expected to remain as first party secretary and continue to be a major power behind the scenes there's a palpable sense of resignation in cuba about who the next president will be in fact with only weeks to go cubans know very little about me give the afghani or any of the other potential candidates one thing there's no uncertainty about though is what the next president's biggest challenge will be upon taking office and that is tackling the country's stagnant economy. over the last decade cuba has made efforts to modernize its economy most notably allowing some private businesses to operate but many here feel they have fallen short of what's needed to improve the quality of life on the island the next president's job has also been made much harder by the worsening relationship with the united states and you can on the collapse of venezuela cuba's main ally in the region just. you know. there will be positive

changes both to our economy and our political because some of the decisions made in the past have become obsolete but i and. we have some big economic challenges ahead in particular the unification of our two currencies which creates a lot of problems but we trust those people in this new government will be able to find the best way forward without ever compromising our peace and freedom whether it's the next leader will find it tough to replace these historically recognized figures but despite the challenges ahead many cubans are hoping this is a moment their government can capitalize on for lasting economic reform julia galliano al-jazeera have an now on tony and more as a latin america analyst and editor in chief of news and news dot com and he says having the vice president make and they ask alan power i won't necessarily bring change to cuba he simply will not have the same kind of authority as the people who came before him the people who were part of that revolution who were who were going

to be icons of a communist cuba so that is going to be an issue for him although again with raul castro still there and still backing him up i don't think that's going to be much of a change the question's going to be whether dissidents and others are more inspired to take action and to protest against the government but i wouldn't hold my breath on that because the tight control that the cuban security apparatus has over the cuban people from the military the police and the this there are things i know who will see on the committees of defense the defense a defense of the revolution which are basically people in your neighborhood who are watching out to see if anything happens in the call the police if they see anything out of line it's just it's so strong and so pervasive that i guess i wouldn't hold my breath that this would be a change in cuba any time soon. now arms sales are increasing around the world with asia and the middle east leaving the demand that's according to a new report by the stockholm international peace research institute that found

regional tensions are driving india's growing demand between two thousand and thirteen and two thousand and seventeen india was the biggest arms importer accounting for twelve percent of the world's total the report also found arms imports into the middle east doubled in the past ten years saudi arabia the world's second largest importer increased its buying by two hundred and twenty five percent between two thousand and eight and two thousand and seventeen eight percent of those weapons were supplied by the us and the u.k. . u.s. president donald trump seems to have backtracked on his call to raise the age limit for gun sales his new plan to prevent school shootings includes strengthening background checks and funding firearms training for teachers but thomas says he wants a recommendation from a new federal commission on school safety before he decides to raise the age limit from eighteen to twenty one gun control advocates called the plan an insult to the

victims of gun violence. the trumpet ministration says there will be no added conditions for talks with north korea donald trump and kim jong il all are set to meet within the next two months the first ever talks between the two nations leaders will be taken as a former south korean diplomat and he says the u.s. needs to be better prepared for talks. the white house the national security council they have added rocker who has a professional you know with long experience in this because they're having this guy so in the north korea before but other than her i mean there are other competent professionals but state department is a problem they don't have a method or to south korea here or those so they have several layers of sr and the one thing that will this will not yet a point is so you know this is a diplomatic game we're talking about therefore no matter how hard trump and the national security council at the white house are leaving the game still at the

state department there's a lot of work to do and they don't have the people so that they'll have more really quickly but in the meantime because of the lack of manpower at the state department probably will continue with the white house the national security council leaving the game for quite some time to france now where the main far right party the national front of being rebranded and about to revive its image possibly to many in the pen say that should now be called the national gathering david chase has more from the. i read the panda wrapped up the risk branding of a party with a classic speech touching all the point she knows will get the cheers from her crown tough on the european union and tough most of all on the effects of immigration. leave us your leg it is legal and illegal immigration are no longer tenable. wrong the french people's money must go back to the french people first.

we no longer have the means to welcome to house to careful or to feed the whole world. but the high point came at the end when she announced her suggestion to rename the party it was here in existence absolute you know it must signal an absolute demand to unite the country in the defense of its identity its prosperity and its security and freedom i therefore propose that the national front become the national gathering live for national non the viendo has some limit on the sure not . so the national front is dead but not quite varied yet the members will have a chance to vote on the name change in the next few weeks for what is also the most important thing for me was to keep the war national in a thing that the world got going its goal here and now the idea is no longer to be a france but to get a people together and. demonstrators

took to the streets of lille to show what they called their contempt for the rebranding of the national front they said it was just another attempt to disguise fascism but back in paris a warning from an expert who knows the party at first and an opposition counsellor it one of the hotlines. let's not forget the national front got the highest score in its history last year the fact she made a fool of herself at the debate doesn't mean the party is finished but. the party's found a pen has now been stripped of his position as on re president of the national front but he can't be written out of history he's just published a for. as for you move his autobiography and it's turned into a bestseller he said changing the name was committing political suicide david chaytor al jazeera live. now something a minute address is an associate professor of sociology at the american university

and she says the new name hasn't changed the party's rhetoric. i do not think this is really a rebranding at all i think it's just a renaming i think especially coming on the heels of having steve benen speak to the congress and say you know it's ok to be racist it's ok to let them call it was you know i don't see how this distinguishes you know distinguishes the party at all from from its past but certainly we're seeing you know a much greater acceptability of the you know phobic rhetoric of anti immigrant rhetoric of islam phobic rhetoric in political parties across across the continent and we're seeing some of that language show up even in more mainstream parties as you know as an attempt to move and draw some of those voters and so i do think that that we're going to continue to see that happening i don't think that that you know is it distinguishes what's what's happening now from what the party has been in the

past now finally this bulletin antarctica is the largest unspoiled will join us on the famous for its wildlife but it's facing multiple threats from climate change to dramatic rise in tourism clucks ongoing peace expedition ship as he looks at the creatures calling the continent. life for the islands fringing the antarctic peninsula is abundant a place of seemingly endless variety the whole region is richly biodiverse a living example of how things are pretty much free from the influence of man. a place to breed feed and grow. its pristine oceans full of marine species including all that it doesn't types of whale but getting to see the astonishing want life here is by no means straightforward. the weather makes everything a challenge bit of a thread on today it's gusting forty to forty three very very good progress in the

not right now back in the i thought the guy. which is where there isn't a hard time we want to visit that is also a colony of about one hundred thousand. and then by radio the argentine base says the winds have become impossibly strong and it now has enough away sixty eight. mission is aborted and we have to wait another twenty four hours before making landfall on penguin island near the reasonably accessible tip of the antarctic peninsula a colony of chinstrap penguins territory with a large group of seals one making the most of the comfortable feathers of the molten juveniles of course the environment where these magnificent animals wildlife is living is incredibly fragile incredibly delicate there's all sorts of threats that they're up against from climate change to cruel fishing and then of course

there's this tourism and the tourists come here the audience close to king george in their masses. some are prepared to pay top dollar to have the and all to experience there are some pressures that come from tourism so in the background we have a two hundred person tours ship take the number of tourists coming down here at say the beginning of the two thousand this was somewhere around four five thousand a year we're now over thirty thousand people a year. two days later we arrive at hanna point on the southern edge of livingstone island here another colony of chinstrap penguins healthy and in good shape they overlook a group of gentoo penguins there's the distinctive beak of the southern giant but showing its young. or elephant seals all different species side by side on a grand scale but across the continent the pressure is building its crazy pace of

change and at the moment colonies like this one seem to be doing ok but all it takes is one bad year and we saw in the east antarctic last year a penguin colony collapse due to chicks born. and and so that the pace of change is so quick we don't want to add additional threats things like fishing which is gradually expanding and is still in pretty good shape but it's apparent this unique landscape needs to be very carefully managed as multiple threats interludes on the horizon. al-jazeera antarctica. and i have a problem and the headlines on al-jazeera syrian government forces have made further and roads into the beveled how territory of east and both are they now control more than half the opposition area and have splintered what's left in rebel hands into three separate pockets rebel groups have reportedly considering an

evacuation deal with the government. why is. it and he says the situation is dire. i don't see any. resume i see the russian airplanes and militias of iranian. known. army coming to is doing. yesterday in there was really. i don't know anything about them. unfortunately the situation here in eastern good very very awful and miserable well also and soviet kurdish fighters have called on civilians to volunteer to form a human shield around the city of a flee in as turkish forces advance al-jazeera has heard reports that womans and

community groups have responded to the calls turkish troops and free syrian army fighters have surrounded the thing and warned they'll enter soon colombia's right wing parties have performed strongly in congressional elections the groups are critical of the two thousand and sixteen peace for fark rebels the elections for the debut of fark as a political party china's one communist party has paved the way for xi jinping to remain in office and definitely as voted to abolish term limits for the president and vice president and investigations underway into why a helicopter crashed in new york's east river the crash was caught on camera by a passer by but these two people were killed while three others are in a critical condition and hospital police say the pilot managed to free himself and was rescued by a tugboat the helicopter had been chartered for a photo shoot. as the headlines on al-jazeera produce stay with us one on one is coming up next thank you very much for watching.

an act of youthful defiance. your turn next to the us of the school they arrested me at home with four in the morning the electric shock treatment was the worse that triggered a revolution. the arrest of those children sparked it all of which became a battle without and that was the beginning from the syria. the boy who started the syrian war at this time on al-jazeera. hundreds of thousands of real hindu.