two women accused of killing the strange half brother of north korean leader kim jong un have appeared in court in malaysia to hear the closing arguments in their trial see the i.u.c.n. in the one three kwang are accused of attacking kim jong nam with a nerve agent in an airport terminal in kuala lumpur last year the pair could face the death penalty they pleaded not guilty. the u.n. says forty five thousand people are fleeing the fighting around the city of daraa in southern syria they're heading for the border with jordan but its government says it won't let them in hama times reports. as the battle for intensifies pro syrian government forces say they've taken control of the two towns above sort of how dear and. in the eastern that are countryside videos like this one purport to show troops many of whom are believed to be iranian backed militia members entering sort of how do you on tuesday the town has come under heavy bombardment and its capture is the first major government advance in this offensive that will

allow the syrian army to advance more southwards thought of. the city of that i take it i think that connecting. with that and occupying the valleys of the which we have full of. groups. forget that the group that will allow. me to advance first that i first thought of towards the city of that. by cutting off a key rebel supply line in our province more pro-government troops will be able to move in retaking the entire province of that i would give the government control over its border with jordan all the way to the israeli occupied golan heights. and in the extremely complicated terrain of syria's war analysts believe deals have already been made i believe that. the americans that we have

a good deal with the russians now they are going to stay out of this of this of this anyhow and the city of beijing will take control of that will be good for everybody what is a need for the russians for jordan because jordan also although the jordanians actually but it concerned about any new influx of refugees inside job done but they want very much actually. to open the border crossing with syria because economically this is a very important lifeline importer the jordanian economy according to the united nations forty five thousand people have so far fled the violence and headed toward the border with jordan concerns are growing about the humanitarian situation no matter the regime's recent advances rebels say they will continue to fight even as many wondering if this fight may be coming to an end. as. the u.n. says it's counted in more than eight hundred cases of children being used in the fighting in yemen a new report accuses both who theobald's and this idea marathi coalition of

recruiting child soldiers some as young as eleven years old and says up to seventy six were used on the frontlines many got to check points in government buildings and took equipment to military positions over him call hubby is a political analyst who specializes in the yemen conflict he says the u.n. has an obligation to hold those who recruit child soldiers to account. recruitment of sheldon and using them as shields and bringing them to the. you know word zones two to being gay than the conflicts and the wars and the killings it's a crime against humanity all parties the saudi led coalition and the whole thing is have committed crimes and crimes against humanity and yemen and in particular against shoulder and they got them out they will move them out of schools they recruit them they do all kinds of violations that actually is a violation to the local law and the international laws and i think this is all

these people you know militias and the coalition need to be held accountable this is not new and to be honest this is only a fraction of what is being done to the shoulder and the future of yemen these are the future of yemen and to kill the future of yemen killing the sheldon of yemen and without any accountability without any transparency this is a serious problem going into the future and i think the u.n. has an obligation to do what's right for yemenis and to hold those who committed these crimes accountable still ahead on al-jazeera in malaysia police say they plan to question a former prime minister after a raid on his home. divers into the flooded cave complex in northern thailand searching for a missing football team. well

in places i can or quite across the middle east so much as catch one or two showers just around the caucuses maybe the. towards the himalayas but this pretty much wall to wall sunshine not too much going on that says around thirty six celsius in tehran forty three for baghdad a forty one there for kuwait city pleasant sunshine around that is the side of the med by rate of around thirty celsius similar values for jerusalem. as we go on to the latter half of the week there you go is pretty much dry or the waiting for that dry weather down across the robin peninsula. sunshine then forty two celsius not quite as hot as it has been recently i still plenty hot enough more clout there across southern parts of the peninsula of course we got the southwest mostly feeding a little more moisture to southern areas of yemen southern parts of i just catch your spot of rain but for most it's going to be try and set it down hard around forty one forty two that over the next couple of days hot and dry to across much of

southern africa to see want to see showers around the southern cape may be pushing over to ward southern parts of mozambique but essentially it looks fine and sunny for central parts of africa the showers the seasonal rise rumbling away from the ethiopian hadas right into the gulf of. examining mandatory sentencing in the u.s. if the state of florida requires the rest of my life in here as a tradeoff for my family's life pardon i'll do it if the defendant goes to trial the judge has no option but to give the mandatory minimum they were complying with this judge gives you five years and this judge gives you twenty years so the legislature acted to make a difference exploring the dark side of the american justice system with joe byrne and on al-jazeera.

you're watching al-jazeera a reminder of our top stories this hour the u.s. supreme court has not only voted to uphold president donald trump's travel ban on people from five muslim majority countries from calls it a tremendous victory for the american people the ban prohibits most people from iran libya somalia syria and yemen from entering the u.s. . unless the international is accusing me and mines army of carrying out a planned and systematic campaign against that it can get its latest report names thirteen military personnel it says are responsible for war crimes including murder rape and forced starvation and human rights group says they should be tried at the international criminal court. proceeding and government forces say they've retaken

two towns in the strategic province of the the u.n. says at least forty five thousand people a fled the intensified fighting in the south there heading for the georgian border but the government there says it won't let them in. malaysia police say they'll soon call in former prime minister najib razak and his. wife for questioning over allegations of money laundering and corruption items seized from property linked to the couple have been valued at more than two hundred fifty million dollars among them a collections of luxury handbags worth twenty three million dollars and twelve thousand pieces of jewelry is being investigated for allegedly stealing billions from the state fund during his nine years in office or a son was political secretary in office from two thousand and nine until two thousand and eleven he's now working as an independent political analyst and he's joining us now live from kuala lumpur thank you very much indeed for your time sir

we should stress that of course is denying the allegations that have been put forward and so far he's only been brought in for questioning rather than being charged with anything but what possible explanation do you think he could give for the items that are being found in his heart. why he gave the explanation. of the month ago when they were first sort of taken away that this was part of the political contributions and it was supposed to be used by elections and so on but i think this sort of messy finds it's all need the latest in a series of similar finds what a past few years and it's precisely this sort of a messy fines which are sort of problems that the malaysian voters and is partially to vote out the form of government is it normal in malaysian politics for people to receive handbags and jewelry as donations to

a political campaign. no i don't think so but you see during the election anything can happen i think those handbags those juries those watch is a bit difficult to explain away the cache thing at least. from the perspective would be explained away as politico contribution this was money that was placed into his a bank account which he says he identifies or assumed were political contributions but i believe u.s. investigators suggesting how to originate it in the one m. d. b. fund that he had originally set up given your knowledge of the man you worked with him for some considerable time do you believe this is the kind of thing that he would allow to happen that he would allow given the investigation that's going on that he would allow the items like millions of dollars worth of handbags and

jewelry to remain in a property that he owns given that there is an investigation going on why i think yet to look at the malaysian political climate and culture. let's say fifty to sixty years in general and that is money and politics they do go hand in hand and events senior government officials there's a certain expectations sometimes not even from your own perspective but from the perspective of your supporters your voters your factions and so on such that you should be leaving in some sort of luxury exude that kind of image then you're not considered to be a very successful leader so the shot i would say is yes it is sort of commonplace for a lot of senior government officials to do so. it's interesting that you should say that they have to have this level of wealth in order to be able to demonstrate that there is success we are talking about millions of dollars in items and jewelry and

money in his bank account but let's talk about the political situation whatever the outcome of this case there's no question of course this investigation is politically going to benefit to some degree the marketeer government which initiated again oh yeah of course a popular game on even i would call it popular thirst for some sort of thorough investigations into the end. of the form a government former administration to in the sense of as we now find out massive finds of cash and juries have watches and so on and also of cause the missing funds from the one company i don't hear it's not only that you know please go on just not only yeah it's also some sort of popular request

for it and i think that's did that place of many major road in terms of why. voters voted in the new government and that is to undertake this series of thorough investigations or isn't very interesting to get your view on this thank you very much indeed for your time rescuers remain confident they'll find twelve missing footballers and their coach alive four days after getting stuck in a flooded cave in northern thailand they are believed to be several kilometers from the entrance and they've been stranded since saturday when heavy rain blocked to their only exit scott tyler has the latest from chang right. here on the fourth day of searching here in the cave complex rescue workers are continuing but the rain heavy rainfall overnight from tuesday into wednesday is really stymieing their efforts we were just seeing rescue workers teams of rescue workers bringing down very large hoses and this is part of the process of them trying to pump out all the water that's been going into this cave complex that's preventing them to get to

those stranded footballers and their coach we know that there have been other efforts have been ongoing you know at the end of day tuesday there were three kilometers in pumping some of the water out and they had electrical lines and strong in there too to run the system here because of the heavy rain overnight tuesday wednesday and wednesday morning that they had to retreat a little bit we don't know how far back but they've been stymied they've had to come back and kind of reduce their footprint inside this cave complex we also know that there are two helicopters standing by to go up as soon as the cloud cover clears one is a blackhawk helicopter that seal members will go in and with the idea hopefully there's some openings in this cave complex mass of those a kilometer then that there could be some openings where they could repel down and try the rescue effort that way the seal team members we know now that there are forty one on site other army troops have been marching through the jungle around this area also trying to find any way in now something that happened on wednesday

morning you know this is a football team a youth football team from the local area here some of the other members of that team came here to talk to rescue officials this is a facility that they have used as a team as a training facility but also as recreation in fact when they came here on saturday afternoon it was after a practice met the team members here coming to talk to the rescue workers to give them any information they can but also to sit with other family members who are here still and have been here since saturday afternoon. zimbabwe's two main political leaders have failed to attend a peace pledge signing in the run up to next month's election president emerson among god why an m.d.c. leader nelson chamisa missed a meeting in the capital city it comes days after the president escaped unhurt from a grenade attack at a rally in the city of bull away a how has more from hadi. some of them bob in say they are disappointed after saturday's explosion they expected to see president and and the main opposition leader nelson chamisa at this peace signing ceremony saying that they are committed to peace come the elections in july

but none of them attended to some of the bombers are asking how serious are politicians leni about making sure that this election in july is peaceful we saw earlier there was a small opposition parties in the room were attending the signing ceremony they were very unhappy with the electoral process they say they feel that the electoral commission is siding with the greens on a pier party and they are really worried that zani could rig this election or one man had to be dragged out of the room by the police because he would not keep driving keep shouting on and on again that he feels and this election will not be free and credible early on in the day members from there's an e.p. if you can he gave their version of what they think happened at the explosion on saturday in pull away they say they call it an act of terrorism is it has nothing to do with internal party divisions and they say from now on if the security forces contradict the president and they'll have to do it themselves and one thing they plan to do is to have to form a human shield at the next rally with just

a very few people to get close to the president. well it's been another dramatic day in the world cup in russia argentina nigeria to advance to the final sixteen croatia secured a late when over iceland earlier denmark drew with france to book its place in the knockout stages and put who beat australia to record their first win at the world cup since one thousand nine hundred seventy eight and the richest in reports from some petersburg. argentina came into this game with their stomach for the fights in the form of their leading lights both being questioned but you're right leno messi off at your peril after a couple of disappointing games he was back with an early goal in this match against nigeria nigeria needed at least a point to have a chance of reaching the last sixteen or equalized early in the second half with a penalty from victor. he says but argentina got the winner they needed three marcus rowe how and they will now face france in the last sixteen caray share the finish top of the group and they'll be taking on denmark. ok let's look ahead to

wednesday's action in russia in group effort south korea takes on twenty fourteen champion germany and mexico faces sweden the koreans have already been eliminated but any of the other three could still secure spots in the round of sixteen mexico currently leads the group later group e.t.a. wraps up its games as serbia takes on perennial powerhouse brazil and switzerland is going to play costa rica this group's been surprisingly competitive with only costa rica out of the running. of the some of the headlines on al-jazeera the u.s. supreme court has voted to uphold president donald trump's travel ban on people from five muslim majority countries some calls it a tremendous victory for the american people the ban prohibits most people from iran libya somalia syria and yemen from entering the u.s. . this is

a great critically. we have to be tough and we have to be safe and we have to be secure at a minimum we have to make sure that we vet people coming into the country we know who's coming in we know where they're coming from. you just have to know who's coming here meanwhile seventeen u.s. states are suing president of trans administration for splitting up migrant families they want to force officials to reunite children with their parents two thousand three hundred children have been separated in recent weeks signed an executive order this month to end separations. i missed international is accusing me in mazar me of carrying out a planned and systematic campaign against their opinion its latest report the names thirteen military personnel it says a responsible for war crimes including murder rape and for starvation the us military has sent a third aircraft carrier to patrol the south china sea washington's been critical

of china's growing military strength a new manmade islands the u.s.s. ronald reagan docked in the philippines capital manila after sailing through the south china sea as part of a mission to reassure allies in the area. two women accused of killing the a strange half brother of north korean leader kim jong un have appeared in court in malaysia to hear closing arguments in the trial city i used and accused of attacking kim jong nam with a nerve agent in an airport terminal in kuala lumpur last year malaysian police say they'll soon call in former prime minister najib razak and his wife for questioning over allegations of money laundering and corruption items seized from a property linked to the couple have been valued at more than two hundred fifty million dollars among the goods were a collection of luxury handbags worth twenty three million dollars. and those are the headlines the news continues here on al-jazeera after listening post by phone.

seven billion in this. one is still. the monster the. tonight think of him and forcing him into terry increases. like a lot of pressure bringing it. looks like i'll. face. ok next. time. hello i'm richard burton you're at the listening post here are some of the media stories we're tracking this week the war in yemen will the latest coalition offensive finally get this story the kind of coverage it deserves journalism in syria suffers from a different kind of problem does the truth even stand a chance that a brutal murder of a kashmiri editor sends

a chilling message to anyone trying to report from the reacher and an american cartoonist becomes collateral damage in donald trump's war against the u.s. media he's out of a job. for a conflict described by amnesty international as the forgotten war yemen has found itself in an unusual place over the past week in the news the reason for that is the assault by the combined forces of saudi arabia and the united arab emirates on the port city of data the u.n. already calls yemen the world's worst humanitarian crisis and that port is where yemenis get seventy percent of their aid supplies while it's the saudi led coalition that is wage this war from the air over the past three years hitting multiple civilian targets many media outlets describe yemen as a proxy war which is why you'll be familiar with the term iran backed who's the rebels but how much attention has been given to the united states and the united kingdom whose weapons sales and military assistance have been able to wealthy gulf

monarchies to wage war against the poorest country in the middle east for british and american journalists that should make yemen a foreign war with plenty of domestic angles but you wouldn't know what from the kind of coverage and the overall lack of it our starting point this week is ho data . troops are finding to retake became. the control center of the data has been held by the morning and are on the return of the war in yemen to news agendas has been long overdue it took a new target report actual data to do. trying to capture the city of six hundred thousand people putting their lives at risk but also putting the lives of twenty two million people at risk would depend on that aid coming from yemen has always been a forgotten story it's been extremely difficult for you to national media to go to yemen how can you tell that story if you don't have people operating in those areas

and that for me is the biggest challenge when covering the military campaign against the fifty's in yemen i don't think the lack of coverage is explained by the fact that it's difficult. for journalists to get into the country when there's an airstrike on a school or a hospital or a marketplace or a home i can find pictures of that because people in yemen take pictures of that's not the problem the problem is unwillingness to us or u.k. role in the conflict. supported by iran on the role of outsiders one of the most skewed representation in this conflict has been the western media is constant use of the term there ran back to. iranian backed rebels in yemen iraq an ally rebels and yet this began as a civil war yemeni against yemeni in two thousand and fifteen within weeks the saudis leading the military coalition of nine countries intervened and made it regional one of their justifications was that iran was supporting the who the side

there was little or no evidence for that at the time however as the war dragged on iran's involvement has grown still the support tehran provides the who these pales in comparison to the backing the saudis and the u.a.e. get from washington and london between them since the war began the u.s. and the u.k. have sold more than twelve billion dollars worth of weapons to the saudis alone including some of the warplanes and the payloads they drop. the american military also provides midair refueling for saudi and u.a.e. aircraft and both british and u.s. personnel assist the saudis as they target their strikes hundreds of which have killed civilians like this from a such. a taking off but on the relatively rare occasions when western news outlets actually cover the story have they ever used the term u.s. and u.k.

back to saudi and you force. the conflict has been cast in ways that have been very misleading to us or u.k. audience people don't realize how involved our governor. in creating this catastrophe in yemen it's so construed as something that just is happening somewhere to people who are fighting each other already of the war has metastasized and it's grinding the ruins of life into dust casting it as a sectarian war and more often as a proxy war between iran which is completely misguided and the very latest from the fighting in yemen now that proxy war really is raging between iran and saudi arabia when you have coverage which doesn't really provide context which doesn't really provide a proper understanding of the key actors in the conflict and also the role of our own government publics the left with a sense of confused conflict. in terms of perceptions how helpful is where it's not clear who's right or wrong it's not clear whether or not we're

involved in any of the big political economic and military relationships which would cause increasing degree of public dissent people are fully aware of what's going on and you've got to remember there is a close relationship between government officials and journalists. it's not just the journalists involved it's the media outlets they work for c.b.s. is news magazine program sixty minutes is an american journalistic institution now in its fiftieth year on the year last year it produced an extensive report on yemen going where most of the u.s. media have failed to go we have managed to get pictures out of yemen to show you want to show the government does not want you to see the documentary the humanitarian catastrophe and openly criticizing saudi arabia the report was thirteen minutes long but there was not a single mention of the u.s.

role in the conflict the weapon sales were the military and logistical support not what m s n b c is a twenty four hour news channel americans consider to be on the liberal side. of the political spectrum in two thousand and seventeen the network produced exactly one news report on yemen one and s.n.c.c. had eight thousand seven hundred and sixty hours of air time to fill last year the total time is devoted to the yemen story and the american angle in that three minutes and seven so if you don't know what country i'm talking about maybe that is because we in the american press don't cover it very much the fact that m s n b c refuses to cover yemen it just goes to show you that support for the saudis are audi's in the united states is not just a liberal or conservative policy the fact that journalists are not scrutinizing it more just demonstrates that in american media culture it really is ok to devalue

the lives of people in the middle east and the people that the united states tramples on to obtain its policy goals i also think that it's a really shocking failure of journalists to push back on the government's own narratives even apparently critical journalists and that's in b.c. become very reluctant to cover those a huge they mark out of a just kind of debate on the right so you know. time and time again when we look at media reporting the conflict in the case of vietnam and then really all the conflicts you have since then the same pattern has and yes i think it's right you have. they are beautiful pictures fear some armaments the liberal left not actually getting to the heart of reading important big issues when it comes to high foreign policy and war. there's a bigger picture at play in yemen than most of the coverage from the outside world would have you believe broader power struggle that bedeviled the middle east it's

not just about iran isis or al qaida nor is the lack of coverage solely about the lack of access there's more to it than that and. however you frame media outlets that give the story the short simplistic shrift are letting their viewers as well as millions of yemenis down if you go back to the last twenty years it's a national media trouble to yemen al qaida first struck a u.s. target in yemen in two thousand just a couple stories related to. us presence in yemen apart from that it was really never on the radar screen of the international media suddenly it was summed up to this fight against a proxy militia used by the iranians to further destabilize the region that's not true we are seventeen eighteen years into a series of very major conflicts in the international system following nine eleven

and these conflicts have been in a very significant way driven by western governments and their regional ally and really it's very very important that we now start to sort of encourage or when we come here we're not observing a series of disparate discreet conflicts and we actually have a broader drive from western governments and i go by in order to shore up their control and influence in the region this explains why people sometimes don't get why is this happening and who's backing who and what does that in yemen i've been covering yemen for the last fifteen years and people would always tell me the west is not about us as yemenis they don't care any more about yemen. we're discussing other media stories that are on our radar this week with one of our producers flo phillips flo last week a journalist was murdered in kashmir a prominent one what are the details of this case well richard shoot up because he

was the editor of a local english language daily the rise in kashmir in srinagar the capital of the indian administered part of kashmir but he also become involved in attempts to broker a better relations between india and pakistan and he was shot multiple times by three unidentified assassins while sitting in his car outside his office both of his bodyguards who actually had been assigned to him fifteen years ago were also killed and on that point a former security chief has since said that mist of a car had actually requested additional protection from the indian intelligence service just a few days earlier he was clearly fearing for his life now i spoke with anuradha bos'n executive editor of kashmir times a professional associate and friend of the qarase and i asked her what it was about his journalism that made him a target. professionally this is b.s. and. this is reporting things very objectively. which in

a conflict situation like this mean it's really an easy thing to do because they're in different editions and pressures from all. the other thing is there. so you know he was also wearing two hats it wasn't his professional. journalism which was as problematic for some people as his these activists and as you mentioned this guy had two bodyguards they were killed as well and that must leave kashmiri journalist wondering if anybody there is safe and it's a community of journalists that has suffered decades of threats and intimidation from militants and indian forces alike i talked her myspace and about that and the effect this may have on journalism in cash. at the personal level it's a huge loss professionally and i think it's scary.