jet was actually flying in syrian air space at least sixty people have been killed in forest fires that are burning in several areas near the greek capital athens the fires have destroyed homes and disrupted transport links officials have declared a state of emergency in two areas. hundreds of people are missing in lour after a hydroelectric dam collapsed state media is reporting it was under construction in the southeast of the country several people have been killed and more than a thousand families have lost their homes the region has been affected by severe floods over the past week. electricity supply to palestinians in gaza is to be cut still further from eight hours to just six hours a day the solar power station on the ship can't get enough fuel to maintain its current output the amount of fuel entering girls are has been greatly reduced since thursday when israel imposed restrictions on imports through the. crossing the

israeli defense minister has now said the crossing will be partially reopened in the coming hours. fifteen senators have quit nigeria's ruling party in a major blow to president muhammadu buhari his bid for reelection the defections make the all progressives congress or the a.p.c. a minority party in the senate the senate president is also threatening to quit the party while in the lower house thirty two members a changing sides most of those who have left have defected to the main opposition p.d.p. party only last week another faction of the a.p. said a.p.c. said it no longer supported the president's government. the democratic republic of congo's health ministry has declared the country's ebola outbreak to be over the first case was confirmed in may making it the knight outbreak in the d.l.c. in the last decade an estimated thirty three people were killed leaving at least sixty children orphaned the government had given permission for a new experimental vaccine to be used which may have saved thousands of lives right

there is the latest headlines the news continues after the string of twelve boys and their football coach go missing deep in a cave in northern timers with rising floodwaters rescuers are running out of time and want to be inside story of time it's extraordinary here on al-jazeera. and here in the stream today the global move to ban single use plastic straws it's reaching a fever pitch take a look at why this movement caught on so quickly and who is most affected by it all be looking out for your comments online at a.j. stream and of course we're live on you tube. history of strong officially strong debuted in ancient mesopotamia we're still marion's guzzle beer and strong

of gold in the one nine hundred fifty s. the rise of the automobile brought with it trast. and the desire for disposable. drones were surely. cheaper and easier to mass produce plastics. every crazy. and. go with america for. billions of them are very. literal women are. no longer a harmless. johnny. but a ban on plastic straws may potentially have a huge impact on the disability community adversely affecting how quality of life many some needs are also drink because they are unable to lift

a cup to their mouse or to regulate the amount of liquid being ingested there are also allergy concerns with alternatives and bears the issue of access we have a lot to discuss today so joining us on skype to do that christine taken there is a marine conservation biologist. senior communications officer at break free from plastic lawrence carter long is director of communications for the disability rights education and defense fund and do and i was executive director of lonely whale organization launched the stop sucking campaign welcome to the stream everyone i want to start our conversation with a video that many point to as the impetus behind the influx of plastic straw bands that we're seeing now in the u.s. and elsewhere and a note to our viewers this may be hard to watch so this is the reason. that it.

she's peaceful shoulders. and you. show me show me how you say it was. so hard to watch us watching this morning and i had to cover my eyes slightly to see the full video art community feels similarly this is flabby on twitter who says that twenty fifteen video of the sea turtle with the straw on its nose clearly made an impact the good thing is it made people seriously examine their reliance on single use plastics so christine you shot that video you were

a among the group who are with the sea turtle and today we now have companies from mcdonald's to starbucks. a plastic straws why do you think it is that this movement caught on so fast well i think the video was very emotional i think you saw bringing up a creature and a lot of people react to you and it's very obvious that it was suffering from an idea that we use in every in our everyday lives so i think that is probably the reason why i had such a huge impact and made hopefully a lot of people agree quincy that that's. a doun what did that video do for you do you remember where you were when you saw it in what you bout. so lonely well when we started looking at the issue of plastic pollution and we looked at all the single use items out there we kept coming back to this straw as

a potential way and to raise awareness about plastic pollution at large and that that turtle video certainly did have an impact i think it's always hard to see an animal in the wild being hurt by something that was manmade and that it's the result of our carelessness you know somebody had that straw for fifteen minutes maybe they had a straw for two hours and they couldn't find a way to get it into the trash can and so instead it made its way out into the water but it's really indicative of the larger plastics crisis that we have on our hands right now that we need to really deal with and part likely why you started this campaign to pull this up on my screen here lonely whale stop sucking on plastic straws share this video as your pledge and challenge your friends to do the same like to share with your audience what that video looks like. you.

me i. really want me to see. you. thank you. thank you. so do it's catchy clearly tell us about the thinking behind this campaign and the idea of the octopus. straws out of celebrities hands. well it's funny you know i think that's part of what we're really going after is doing something that

really sparked a conversation and woke people up a little bit i mean if you remember two years ago even with the turtle video very few of us are actually talking about plastic pollution it was very little coverage in the media we weren't really talking about it and we thought you know there's a lot of people out there who are stuck on single use plastic straws every day that don't need them and we need to we need to focus on i what i will share i early on one of our targets in our hearts was if we could just get kim carr to ash and to stop sucking then maybe we can actually talk about it and i it just her friend just called her out today or yesterday for sucking with single use plastic water bottles and single use plastic straws that she and her family don't need and so why do they promote conscious consumerism or conspicuous consumerism so much so that was really our intent by the campaign. yes make it playful and raise awareness so that we can really culture hack pop culture i love that idea and we did see our team here that

she did talk about in our interim story so there is that i want to bring in another voice so that many people and be able community may not have thought about when they think about straws and a straw ban and we're actually hearing from a lot of people in the community of people with disabilities this is a video comment that we got that i'd like to play from matthew shapiro he's a public speaker here in richmond virginia and this is what he told the stream about this star ban as a person with a disability i'm very frustrated by the recent ban on plastic straws people with disabilities need community so that they can have access to beverages and drink like anyone else would. and the alternatives for these plastic straws don't always work i was recently in south africa and a biodegradable straw in one of my beverages and it melted so it was somewhat harder to drink that bridge and i'm just overly frustrated that once again the

disability community was not consulted when it comes to solutions like this because this does affect people with disabilities and i really want us to come up with a solution to this straw issue that will make a rather than harder for people with disabilities. lawrence there's a hash tag on line that goes along with this it's able ism socks playing on the stop sucking campaign or what do you think is the biggest impact on the community of people with disabilities. well i think it's really one of process and participation when we're talking about large scale issues like this in big cities like seattle the question we have to ask is who was involved in those conversations who was what out of those conversations who was consulted and who wasn't if you're not consulting people with disabilities then you're not going to be learning from our experience or expertise and the insights that we have and that's really the biggest issue here i think that this whole controversy could have been avoided if

the right people with disabilities had been asked about this you should before it became a controversy rather than after the fact and so now what we're seeing is that cities like seattle are having to go in and clean up the mess they made by not talking to us first in new york city they're rewriting the laws now to include the concerns of people with disabilities and actually looks like they're going to make it mandatory to include options that people with disabilities can use including plastic straws in other places like san francisco just down the road from me here they've got a provision there the no one else requests for people and this is no he said medical needs but no mandate saying that plastic straws are should be made available or must be made available for people who need it so we're making these decisions we can put in under burden on people that are already burdened you know people with disabilities already have to take ahead three times four times how are they going to take the bus is the part going to work how are they going to get to

that runs from we don't want to make sure that we're adding more burden on by so you know you also have to carry your own straw and absolutely it's absolutely great to meet you break free from plastic it's a global movement of thirteen hundred n.g.o.s and we fully agree that progress on plastic could not come at the expense of that if the able community in fact we look very forward to working more closely with you when i buy member organizations greenpeace and others like lonely well are also actively engaging the. ability community as all environmental n.g.o.s sched we believe that governments and corporations have plenty of resources to come up with options that provide the disabled community with what they need while also tackling the plastic pollution crisis and then in the meantime absolutely restaurants and cafes should have a limited number of plastic straws upon request don't try to think that this is going to do it really that delusions are pretty simple it's if you don't eat a plastic straw all means don't use one if you can you have

a reusable straw you use it if you need a class or a small you should be made available what i'd like to get here from you folks would rather think would put people's minds at ease is a guarantee that you're going to go to those local cities where these bands are being initiated and you're going to talk to the production and advocacy groups you're going to talk to the independent living sometimes we're going to talk to people on the ground and say we'll be including people in this community in this decision before this is news made i think that would go a long way in building those alliances and we did. and more and it's really i'm so glad that this movement is bringing this this conversation to light so we have it made a way i you know i think i feel like as a small organization we could have done more in reaching out to the disability community early on we do have a few members of the disability community it was terrible policy with m.s. with m.d. with autism even struck victims that we've consulted with really early on and it singlehandedly every single time they've said what we really need is we need

a single use plastic straw we i haven't heard until recently that bend ability as a really key feature that is needed to be included in so all of our training materials with all restaurant tours with bartenders hotels airlines you name it includes a cruise a section where we talk a lot about the disability community make sure you have an ample supply on hand and then we're not a policy organization but we work with n.g.o.s that really do look at policy as a solution where from believers that the market leads the way. and so in working with those policymakers and those organizations we encourage them to include a provision in the policy language for the disability community we've advocated on behalf of the disability community in our testimony in new york city and san francisco and so we were not experts we can't speak for the place that you can speak from but we'd really love not only to work on this with you for strong was but all single use plastic items because this is a this is

a movement that's underway and there's no reason why we can't address the needs of the disability community and environmental needs at the exact same time i firmly believe and so work we're told in so i guess i want to buy just because i want to bring in our community and i hate to have to pause this very vivid conversation we're having but i want to bring in the people that are watching this is and i will share it it's a it's a three part and so on the one hand you have a chief floors saying why not use a metallic reusable straw so there's one suggestion from a member of our community robert here says how do you clean them after use if you're parkinson's means parkinson's means you shake so much you can no longer write hold a cup or dress yourself so there is one pushback to why people are not just using certain alternatives but then we got this via you tube live as i already have metal straws and reduce my plastic waste but honestly i believe we should ban fishing before we banned straws especially banning straws that effects people with disabilities so christine i want to bring you in here on this because so many

people have pointed out on line and other places that strong. the low hanging fruit here there are other bigger issues that we need to be aware of. and they're absolutely not incorrect about it but and i think the plastic issue is so overwhelming pity they find out that putting the lever at just one place is not enough at this point and so yes i mean i'm a marine biologist so i know what efforts we make to try to improve the fishing gear that is getting lost at sea but it's not only the plastics and actually you know i would say even numb very smite turtles for example and equally affected by plastic bags and i didn't see that me use you know at home and not by fishing line so i think really that i'm coming from a conservation conservation is point if you every time you're trying to implement

change in specially in the face of you know endangered species or the environment you will always meet people that come from a disadvantage points and it's really difficult for one person to put yourself in your shoes because you know you don't have those problems sell for example i work with people that i just really poor and of course for them it's difficult you know to buy different things different fishing gear for example and and i think it's sometimes not intentionally that we excluding groups and want to do that but it's all about coming back together sitting down at a table and discussing the options without going back in time and actually repeating the same error for example you know continue to use fast expect not really necessary and shouldn't be done anymore. i'm going to let a month i think it's also important you know i don't just want to put the burden on environmental groups or n.g.o.s or advocacy organizations seattle public utilities

because city agency and they didn't make any significant outreach for the disability community but they said in some time or twenty seventeen they had i will or will advisory committee but will answer anybody's question about who they talked to i reached out to the people in seattle. and i heard they did their own disability policy commission nor to disability rights washington nor to the yard nor to open doors for multicultural families or to be on it's people with disabilities and so we've got to go back to the lawmakers who are. proposing these bills and make sure that they're reaching out to nobody can use well so i want to share this based on what you're saying there lawrence this is a tweet that's made the rounds from spoony warrior who says how the great straw debate should have gone beyond straws disabled folks some of us depend on stars and can't use alternatives a band could kill us able to band balloons and instead we got you're just selfish don't you care about the planet takers try harder so we got a video comment from someone who thinks along those same lines and explains to us

why some of these alternatives won't work this is and and do you know i'll direct this to you. as a full time wheelchair user with significant muscle weakness i need plastic strong order to access their bridges the proposed alternatives are not viable options because they pose other concerns for example paper straws disintegrate and metal straws are difficult to clean independently in short. being plastic straws is an assault on my independent. june taking that in mind what went wrong in seattle what would you have done differently. so when we first spoke was he had a public utility as it was about it maybe a couple of weeks before we launched our star less in seattle campaign and maybe it was maybe it was three three weeks before we launched our star listen seattle campaign and and really it was to say hey we just wanted to let you know that we're

launching this campaign here is everybody who signed up is there anything that we should know about and then about a week into the campaign is when they left the exclusion on the rule which does allow for compostable plastic straws which tend to act exactly like plastic straws now some of those compostable plastic straws are made from corn and somebody who has pretty severe food allergies i'm very sensitive to those who have food allergies so i don't know if that is a viable alternative for everyone it probably is not it but given the feedback that we received already from folks in the disability community it seems like that composed of all plastic straws were going to be good and that was after doing a test like i love her video and i love a comment paper stars disintegrates especially i mean it doesn't matter if you're able to disable paper straws and lets you use there's only one that could potentially work even in the able community and they're not a great alternative bamboo are expensive bamboo or hard to hold i can use a stainless steel straw it actually breaks the teeth of some members of the

cerebral palsy community with the silicone tip it could work a little bit better but glass tries you know in all of those are really difficult to clean it doesn't matter if you're able to disabled it their chest difficult to work with i mean it's so it's it's hard to think about those as viable alternatives but rather and they're not. they're not really viable alternatives that they're not you know and if they're not usable one size doesn't fit all that's really the problem here so if you have a condition like parkinson's disease or your stroke survivor you might have difficulty controlling your right so you're not going to want to bite into the glass or you can break your team paper as you said turns to mush and so until we have an option i think we can get there by working together that that is more workable that work for more people plastics wasn't simply going to be an option for unnecessary option for the majority of people that's why again

we have to be part of that commoditization new york is rewriting its proposed because disabled people got it well that's because the people of new york get embarrassed because they didn't it was a sin we are twenty nine years after the passage of the americans with disabilities act we're going to have a thousand people at the national council of independent living conference marching on washington d.c. tomorrow. tuesday july twenty fourth to say let's not take steps backwards let's make sure that people with disabilities are every conversation we have a statement of disability rights says nothing about us without us i love that you just sort of think that is very likely i would agree with laurence i definitely agree with that i wanted to share with our audience in case you're wondering what this huge stick is on my table that this is a bamboo strong trying to do my part i love straws i don't need them but i like them and so i am trying it out if it's not my favorite soap or i will say but i

want to shift the conversation a little bit to corporations and what they are doing about this i pulled up this here from the starbucks newsroom mcdonald's joined starbucks and closed loop as founding member of initiative to end the cup wace starbucks says that's trials are out lives are and they've announced environmental milestone you can see their new lives. people have criticised and they also sent us a statement directly to desire here at the stream starbucks says that they are committed to continuing to offer stross to customers who need them or request them in their stores but that sustainability is part of their d.n.a. and has been for thirty plus years she'll be you're writing a letter to see why what do you think about this yeah well this thing kind of will have to strides is obviously a huge step forward in the fight against plastic lucian but banning strong as can be an effective mobilization talk for the public only if it's connected to the

broader plastic pollution life cycle and since much of our way it's an even recycled plastic waste is coming from the global north and ending up in cities and towns across southeast asia so many of us that break free from plastic were started scratching our heads when starbucks decided to ditch the straw was only to replace that with the their car plastic lead so we need to be thinking bigger bolder and also globally as we progress on this issue we're all including the disability community in these conversations but strong hands alone are not going to solve the problem christine yet i think this listening to it and coming again from earth sciences point of view. i think you know when be allowed myself to just sometimes take a step backwards and look at all of what's happening i think you know social justice is very important but in the broad as human beings none of that actually

matters if we don't have a planet to live on so i think we really need to think of how we can end very quickly so all of this problem and that means we have to not just now it shouldn't be a monoculture concerning star extra but i really think we need to look at all the unnecessary plastics that are there and not letting such a step back for example the whole i just adding strauss and then putting in now a bigger lead on the whole thing so we need to follow up right and saying hey ok if this was to fix that right what is your next i think the follow up is important which is why now we will revisit this issue on our show unfortunate that's all the time we have for now thank you to all of our gas for joining us today and to our community which is where i will give the last word this is the last classic straw tweeting again we are not for strong bans we are for source reduction of single use plastics and exemptions for those who need them the focus on plastic straws is part

of the band as giving a much needed voice to people with disabilities and we are listening this conversation will continue online you'll see there. to. my. thanks. thanks.

thanks. every armed attack. creates fear and division amongst its citizens west henri's of los no one tone. is sweeping association of islam with the violence. in muslims facing the stock reality of being ostracized by the very communities in which they live love and moon the tragic loss of life twice a victim coming soon on al-jazeera and new perspectives can change a world. for one chin is even began as a hobby has grown into

a passion a way of life. teaching the next generation to strive for a higher level. and ensuite instilling in his country and sense of freedom and strength. new heights my chin is yeah on al-jazeera. this is al jazeera. and live from studio fourteen here at al-jazeera headquarters and. welcome to the news grid israel suits down a syrian fighter jet that it says strayed into israeli air space well syrian pro-government media those say the warplane was targeting on groups in syrian

territory the syrian army has been edging closer to the israeli occupied golan heights recapturing ground lost to rebels join the war also on the grid dozens of people killed by wildfires raging in a disaster the prime minister describes as an unspeakable tragedy the flames have left behind blackened devastated. in seaside areas around athens which attracts huge numbers of summer tourists also despair as bulldozers destroyed hundreds of homes and biggest slum the government trying to build a new road it says it's offered people compensation but many have told us they've been left with nowhere to go. and i'm looking at the mysterious attempt to rent a crowd to. have town visit spritz and as always we want your input to show you live and you can use the hash tag.

thanks for joining us over the newsgroup or live on air we're streaming online through you tube facebook live and at al-jazeera dot com as well we begin with an attack in the border zone between israel and syria the israeli army says it saw down the syrian fighter jet after it flew into its airspace these are pictures of smoke trails left by two israeli patriot missiles that were fired at the jets out syrian pro-government media though say the warplane never left syrian territory where it was targeting eisel affiliated groups in the south president assad and assad's forces with support for russia and iran have been recapturing rebel territory in this part of the country meaning they've been edging closer to the israeli occupied golan heights well this right there is the area we're talking about so isolated groups hold these shrinking ground marked in black as you can see

the red is held by syrian government forces which are continuing to advance on that last remaining rebel pocket in green and the blue is the israeli occupied golan heights and that is where stephanie decker is joining us from stephanie what can you tell us about the fighter jet any more clarity on what exactly happened. right well that to map you're just showing that black area that's the area just behind us and that's the area also where that jet went down the israeli army confirming to us that it did go down in the southern golan heights the syrian side of this is exactly where we are we've seen burning fields around here also a little further north we also whether that had anything to do with this we were told categorically no but we've been here for a couple of days now and i think it's safe to say the timing of it very very bizarre because there's a lot of windier farmers and like me putting fires to their fields but the sensitivity of it from what we understand from sources because what's interesting

to read we've been watching the battle unfold behind us for two days now incredibly loud airstrike shelling after that jet went down it's been silent it's been completely nothing has been happening and from what we understand from sources that the russians know how be with what has happened that there are talks now going on to figure out exactly what happened because the plane went down in syrian territory these raids are saying that the plane came into israeli airspace two kilometers they assessed it and that's when the patriot missiles intercepted the plane so it goes to show also the international dynamic and complications to this war ok stephanie decker giving us the update from the israeli occupied golan heights thank you let's continue with the story with our diplomatic editor james bass he's joining us from the united nations because the israeli ambassador to the u.n. james has been speaking about those incidents what's he been saying. yes danny down on was speaking to the press ahead of a security council meeting that's now underway which is looking into directions

it's looking it's the quarterly meeting on the middle east it's looking at the situation with regard to southern syria in the downing of this fighter jet but also the situation in gaza and the u.s. ambassador nikki haley is actually speaking at that security council session well just before it started danny done on came in brief the press and as you would have expected he said that the syrian aircraft infiltrated israeli air space and israel acts as it always does in self-defense when something like that happened i then pressed him though on the wider context and the talk that there has been a deal between the israelis and the russians a deal that was then endorsed by president trump and president putin just over a week ago in helsinki i asked him what was in this deal and this was his reply talked about the incident over syria this morning can we ask you about the wider

context because there's been a deal done between your prime minister and president putin and that's then been endorsed by president trump at helsinki and the world really doesn't know what the deal is can you explain more for us i don't know about or deal you know if they know one thing. we will not allow anyone to which our sovereignty we would not allow they even been there better that our borders in their garden hide here.