the head cold coming on al-jazeera. were committed to a whole of government effort to change the iranian regime to behavior the u.s. announces a new approach to policy on iran after withdrawing from the nuclear deal. a momentous and this is all to see a live from doha also coming up india gets ready to bid farewell to former prime minister atal bihari budget pie who died on thursday. remembering the queen of soul tributes pouring in for a wreath of franklin has died at the age of seventy six and their lives may have been spared but those living in the shadow of jenna was collapsed bridge may never

be able to return home. the u.s. has announced a new foreign policy initiative aimed at changing the behavior of the regime in tech run secretary of state my pump aoe says the white house is forming a task force to coordinate and run its policy on iran our hope is that one day soon we can reach a new agreement with iran but we must see major changes in the regime's behavior both inside and outside of its borders also in jordan has more from the united nations. the u.s. secretary of state mike pompei o has unveiled what is being called the iran action group trying to make certain that all parts of the u.s. government are working on a strategy to compel iran to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions as well as to stop its efforts of supporting groups such as hamas hezbollah the who these in

yemen and other such organizations that have been listed as terrorist groups under u.s. law even though this effort is now being unveiled the administration is denying charges that it is trying to push for regime change inside iran there's also the question of whether the u.s. is goal of trying to get other countries on board with this new effort will work notably countries within the european union which have longstanding economic ties to terror on it asked whether or not the u.s. was going to have a problem getting these countries to agree to put more pressure on iran to change its ways this is what bryant hook the new special representative for iran had to say that's the purpose of maximum economic pressure the point is not to create any rifts with with other nations but when you look out the kind of money that iran provides to assad and to shia militias to lebanese hezbollah it's billions and

billions of dollars and we need to get at drying up those revenue streams so far the beggar's of the iran action group is a very small one the administration wasn't ready to unveil those names on thursday however brian hook did tell reporters that this is a key policy initiative of the trumpet ministration and that they are committed to trying to get iran to change its political and security ways. trita parsi is from the national iranian american council and he says the new strategy is in line with the administration's tough stance against iran what we're seeing here is the continuation of the escalate or the plan that the trump in the situation put in place on they want when the into the white house which is some form of confrontation with iran that talking point is that this is just about changing behavior there is even an offer to talk on the table but everything the trumpet

ministration is doing is very clearly pointing towards a demand for iran campus elation which will happen which as a result very likely will either lead to some form of a direct confrontation with iran or efforts by the united states to destabilize iraq on the trunk of mr asian is on record admitting that they're trying to foment unrest in iran what that would do is that it would force him on to turn its research resources inwards and it would be this evil from projecting power in the region and from the perspective of some of iran's regional rivals that type of instability in iran is probably the second best option compared to what their primary preference seems to be which is the military confrontation. the funeral of former indian prime minister atal bihari vajpayee will be held later on friday he's died at the age of ninety three one of the prize controversial decisions was to conduct nuclear tests just weeks after becoming prime minister in one thousand nine

hundred ninety eight under thomas has more from the indian capital new delhi. flashpoint was ninety three and he had been ill for some time to his death itself wasn't unexpected unless of course very big news he was a major figure in the indian politics and is the hindustan times politics loses its poetry a reference there to the fact he wasn't just prime minister he was well known as a poet as well the times of india pm poet statesman gentleman international eventually will be known as the prime minister who tested nuclear weapons he was prime minister very briefly ninety ninety six but his long stint was from ninety eight to two thousand and four and it was at the beginning of that period that he tested nuclear weapons it was international outrage but he calculated probably rightly most indians would say that that would die down in the long term it would ensure india's security he did carry out their approach more with pakistan the following year he went to lahore and halt his pakistani counterparts economically liberalized the economy privatized many state assets but really continued what

already been happening under his predecessor most of all that he'll be remembered simply as the prime minister that did a full term who wasn't from the congress party and that itself is some achievement the stain on his time in office will be the riots they began when a train of hindu pilgrims was burned about fifty died in two thousand and two but as a result of that still a major riots in which well over a thousand possibly as many as two thousand people the vast majority of them muslims were killed chief minister in that state the time was one modi and eventually behind the scenes fight with him over that he wanted a second id but was overruled by those in his own party and that incident has really set in train the ethnic tensions that exist in india to this day. tributes from around the world have been pouring in to remember the queen of soul aretha franklin died at a home in detroit on thursday the seventy six year old american singer had pancreatic cancer fans have been placing flowers and her star on the hollywood walk

of fame former u.s. president barack obama fondly remembered her on social media so has music giants and barbra streisand and former beatle paul mccartney about all this on the lives of bachata life and how she enfants the world of music. she was simply known by her first name aretha because of her unmistakable voice she was born a retha louise franklin in one thousand and forty two in memphis tennessee from her first recordings as a young gospel singer she went on to become part of the sound of detroit her singing career would span six decades away.

a winner of eighteen grammy awards her distinctive gospel honed vocal style influenced multiple generations she was number one on the rolling stone magazine's list of greatest singers of all time and she was the first female artist ever inducted hall of fame. but it was in one thousand nine hundred sixty seven song respect which garnered her international attention and payment. fifty years ago she sang at dr martin luther king jr's funeral and many years later at the dedication of dr king's memorial in washington she was active in the civil rights movement for decades something she spoke about in two thousand and fourteen well it certainly was a struggle. it still is although we have come a great ways a long way and there still is a significant way to go the recipient of the united states highest civilian honor

the presidential medal of freedom her voice delighted presidents as her health declined she curtailed her performances but she always sang by can this two thousand and fourteen performance and she sang adele's hit rolling in the deep. in of soul to her fans she always was and always will be. frank with seventy six years old. and the time reporter kelly koch has reported extensively on everything franklin's life over the years she says franklin's paved the way for female vocalists not just in the u.s. but around the world. when her version of respect this was the third version of respect but the first version that was a word by a woman it felt like

a so world erms at a time when women in the united states are really fighting to become equal partners to their male counterparts and so it really kind of hears through a cultural and racial line but even now her music is so timeless it sounds as if it could just come out on a streaming service twelve minutes ago and still go as hard as it would have been one years ago and i think that is really kind of the true essence of her music i know words like timeless and classic i think it's hot brown we talk about some people's musical body but it absolutely rings true. italian government says it's thinking about taking over all of the country's motorways after the collapse of a bridge in genoa the country run by private companies and contractors and an investigation into what happened may take some time but hundreds of people have been forced from their homes by the collapse wondering where they're going to sleep

the tasha bottle reports from general. below what is left of geno's marandi bridge hundreds of properties stand empty more than six hundred people were moved from this neighborhood after the bridge collapsed on tuesday some are returning to collect their possessions many are still visibly shaken you know this reported a lot of i saw the bridge collapsing because my apartment looked over it so i saw it fall or heard a big noise like thunder i thought it was a storm and there was dust everywhere and i saw a building turn to rubble. it's unclear if people will be allowed to live here again as experts say the structure could be unsafe this firefighter showed me what's now known as the red zone a high risk area if you look up you can see just how close from randy quaid there is to the top of some of these apartments it almost seems to me it's and you can really understand why italian authorities decide to pull back you wait this whole neighborhood because of course if any part of that bridge was to collapse anyone

underneath would bring grave danger carrying their belongings residents leave to stay with family and friends or in city shelters this man's elderly mother was too shocked to come back he says my fear will never be the same so the next visual for can please you and i used to be a firefighter and looking at all this i believe it will take years to rebuild and recover. at the rescue site hundreds of emergency workers continue to search for survivors as time passes hopes are diminishing. now we are cutting the big slabs we are moving them and then we send the can i. the dogs the search dogs. if there are positive signs and our teams. direct research casualties into or. into the voids people in juneau are still coming to terms with what has happened in this city his

grief anger and for those who call this district home there is now a future full of uncertainty natasha al-jazeera genoa italy still ahead and al jazeera will have the latest fallout from the vaccine scandal that's raised fears over the safety of drugs in china plus. concerns over the quality of air in the indonesian capital as the country prepares for the opening of the asian games on saturday. hello there we're still got lots of clouds lingering over the southwestern parts of kazakstan you can see it on our satellite picture here gradually fading as it works its way northwards but this region has been unsettled for weeks now and we're going to see the showers just transfer a bit further towards the west as we head through the next few days so yet more

showers over the northern parts of turkey and stretching east towards the caspian sea this region seeing yet more rain as we head through saturday in fact on saturday looks like they'll be even more showers around a bit further towards the south and it is generally fine unsettled force in beirut to thirty degrees and hot in baghdad put it around forty four here in doha it's also really quite hoped with the air is quite dry and will continue to be so as we head through the next few days the winds are firing down from the northwest so our temperatures around forty five degrees but as i say not so humid temperature for the south but that's where we'll see more cloud across the southern parts of oman and into yemen and of course this will be giving us a few showers as you'd expect at this time of year down towards the southern parts of africa and for many of us it's falling and dry but there is a bit of cloud in the southern parts of our map here that could just give us one or two showers for cape town is not that warm we're looking at a maximum just to fourteen the temperature here should recover as we head into saturday this time we're getting up to sixteen.

some during these are tougher than i was there. but this route is even tougher than the current the truck that it's dangerous there's allergies you know whom follows the moroccan truck drivers in danger of their lives. just to be committing if you crash they might break your mirror or even kill you because authorities more influence. from a.b.c.'s death on al-jazeera.

they're watching al-jazeera a reminder of our top stories this hour the u.s. has announced a new foreign policy initiative aimed at changing the behavior of the regime in teheran the white house is creating a task force to coordinate and run its policy on iraq. the funeral for former indian prime minister atal bihari vajpayee will be held later on friday his body is now making its way through the streets of delhi one of his most controversial decisions was to conduct nuclear tests just weeks after he became prime minister in one thousand nine hundred eight has also led india during a brief war with pakistan. tributes are pouring in for us singer retha franklin she died of pancreatic cancer at the age of seventy six franklin's known as the queen of soul she's won eighteen grammy music awards career and she's also been a prominent campaigner for civil rights. newspapers across the u.s. have cleared their front pages on thursday morning instead they've been printing

editorials fighting back against donald trump's attacks against the media she has a tendency of reports from washington d.c. . here at the newseum in washington d.c. the front pages of some of the over three hundred newspapers taking part in what was billed as an attempt to end a quote dirty war on the free press and were being displayed their goals for the day really are to remind the public about the value to our democracy of a free to dependent press and maybe tone down the rhetoric that leads some on the fringes to violence by using inflammatory terms like enemies of the people they are the fake fake disgusting news. donald trump's attacks on the media have been rhetorical and that has its dangers but he hasn't. with the espionage act seized their records and demanded sources as president obama did instead trump is playing on suspicions about the media the house long been the charge that the

mainstream media does reflect the views of the establishment and the elites and marginalize those who question that at least and some do wonder whether donald trump is now giving the mainstream media the opportunity to present itself as m to establishment without having to conduct any self reflection answers and what you just did is inflammatory to the u.s. media has awoken under donald trump and is likely to take a far more adversarial position against the white house. but has the age of trump truly ushered in a new era of fearlessness for a fourth a state finally willing to speak for the people or is the press simply reflecting the unease of the establishment that trump ended with his victory that many have a long called for an adversarial relationship between the media and a sitting president but the question is what kind of adversarial relationship is it just simply belt based on attacks personal attacks going back and forth that don't

have substance that don't actually improve people's lives that don't highlight issues but in effect inflate the personalities and egos of major. celebrity media figures and people in the trumpet ministration the polls show most americans care far more about free healthcare or reversing economic inequality than the alleged russian collusion that establishment voices blame for their loss in the last presidential election yet the last of the dominates the us media and those that do take an adversarial stance to the establishment on social and economic issues remain as marginalized as ever meanwhile the polls reflect a declining trust in the media nationwide trump continues his attacks she never turns the zero washington. in china for senior officials including a provincial deputy governor have been dismissed over a defective vaccines program one hundred eighty eight thousand children in shandong province have been given the injections and james brown has more from beijing. of

the four officials who've been dismissed one is the deputy head of the organization responsible for regulating the drug industry here in china as well as the deputy governor of jilin province these dismissals were confirmed in a report in the people's daily overnight the people's daily is the newspaper of record here in china it said that the state council which is a body headed by president xi jinping had met to discuss the case and this was the result president xi jinping it seems has been playing an active role in the fallout of the scandal which appears to be widening now this all began back in july when it was revealed that the chunk chunk biotechnology company had been falsifying production records it produced vaccines which were then given to children these are vaccines which are not dangerous they simply ineffective in effect useless so now you have thousands upon thousands of parents in china still not sure still not

convinced they can trust the industry which provides vaccines for their children there really is a trust deficit in this area at the moment and a lot of anger in the streets when you speak to people about the scandal they say how can we trust our vaccine industry and of course foreign vaccines simply aren't available in china so people here in china have no option but to use the locally produced ones now we know also that some five hundred thousand ineffective vaccines were produced that's double the figure the government gave a month ago and that one hundred eighty eight thousand of these vaccines were administered to children we know also that fifteen officials from the company at the center of the scandal are still under investigation including its chairwoman. in south africa relatives of striking miners killed by the police six years ago so the government isn't properly a knowledge of their pain and grief some families have been given compensation

totaling about seven million dollars but others including survivors are still waiting for an animal or has more from not a card or a special ceremonies being held. the commemoration took a somber tone when the loved ones of the thirty four victims little candles and stood in silence six years after the magic on a massacre the grief felt by families and survivors is evident but many are angry too they blame the government and the police for the deaths of the miners new evidence suggests that when striking miners was shot they were running away from police. was shot in the head the bullet is still in his skull he was told he would die if doctors removed it i am angry now because i feel like a piece of script and not good enough to waken him i deserve to be compensated. for this it been a particularly violent strike ten other people including police officers and

security guards were killed in the days before the mass shooting six police officers are facing legal proceedings but no one has so far been convicted of any crime. but i think there's no willingness on the one. let alone. this. was monetizations i mean. they're living off stride. but. what happened in. this world. in the. early morning down. adding to the continuing volatility here is potential the. of thirteen thousand job cuts by mining company impala platinum people here have used the anniversary to revive their calls for

better wages and living conditions these remain major issues for the mining community who say mining companies have put their profits they hear it out of people's well being or there are concerns that if these issues are not adequately addressed some may resort to violence workers' union amcu says it will not accept job cuts plans or mass action for me to mina al jazeera america. a british parliamentary committee has said that smokers should be given greater support to use isa carets as a way of kicking the habit in a report to court and medical studies that suggest very paying could help people stop smoking conventional cigarettes are xli has more. certainly no denying the popularity of aping and the cigarettes nowadays in the u.k. places like this is sprung up all over the country and almost three million people nowadays in the u.k. routinely use the cigarettes as a less harmful thing to do they assume than conventional smoking of course the

science is a little sketchy and opinions are mixed the report this week suggest that the cigarettes are actually more harmful than people think they might be on the basis that they can cause lung infections but now an officially sanctioned reports by a government committee here suggest that not only already cigarettes are actually much better for you than conventional ones but they could even be used to help people give up smoking completely just like patches and nicotine replacement and that sort of thing and even further the authors of this report suggests that the health service hasn't made the proper distinction between conventional cigarettes and these cigarettes and that it could even be the case that people could use the cigarettes in places like public transport and offices in a way that is currently banned that is quite controversial but here's what the chairman of the government committee had to. i don't discount the issue of the sort of nuisance value of people very ping

a lot of people complain about the smell of the sort of cloud of paper that surrounds some people who do but we mustn't confuse that with. public risk in the way that we know cigarettes cause risks secondary smoke ng we know has an enormous risk attached to it very thing is wholly different to that and we want to encourage a public debate about. treating vaporing differently to smoking in those public places certainly to a degree all of this flies in the face of the received wisdom inside the national health service which runs public hospitals like this one in central london their advice is that these cigarettes are less harmful than conventional ones but they might not get you over your nicotine addiction and help you give up smoking and so it is still a very confused picture for smokers. from saturday indonesia's congested capital

will host the asian games and there has been a campaign to tidy up the city of jakarta but air pollution is still a big problem step vasant ports. a country better known for its diverse culture and for its sports. asian games are the largest event ever organized what and fourteen thousand athletes are arriving in the congested capital jakarta and in the city of the center of yearly forest fires stadiums have been built and renovated and city centers have undergone a transformation this is what visitors will see when they look up the air quality index just three days before the opening of the games show unhealthy levels. in beijing was hosting the olympics managed to lower air pollution by decreasing the number of cars in. closing down factories and it's relatively better quality intercut environmental issues are not a priority especially equality the government puts the economy first. pollution has

been called a silent killer in the indonesian capital with figures in two thousand and ten showing that fifty seven percent of its people suffer from respiratory diseases but indonesian at least seem unfazed having to compete against countries like china or japan which have won the most medals at previous games they say they have all the worries like eighteen year old runner lalu mohammed story who last month surprised many by becoming the world champion at the under twenty hundred meter sprint in finland young against a lot of shopping meant i need to mentally prepare myself because at the asian games i will be up against athletes that are all older than me and very experience . in the media is aiming for sixteen gold medals especially in new sports events like bridge jet skiing roller skating and martial arts while indonesia is gearing up to what is promised to be a spectacular opening of the asian games on saturday the country wants to show the

world it's capable of organizing such a big event having less time to prepare after vietnam withdrew as a host not everything is quite ready at. the athletes' village is near an area where a polluted river spreads a fold smell instead of cleaning it ahead of the games it is covered by in that and it's smell unsuccessfully treated with chemicals are complaining about logistical problems making it hard to reach the venues on time. games are very important for our nation important for asia the energy of issues being portrayed here that's why we have a speeded up the building of venue so the people of asia who are coming will be happy and proud. indonesia hosted the asian games for the first time in one thousand nine hundred sixty two than the still young nation built this welcome. statue one of the city's landmarks fifty six years later it will once again welcome athletes even if it's sometimes hard to see because of the polluted air step fasten

al-jazeera check after. this is all just zero of these at the top stories in the u.s. has announced a new foreign policy initiative aimed at changing the behavior of the regime in tehran the white house is creating a task force to coordinate and run its policy on iran more now from our visitors was a little jordan it's not really clear what this whole of government effort to weigh unify policy on iran is actually going to lead to especially given that when asked bryan who is the new special representative for iran said that there is no plan for the u.s. to try to push for regime change inside the iranian government the funeral of former indian prime minister atal bihari vajpayee will be held later on friday his

body is now making its way through delhi one of his controversial decisions was to conduct nuclear tests just weeks after becoming prime minister in one thousand nine hundred eight he was ninety three years old. fans of us singing a wreath of franklin are paying their respects after her death from pancreatic cancer. the queen of soul was seventy six years old she won eighteen grammy music awards during her career franklin was also a prominent campaigner for civil rights. the u.s. is threatening more sanctions against turkey of a detained american pastor isn't released says it's willing to negotiate with the u.s. over the dispute but trade tariffs have been applied by both sides pastor andrew bronson is under house arrest over the ledge links to businessman fatah the golan turkey blames go in for a failed coup in twenty sixteen zimbabwe's opposition says the constitutional court

will hear its challenge against president emerson the missing dog was election victory next wednesday opposition leader nelson chamisa says the vote was rigged when god was an organization's been postponed until the court makes its decision. the vatican's condemned the sex abuse described in a grand jury report in the us state of pennsylvania as morally reprehensible a vatican spokesman says pope francis is with the victims the report gives details about legations of assault on more than a thousand children it suggests there could be thousands of other victims spanning a seventy year period those are the headlines the news continues here on al-jazeera after my cuba by phone. where on line this isn't some abstract issue with eating meat into their shops or if you join us on sect rather than stopping terrorism it's creating it is a dialogue and just the community. conversation we need a president who's willing to be a short while everyone has

a voice and part of civil society but i never get listened to by those in the corridors of joining the global conversation. on how to zero. oh on the getting. on the scene but on the north pole.