offered a ceasefire to the taliban reports. afghanistan's president might have been hoping for a quiet start to the eat out holiday but as ashraf ghani reviewed his troops and officials gathered for prayers they were all reminded that there are fewer and fewer peaceful days here. that was the sound of one of two rockets fired towards the presidential palace could do you think it gave the if they think that with rocket attacks this nation will surrender they have to think again this is a brave nation as always ready to defend its independence on earth and islamic tradition. eyesores says its fighters were behind the attack the armed groups numbers are growing in afghanistan although it's the taliban that remains the greatest threat. that was made clear in a recent attack on the nearby city of gas that exposed the government's fragile grip on security thousands of taliban fighters stormed the city cutting

communications and access to the highway to kabul at least one hundred fifty soldiers and more than one hundred civilians were killed in the five day battle to regain control of the city the government says hundreds of taliban fighters were killed. the taliban has been at war with the us backed afghan government for nearly seventeen years but one analyst has told al jazeera the while the taliban leadership believes it's doing well on the battlefield many foot soldiers see things differently most of them never see an american for all you know one month to the next so they're i'm convinced that they're actually fighting against an occupation but they don't have a way out so i mean they're stuck the war continues the leadership are resisting serious peace talks those inside the movement who are broadly in favor of it because they're in a in a centralized top down movement no way of affecting the decisions of the leadership . tuesday's attack on the presidential compound ended when an afghan

helicopter gunship targeted the house where the rockets were apparently fired from bernard smith al jazeera floodwaters are receding in the indian state of caroline but the bodies of more victims are being found after the worst floods in a century their tools have been held for those who think killed so far more than four hundred are confirmed dead more than a million people are now living in temporary camps after the high water forced them to leave their homes and thomas reports from the now encourage. the good news is it's been sunny almost all day on tuesday which means that the water level has gone down considerably over the course of the day we spent tuesday with a man who wants to return to the village he flayed was rescued from on friday and he knew that on saturday a huge wall of water had come through his village and he want to go back and see how much damage has been done now early on to say we couldn't have done this we had to take a canoe to reach his village and when he got there he saw that while there was mud

throughout the place and it was a mess it's out at least was still standing and he's grown up son who had left there to protect the property and also help out neighbors well he was ok now over the course of today the water has gone down to such an extent that a couple of relief trucks have been able to drive in they have very big wheels so they can get through this and they brought rocks and water and other essential supplies to the villages now we are able to walk out now because over the course of two thirds of water level has dropped it's not yet really what the whites level that's the good news the water is going down here one says it will not bounce or pressure from china after another country cut diplomatic ties president saying when criticized el salvador's decision to establish relations with beijing instead so that their nation to do so this year china's been pressuring countries and companies to recognize taiwan as part of its territory so i called china's behavior

out of control. hinted at the world which is today's china is not only a menace to cross straight relations what china is doing right now all over the world no matter if it's interfering in the end if it is of countries or destroying the order of international markets it has already caused a high degree of global instability and we need to remind the international community that this is not only related to taiwan that we will not tolerate the serious situation in a more edgy and brown has more from beijing. well this is another important symbolic diplomatic victory for china as it seeks to pick off one by one those countries that still have diplomatic relations with taiwan since zion when became president of taiwan in january two thousand and sixteen five countries have severed ties with taiwan el salvador now joining that lengthening list on choose day taiwan's foreign ministry reacted angrily taiwan's foreign minister joseph who said

the china was luring away taiwan's allies with promises of vast financial aid he said this was a game that taiwan was not prepared to play well of course this all comes just as zion when has been on a stopover in the united states she'd been visiting billie's and paragliding two of the seventeen countries that still recognize taiwan she made a speech in the united states the first time a taiwanese leader has done that in ten years that upset the chinese and then lo and behold literally just a day later we learned that el salvador has decided to sever ties with taiwan now taiwan said that it knew what el salvador was planning to do in fact it had an idea this was going to happen back in june it a try to persuade el salvador not to do this but of course in the end it simply lost out in the inevitable bidding war with china there is now just one country in

africa that has ties with taiwan that is swaziland and i think china would very much like swaziland to come into its orbit before early september because that's when president xi jinping will be hosting an africa china summit here in beijing for us but a software company microsoft claims that uncovered russian hackers launching cyber attacks on the u.s. senate and political parties the firm says it stopped fake web sites that were set up to steal logon information. from visitors to think tanks the heads and institute in the international republican institute have their websites copy microsoft says it's part of a russian plot to influence remember midterm elections moscow is denying any involvement calling the allegations a witch hunt cher bhutanese is following the story joins us now from washington so fake websites copying websites tell us more about this she. right well

microsoft shut down these domain names last week in fact but they only announced it today as part of some marketing push cybersecurity big business now for various. especially as the elections approach several web domain names were registered which sound familiar domain names such as sign that dot services senate email senate group. or. those to the right wing think tanks that you mentioned spearfishing it's called people into these these will they get emails from these domain names. names the websites created with those domain names they think they're communicating with the hudson institute or. in fact not communicating their credentials to hackers but apparently microsoft shut all this down before any any damage was done we got a response from the kremlin this isn't translation we don't know what hackers they're talking about we do not know what is meant by influence on elections we're here

confirmations from america that there was no influence elections who exactly are they talking about we don't understand what the proof the basis for them drawing these kind of conclusions such informational proof is lacking or the broken translation of a translation of this. is interesting that i mean there is a little bit of irony here there because the the international republican institute right wing thing is quite overt about influencing elections around the world they do it the right wing groups they try and pick political candidates that the right wing in the u.s. the establishment wants to when they pour millions of dollars into social media campaigns and so on so there's a bit of irony there i guess that they were targeted with this these are the same sort of weapons because of the u.s. has planned it for years and elections around the world now being apparently used against the u.s. so. you know russia is denying this russia has consistently been denying all along for several months if not longer that they have had anything to do with any type of alleged you know interference or any type of hacking attempt nevertheless there are

still sanctions that keep piling up against them that the u.s. has imposing on russia there's their new sanctions to tell us about. right i mean there's all sorts of sanctions that have been imposed over the last several months of crimea or alleged election meddling a couple more rounds of sanctions today we heard off. which are in regard to previous sanctions for alleged cyber meddling these were these were imposed on two companies and two individuals accused of allowing russian entities to try and bypass those sanctions but what we're really expecting or looking to is tomorrow wednesday when we expect sanctions to be imposed on exports to the russian state's business is all companies which have some connection to the russian government exports will be denied on various items are expected to be denied on various items that might have jewel use technology national security implications other tronic equipment turbines and things like that that's kind of part of an

automatic process that has been underway since the u.s. decided it believed the british allegations against russia about the. chemical weapons attack against a double agent in russia and his daughter once the u.s. accused russia of being part of that they have to impose new sanctions under u.s. law but what we're expecting there is things to get even more serious in ninety days when really really tough sanctions might be imposed if russia doesn't satisfy the u.s. that it isn't using chemical weapons and how can russia satisfy the u.s. it isn't using chemical weapons when russia says it didn't use chemical weapons in the first place right sheraton's a live press in washington thanks she had. claymore head in the news hour and clothing and venezuelans opposition called for a general strike in protest after a controversial measure by president nicolas maduro and sport hosts and in the ship put and other gold medal performance with the country looking to lift its ambitions beyond the asian.

and as well as major opposition parties have called for a general strike and they are protest they're opposing the government's new monetary policies aimed at curbing soaring prices the currency was devalued ninety five percent and linked to a government backed cryptocurrency that israel is struggling to contain an economic crisis that lead to inflation of one million percent there's widespread sprite spread shortages as the basic necessities and millions have left the country or now for latin america editor with newman from caracas. this is the first day that banks and shops are supposed to be open since the new currency regulations went into effect and quite frankly there are far more questions than answers at this point many shops are closed not only because a part of the opposition is called for a nationwide strike but simply because they don't know what to charge and people don't have any money because the new currency hasn't really hit the streets yet it's very difficult to get it you can get up to ten of the new bully believe itis

which are worth one million of the old believe it is but with that you can barely buy a cup of coffee at this point so that it is not enough to go shopping many in the shops are saying that they don't open at all because they don't want to operate at a loss doing that probably in then a couple of weeks' time everything will cost one hundred two hundred three hundred percent more than it does today in the meantime many people are trying to leave the country rushing to the bus stations that go where buses go to the border but those are now closed because the company says it doesn't know what to charge for the tickets president nicolas maduro will be holding his first public address since he said he was the victim of an assassination attempt on august the fourth he will be trying to answer some of these questions when he does many venezuelans have crossed into the border crossed tried to cross into brazil to resubmit joins us live from the border between venezuela and brazil so what's what's been happening there

that's been there's been some some tension some violence teresa. that's correct i'm in the town of mike and i know this is right up the border between brazil and venezuela this is an example of the strain that many of the countries that venezuela's are fleeing that that the strain that the countries are going through where i am right now with a reception center for venezuelan refugees then about a week ago i was told by the military that around six hundred venezuelans cross every day i've just been told that that number has gone up to about eight. hundred so everything you've been centers like this one where they are fed they're vaccinated they're given an i.d. and the government of this point is trying to basically get them away from this border town because it's a very small town that over the weekend a group of men is leaving not far away from where i am where attacked by a mall there was saying that every big and national had been attacked on a full day by of unequal and national and they literally pushed about

a thousand venezuelans outside to the other side of the border told the venezuelan territory there was not a pension here something that poor. a minute. brazilian really. controlled by bringing more security forces so what are people telling you for why . why they're doing this why they're leaving knowing what we you know the tension and perhaps the pushback that they're going to receive why are they doing this. well let me tell you what we're hearing here are pulling off the race and one when you're in venezuela the stories are very prolific of one people are here it's mostly economic they say they cannot make ends meet with a minimum salary they cannot afford to buy their medicines than we need the food. chain their child becoming we have seen on this day and it's leaving the country

coming here trying to get identification clear that they can either go to brazil or go to another country in the region or it's a reasonable life or a city in israel of brazil border thank you. the great prime minister has declared an end to an age of austerity as the country exits the biggest international bailout in history alexis tsipras the hardship of recent years and said past mistakes will not be repeated chris avoided bankruptcy for the last eight years through three hundred billion dollars in loans from the i.m.f. that is in the european union and return it impose punishing austerity measures aimed at balancing its budget he must above. that carried with them austerity and recession and turned our country into a social desert over our country's regaining its right to define its own fortunes and its future like a normal european country without being compelled to do things from abroad with no more blackmail no more sacrifices for our people. more from athens. the prime

minister signals the beginning of a new age for greece one in which greece will become a normal european country again able to choose its fate to determine its economic policy free from the external coercion of other countries and memoranda understanding this is very much within the seed is a narrative that this left wing government was elected to rid the country of austerity policies imposed from without due to the policies of previous administrations and admitting no blame itself in prolonging or causing any further problems in the course of the greek economy the opposition conservatives have a very different narrative they believe that cities this election itself spooks the markets prolonged greece's period in the wilderness on able to borrow from the private sector and therefore remaining dependent on the third handout from its

eurozone partners those two narratives are likely to persist as greece heads into an election year with local and european parliament elections coming up in may and the general election by september of twenty nineteen as the two parties try to polarize the greek electorate the conservatives all consistently ahead in the polls see it is a major try and regain that lead or at least close the gap as much as possible which means that the lack of consensus here is likely to spook markets further as the government and the opposition openly disagree about who caused what and what the best course is for the greek economy from here on out jury deliberations continue in the trial of former champ campaign chairman paul mann ford and the jury same's to be split on at least one of the counts the jury reportedly submitted a note to the judge asking what happens at they don't reach a consensus on one of the counts against man a for the former trump a places eighteen bank and tax fraud charges and he has pleaded not guilty and

gallagher is live for us in alexandria virginia so what these questions andy that we're hearing about what does that mean. well i think it's a reflection of just how complex these charges facing donald trump's former campaign manager paul mana fought were dealing with very intricate financial dealings there are of course eighteen charges here and that note from the jury to the judge was very specific it said what happens if we don't reach a consensus on one of those eighteen charges the judge's reply to the jury was to go back and trying to reach a consensus on all eighteen charges if not he may accept a partial ruling on those eighteen charges now it's difficult to say whether that means the jury decided unanimously on seventeen of the eighteen charges that kind of speculation at this point isn't very helpful on monday night the jury stay here till six fifteen in the evening going past the normal finish date and we're at about twenty past two in the afternoon on day four of these deliberations and still

no decision made of course pullman affords legal troubles here are far from over even if he's cleared of all the charges here because he faces yet another trial in washington d.c. next month so what's at stake with this with this trial and. while a lot at stake clearly for paul minor for but this is widely being seen as a test of robert muller's investigation into russian collusion the charges here have nothing to do with collusion but they did spring out of that investigation so i think it is found guilty will in some ways legitimize what robert muller is doing of course if he is cleared of the charges here i think donald trump will really make mincemeat out of this trial saying look there is no collusion and he will repeat that claim going and all of this is.