it's the price at the center of this nearly seventy percent of yemen's commercial imports pass through the city's poorest practically who un supervised eight pro-government ports is backed by saudi arabia say a major offensive is now underway to try to take her data back problem rebel fighters the ones that have remained in order. of food water and sanitation these scarcity of his goods basic needs like food the prices of basic commodities have double. doors for structurally caused because and schools have closed because of the war. the who think they say they are also implicating heavy losses on saudi backed. this war years old began when the point is captured the capital sanaa a coalition led by saudi arabia then launched a major campaign to try to restore the government recognized by the international

community since then the country has descended into chaos and in a place where war has become a daily plight pursued leibel hunger has become the norm one child under five in yemen dies every ten minutes the diseases which are killing them are entirely preventable half a million people have fled the area around to data since june when government forces try to recapture the city but for many in the poor city there is no escape and little chance of outside help while the number of those remaining in her latest city is difficult to gauge you know and it's the hours of worried that people needing to flee for safety are unable to do so they're trapped by military operations which are increasingly confining populations and cutting off exit routes there are a continued cool spring and a political solution to be found for yemen these so far have been ignored with neither side willing to compromise ever heywood. well let's bring in some she's

a yemeni analyst and visiting fellow at georgetown university and joins us via skype from washington d.c. some of the trump administration and the saudis both now say they've stopped the refueling of saudi warplanes operating over yemen so what impact is this going to have on the ground and what prompted this u.s. action do you think. what prompted this u.s. action is probably a create emptive step to what's about to happen in congress we just had elections here in washington d.c. and it seems that a lot of the senators and congress men and women who want want to see an end for the war at me and men and what we're seeing here is in a sense. the u.s. removing itself from the situation of what's happening in yemen of course it's not going to slow down or end the war in yemen and might slow it down just a bit but you know all the capacity and everything that's being run right now is

saudi managed i think it's a clear message that the u.s. no longer wants to be publicly supporting this war that said that they would like to see the war and for peace talks to begin ok so i mean both sides in the war say they're making gains but what is the military situation on the ground around her day than is any one side like the to have a clear victory around this crucial support. so it's really hard to tell but it seems that the most recent up to date news are revealing that the government and the pro had the forces that are fighting against these are having terry but this is not the first time that this is happened in the past we've seen fighting just the spears and her day that where the government managed to capture a lot of territory and then lose that somehow afterwards and so just because they're winning now it doesn't mean that they will continue to win the entire war militarily now this is of course the hopes of both sides that are fighting this conflict they both would like to see

a clear victory but what that means is that yemenis will continue to suffer there will continue to be bloodshed and that you know this is just an escalation of what's happening there it's an interesting point you make some of because aid agencies have long since warned that the fighting in the data has increased the risk of escalating this disastrous humanitarian crisis saw things like that to get worse with this new offensive which the saudis have launched. so we have statistics that say that even if the war stopped today the humanitarian crisis is going to continue to get worse because we have not acted in time to save it entirely and so it is without a doubt that yemen sooner or later we're going to announce famine if the escalation of the fighting continues and if aid is not allowed into the country and so the humanitarian situation is really alarming i think the entire world at this point after three years of war know that yemen is in danger that people are suffering and

i think that the genuine pieces for a boy for peace are continue to be ignored for example woman children the average person no longer gets to talk about peace and what we here are political people abandoning their agenda forward and talking about the end of the war which it is not so much just a just a final thought from you i mean international powers including the u.s. and the u.k. have all called for a speedy end to the war we know that so whether system of the peace talks which now won't resume apparently until the end of the year. so that's expect that peace talks are going to take a while to start it's going to need a lot of coronation an organization every time we've been ounce the start of peace talks in yemen what we saw in the escalation of violence because each party is trying to come into the negotiation from the powerful side in order to push the other side into conceding to their demands but unfortunately what we've seen in the past that this aggression usually tends to push one side or the other out of the

negotiation and out of coming to the peace table and so it's really important here for both sides the kind of slow down their rhetoric and ease that out if they have a true commitment to peace and i think that ultimately reveals that both sides are really concerned with a military victory and inside of them inside their military party and inside of their organization they're not genuinely booking to end the war in yemen for the right reasons which is to stop human suffering some of them done it thank you for talking to al-jazeera. thank you all have plenty more still to come here on the news hour including at least twenty one people are killed in gun and car bomb attacks in the somali capital mogadishu. i hope to god nobody will send me anymore brazier i want control no more. another u.s. national team leads to calls for gun control but it's unclear whether congress is listening. and in support a planned march in saudi arabia between never djokovic and rafael nadal has been

called off details with on the later in the program. now australian police say the man behind what they're calling a terror incident in melbourne had links to eisele he's been identified as. alley he crashed a car filled with gas cylinders in the city center on friday before stabbing that a man and wounding two others later died in hospital from being shot by the police investigators say he was known to counterterrorism officers this individual does hold radical views in his passport was cancelled in two thousand and fifteen when i plan to travel to syria his brother was arrested with terrorism offenses in november two thousand and seventeen by the j.c.t. today and he's currently on remand. for those offenses in terms of a serious one on this individual he was there were a target of the j.c.t.

in terms of investigations we undertook this search and it was made that was he heard held rhotic radicalised views he did not pose a threat in relation to the national security environment. a bomb and gun attack us killed at least twenty one people in the somali capital mogadishu witnesses say a gunman tried to storm a hotel when the bombs went off a warning some of the images in portugal report may be disturbing. the car bombs exploded simultaneously near a hotel and a police department headquarters in the capital mogadishu one of the three bombs ripped apart a minibus victims' bodies were scattered on the street. i pulled many dead bodies from the burning cars one of the cars exploded next to a public transportation vehicle and there were many people in it including women and children but the number of casualties is unknown as bodies are still being pulled from the burning cars. witnesses say a gunman tried to storm the tell by blowing up it security wall security forces

reportedly killed the gunman before they managed to enter the hotel. it was three huge explosions up to now we had an ambulance carried thirteen wounded people and four dead bodies but we still don't know the exact number of dead it may be more than thirty percent is it out of the armed group al-shabaab is claiming responsibility for the attack it's been trying to oust the un backed government for over a decade al shabaab has carried out deadly attacks against high profile targets including hotels and checkpoints in the capital and other cities. on al jazeera after two weeks of turmoil there's been another twist in sri lanka's political power struggle president mathur policy recenter has dissolved parliament clearing the way for a snap election two years ahead of schedule problems began on october the twenty sixth when the president fired his prime minister running a wickremasinghe oh he replaced him with my hand to rajapaksa the next president accused of war crimes well since his ousting wickramasinghe has refused to leave

his residence saying the move to fire him is unconstitutional and illegal. well the move to dissolve parliament came hours after the president's party admitted it could not muster enough votes to nominate rajapaksa nelson and as more from colombo the dissolving of parliament by president by three policy restrain another board out of the blue two weeks after he started off this constitutional crisis by sacking his prime minister and of the commissioner and appointing the former president mind the rajapaksa as his successor now the many people had been saying there should be a floorboard parliament should be reconvened because the ousted prime minister claim that he still held on the parliamentary majority he had the support in parliament and he challenge the appointment of mind rajapaksa which was which he said was against the constitution the president had seemed to bow down to pressure and brought the date forward as to when parliament would sit that being the fourteenth of november next wednesday but in recent days we've heard problems and

the government seeming to have problems making up that magic one hundred thirty number which would give them a majority in the two hundred twenty five seat assembly now the nineteenth amendment of this country's constitution brought in by the citizen a government expressly forbids the president from dissolving parliament less than four and a half years into its term this dissolution comes way ahead of that it's one year and three months before that number and critics. have said this is against a constitution it's antidemocratic the ousted prime minister's party has already the criteria and said they will meet the election commission of tomorrow morning and challenge that so we're bound to see this is not the end of this issue. a state of emergency has been declared in the u.s. state of california where raging wildfires are causing widespread destruction at least six people have died and tens of thousands of an older than the homes robins

reports from west make the niche. fire is ripping through southern california with high winds driving columns of flame and smoke from the mountains to the sea. tens of thousands of homes are threatened many have already been destroyed my friend's house is totally bundt i don't know but mine you're fearful that your house will burn yes. ok yeah. very. residents of the wealthy seaside enclave of malibu are fleeing under a mandatory evacuation order the fires sprang up thursday night the source is still not known but intense wind gusts rapidly spread the blaze through bone dry chaparral and brush into communities how we got the bag and i said i'm not going to remember going to have done what you think you became a good parent a huge tower of smoke rose thousands of meters into the sky and the smoke made air

quality hazardous for people with respiratory problems california's acting governor gavin newsom has declared a state of emergency and while authorities say most people heeded their warnings and evacuated when they were told to we are also told by authorities that there have been some deaths firefighters are working desperately to keep up with the fast moving widespread blazes when you have forty fifty sixty mile an hour winds blowing fire at your heels the importance is to get people out of harm's way and get them to safety. in northern california the town of paradise turned to hell overnight these incredible pictures show. a tornado of fire raging there the entire town is believed to have been destroyed twenty seven thousand people fled the area twenty year old colton person field shot this cell phone video as he drove through

hellish conditions outside paradise he somehow made it to safety severe fires have ravaged large areas of california since october of last year now the state is once more witnessing nature's fury at its worst. and rob joins us live now from west village there in southern california rob's that is bring us up to date with what's been happening on the ground. well there is some very good news for the residents and the the firefighters and other law enforcement officials here in southern california daryn and that is that the winds have died down now you can probably see behind me just a few flickers of flame in the brush on a hillside if the winds were as high as they were earlier today that would be a big problem but it is not being dealt with by firefighters right now so the winds

are expected to remain calm. into saturday tomorrow for about another twenty four hours or so that will give the firefighters a chance to rest many of them have been on duty for twenty four hours or more and also many of these hundreds of firefighters are actually themselves and their families had to evacuate their own homes so that's going to be a relief unfortunately the winds will come back on sunday and blow again for several days but hopefully in the meantime authorities say they'll be able to get a handle on this southern california fire it is so far burned more than seven thousand hectors about ninety thousand people have been evacuated number of structures homes and other buildings have been destroyed we don't know how many because no official count has been released and the. fire

authorities who gave a press conference not too long ago said that the fire is still zero percent contained and could still burn for several more days robin apart from what's going on in southern california where you are they've also been files in northern california what more can you tell us. yes now those fires proved deadly least five people were found to have been burned to death in their vehicles as they were trying to flee from the burning town of of paradise. their bodies so badly burned that they have not yet been identified the local electrical utility in that area of california said that there was some abnormal activity on its power lines immediately before the fire broke out so that is one

possible cause of the fire as often happens when the winds are high the utility lines of power lines sway in the wind if there are trees or other objects close enough there may be a spark an arc of electricity and in these extremely dry conditions that is often enough to start a fire and then when you add wind in with that it turns into a huge conflagration so california has definitely not seen the end of this. very sudden and devastating fire a but it may be turning the corner on it rob thank you are not want to come here now it is there including. living in fear in the philippines critics say the president's crackdown on drugs is making the situation worse. yes it is rather cool using simple high powered blazes to gently nudge

decided gently gently nudge. space to reach one hundred to another and from science fiction to fact new laser technology enabling scientists to get rid of space junk surrounding the planet. and it's all the supporting actor who flock to the lions of the start of the world chess championship more nazi. from dusky sunsets over the sprawling savannah. to sunrise atop an asian metropolis. hello we've got some wet weather in the forecast for central parts of china and down towards the southwest a fair amount of cloud just around the gulf of tom king northern parts of vietnam hong kong the finest settled north easterly winds coming in here twenty seven celsius chance of a few showers there into taiwan the wetter weather will be into central parts of

china saturday and going on into sunday maybe just flooding a little further south what's in the process there's that wet weather still of it was northern parts of vietnam sunshine and showers into the philippines quite a rash of showers actually right across southeast asia usual heavy downpours there in the heat of the day could be affecting a good part of malaysia more so rather late peninsular back up towards thailand it's been a pretty wet wake and there's a lot of these showers well less still in place hopefully not quite as heavy as they have been recently and they're tending to nudge a little further westward saying today ship could see some wet weather some heavy rain there coming into java jakarta at around thirty two celsius with big downpours from time to time some thunder showers here thunder showers continue for southern parts of the bingo still a few showers there in flank and not as bad as it has been over the past few days but the showers close by nevertheless for much of india it is dry and sunny. the weather sponsored by cattle and he's. dug

a stone with tensions between islamic separatists and pro russian nationals. caught in the crossfire one man has a vision for the next generation empowering. to seek a special way. with this. peaceful moorings on al-jazeera. fresh perspectives. possibilities. thinness gentleness and. debates in discussions how can you trust a man like that how can he work again with a man like that she seems to be saying if all of us and we just don't know or care enough al-jazeera award winning programs take you on a journey around the. only al-jazeera.

welcome back to the top stories here on the al-jazeera the u.n. refugee agency is demanding the u.s. ensure that the press statement violence or persecution are given protection of the international law president donald trump to sign a proclamation which says migrants who enter the country illegally come out on the side of. turkish police are officially ending the search for some official g.'s body but will continue the criminal investigation into the saudi journalists murder sources have told al jazeera traces of acid were found at the saudi consul general residence in istanbul. it's believed his killers used chemicals to dispose of his body. president. has dissolved parliament clearing the way for election in january

two years ahead of schedule a political crisis began when the president replaced the prime minister. now thousands of people have been killed in the two years since philippines president rigaud to ted. drugs that many say they are living in the fear of police operations . sent this report from central philippines. grief has come into the town. five people are killed in what the police describes as the one time big time operation a raid that sweeps through communities for illicit drugs and other petty crimes. many remembers how the police barged into their home at dawn looking for her husband he told me don't be afraid there are no drugs in our home they won't do anything. but mary and her children were made to crawl out of their home while her

husband stayed inside the police then shot her husband dead. the police are reassures residents that operations here are meant to restore safety in very communities but that's not exactly what many people here feel they tell us they have never been more afraid the recent spate of killings here on scene in recent years. across the province drug related killings have gone up to cebu may be one of the most developed and populous cities in the vicinity it's region but police here say they will be relentless that's why the president called it drug war because even that will be. the police as the fight. and. sometimes we don't even know who the other side of the house in these houses are

made or. will it's going to just penetrate if we fired our guns she admits many officers are now less willing to implement the government's so-called war on drugs that is because president to dare to is now halfway through his term and there could be legal repercussions once his steps down from office complaints against other government officials for crimes against humanity are no pending at the international criminal court police say almost five thousand people have been killed in drug related operations since their they launched his war and drugs in two thousand and sixteen but the rights groups believe the number is much higher they promise to continue their investigation and say witnesses will soon be ready to testify. for some families that is the best they can hope for they say. their loved ones are gone and there won't be an end to their

grief. province central philippines. investigators in california are trying to establish what motivated a mass shooting on thursday a twenty eight year old former marine walks into a bar and shot dead twelve people the gunman killed himself when confronted by police reports another day in the united states another day to learn the names and the stories of the victims of a mass shooting among them a small business owner a police officer a college freshman just eighteen years old a man who took care of disabled children and a twenty seven year old who survived the mass shooting in las vegas just over a year ago my name is susan are fine with my son with tell her if i know if we lost him last night at the borderline shooting my son was in well spent yes with a lot of his friends and he came home he didn't come home last night and i don't

want prayers i don't want thoughts i want gun control and i hope to god nobody you know fems me anymore breyer's i want gun control no more guns period q it has become a familiar pattern each and every time americans are killed in mass by an armed man the politics break down into two camps for republicans it is about mental health the shooter was trained to be an excellent shot by the u.s. marines he served in afghanistan well he was a war veteran he was a marine he was in the war he served time he saw some pretty bad things and a lot of people say he has to be the. just tough for democrats it's about guns this is a man. got to change. this doesn't happen anywhere else on planet earth. and we can't let folks forget that can't lose sight of that can allow this to be normalized it's been

a constant conversation with little action while the republicans controlled all branches of government that changes in january and the likely house leader nancy pelosi put out a statement promising house democrats will fight to pass bipartisan commonsense solutions to prevent gun violence in communities across the country at the end of the of. the right now it seems much more likely that we'll learn many new names new victims new stories of loss and horror long before congress agrees to act. al-jazeera washington. now scientists are preparing to file lasers into space to shift some of the one hundred seventy million pieces of manmade daybreak orbiting the earth the cosmic clutter poses a constant threat to satellites spacecraft and potentially people here on earth there in a home that's more on the space junk clean up. we've been launching things and people into space since nineteen fifty seven satellites be

a favorite programs spacecraft to explore the unknown people to take our first sticks and then the more than sixty years of space exploration with managed to leave behind around one hundred seventy million bits of junk to give you a sense of just how big the problem is take a look at this graph from scientists at the university of texas these orange dots a functioning satellites orbiting the earth every day everything else the sea of pink the below is daybreak junk basically some of it's tiny some of it says big as a bus all of it's hurtling around the earth at speeds in excess of twenty seven thousand kilometers an hour crisscrossing at different orbits and on a potential collision course for the things and people that we want up there. scientists warn it has the potential to create a string of catastrophic even unstoppable collisions that could render parts of

space unusable nessus scientists donald kislev first identified the scenario thirty years ago scientists have been trying to come up with ways to clean up after ourselves if a sense has the predicted when the population density of space to reach this or it will start. self and start multiplying once though we're seeing the beginnings of that we see greece a number of settlers. through who are you know the best minds in this to mine we have another ten years we could be the. the lucky and have twenty years or twenty five we could be very unlucky and it could happen tomorrow scientists are making progress with innovative ways to clear the class a but none of it's ready to launch just yet that's where a new use of well established laser technology comes in ataman astray leah working with the experts from around the world is preparing to fire high powered lasers to

blast space debris away to a safer orbit yes it is rather cool using simple high powered lasers to change we know which one to side gently gently match the space to reach one hundred to another we don't have a solution for space to bring out we have means to reduce the scale of the problem and. the doomsday event so we get more time space based laser technology dates back to the one nine hundred seventy s. and now has a myriad of applications that already make a real difference to us down here on earth but it's this latest use of laser ranging technology to clean up the cosmic junkyard around our planet that's capturing global attention it's the biggest clean up if it ever seen and this corner of the universe at least medium hond al-jazeera let's talk to david ball his a c.e.o. of the space environment research center he joins us via skype from canberra a dead that's how big is the problem of space junk and what size does the data

breach have to be to pose a serious problem. flood debris comes in all shapes and sizes we're estimating you know an object with one one centimeter and going to for example a model saw this object try to be like kilometers a second can cause significant damage to satellites we do have debris objects much larger than that is thirty thousand objects large in a softball some of which is the previous article showed are larger than a school bus so all sides in solids all sorts of issues but the energy in these are pictures of the problem and david so tell us how this laser technology will work and what's the likelihood of it being successful that ok so we're using the laser technology to stop debris on the brake allision so these are uncontrolled objects which could collide with each other and so we are looking to use the light as it soon gently nudged the orbit of one of the objects to prevent a collision from occurring to do that we've got to do

a whole lot of mathematics in advance to understand the objects to predict at the idea predict their role that's not to stand what they did doing and pick the the two objects which to jude had this collision to stop a collision from happening and it's of the will first when we're doing it here in camera with the roof space environment research center and we're using what they call it dept of optics which is what the astronomers use to clean up images you see from the from the maddest by speck to earth through the turtle is the atmosphere we use in that in reverse to push the lines of out back through the telescope or up to spice to the object but david if the laser beams are just not going the space junk out of the way is that just putting off the problem for another day that. well i've said sit and see if you would stop being a collision from happening and that's important the article previously talked about the kessler syndrome which is objects floating without exploding with more objects which could sterilize an orbital plane or part of the orbit around the earth there

are research efforts going on elsewhere in the world to remove try to remove some the larger places objects to grapple em to bring them back to deal with them but we need more time as a human rights to get there so the work we're doing to better catalogue measure and predict behavior projects and then use allies is to prevent these collisions from happening does bias that amount of time while these other research activities come to fulfill them and they both thank you very much for talking to al-jazeera thank you now vienna in moscow have some of the child as ambassadors of a claims that a retired austrian general worked as a spy for russia for decades the seventy year old the next in the provided russian intelligence information about austin's military and political situations in.