serving on rio de janeiro's city council. indonesia in indonesia the number of people killed by floods and landslides has now risen to fifty nine many villages living near an overflowing dam in the south the ways the province had to be evacuated thousands more were forced to leave home since tuesday's torrential rain triggered severe flooding across the region earlier this month another landslide in java killed thirty two people and soaring temperatures in australia have sparked more than fifty bushfires across the southern island state of turns media hundreds of firefighters have been brought in from other parts of the country to help contain them the heat waves prompted emergency warnings in other cities to. the iraqi city of basra has faced months of protests against corruption and poll services demonstrators now say they want to get more organized and unite with other groups and they're embracing a movement that began in fronts rob matheson explains. yellow is now the color of

protest in the southern iraqi city of basra angry crowds mainly of young people have adopted the brightly colored vests first seen in demonstrations on the streets of paris a few months ago. if the. universe movement symbolizes the rise against corruption by the people of basra and iraq we'll wearing these yellow vests to deliver a message to politicians that even simple oppressed protesters can make a change about seventy percent of iraq's oil sits beneath the land around basra. yet people who live here say little of the money comes to them. the city's electricity supply barely works the tap water is on drink because it's full of salt . and there's high unemployment catalyst lass said and i tell her know enough is enough the iraqi people have been suffering we need to wake up these politicians are making a joke out of us they can't even resolve their differences in parliament how can

they manage a country street protests began in the summer of twenty eight when barely functioning air conditioners couldn't stave off the burning heat the protesters in basra blamed the problems in their city mainly on corruption in corporations but also in parts of the government which is based here in baghdad iraqi prime minister markey went to visit just recently to see the problems for themselves in october his predecessor. did the same thing but despite these high profile visits the people of basra say nothing has changed these latest protests are different this time they're organized by yellow vest say they want to join for. forces with other protest groups and put even more pressure on the government wanted to add the. phrase always going to be a boiling pot and the situation will go out of control of things aren't solved. because the road protest in basra may have changed but the problems are still the

same rob matheson al jazeera baghdad. is there with me so rahman a reminder of our top stories the u.s. president's close ally roger stone has been arrested as part of special counsel robert miller's investigation into possible russian collusion in the twenty six thousand election he's been charged with obstructing official proceedings making false statements and witness tampering the united nations special rapporteur on at me in yankee lean years calling on bangladesh to allow the un to make an assessment before writing the refugees a move to a remote island about one hundred thousand rangar are to be moved to boston char in the bay of bengal greece's parliament has voted to ratify a landmark agreement with its northern neighbor to change its name to north macedonia it was approved following days of heated debate protesters against the

deal have been braving the rain outside parliament. the u.n. human rights chief is warning the situation in venezuela could spiral rapidly out of control with catastrophic consequences michele battle insurgent leaders in caracas to hold talks to diffuse the political unrest opposition leader. has declared himself the interim president but venezuela's military has reiterated its support for president nicolas maduro. is due to make an address shortly. qatar says it will hand over a fifteen million dollars donation for garza to the u.n. after the palestinian group hamas rejected the funding the announcement comes two days after israel approved the donation for gaza but hamas says it won't accept the money because of conditions imposed by israel describing it as blackmail the money was set to fund the civil service and support the gazan people overlooked not be overcome us after we were informed by the leadership of hamas that they would not

accept the ground as an attempt to alleviate pressures on them it was decided to channel the money to other humanitarian projects in cooperation with the un we desist those people families or the improvement of electricity and sewage facilities about eight hundred thousand u.s. government workers are missing a second paycheck because of the partial shutdown the republican and democratic parties tried to purse competing bills but neither heard enough votes president donald trump is refusing to fund the government departments until he gets billions of dollars for a wall along the mexican border and of course you can follow all of those stories by logging on to our web site at al-jazeera dot com the news group with the real applicator is here in half an hour we continue now with the stream to stay with us .

every. hi i'm femi oke a. day off date on the war in syria it's a show that you our community voted for so join us with your syria related call and some questions live on you tube or on twitter. my name is the marker for the boy on the beach and you are. a big thanks to everyone who voted in last week's twitter poll to help us choose today's topic you can follow us to stream to look out for future polls so today we're looking at some of the latest headlines from the war in syria and a pullout of u.s. troops rebuilding diplomatic relations with bashar al assad and how displaced syrians are coping with harsh winter conditions with us to talk about all of this

in istanbul turkey me an architect and activist also in istanbul. vice president of the national coalition or syrian revolution and opposition forces. a journalist and activist really good to have you with us everybody or we begin with the u.s. troop withdrawal last month president donald trump made a surprise announcement that u.s. troops will begin leaving from syria have a listen to what turkey's president said during a meeting with russian president vladimir putin wednesday in moscow i mean if you believe. what is critically important is to prevent a power vacuum after the pullout of the american troops. our country's only goal is to clear the territory of syria of terrorist groups. and i just remind everybody of at best how story started with a tweet and a showing of a tweet here on my laptop and donald j.

trump after historic victories against i says it's time to bring our great young people home or what has happened since the fire of activity after that twitter announcement. femi thanks for having me i think i mean at the gun statement of apology like you might think that's something we're all worried about but if you. look at this and the the where you know that terrorists are going to take over again everyone labels different groups as terrorists and with the gun that label goes to the kurdish groups even some of the people in the opposition that oppose assad and don't really have those fundamental . that fundamental extremism that the rest of the world opposes so. the turkish government i think the power vacuum worry is mainly the kurds getting power and i don't think that's the wary of all the parties involved in syria i don't think that's the worry of syrians i think many syrians today are worried about turkish

influence in the northern region but going back to the original reason this will happen and that was a tweet from from donald trump i think that the u.s. president sometimes says things and then forces the u.s. government tagged to have to actually take action in something that really can be considered irrelevant and i think irrelevant is that the u.s. presence in syria has its about two thousand to two thousand five hundred servicemen. now the process of actually. is going to require us to go out yesterday from what compels saying that there would be some actual military men going in to help take the money and what that means is that the people on the ground are not actually fighting they're providing support to those on the ground. so most of the u.s. is involved in the country has been airstrikes and if we're going to count you have been over twenty countries that have been involved in instruction seriously the

u.s. presence in syria is totally brutal push and i don't see it's withdrew being anything but i think to the situation on army i hear your take there i want to talk to pose it with this one on twitter from rami our who writes in that syria is not a students party to leave it abruptly whenever you want it requires an exit plan accordingly needed with main partners like the s.d.f. and that's the syrian democratic forces a u.s. backed alliance of fighters it can happen after achieving objectives which the kind of mass syria then specially the turkey and iran's involvement makes it impossible so a different take there are some wondering what your thoughts on this and what you think this actually means for the syrian people in syria well there is so much uncertainty about this decision i mean one knows that this decision surprised even the frustration. it's surprise surprise everyone this unions and also the. actors the states that are intervening in syria

or iran so and it is my aides. saying that they finished isis and so it's time to withstand the american troops and upon this we can see that it's not actually you if this decision is really going to second place or not it's because isis is still there and. because this room was made a pond that we can see that if i say if reports kept coming about operations from isis in that region so maybe. trying to take back what he's. about to this is. still not clear. and it's created that doubt it's created a vacuum that all the other actors started just saying how to fill it

but it's still not clear what are the consequences are going to be and following what ronnie was saying. this isn't was taken after a charm her visit to a military base in iraq which is i am based and that means america is still there from the three bases in the region. and there's a base yet go go ahead team of them are show you something i wanted to show you before we wrap up this little segment go ahead. ok if i may jump in here i i think this this movie has a lot actually with that with drums at them to distracting from also some of the internal issues that his administration is dealing with in the united states and now we have the government shutdown so there is this attempt to always bring up the issue about the troops bringing the troops back home that he uses sort of to

distract away from from the internal problems the domestic problems but also see that this is actually this this is not a strategic decision this is more tactical i don't think based on previous experiences in the region where the u.s. has made interventions regardless of some of the differences in the details that the u.s. is not really going to pull out completely they have committed this is an investment for them so i don't see it as happening the way that everybody thought it was going to happen based on i guess i and i you know i have to still talking politics and strategy to a lack of strategies and a tweet going out and then affecting foreign policy but what difference does this make to syrians who are still living in syria well i was going to talk about that actually and i think this is a problem if if the u.s. pulls out without court meeting with some of the actors this will create the vacuum

that can have talked about and there are so many groups that could fill that regardless of who you consider terrorists but i think some of the more dangerous ones would be the regime taking back this area and it considers a lot of the residents in this area the civilians its enemy and it will go after them the same way it went after civilians in other areas that it regained control of. and continues to do so in areas that it never lost control of like in damascus and some of the the other cities and you also still have while isis. was eliminated to a certain extent there it hasn't been eradicated completely so there is still that danger of isis taking this opportunity to reestablish its presence you also have iran and this is inconsistent and consistent with the u.s. right that was talked about previously and all of these affected civilian. romy i know you want to get in there and i feel as well i want to push is on just

a little bit though it is still related so listen to this we're moving on to our next syria story for those of you at home some countries are ready to build ties again with the government of bashar al assad but what needs to be taken into consideration as diplomatic relations move toward normalization so last week lebanese foreign minister put on basket of calls for syria to be allowed back into the arab league have a listen. but you don't because the lebanon has proposed today the return of syria to the arab the this is not a subject that one country can decide on this topic meet its own mechanisms and formulations. however it is not possible for us to ignore this issue and stay away from dealing with it we would like to fill what we have called the gap in our arab world so that this gap widens. with so i mean i want to go to you vest and linking the two segments here than what we were just talking about

a minute ago to this normalization marwan says the u.s. withdrawal is likely to accelerate the political solution which could strengthen as said but stop the war another person starts on that this is peter cleaver and he says that all the countries that fought against assad lost the war against them and the earlier they normalize things the better because it's the last war to remove him so what i mean break that apart for us. less sentiment there seem to be what we're hearing a lot of these days and it's because if you look at the reality and that's looking through this from when this started and to where we are right now it doesn't really me justice and accountability doesn't really meet the aspirations of all the people involved i'm not just talking about people that opposed it and i paid the price for doing so but if you look at also what's happening today it might come as a shock to to some people that there aren't following some people who saw this in

the beginning as a lot of people closing their embassies in damascus a lot of parties countries closing them and cutting ties off of damascus and now all of the sudden they're going back because they've lost the war against us and i think it could come as a shock to some people but it doesn't come as a shock to me personally into i think a lot of people involved a lot of with the killers decisions have been made and. for example the the syrian ambassador to the u.n. . was basically honored by the u.n. secretary general for his ten years of service in the u.n. seven years of which at the time we can say five years of which so half of the time when he was actually. basically using the u.n. platform to manipulate the international community into believing somehow that absolutely fighting terrorists when the u.n. itself that the case all its statements to say that that's totally ridiculous now you have countries like italy so basically pushing it forward with it so that they

could somehow build ties again with assad and to be honest the the gulf states building times of their fight again i don't find that shocking the two i think that's totally expected i don't think that they support to the spring in any way only for one reason was that i would like to chill out here and one of the something people gotta go ahead in the head yeah normalizing the relationships that assad regime means and encourage it means normalized normalizing this terrorist regime now lies in his actions now lies in his work crimes that have been committed against people and normalizing the way he down he is dealing with his finance so we may see the pace of violence right in the world in the countries that have opened its relationship so that we that was what is going to happen if that continues and if i can add if i may add to this and just

building on one thing one thing that that was rami and i talked about you know i have an issue with calling this normalization this is actually what it should recall is reimposing the assad regime and the international community on the syrian people first and foremost half of whom have been displaced internally or to neighboring and countries and beyond and this is about impunity so this is an ethical issue and it's not normalization gives it this sort of. legal term but this is really all about showing where we are ethically and in terms of.