even off free boxes of food in exchange for votes among some people queued up for them across the country. president sisi says his room means a stable and secure egypt in the face of turmoil in neighboring countries the referendum results were announced on the day when he was hosting two summits one incident where longtime president bashir was deposed recently and people one day military leaders out. and the other on libya a battleground between rival governments eighty years after his dictator moammar gadhafi was ousted. emboldened by his victory in the referendum critics fear sisi may be uses new powers to make sure any threats to his rule are kept from under control priyanka gupta al jazeera. saudi arabia is being condemned for executing a further thirty seven people one of them crucified after he was killed state media

said they were convicted of adopting extremist ideology and forming terrorist cells to spread chaos and provoked sectarian strife some were convicted of killing security people in a bomb attack activists say it is the largest ever mass execution of shias in the kingdom amnesty international is among human rights groups who've been speaking out more than a hundred saudis have already been executed this year losses total was one hundred forty nine at least fifty one people have died in floods and mudslides in south africa's eastern cape the heavy rain started on monday night it in parts of the city of durban rescue workers continue to search for survivors. scientists believe they've recorded the first seismic tremor on another planets and they've been quick to label it a mars quake the faint rumble on the red planet was picked up by nasa as robotic

probe inside the first spacecraft designed to study the deep interior of a distant world inside is on a two year mission to mars. all right let's get a roundup of our top stories the death toll in sri lanka after sunday's suicide bomb attacks has risen to three hundred fifty nine people including thirty nine foreign nationals the state defense minister saying eight of the nine suicide bombers have now been identified sixty people arrested so far enough a nando's has been following developments for us from colombo as the funerals continue there is a certain sadness that pervades the entire country because they keep sort of you know harking back to what unfolded on sunday but amid that frustration and

mounting anger that this sort of absolute tragedy and carnage could have been prevented the worst part about sunday and the next couple of days basically has been that now there's a situation where there is concern there's fear that it's the worst is not over that there can be further incidents explosions north korea's leader kim jong un has arrived in the russian city of la de vos stock where he'll meet president vladimir putin the visit thought to be part of north korea's efforts to build international support. a u.n. report on civilian deaths in afghanistan says the military and u.s. forces of killed more civilians than the taliban and i saw airstrikes in military raids were responsible for the deaths of more than three hundred people in the first three months of this year your court says taliban i saw and some other fighters have killed two hundred twenty seven people but the number of attacks has

gone down. japan has apologized to tens of thousands of victims forcibly sterilized under a now defunct law politicians unanimously passed legislation to compensate those affected by the nine hundred thirty eight law it was designed to prevent the birth of those considered inferior descendants near words about twenty five thousand people with physical or mental disabilities were sterilized the law remained in place until one thousand nine hundred ninety six throws all the headlines the stream is next. you're just back from yemen what was the glimpse of the country to go listen the children are deeply affected because of war we meet with global news makers the stories that matter just zero.

in the stream into prime minister narendra modi has promised economic was. warning that a party is reelected next month but what does that mean. i'm really could be leaving today we speak with kashmiris about the first three phases of polling and what this is stuart election could mean for indian administered kashmir want to share a few of your thoughts but them in the chat or tweet us we'll do our best to include them in the conversation. i am talker and i'm a reporter for india and you are in the stream. the first phase of parliamentary elections in the region began on a poor eleventh amid calls to boycott what separatist leaders say is an illegitimate exercise under a military occupation other communities have also expressed dissatisfaction with

the election constituencies living in southern kashmir voted on tuesday with a final to face. twenty nine and six in its manifesto the b.g.p. included a plan to repeal indian administered kashmir special status which according to modi is an obstacle to economic development government authorities increased security in the region after a suicide attack on paramilitary troops killed forty people but already has also restricted civilian movement along an arterial highway. and shut down mobile internet services measures that have not been well received by many kashmiris so how would this huge voting exercise affect people living in the territory to help us explore the possibilities in indian administers kashmir and sasha cohen is an associate professor of politics and international relations at the university of westminster also. dean is a journalist who covers wins issues and conflict in the region. is

a human rights activist and feisal is the president of the jammu and kashmir people's movement party hello everybody for the benefit of our international audience they realize that india is the has a huge elections ongoing right now so big that they're broken down into several parts have a look here my laptop audience you can see jammu and kashmir the elections are twenty nineteen there are funny faces before you even get a sense of what the results might be but not everybody is voting there is a boycott going on right now kiran can you explain to me why some people say i'm not going to the polls i have not voted. german kashmir is disputed territory between india and pakistan and people of kashmir since one nine hundred forty seven have been demanding the right to self-determination and since nine hundred forty seven there are many nations held but we have seen that the government of india has always used elections and legitimized presence and. saw it

as an integral part of the you are. used. to play internationally that the people of kashmir are getting these domestic elections. as . well as people of kashmir are voting for a referendum which will determine whether kashmiri people want to be part of or whether kashmiri people want to be part of pakistan or whether they want to be an independent country so therefore that's the reason why most of the people have. left and in last few years we have seen that the intensity of the by thought has increased so in the last three seasons of election also we have seen considerable. good and schmidt had motorbike or not because we had less. but general sentiment in kashmir is like what seem like god i think i think it's also that by

god is not only like if we go on ground what people tell us is that they have seen a lot of oppression in recent years like in two thousand you seen two to twenty eighteen like a lot of people a day care like it was two thirty to slake one hundred fifty civilians and then there were more there was like more in their houses and these lake recent killing the intensity of these artists and now you see that the major the hardline policies of b.g.p. government in kashmir they think it's no point the world because. it's not going to change your situation it's not going to change good lives. you know what i mean you mentioned earlier that the intensity of this boycott seems to have increased in the hospital years and that's actually something that we're seeing online so i wanted to share a few anecdotes from at least three people who explain why they are not voting the first is art on twitter and she says i didn't vote because i didn't want to be

a part of the statistic that indian politicians use to justify their illegal occupation of kashmir another person she made on twitter says we don't care which party it is they're all the same for us we want to raise our voice for a boycott so that the international community will see that kashmiris are rejecting indian democracy and then the last one is via video com and this is from a student in kashmir his name is omar is that these an engineering student and here's why he's not voting. they're going elections. just like this and the start of the. this is the only nation they're going to. probably still see this and this is the only nation and the same. thing when is it. my boy to me to my.

flaws. and. so shall he says this would legitimize military rule you heard the anecdotes from people there who seem very discontent and yet you started your own political party talk to us about that seeming disconnect why people there don't seem to have that same enthusiasm that you do. i have a slight disagreement of the we elect will mainstream is often seen here while i do agree with the caller on that this electoral process is at times misused too may be going to portree normalcy in kashmir or to portree elections as an endorsement of the stats call. but then at the same time i believe that you know saying that the international community is very naive and they do not understand the ground realities and fish meat and they can be maybe misled into believing that that participation in the electoral politics is the endorsement of the steps called i

think that's also something which i need to question. but i do believe that by court has been a regular feature of the elections and wish me. the intensity of by court which we saw in this election and the elections last couple of fears that has been unprecedented and has more to do with the policies of the central government which we saw the last four to five years the extreme shift of the policy of the right wing to words a hard line military approach to. to conflict management wasn't actually go ahead i can see how about to say something i had to push back a little bit on that because i think that the numbers that we need to remember here are seventeen ninety and sixty five these are the numbers of polling booths that actually recorded ziegel goat now if as a voter anywhere in the world you try to imagine that there's a democratic exercise and nobody goes to vote at a booth then i think that is significant and elections country to what is claimed

as a festival of democracy in kashmir that a very good test carnival of securitisation hours have to be restricted the end guy landscape the cedula of the elections is structured because that there needs to be enough security forces to be able to carry it out so what does that tell us if elections are held under such conditions and it's a i think supremely ironic that elections are claimed as something that gives legitimacy to the government it's a process of eliciting consent but in contrast to that there is there's a complete lack of people who engage in and a lack of consensus and on the very need to have elections before anything else is properly addressed it's not as if there are the lections and then something else will also. taking place in fact the something else that is happening is the arbitrary closure of highways to civilians on specific dates closure of trade in the last few days talks of the appealing article three seventy an article thirty five a so at the same time is used as a rallying cry for the right wing extremists in india and why gosh media is our

object you know i made abject and and caught between this devil you know this rock and a hard place that situation where a vote if you know if they will then be i mean only you know see putting a stamp of approval on their own oppression and the lack of any political component to either democracy or development and if they don't then there is a what opened up relation and you know and people don't realize that many of those who do vote also end up with a specific need a better more nearly climb to list their reasons because they may be related to their leaders josh i believe we know elections have been happening in spite of what we keep on saying for the last seventy years the participation in the elections has been you know going up and going down we have seen that sort of role of course to which the little participation has gone through so why do it be that at this moment electoral mainstream is going through a c.v.s.

let's to miss a crisis morsel because we are not being able to deliver the very we have been you know telling people in troubles and people that you know coming elections are going to be what you do as aleutians but then at the same time i think there is a huge constituency of people who still believe in electoral politics and who believe that maybe electoral politics can still be constructively to meet the. sort of successes that i know i know that you can't vote but who from other das have actually voted or decided they weren't going to vote if you don't mind me asking that they got the hand up so they can also hear ok. for the first time in my life right i am not needed ever in my life this was the first election in which a party because i didn't leave i want to be very candid it is not silent it is very intelligent life to tell us why he did so or he didn't tell us why because it's not easy to vote if you are in kashmir it's

a very difficult situation to be able to do that. you know i did not would because . particularly good but have a bigger question which you are if it is an occupation and we've been occupation democracy exist i mean i'm in love i mean here's the you know that elections have happened. that government has been pawned people have participated or sometimes by court has happened in the happened seventy years that you govern only i think a. little and think they are looking i think one thing i see on the ground what they are lies is that they think now they cannot be fooled they have become politically wary of it and they see these mainstream local leaders who promised you know who should know benefits who promised new beginnings do you see them as an extension of the same brutal rule that's why they should do this

interest to have it even if you see today there was an election going on in the south and what was on that all the situation was there you will see you can hardly find a civilian annoying on the lot it's only you know military policemen from one place than are the police and what kind of election is that maybe you do not ensure the movement of civilians on on the roads like people think people know elections are taken just to hold it is it at all and no one will leave people hard to go toward and even if those who go to war they think they just want you know they have been promised benefits and next time they also end up in the same desperate situation exactly i think are at least. going to speak i think that there is there is this kind of circularity to the trial of expectations so i mean i applaud you for taking that leap into electoral politics and it's interesting that he did not vote before that and i think that in itself is quite telling but now having done so i

mean one does realize that this. this kind of circle of just be trade expectations that continues and could find about the occupation is really important because you know let's let's just take these words is democracy just procedurally holding of elections if it's anything more than that then how is it possible that in a place where which is you know which is called a democracy how is it possible that emergency powers legislation exists for decades on end how is it possible that there is just ubiquitous militarization again to your viewers i would ask them to imagine you know going out on streets where. every few hundred meters you see you know soldiers with guns you see. evidence of militarization everywhere you see these bagels you see people that would literally . trigger how is that in any definition you know how is that indicative of a democracy i'm not i'm not going to sting the fact that elections are say are not

a part of you know democratic exercise they are important but democracy has to be something more than procedural and what we have instead is just this new medical focus on numbers on you know on a kind of like obsession with the edits magick the permutations and combinations that can somehow get people into power but what what does that i think would be a lot so. i think you raised a good point and it brings me to this week that i'm seeing that i want to get in here because i will hear sums up what you were saying he says in kashmir the electoral process is nothing but a security operation in the ninety's people were forced at gunpoint to vote and today it is expanded from that over or over into a kind of a subtle corpsmen patronage and co-option that is one take on this but i wanted to share with you you to comment we've got live this is someone who says that al-jazeera is being biased right now and supporting pakistan not showing how kashmir militants stop or threaten people against voting so i'll give this one to

you what do you what would you say to this person you to do says that we're not showing both sides of the story and there are other reasons why people weren't out there to vote. if you see the elections. and for a mega does not have militancy. with you only seven percent people. who are in a good is also less militarized as compared to. people in. without the pressure of militants without the pressure to provide quote campaign are choosing to buy quality what does it tell you writing these three little boys or is a bigger government or the process because we understand also why people in north and south in the rural areas are voting because of their vulnerabilities. enumerable a little bit because of the people they vote they also feel that there has to be

a buffer between the indian armed forces and the people of kashmir and they think of these politicians. as. sometimes who would save them from the wrath of the indian armed forces doesn't resign i want to play inverse comment some how did ask ask. residents of that town and on a personal level and he was using strategy it was a strategic site have a listen to what he thought. if we boycott the polls it will only benefit the b j t the government of india wants us to boycott the election they are creating unrest because they want to be j.p. to come into power i only cast my vote to keep the b j p at bay as they have suppressed the kashmiris. a refund. and that if i was to set the reason i am voting because of what the b j p say they

may well do to and kashmir so by not citing i you helping that to happen to the debate ip possibly saying we will consolidate india. kashmir make that part of india so rather than being an autonomous toiletry going to be part of india that's what they say they want to they using perhaps this election as a referendum on that if he does so i cannot help it. i think it's not about helping. me personally i have never wanted me did anyone in my family has more did so i didn't even think about being but there are some people who think they're the they want to. go to say will be the one to bet but that's a really small fictional people. but let's talk to people they have actually lost in the democracy the whole last elections they have completely you know they had

must be eliminated from the mainstream politics even if you know new leaders emerge and the rum is them new the showed them new dreams they will give them benefits but the they have completely you know they didn't show any interest in all those things so i think i'm moving fairly they are still in speaking of losing faith i want to share this because she said something similar that kashmir has always been used as a tool but mainstream politicians are harvest votes from the rest of india the fact is most of the people in india are aware about the ground reality of the relentless information warfare which meanders the true nature of the conflict and so i want to show you this article this headline here and here are you trying to get in there natasha this headline is from a model t. . he talked missionaries who said they feel like they are a campaign prop but they're still voting here ask you sent us a video comment i'd like you to have a listen to. the thing that worries me really about these elections is that how

kashmiris have been handed a sort of campaign props across me in many india like for example to ground zero votes and to appeal to their nationalist b.s. . someone from the holding party in india says that. a bit have given full authority to go to the security forces without any question in kashmir and this has real life consequences on kashmir whose. not just in kashmir but across we mean when india. has said what are those real life consequences. well i think the ground reality here is that there is militarization you know there's death by like a thousand obstructions every day the engine from the communication studio to waves to environmental degradation to corruption and all of that is enabled within that way doing a structure which cannot be changed until and unless there is an honest acknowledgement of the fact that there is

a problem which is under assault and what is staggering is that india wish we did use that as a mobilization as i said and as your viewer said further right wing without any acknowledgement and you know and that person is right it's not just ignorance and malice it is but it's all it's not just ill will and malice but it's also a lot of ignorance because you know the televisual media landscape there is so narrow and state centric that it would never show people the reality unless you know so in that sense i think soon i got it's really a million miles away from from delhi or from anywhere else because people have no idea of what it's like if they were to do actually know a bit more i think that would change and channels like yours would not be accused of bias because these are precisely the sorts of conversations we should be having everything english media is not about pakistan i mean you know there's there's a whole range of issues that anything thinking person would get about and they range from you know nothing on freedom to one end to the road on the other and to

corruption and this is not an area we don't even get to watch the channel. that's basically the crisis which we are talking about when i. went to fort you talked about democracy i said more than the democracy it was more about survival for us the kind of lot of the right wing which we have seen in the last few years the crisis when it comes to a group of article thirty five articles seventy the. international audience you want to three seventy i know this is the article where these are just. he has special status in the other one and that's part of the indian constitution the other one absolutely article twenty five. is a little. more from kashmir a property outside of cannot be made up to property and what is potentially being threatened by the. so we have seen we have seen on the civilian bomb and on the

national highway which is the only link that connects me to the rest of the world so that will go down with it that's connected to what. i have as well as i'm just i'm just going people a little bit of context so that they can follow along i guess let me just ask because out of all of it he feels like the most optimistic out of all of you that he may have actually been something. that is real i guess literally impaired thank you i really was that was going to like this you know i understand that this is a big step you know knowing how trust has been factored what he's doing is a big step but then the question is if you rely upon local politicians here to actually stop and stem the. you know influence of the p.d.p. how does that square with the fact that it is push me to mainstream politicians that have anybody that if you look at the whole b.-b. b.-b. b. you know the other suggestion i would love to answer could almost at the end of the

show. i completely agree with the president so you know phase of destruction which we are witnessing in the credit completely goes to the electoral mainstream completely cannot dispute but then when it comes to the future life of society as a people i mean we just cannot be disappointed and we cannot just feel that nothing is going to work i mean some gastro you look at it we want to. but i don't i mean what you don't want to. belittle political views by people look by being election the early ones were going to change which means future i think part of the. a lot of them you have got to be good to the problems you're not the only one the first one who has to do what after bodyguards there have been many you know that in those in the past but they wouldn't be political leadership which is why i didn't read them because we call it what you have been the well to do and the good election will depart on a technique that we want you but i mean but my question is there are i'm not going

to i'm going to ask you just to hold on to your question and we will continue our conversation online because there's so much to talk about one talk about john the kashmir thank you tess for helping us get up to date with where you are in the elections right now and the issues that you care about moving on to the lead and a final word i'll give it to you mark dyer who says that after a well known young bureaucrat say facebook face or join politics it has made some you theme marriage in electoral politics as a means to achieve political concessions from india to some props there are conversations continue always online you can find us on twitter at a.j. stream see him next time thanks for watching my . the fascist anti establishment and pro violence. despite the recent official disbanding of its

militarized wing a basque separatist movement is found alive and well on the terraces of a build files stadia. a place where political revolutionaries share a platform an ideology with football hooligans. and read all death on al-jazeera. for nine hundred forty six to nine hundred fifty eight the united states detonated dozens of atomic bombs in the marshall islands when the us was getting ready to clean up and leave in the one nine hundred seventy s. they picked the pit that had been left by one of the smaller atomic explosions and dumped a lot of this new tony and other radioactive waste into the pit the bottom of the dome it's permeable soil there was no effort to line it and therefore the seawater is his inside the dome when this dome was built there was no

factoring in sea level rises caused by climate change now every day when the tide rolls out ready zero active isotopes from underneath the die roll out with it if it really they were not tolerant just the marshall islands we're talking the whole sea . but i'm a tradition every weekly news cycle brings a series of breaking stories and then of course there's donald trump town through the eyes of the louts jannah least that's right out of a hamas script that calls for the an aisle asian of israel that is not what that phrase means at the least name post as we turn the cameras on the media and focus on how they were told on the stories that matter the most in bad news a free palestine a listening post on al-jazeera. new

video emerges of two suspected suicide bombers attacking three lantus shangri-la hotel on easter sunday. a lot of this is al jazeera live from doha also coming up north korean leader kim jong un arrives in russia for a summit with president putin. to prod him ocracy leaders in hong kong sentenced to sixteen months in prison. plus testers in sudan get some back up a train from the demonstrators are arriving to help sustain their movement. below are starting to get a fuller picture now of who may have been behind sunday's suicide bombings in sri

lanka that have killed three hundred fifty nine people new video emerging reportedly showing two men with large backpacks entering the shangri-la hotel in the capital colombo moments before an explosion of the country's deputy defense minister says a splinter group of the national. faction of the high end of the attacks eight of the nine suicide bombers have been identified. what also i can say is that this group. of some of the suicide bombers most of them educated. and come from maybe middle upper middle class so they're financially quite independent and you know their families quite stable financially so that is a boring factor in this because some of them have i think studied. in various other countries people degrees. elim you know this

really do care that people. a president of much any policy sina has vowed to overhaul state security after the country's intelligence agencies didn't act on several tipoffs and there are fears all those associated with the easter sunday attacks are still at large scott live now to florence louis who is outside a historic buddhist temple in killarney or just outside the capital colombo where ceremony for the victims will be held later florence i want to ask you first of all about this new security footage this just been released how close does this get us to knowing what happened here. well this really confirmed well this really in a way confirms what security officials have been saying they've say the defense minister we heard from the defense minister couple of hours earlier at

a press conference that they have been able to identify eight of the nine suspected suicide bombers who carried out the attacks and the the video that we've got the latest video that we have seen now shows two men at the shangri-la hotel one of those hotels that was attacked on sunday we see these two men walking up to.