they were highly effective in the battle against eisel in iraq and syria and were formally incorporated into iraq military and security apparatus in two thousand and sixteen on wednesday evening one how should a shabby commander in diyala province said any attack by the u.s. on iran would be met with attacks on u.s. interests in iraq. you know needs to work on that how should all the has to shabby is considered part of the military establishment and there are still armed groups that are difficult to control and the government suffers because these groups have so many weapons that there are around five thousand two hundred u.s. service men and women in iraq president trump said in february u.s. forces should stay in iraq to keep an eye on iran. iraq a prime minister under lobdell my hoodie says iraq will continue a balanced policy that builds bridges of cooperation and friendship with all neighbors including iran iraq a mom of iraqis facing

a dangerous situation and is under both u.s. and iranian pressure but iraq could play a negotiating role between the u.s. and iran and between saudi arabia and iran i believe there is an acceptance for that role to be played iraqi politicians and influential religious leaders here have repeatedly said they will lot smaller rate any threat to iraq's sovereignty by any nation including iran after decades of conflict and political instability here the u.s. iran crisis is presenting the baghdad government with a delicate diplomatic challenge where any mistake by washington tehran or indeed pro iran armed groups here could mean the iraqi people being the victims of violence again charles strafford al jazeera baghdad. well still ahead here on the al-jazeera news the u.s. also ramps up rhetoric on china accusing it of cheating american workers ahead of trade talks also how the crisis of venezuela is hurting the country's health care

system and putting transplant patients at risk. and bucking their way into the next round of the n.b.a. playoffs or have details of the save. coming up in sports leagues. south korea's military says north korea is fine too and identified rockets or missiles launch happened in to seoul in the northern province south korea says the projectiles were directed towards the east robert bryant has more from the south korean capital. south korean defense officials confirming that two projectiles were fired within half an hour of each other on thursday afternoon local time and assuming that these were short range missiles one of them travel just over four hundred kilometers the other just under three hundred kilometers landing in the sea

separating the korean peninsula with japan it comes as the u.s. special representative on north korea stephen began is here in seoul meeting with his counterpart looking at ways of trying to restart the dialogue between north korea and the united states this obviously makes that a lot harder for the south korean government has said it's very concerned saying that this does nothing to help ease tensions on the korean peninsula and it comes of course five days after similar provocative firing of rockets and a missile off north korea's east coast taken together this does look as though it's a ratcheting up of the pressure and seems to indicate the growing frustration of north korea to the way that negotiations between itself and the u.s. have stalled but as observers will point out if it continues with these tests then it risks derailing that process altogether trying to serve as its it has kept its

promises on the u.s. trade deal out of president donald trump accused beijing of breaking the deal of trade talks but talk promised to more than double tires some two hundred billion dollars worth of chinese goods china says it's ready to retaliate with similar measures trade negotiators are central to meet in washington later on thursday by the way you see the chairs because they're broke did. they broke that. they're flying in device for me or to mars flying a good man but they're broke. they can't do that so they'll be paying. we don't make the deal nothing wrong with take it in over one hundred billion dollars a year. trying to figure we never did that before we won't back down until china stops cheating our workers and stealing our jobs and that's what's going to happen otherwise we don't have to do business with them we don't have to do business we can make the product right here if we have to like we used to remember like we used

to. dream brown has more from beijing. well a mildly defiant message from china's commerce ministry on thursday a spokesman was pressed several times by foreign journalists for his reaction to a report in the overseas media detailing it seems how china has essentially backtracked on just about everything it had so far agreed to in these ongoing trade talks with the united states talks that began more than ten months ago where the official simply said they were in china gives its word it sticks to it but he also repeated that china is prepared to take countermeasures if the united states presses ahead with new tariffs dr alex had already to quote the u.s. has assigned a lot of labels such as backtracking on going back on one's word and so on lots of promises have been foisted on china the chinese side has valued credibility and has kept its promises this has never changed analysts say there is now

a grim realisation here in beijing that that is going to happen there is precious little time left for chinese negotiators to avoid that it's possible there could still be a surprise deal if there isn't and the talks break down the question will be will those talks resume or continue if they do it might be enough to stabilize markets if there is a complete rupture then we could see the stock markets here in china plummeting again once more as they did earlier this week. early results in south africa's general election suggest the governing errancy party will retain power but that share of the vote could fall below sixty percent for the first time since the end of apartheid voters have expressed frustration about corruption unemployment and racial inequality let's cross over to malcolm where monitoring those results for us from pretoria the vote count started

a few hours ago what sort of trends are you seeing. well the count started yesterday evening after the polls closed and it went on through the night and all of the data is coming up on these screens up here to decide on their blue screen the date the data for the provincial elections the provincial governments which are also elected in the same poll in the middle the national election results will tell us who's going to get how many seats in parliament if someone gets a majority as the a.n.c. currently does have means that their party leader become the president on this side we have some officials from the electoral commission who are tallying those results as they come in and so far they've got about forty five percent of the votes they counted about forty five percent of the data that we have at the moment could still change in. the hours ahead we think we won't get anything like

a sort of provisional final result until several hours from now but on this side we've got to ask all of the agents of the different parties they're monitoring the results as they come in as well and as you said so far the african national congress. has about fifty six percent of the votes counted so far so that's a majority but still the lowest margin majority that they've ever had before that's kind of what many south africans were expecting that's what the opinion poll suggested following corruption scandals over the last ten years and perceived poor delivery of public services but they're still in the count so far well ahead of any of the opposition parties the democratic alliance has about twenty three percent of the vote at the moment economic freedom fighters his desk is just here the red jackets they've got just over nine percent of the vote but another very interesting

thing to watch here is the turnout so so far. yes to make that the turnout of registered voters was about sixty five percent lower than it has been in the past but that doesn't include a quarter of eligible voters who didn't even register to vote and one of the things that we've learned definitely travelling around during this election period is that whilst the a.n.c. has lost some supporters it's not the case that the opposition parties have picked up all those votes go to people are skeptical skeptical about opposition politicians too don't find them any more convincing than those in power some people in opposition have been implicated in corruption scandals as well so what we've seen over the course of several elections as well as that declining vote share of the a.n.c. is decreasing voter turnout as well it would for the moment we'll leave it there malcolm and come back to us when we do get results from the election commission thank you. now thirteen people including two russian secret service agents be jailed for plotting to overthrow montenegro's government in an effort to stop it

from joining nato russian's. shisha and glad to be popof were jailed between twelve and fifteen years to serve in opposition politicians received five year sentences al-jazeera as. joins me now from the go capital. exactly what seems to have happened in terms of these people being found guilty what were they attempting to do. and these secret service russian agents are sentenced to sentences fifteen years of prison in markov and twelve years of prison in case. of because according to a very direct they try to overthrow montenegrin government and install prashant against nato government who will definitely not.

allow one to name. to become u.s. and nato member there accused the did there that they were trying to organize a criminal group which consisted of montenegrin and serbian citizens and that today planned to attack montenegrin parliament with weapons to kill it to capture and then kill. prime minister montenegro in this period and today president of montenegro. cannot reach as i said to install a new government and to prevent montenegro on its nato. on the other hand democratic front today announced that they will. that they will appeal on this court decision this is not a final decision in this case and that next time they will try to

prove that they are innocent and that everything they claim is politically engineering engineers process against them in order to bend the spine party and to destroy every opposition defend the fence in this country well for the moment leave it there. we are in a fish tank. started as president salva kiir the formation of a unity government should be delayed by at least a year that would be missing a sunday deadline such as part of a peace agreement signed last year that ended the civil war president here says he doubts all the parties will be able to implement the agreed security arrangements in the coming months at least four hundred thousand people were killed in the years of conflict well sudan's opposition leaders are threatening to launch a nationwide civil disobedience movement tough to accusing the military council of delaying the transfer of power to civilians the military leaders are warning about holding elections in six months if an agreement can't be reached with the

opposition mohammed how has more khartoum. deadlock and threats of escalation marked one is these talks between the opposition and the transitional military council in khartoum along with the forces of the declaration of change the military had invited dozens of other political parties to the talks they have all presented ideas to get sudan out of the crisis. we received one hundred seventy seven proposals we analyzed and research them and that can give indication of a compromise policy solution on the transitional issues of the transitional government the meeting with the political committee of the transitional military council in sudan aims to review the visions of the entities of the governing mechanisms in the transitional period. the protest leaders criticize the broadening of participation in talks as a delaying tactic by the m.t.c.

designed they say to drag the process out and break the revolutionary momentum or how will the military council is trying to twist revolutionary choices and use the same old ways to control and maintain power this contradicts what the council said in the beginning when they took power when they said that they don't want to stay in power and that they took the protester site now we have doubts about this because they have spent their whole months progressed in aiding. the military council says it found holes in a constitutional documents submitted by the forces of freedom and change earlier this week including the omission of sharia law as the source of legislation the f d f c says the document wasn't meant to be conclusive and ridiculed those remarks saying there were merely intended to derail but the negotiations the t.m.c. said it would call a general election within six months if no agreement is achieved a measure which to the protest leaders means a certain and full return to power by the deposed regime with the help of the deep

state which they say is still in from troll. of the view with the we agreed to continue demonstrations and escalate our activism escalation in itself is not the goal the revolution has yet to achieve its demands we have not yet transitioned to a civilian government and we are yet to remove many of the elements from the old regime it is clear that the reappearance of security services and their resumption of their activities just like in the old days means that change has not happened. to address this issue the protest leaders say they have not only going to continue the sit in but also they may soon call for civil disobedience across the country until their demands are met by a desire. to have the level of his evident it's just not looking good is it for south america. so we've had some really heavy rain in paraguayan particular but it's not just possible still seeing some heavy rain and northern argentina you can

see it all the satellite picture big clutch of storms just around the eastern half of paraguay the been swirling away for some time now things quieten down for tomorrow when it returns we'll see the wet weather coming back into place so that's the situation in a sense here at the moment the river at around three meters above its normal level so some major problem. some thought two thousand people have been evacuated from their homes as i say we are going to see that cloud and the rain returning quite won through a good part of friday but the rain now pushes back further north as we go on into friday and saturday if anything does look worse still right out of bolivia across much of paraguay into the southeast of brazil we also got some flooding problems north of the equator in the u.s. a see some very heavy rain here as well but if this massive cloud and here this is oklahoma we had some really heavy downpours severe storms there in the process of

making their way further east with say we will see quite a weather come in behind at least for a time as we go on through or friday and in the will thirteen to friday and into saturday the rank continues in the south. thanks so much and still ahead here on the news hour we'll have the latest on the fighting in syria's rebel held hama province that didn't spoil the lineup for the conference finals it's all have those details straight after the break so do stay with us. i really want to get down to the nitty gritty the reality where on line when you have a male chauvinist that is in france with in our global federation it is really hard to get a piece of that or if you join us on saturday. they're going to beef up their mind this is a dialogue everyone has a voice to talk to us in our live you tube chat and you too can be in history join

the global conversation on now does iraq.

talk about that reviews are with me so rob the reminder of all top stories the leaders have rejected the sixty day ultimatum iran's of president hassan rouhani gave them to fulfill terms of the twenty fifteen nuclear deal. they also criticize the u.s. decision to really. want all parties against escalation. and with half of the votes counted the governing party is expected to retain power in south africa. of the vote could fall below sixty percent for the first time since the end of apartheid. south korea's military north korea is five two and i did missiles towards the east the launch took place into song in the north and. it's got more on our top story you know with. the project leader of the european leadership network a geo focusing on protecting the iran nuclear agreement to join the good to have

you with the program much was made by the europeans about this sort of special support trade exchange system this money transfer system to do business with iran firstly why is it taken so long. not an operation at the moment. yes thank you so much for your question and for having me today these special purpose vehicle the european governments namely the e three the u.k. france and germany upside up is an unprecedented mechanism but there is not ever been something like this an effort like this undertaken before by governments to basically circumvent the dollar have the financial system and it's taken a long time to get set up for a number of reasons i think that it has been very tricky to ensure the compliance standards are met so that any trade that does occur through the mechanism meets european standards and because it is unprecedented they've also had to set up new

companies in europe as well as in iran so that those can be the focal points for this trade i think the big point to make about this is that although we haven't seen that for. transaction yet the instax team which is the team that is leading this effort is constantly consulting with businesses and banks across europe in order to make sure that that happens and now we know with this new sixty day deadline it needs to happen quite quickly can i just could with the because obviously part of this very complicated process is all about getting. large companies to buy the ski getting because america can't put sanctions on. the world but the big selling book is trying to get business is it to reassure the . if they are in the.

scenario. that's correct yes i think that present the ether governments aren't necessarily focused on any specific type of business or company because even if we have a limited number of small companies such kick off the mechanism and start to engage in trade we will see decreases in the amount of inflation that's hitting the ordinary households in iran which will make a substantial difference because currently the j c p a way doesn't hold much political currency and what rouhani has done by withdrawing in part from the agreement the steps that have been taken are the easiest most reversible steps that iran could have taken but the ones that they will be taking in about sixty days potentially those are not so you know in the grand scheme of things we hope that this pressure from the iranian government will show business. europe has devised

a mechanism that that through which that they can help not only the ordinary people in iran but also potentially to save a landmark nuclear nonproliferation agreement that created a new global standard for what we expect. countries today in terms of meeting their not commitments. much larger issue here is all about sovereignty the us into the e.u. also wants to show that it's not subservient to the u.s. it's not having a gun held to its head to buy the u.s. so that it can act alone and it needs to be seen to be acting independently on the global scale or else there's no point in carrying on financially is there really if we are all. subject and hostage to a u.s. edict. absolutely a huge part of this is strategic autonomy or independence which is a huge buzzword across europe because this case has proven that the europeans

really need to think strategically about when in principle they disagree with the united states how they can maneuver situations which in the end may put them actually not only in a more economically more economic risk but also in terms of physical security what very moving u.s. participation from the iran deal does is that it puts european security at risk. for the moment it's been a pleasure speaking to you thank you for sort of clarify exactly what this is all about timing on the program again thank you. well government forces in syria are continuing to push into rebel held areas in hama province is the second time in the northwest has been seized from opposition forces there by the time. it was taken on wednesday. reports from beirut fears of a much larger offensive. another day of air strikes. and more civilian casualties. the

rescue workers move to take away their guns. it's been almost two weeks of relentless bombing in north. west syria denied it nation says at least fifty opposition controlled villages have been targeted in northern hama north a lot aquia and southern adlib provinces. and. we want to see these people running away from the country who want to help these families with food with much reeses people are under the rubble until now. rebels have lost what opposition activists call the first line of defense of adlib syrian government forces have taken ground in the northern countryside of hama the loss of the towns of foreign a buddha and collateral mahdi are seen as strategic wins rebel supply lines are now vulnerable and the m five international highway linking government controlled cities is a few kilometers east the government wants that road to revive trade and help the

economy in nearby aleppo syria's commercial capital remains cut off from most of the countryside and poorly connected to the rest of syria russia which is backing the campaign says its military is implementing the sochi deal that was agreed with turkey in september foreign minister sergei lavrov said that memorandum is not about protecting what he called terrorists and yet another verbal attack against turkey for not creating a demilitarized zone around. love rugs statements indicate the scope of the military operation implementing the sochi deal does not mean a full scale assault to retake the entire province of idlib moscow knows that would threaten its alliance with turkey which wants to prevent a humanitarian crisis along its border and prevent a new wave of refugees crossing into its territory. turkey which has military positions around it live under its agreement with russia has not responded to the

latest escalation but it too has criticised russia for failing to remove the syrian kurdish group the white p.g. from tel rifat in northern aleppo turkey considers the y.p. g a terrorist organization. trying to find a trade of if russia will give them more. money but again. which is on the table to russian to. i think also part of the trying to test the limits of each other to see how far they can go. but serious power brokers are unlikely to push far enough to break in alliance they both benefit from neither side wants a large scale assault on adlib but even a limited operation is enough to destroy the lives of many. beirut. the international court of justice is hearing cantles case against the united arab emirates for violating human rights but also the u.a.e. targeted citizens and expel them after an economic blockade was imposed in twenty

seventeen. has been hearing more from the hearing in the hague. it is the final day of a three day public hearing brought at the request of the united arab emirates they are all skiing for provisional measures this basically means an injunction saying that qatar is stopping it from implementing the provisions made by this court last year and that is to allow the return of custody citizen students and families to the united arab emirates it all has to do with a website that it alleges qatar is blocking qatar is saying that it is concerned about malware that's just one of the items that's being debated here by top lawyers on either side of the company team and the amorality team the bigger picture of course is that qatar has brought the emirates to the international court of justice why because it says its citizens are discriminated against in the context of that blockade by four countries of the most two years into the making it says it's become personal and this is why is trying to highlight the issue through this court

it's going to take quite some time before we have a ruling from the court either on the application of the emirates and also on the bigger case when it comes to whatever the ruling does it have any power to change the facts on the ground i think many people will tell you no and certainly at the moment if you look at the political situation the blockade certainly doesn't seem like it's going to end anytime soon. pope francis has issued a new law making it compulsory for all clergy in the catholic church to report cases or cover ups of child sex abuse the law requires priests and nuns to report sex crimes to their supervisors but not civilian authorities but crimes heard during confessions are excluded it also requires all churches to have abuse reporting systems in place and a way to deal with victims by june twenty twenty leave this month campaigners criticize the pope for failing to promise a zero tolerance approach to paedophile priests michael walsh is

a papal historian joins me now from london good to have you with us on the program mr walsh depending on your point of view in or out of the catholic church this is either a good move by the pope or it's just too little too late. well i think it's obvious it's a good move by the pope it's a pity it hasn't happened sooner if you say to that or to later think it's too little your mother your remark about not deported civil authorities is not absolutely true the problem for the pope is that the requirements of the civil law differ from country to country and he's talking about pretty well every country in the world where the roman catholics so but he does require people to to report it to the civil authorities and what is more he adds don't get terms the bishops not to get in the way of investigations by the civil authorities to cases of sexual abuse and of course what he has said you know you're right about the the issue of reporting this to the civil authorities it's a very complicated case but in other areas whistleblowers across the world in other

subjects are rarely protected in this particular case the same with the blowers should be protected even though sometimes they're vilified how can the church protect or how they have to potentially go to protect whistleblowers who you know uncover these sorts of scenarios. well to be honest. i don't know but obviously the there is a bird could be protected by the. degree of anonymity is what that is like dubbed the said problem problematic in other ways because then accused priest of more known or whoever wouldn't know who was the accuser worse but which is it which is quite wrong. but i mean i think the that made does say that they should be protected and so it's a step in the right direction we talked about the fact that you know that there isn't the transparency perhaps some might argue if the reporting is only restricted

to a senior clergy or not to the civil authorities and there lies the problem that hurdle has yet to be judged depending on which jurisdiction you're dealing with or the catholic church is dealing with. but it does this the believe it or not there are some apparently i mean i would find this difficult to believe but as far as i understand it they're actually subjects of the world where the sexual abuse of minors spreads is not regarded as a crime. so how do you then have the catholic church deal with this because you might say within the vatican you know that there is a sort of the morality police there will deem it a crime or certainly a situation that needs to be dealt with and that is morally and socially wrong on several levels even if not within that particular nation a country. where they already deal with with obviously they deal with crimes

a this nature. on a regular basis unfortunately but i mean i foresee that they have to but. the one criticism you might make of this document is it doesn't actually say what the penalties are. for clergy or any of the bishops. who committed abuse or attempt to cover it up it doesn't say how they should be punished but clearly they have been i mean the only thing the church could do in. the church no longer has prisons and for to say well that five words by their son fortunately the church no longer has prisons religious houses used to have prisons of the old days they don't anymore so they can send to prison but they can remove the from the. roots from their office. they have done the bishop or or priest just very briefly do you think this clears up the matter and draws a line and the issues always is just going to rumble on for the next few years.