proportionality of china's response china has warned of counter measures without specifying exactly what those measures would be but lou her who has been leading the chinese negotiating team has said the talks are going to continue he said there's been a twist but the talks are not over and they will resume in beijing in a few days time it seems but lou her there's also conceded that there were disagreements during the discussions china wants the united states to lift those tariffs if a deal is done he also admits that one of the other sticking points has been how much china has agreed to purchase from the united states but generally his language so far has been very measured. from a drop we have come here with sincerity on behalf of the chinese government are 2 sides of conducted candid and constructive talks we both agree that the 2 sides need to maintain the good momentum of the consultations despite some temporary

friction and obstruction we also agreed to meet again in beijing to continue their consultations in the future. president xi jinping is aware that in the united states president trump has the support of the democrats on this issue and of course this tariff war comes at a time when china's economy is continuing to slow and this is a key year in china as well the communist party is 100 years old and in october it will be 70 years since the founding of the people's republic a year that a chinese leader cannot afford to appear weak but to killie during trade disputes with the united states but on the issue of trade this is perhaps the one area where the u.s. and china can do a deal because china is much more concerned right now over taiwan and the support that the trumpet ministration is giving to the independence leaning leader of the island republic for plenty more ahead here on the isle. zira news are including

allegations of voting irregularities in south africa's election as the nation awaits its final results and we look at how months of demonstrations have deepened the economic crisis in sudan also rochelle the dolls a play master class in madrid one of the sports news later. let's turn to one of our top stories of course the rising tensions between the u.s. and iran in the gulf region as we said earlier washington is sending an aircraft carrier to the region and has deployed b. 52 bombers to qatar but those deployments only to a significant u.s. military presence already in the gulf the al a data base in qatar is the forward headquarters of u.s. central command it's the largest u.s. military base in the middle east but not the only one the u.s. navy's 5th fleet has its headquarters in behind and there's been an american

military presence in kuwait since the $1991.00 gulf war and there are u.s. forces that regularly use the facilities in oman and the united arab emirates for more than 15 years there's been no formal u.s. military presence in saudi arabia but u.s. operations at the air base just south of riyadh ended in 2003 but ties between the 2 countries militaries are strong and the kingdom has long been a major buyer of u.s. weaponry america's support for the saudi campaign in yemen has also become a significant political issue in the u.s. . is a research fellow at the low institute for international policy and a former australian army officer joins me now via skype from sydney good to have you with us on the program against china and i mean there's news of more and more military hardware entering the gulf sort of has been falling on our news wires the . being asked all week what's the message being said really by the americans. here

is i think we have to separate the actual deployments in terms of the aircraft carrier battle group to probe planned and perhaps a patriot missile batteries something that is new york separate those from the langley says emanating from washington so the narrative to washington is only happening if you 2 are and choosing ney's normally sequence military deployments to back at our routing should be overly concerned at the moment there is. an ending of u.s. military hardware in the region for no apparent reason this is just part of the normal course of events but the narrative that spain wager around it is something different if we have these 2 different note is that as you say the gulf itself is that it's a narrow waterway that can in theory see an intentional accidents is there more of

a probability that that could happen. you know it's not think this is one of the one of the problems that people are concerned about that having these not all of the clients but own ramped up narrative that surrounds and my saying to the outside observer a spline but once you heighten the tensions by by making a langley more direct then the possibility of people or decision makers making the wrong decision based on that is heightened so i think the language surrounding these to finance is probably more dangerous than the deployments and so we've been listening to the language from washington d.c. all week and the americans have talked specifically of a threat in fact only america seems to be talking of a specific threat we haven't seen or heard anything and has accused washington of nothing more than psychological warfare again a war of words and a war of

a different type of mindset. is certainly i think we've seen and the u.s. is certainly sit and talk about ramping up the pressure and it's not only the military pressure from announcing nased arms as being something more than a probably the thing that has been ramped up has bayne the economic pressure so sane not a coming out of the j.c. you know i bet also more recently. the waving or the citation of the way it is for iranian oil exports are now sensation in the entire the iranian revolutionary guard corps and very recently would say now sanctions against the iranians still now really major she says oh. i think people are probably trying too much attention to these military aspect and not attention to the economic aspect which is probably where the where the herd is brain filter taney of course while we're all watching

this globally if your sitting in iran and you'll seeing this military build up i mean it could be interpreted that garage nemesis is about to attack it can be sort of misinterpreted in so many ways. was closest to aspect of this economically the unfortunate reality use that in a country of nearly $90000000.00 which iran is the economic that is generally fill at the low end of the socioeconomic scousers going to be a groundswell of pressure for the iranian government and at the at the strategic level you say mr messaging from washington. and while most people in tehran levelheaded there's probably some elements that are probably going to think that. the pressure should be ramped up again from their side in response to washington it being to them see what happens is for the moment roger simon it's always good to have you on our program thanks so much for joining us from sydney my pleasure.

now india's long election continues on sunday when voting takes place in the capital new delhi the aam aadmi party is highlighting education reforms it unveiled when taking control of the capital city 4 years ago and it's now hoping to replicate its regional success in parliamentary elections. like many homes across india a man out on a cart is helping his children with their reading writing and arithmetic mahomedan are sent to horror wants taught in a private school that parents believe that state schools were not up to the job until now their father is a local politician for the aam aadmi party which has promised to improve state education in india's capital region the many years of bush stung me when i ask my children about the change they say government school teachers are teaching us better than the private schools private school teachers are very qualified they are paid less our teachers are more qualified and i get to know this from the children

many. many government run schools in other states look like this badly in need of repair very little furniture and no support materials it's not easy to get a good education in conditions like these. one few parents in delhi would send their children to state schools for the same reason but a major investment in schools has seen the modern classrooms emerge with new equipment and sporting facilities that have attracted more parents back to the state system altogether look at me with our situation was pathetic we never wanted to step in sight now the building is amazing their 1st reaction is great the number of teachers in the school is also increasing that's why we are getting our children admitted to the government schools here set up the system but lacking then die a county. is credited with turning delhi schools around she was brought in as a senior advisor to the state's ruling party she's now contesting a parliamentary seat in delhi and hopes the party's education policy will get her

votes and people are now beginning to talk about the fact that in just 40 years of such a transformation can happen then why did it not happen in 20 years before that and this is the fast time this question is that i think in their mind that yes government schools can be involved yes government hospitals can be improved and therefore we need the parties who believe in delivering this not to live for us. last 5 years but the project foundation which is a non-governmental agency says the focus needs to be on those who educate the children who are they having these number of buildings. but the one school we need to be offered you cation. in the quality of education is more important as compared to other aspects well what's interesting about the story is it educational reforms are being debated across the country but the need for reform and change is because the progress associated with a smaller party is seen as more responsive when the voters in delhi are asking

what's the long established parties across the country done in their state while the final election results will be announced on may the 23rd and al-jazeera will be there now with 99 percent of votes counted south africa's ruling national african national congress party is on course to win the election but it's the worst ever performance by the a.n.c. in the 25 years that it's ruled since the end of apartheid let's cross over to malcolm webb who's live at the national results center in pretoria and of course malcolm over the last few days we have got a clearer idea more so now with much of the vote counted and completed as to how really the parties stand. those results being counted they've been posted on the screens up here 3 screens to the side showing us the results for the provincial elections people got to vote for the provincial government the same time as voting for the national government that results displayed in the middle you can see they've counted $99.00 of the votes that were cast but those last few

polling stations to be counted at the slowest reasons for that include problems at the polling stations disputes and so on that we're talking about a very small number of polling stations but it still might take quite some time to get those last sets of data in we've been here reporting since wednesday's poll let's take a look at what's been happening. since the 1st results were displayed the ruling african national congress has had more than 50 percent of the vote it's one every election since apartheid ended and democracy began in 1904 but this time it has a smaller majority than ever before why does now then we hit what what this is telling is that it. is being constantly dated we now have good over 40 parties the political parties that are participating in these elections the a.n.c.

is declining popularity followed a series of corruption scandals especially under former president jacob zuma and ongoing protests over poor delivery of public services president will run a poser is being credited with halting the party's decline since he took over just over a year ago he's been promising to tackle corruption the largest opposition party the democratic alliance has just over a 5th of the vote as it did in the last election it's one of a number of opposition parties who have complained to the electoral commission that some people voted more than want the parties and the electoral commission of agreed to all the result before they were officially announced the straw. we do not is the extent of the problem and we hoping that that or that will show the extent of the problem if we have a nationwide phenomenon or whether it's just localized in 3rd place is the economic freedom fighters whose leaders promise radical economic reforms exposure has

increased to about 10 percent it's also complained about double voting but observers say it's not on a scale that could affect the national election result agents from all of the political parties been sitting here at desks monitoring the results as they've come in they're waiting for the official results to be announced and on this side of the room officials from the electoral commission to be in processing some of the data one of the most interesting things that they've reported is a lower voter turnout than ever before amount 2 thirds of registered voters voted in wednesday's poll about a quarter of eligible voters didn't even register but i think there's a general pessimism about the political system or about political parties and the rampant nature of corruption and so captured really saying we haven't had a message this is the electorate it's a rabbit out of message that convinces us to go out and vote south africans are waiting for the official announcement of results expected on saturday so far there

are no great surprises but signs of a steadily shifting political landscape. so we expect the results. we're still expecting the final count to be announced later today as officials from the electoral commission still trying to count those last few polling stations we can still see a few of them sitting at the desks over here but what we may not get is officiation of those results in till that audit that we just heard about as being completed and that might take a few days the statistician general has taken a sample of over a 1000 polling stations and they're using this data to verify how many people within that sample voted more than once and it's from that with in collaboration with the political parties you raised the complaint they'll decide if this is significant or not but many observers and civil society groups say that there isn't any evidence that this double or triple voting has happened on any kind of scale

that would actually affect the election result but nonetheless this is unprecedented in south africa which is widely considered to hold successive had held successive free and fair elections as one observer told me he's worked in elections all around this continent and said this is one of the only countries that he thinks holds free and fair elections so even to hear a complaint like this is unprecedented but a lot of observers civil society groups believe that it's not something that's on a scale that is significant enough to actually have any impact on the result. of course and come back to where we do get that result in pretoria. well in a few moments we'll have the weather with kevin but still ahead here on the al-jazeera news the u.s. intends finds its pressure on venezuela after a government crackdown on opposition politicians also leading the charge the south korean island plan is for all its cards to be lectured by 2030. and around us

here with the sport russia's president is he's a scoring machine on the ice but he's only been in victory. wellspring is known for its changing and wet weather in april we saw in southern and central parts of europe $2.00 to $3.00 times the monthly average for what we have seen and rain and we're going to see another big storm coming into the middle of may as well i want to show you what we're seeing right now not just the clouds are here across parts of western europe ever low pressure a front moving through parts of iberian peninsula well with this system over the next few days it's really going to begin to develop right now today we're going to be having widespread rain across much of central and western europe but this is not

where the problem is going to be as we go towards the next couple of days this area of low pressure is going to be sinking down here towards the southeast across much of the balkan peninsula heavy rain is expected with the storm this area of low pressure over italy tomorrow is really going to begin to deepen and winds are going to be a big problem as we go towards monday the low air doesn't really move too much and that's going to be a problem in terms of accumulation because we're going to be seeing the same area received days and days of rain across much of this region actually in some locations we could be seeing well over 102125 millimeters of rain some locations maybe up to 150 gusty winds are going to be a problem and of course with the ray. localized flooding across much of this region is going to be an issue of. the weather sponsored by qatar and. the climate is changing and time is running out i've never seen an elephant like.

that. in a new series earthrise meet some of the people driving the struggle to save the environment scientists are telling us that we have just 12 years to make any changes to transform every part. of the cycle through ice coming soon on al-jazeera. leverage. of duction killings and unanswered questions we don't know what happened so we can't he told faultlines investigates why native american women are vanishing in disproportionate numbers in the u.s. in the search. for missing and murdered indigenous women. on al-jazeera they're still searching to be able to locate.

welcome back you're watching the al-jazeera news hour with musical robin a reminder of our top stories yemen's hoofy rebels have begun redeploying forces from 3 strategic ports under u.n. supervision moving from the poles of data salif. which are important transit points for food and. also some members of the u.n. security council one of a humanitarian catastrophe in syria's province if the fighting could. these more than 100 people have died in the last week because government forces pushed into the rebel held areas. and the u.s. and china have agreed more talks to end their trade war but despite giving the go ahead to impose tariffs on all chinese imports the u.s. president says he's in no rush to reach a deal. in washington ended without

a breakthrough. queues for food fuel and cash are common in sudan basic commodities are in short supply as the political crisis grinds on following the overthrow of president omar bashir. in the capital khartoum. more tourists queue up for fuel and. scenes like these are now a common sight in most parts of the city more toadies say sometimes they spend the entire day waiting to fill up their vehicles. the fuel crisis shortages of bread and electricity outages are posing a major challenge for the country's transitional military council moderate men and . everything is as before there is no difference between the old regime and the military council we still have shortages and queues for bread and fuel.

their queues to form money at banks and the few teller machines that still hold cash under the c.n.n. hit dozens of people wait patiently in line to get money out one of the most out of it may take us up to a month sometimes to withdraw full salaries treat government imposed limits it's ramadan and people are fasting it's unfair to wait for this long to collect our own money our own right according to bungle fishbowls it's been taking an average of 6 hours for the few a.t.m.'s that are talked to be empty. the financial ecosystem they say house quite simply says. yet says that removal of a model bashir from office the sudanese pump has deadly strengthened against the dollar on the black market sulfides it again almost a 3rd of its value but that is yet to fully convert into law prices for basic commodities. while live on the dollars are going prices had begun coming down but have once again risen due to the mess of demand for commodities during ramadan we

can only pray that things get better for us. decision to cut food and fuel subsidies our last year increased discontent with the government and 3 get mass protest in december that ultimately led to the more the from office the protests are still going on the people of that used to making do with a little late hard core venting redeveloping are coming together to find new ways to make it effects on me years of political and economic isolation they say is threatening to break that determination and push them over the edge. does it or how thompson done. let's take a look at our vents of unfolded in sudan we start with april 11th when president omar bashir was ousted after months of anti-government protests in a military coup that ended his 3 decade rule he was replaced by his vice president

off who was also defense minister at the time but just a day later able to for resigned following public anger and was replaced by the fact that alberto hunt who's now head of the military council that same month the opposition coalition accused the council of delaying a transfer of power to civilian rule talks between them with then suspended april the 27th both sides reached an agreement and formed a joint civilian military committee to iron out their differences but just a few days ago the military council rejected the opposition's proposal on what the transitional government should look like and has called for an election in 6 months time should the stalemate continue. our low is a lecturer at kiel university joins me now via skype from central england good to have you with us on the program sir. one really has to begin at the beginning to

a certain extent in terms of what stage are we at in terms of the protests and the negotiations this is been ongoing for for months now public momentum certainly seems to be there but in terms of talking with the military progress is stagnant. and i think it is really important to critique on its political transition to a given system to market system i usually very quick. and very complex and actually . going to go to assist them early lead to the gate and needed. the. you know you can go. look at the famous 17. that evolution do not need to. use later today and 2 previous. 64. protesters call it government in america meant.

age 5 you know michael let me lot who do not need to in the markets that this work to suggest that this is what we need in the same moment we docked and i think sunni's excellent. bring me into the different actors i'm. going to be ok you talk about the different actors and that really brings me to my next point because the military are willing to deal with a certain group of the civil society movement and yet it seems when i was speaking to various other sudanese experts just a few days ago the way the military want to bring in some of the people that weren't initially involved in the indigo she ations with the sort of professional association is confusing and muddying the waters about who is able to talk to the military and who the military wants to talk to. absolutely so there are rather different actions of this function in. school and if there are.

solutions and there lying kind of relationship do not equal that you went with him and his within the military they had a different view in terms of the example of the. solution to the alliance of dog as it should call quote a transitional government then in that group meant that with the supposed to the place or sherry outlaw group determination that military should have pressed it mentally we still consider to be a center. the constitutional system so the need to be for example an argument in terms of what that place or should be in that position are. going forward there are some elements within the quote legion that lines. who have freedom and change who wants to see in more liberal democrats so as

a military kind of house to navigate course those differences of those limits in terms of wants to talk to but certainly i think the position using different sources with no clear leader. for ready these countries to listen to work we do need some kind of the simply we do need leaders who are at leat the president and garnering support from the grassroots ok well civil society to one side if you take a look at the military they've been in charge of the country in some shape or form for several decades now is there some sort of controversy or split in the way that they are approaching that conversation with civil society because we're not really getting too much information about what the military think what really their plan is except the fact that they don't quite like to talk to certain members of that movement. absolutely i think that military is in danger and obviously it used to stay all as much as possible and you could actually see that in this article that

there could be a force or they were preferred way or the middle east and these who weren't is by allowing it to get a transition where they were going to get the power of elian directly government but they retain power one month or so it won't be it is you who saw the question for example who are you to declare a state is in many of these really critical question. going forward so well that i think the military within. a certain degree of. it is supported by the powerful actors in that region including saudi arabia and it would be the opposition last that and of course you don't and that kind of course so i think i missed authorization you know now i think it's very careful. to extract routes. to ready market more stronger that has internal consistency i think this is going

to be very difficult and. even though the military be very interesting time ahead and thank you very much our low the electric eel university in central england thanks for joining us thank you. but as well a self-proclaimed president is calling for protests against the crackdown on opposition leaders the vice president of the national assembly and garzon brother who is in a military prison other politicians have also been arrested all sorts refugee status in other embassies the u.s. impose new sanctions on shipping companies trading with venezuela or part of its campaign to remove president nicolas maduro. as more from gratis. earlier in january the u.s. announced a very harsh sanctions on venezuela that effectiveness were less theatre company with a reset its subsidy area in the united states citgo which involves billions of dollars so most definitely this strategic the strategy here by the united states is to choke the government of nicola many say that over the fear is that it will affect

even more the venezuelan people who are already struggling with a crisis an economic crisis here and not get modo out of office nicolas maduro responded to the united states saying that he trusts completely trusts he's for it he's defense minister and the president of the supreme court and he's also spoke about what happened on april the 30 years during what the government calls appalled by the opposition that's been led by the united states he referred to an intelligence chief who's currently in hiding who's been very very critical of the governmental nicolas maduro and he called him a traitor we also know that one way though is asking venezuelans to take to the streets this saturday in spite of what's been happening here which is basically the government going after some deputies from the national assembly their vice president was imprisoned 2 others carrying in his sick refuge of the italian embassy another one in the argentinean embassy in spite of this the way law is

remaining continues to challenge the government of. asking people to take to the streets the big question is how many will actually respond to his call because people here are getting tired many are suffering from enormous for an enormous economic crisis and many have lost interest of actually taking to the streets because they're saying that change is not happening fast enough. some economists are blaming a fall in aid from venezuela for the start of food rationing in cuba shoppers looking for hours to buy chicken eggs rice and other essential is being rationed by the government communist leaders say rationing will prevent shortages and stop cubans halting goods so on the black market many cubans are sharing their frustrations with queuing by sharing their experiences online their tweeting dissatisfaction under the hash tag the q. challenge she was minister of internal commerce says the government is looking at

other options to alleviate the crisis. product regulation involves selling limited quantities so that there's equity in distribution so more people can purchase and therefore access the product as well also avoid hoarding which is the scourge which we're now experiencing as there are limited quantities of product and we're depending on imports that come from the united states and that means that we have to look for alternatives to ensure that the product will arrive in the market. is a former u.s. principal deputy assistant secretary of state for the western hemisphere he says cuba remains highly dependent on imports. ports 80 percent of. this is an agricultural country which used to export now imports you can imagine import sugar from. they can't support themselves. tourists come from abroad i was they want to eat well.