the black comedy set in 1960 s. los angeles and fight to go to jail is called manslaughter many more heavyweight directors will walk this red carpet over the next 11 days including ken loach. terrence malick and. but they'll also be flanked by newcomers that critics anxious to see i want to see what. i mean it's kind of ridiculous that this is the 1st black woman to ever be competition as a director and kind of intrigued to see what women. are more than the men because i feel like ken loach parents that. we kind of know their work and we know that film is going to be solid but are they really going to surprise us can is dedicated to cinema survival but in doing so it lost out to new films for martin scorsese and steven soderbergh this year that's because they were produced by netflix who refuses to screen in cinemas before going online but netflix now attracts the biggest names it's been $12000000000.00 of content and it's unclear how long can

will be able to hold back it's changing tide. can. and let's take you through some of the headlines here now just 0 now sudan's military leaders have agreed to a 3 year transitional period with opposition groups as the country slowly moves closer to civilian rule the military council and coalition for freedom and change held a press conference to announce the after weeks of deadlock the 2 sides say a final agreement on the makeup of the sovereign council should be reached within $24.00 hours the general from sudan's transitional military council has promised to work quickly to secure a complete deal with opposition groups. we pledge to our great people that our agreement will be completed and we will. the chief the ambitions of our proud

people within less than $24.00 hours god willing so that our proud people will celebrate the victory achieved by the people and the army in order to achieve the goals of the great revolution russia's president has told the u.s. secretary of state he senses president trump wants to repair relations the comments followed talks between bloody me and putin and the u.s. secretary of state in sochi on tuesday earlier mike compote told russian foreign minister sergei lavrov the u.s. does not want a war with iran but would respond if attacked. we spoke a bit about the activities that are taking place in the middle east today with particular focus on the actions that iran is taking i made clear that the united states will continue to apply pressure to the regime in tehran until its leadership is prepared to return to the ranks of responsible nations that do not threaten their neighbors or spread instability or terror saudi arabia's state owned energy

company aramco has stopped pumping oil through a major pipeline after a drone attack the government says 2 stations were targeted on its east west pipeline who think rebels in yemen say they launched the strikes to warn the kingdom to stop what they call its aggression there's been slow growth in china's economy in april even before high u.s. trade tariffs took effect growth slowed to 5.4 percent last month. rewind returns with updates on the best of his documentary. the moving story of 2 young girls in afghanistan. at last able to get an education after pressing taliban occupation. what has become of their tree. rewind pencils and bullets. on al-jazeera.

reporting. today with their only guy under the gun like quite a. lot. of exercise on t.v. none of them are like that's prime minister scott. hello i'm richard gilbert and you're at the listening post here are some of the stories we're covering this week in india's elections one party is definitely winning the media game the trump white house is that using new rules for press passes to lock out journalists it doesn't like me and maher whether refugee story and the coverage of it continue to make news and looking to be inspired then look elsewhere it's been a little more than a month now since the 1st votes were cast in the largest democratic exercise on the planet india's general election prime minister narendra modi wants a 2nd term and his party the b j p seems destined for victory how much of that is

due to modi is genuine popularity and how much is down to the b j p sprawling publicity machine is another question it comes down to the money over the past financial year the b j p s publicity budget has been 20 times that of the main opposition party the congress that's a lot of extra rallies billboards and social media it's all spent to brand modi as the leader indians need the antithesis to what the b j p. he calls the country's weak anti national and anti hindu opposition throw in a few dozen celebrity endorsements bollywood style a mainstream news media most of whose support the b j p gets for free and that adds up to an election that looks like narendra modi's to lose our starting point this week as the campaign trail in india.

india the election story starts with the numbers and they are stacked more than 900000000 fold since the 7 stages of voting lasting 5 weeks more than 2000 national regional and state party. more than $8000.00 names on the ballot and more than $400.00 television news chapters regional and nationwide covering the election and based on the media output one would be forgiven for concluding that this election is about just one candidate prime minister narendra the b.g.p. so he has an extremely effective campaigning weapon and an eye caught in the figure of the prime minister narendra modi and nobody knows that better than most of what you said now india has a parliamentary election but since mr modi has arrived on the scene national election as p. diddy been described as a presidential style if you see what has happened to how. the m.p.

candidates are named that is getting pushed back to leave her leave your 2 weeks away from the date that you were before and cost a vote and you don't know who is standing for elections in your neighborhood. and the only way that works is if you don't care who is standing for election is in your neighborhood because you are working for that it will be is not the 1st person who have been elections presidential political parties have but if you have a list. only the work stands up i did get a little bit in there when all things have gone wrong and i didn't need to they would blame for it given that it will be when the workings were all about him somebody else is live for it but as with things he is the one who takes a look at. the kind of visibility and name recognition to render a modi benefits from does not all come for free for the financial year 201718 the b j p spent the equivalent of more than 80000000 u.s.

dollars in election publicity more than all the other parties combined and that was before the campaign had formally begun for one period earlier this year the party spent $100000.00 u.s. on google advertising alone 10 times more than its congress party challenge and modis b j p is also india's biggest facebook appetite those are among the places the b j p's money is going to then comes the issue of where that money is coming from. the beach has found a way to folk these funds that are conceived in absolute secrecy it has introduced a new system of electoral bonds which allows completely anonymous donations we don't even have a we of tracking who exactly is giving this money to the p.d.p. and why what are they getting in return now in the last year for which this data is available to be g.p.'s income was 3 times the size of the combined income of the

next 6 largest political parties in country but that's a huge what a difference in a chance into a massively different spending budget so the bigger big currently spends are 20 times as much on election campaigns as any of the other parties that live are really managed to have a very comprehensive presence from the national all the way. local level people are called when they are supposed to put out water park and how specifically to write the words post content they have to read tweet when they have to repeat it this is a really massive centralized campaign which reaches everyone all the way down that's how effective we did meet up with you know that they've got to get in. on the other hand they're up against all this which is not even close when it comes to its communications to defeat in creating. the b.g.p.

and it also helped in the media that it's been mandated that it will be and that is worked a lot in keeping its image and beck but i'm going to house the children. not to contradict the reasons for the mainstream media's preoccupation with modi range from the commercial to the ideological. the prime minister's brand of nationalist and penchant for bellicose are marketable commodities that play well on the hundreds of news channels the battle for viewers 247 in 2014 modi came into office having campaigned on economic issues promises of development and agrarian reform during this campaign the primary focus has been on national security issues like kashmir and pakistan and the d.j. piece interpretation of india's identity as

a hindu 1st mission and i saw the movie day. the night he made the name. news outlets are also with cuba where the d.j. t.v. led government is the country's biggest media advertise and the party wields that money tactically if you turn on any news channel during a primetime hour we got that you would destroy your own country in the way that you are going likely to be. sometimes hysterical declarations of loyalty to the nation and to the state and to the armed forces and somewhat implicitly to the ruling party doesn't feed into one feeling in front of each scene of carnage and easily say that one of the successes of the mahdi government has been to call off major media houses especially television networks by may care for management of government funds of which the media houses patronized interviews from

ministers or from the prime minister the media business has always been picking areas for what has also happened now in media companies are now raising revenue by doing events for which they require the attendance of top level government functionaries including the prime minister we don't know now and there will be on this one ok mark up at our member now this in turn introduces constraints on the freedom of taking on the government of holding it accountable of not wanting to eliminate the powers that. be other media modi's be j.p. has mastered is filled through the prime minister's courtship of bollywood a listers tweeting at them taking selfies with them even being interviewed by the way . on april 24th 2 weeks after voting had begun modi had a series of softball questions logged his way by bollywood actor akshay kumar who

was playing the role of an interviewer. of big all the. all. the issues with. india's election rules for bid such interviews during the voting period however the news agency that put that interview out which is closely tied to the b j p argued that since no journalist was involved the interview was not journalism it was a political what is a poll. when it involves a person standing for election. when you do you truly you realize that not in the room or the love mangos he was a poor person made it a point to point that out. and it highlights how he is a self-made man and this is really important because the person he's standing

against. is the son of a prime minister and he's the grandson of a prime minister who's the great grandson of a prime minister and not in the mood he comes across in this interview has everything that average india is or aspires to be factors in india have a long history of being involved on the team so the involvement of value isn't entirely new selfies of bollywood celebrities with the prime minister carefully planned as tweets that the prime minister bags film actors is a symptom of how carefully with great attention b.g.p. plans media campaigns though it does make you wonder why a prime minister who has so much time for instagram influence and to meet and selfie himself with the bollywood stars has not had the time to hold a single open press conference and is the 1st indian prime minister to feel to do

so in effect. what is causing other media stories that are on our radar this week was one of our producers tarak. the trump administration and the white house press corps are back at it what's this latest issue over accreditation well this week dana milbank of the washington post reported that the white house had revoked his press puff and what he called. a mass of accredited reporters of press householders get privilege access to the white house is one of the opportunity to ask questions of government spokespeople but the trumpet ministration recently changed the criteria for credit station the new rules disqualify journalists who've not been in the white house for at least half of the previous 180 days requirement that according to milbank excludes most of the press corps press secretary thera sound said the change was

about improving security but the concern is it makes journalists access conditional in a way that could disqualify reports of the white house doesn't like and this would not be the 1st time that the white house has played the credentials card would it no that's right you remember that highly publicized spot last november between president trump and c.n.n. reporter jim acosta on the russian vest occasion are you concerned that you may have not heard about anything with me i mean it's been a shame because it's a hoax are you that's enough put down the might after that exchange the white house revoked of course the press for the need to restore it's again on the order of a federal judge but the disputes was a sign of how the administration views the televised press briefings and the headline that they produce one more point this white house hasn't held a full press briefing now for 2 months the longest stretch since the tradition began under bill clinton in the early ninety's you've also been following the story of an arab activist who does a lot of work on saudi arabia and who may now have

a target on his back who will be talking about he added by that he's a palestinian born writer and activist currently living a political refugee in norway and anyone who follows the middle east online will know his twitter feed he's an outspoken and influential critic of arab dictators particularly saudi arabia's crown prince mohammed bin set a man and a lot of his recent work has focused on the human rights situation in thought. arabia this week we learned that on april 25th norwegian police warned about that he of the threats against him after receiving information from the cia after the murder of saudi journalist jim out of touch shakti these kinds of threats are taken very seriously but they were a friend of his shakti and he warned the journalists killing would embolden been fun man to go after his critics if the kingdom was not held to account among the

reasons the saudis might want to go after about that he has recently been investigating a story that saudi arabia was behind the alleged hacking and extortion of a muslim boss and washington post jeff bezos for the threats against him by the sounds defiant if they don't want to kill me he says then i'm not doing my job ok thanks to our. breaking news out of me and this past week after more than 500 days behind bars to reuters reporters have been released by the government the men had been jailed for their investigation into the killing of 10 real hinge of muslims by me and maher security forces news of their release was welcomed by journalists and activists around the world in me and maher the reporting the real him just story remains incredibly challenging since 2017 almost 3 quarters of a 1000000 rohingya muslims have fled to neighboring bangladesh and me and maurice government has been aggressive in its attempts to control the narrative however one

network has been reporting the story from the inside will hinge a vision t.v. run by exiled row hinge of the network relies on undercover reporters to get the information out the stories that they tell contest the official state narrative as well as the work of media outlets in me and maher that have closed ranks with the authorities the listening posts johannah who's now in the perilous state of media freedom in me and maher and the news network telling the real him just story its way. i don't want to ruin.