raj was televised on libyan state t.v. where he praised his forces but made no mention of the latest assault on a money on one democratic ally going we have not hesitated to fight back with force to protect our families in our capital of the civil society that our people support the one that inspired the february 17th revolution we have confidence in the ability of our armed forces. various forces have fought for control of libya since the killing of longtime leader moammar gaddafi in 2011. the world health organization reports that the 3 month battle for tripoli has killed at least $600.00 people and forced thousands to seek safety. on wednesday the un backed government forces also made advances in the southern suburbs of tripling. have tossed fighters have been losing strategically important locations there too including an airport his critics say could be a turning point in the war so al jazeera. correspondent mark would

up to $100.00 centers this update from outside have to base which is in. we're now in the middle of a very young in the very end city center the building right behind me here if you can see this is the central command of the health service forces and from this building have generals were running the battle for control of tripoli but also sending your troops and also sending get info cement to their troops fighting the government forces in the southern outskirts of the libyan capital tripoli we can now say that the young city is completely has completely fallen into the hands of the government forces now have those forces as the government and military sources here tell us they have was thrown or retreated to the nearby town of us hubba and also to the town of gori who not only has one of the major supporting towns for the

the world to have to get in the west of libya the fall of a very young city into the hands of the government forces is very strategic because and what was one of 2 major supporting cities for have to alongside the city of. and now the government forces say that they have been at ranging for this fight for this battle to recapture the area for the last 3 months i witnesses and locals here tell us that heavy fighting took place here around this area and if you can see here here this is armored vehicle it's completely destroyed by the fighting and eyewitnesses here say that have turned war planes targeted similar locations. positioned by the government forces in and around. the city now the government forces here in the area say that they are trying to put

a plan to secure their town and and the towns there around 3 and. lots more to come in this hour news hour including the protests grow louder by the day in honduras at the sorry state of health and education systems. keeping the pressure on protests as in hong kong calling for an end to police fun and. i'm the defending champion is ruling out nicely for one with a impeachable have the details in school. the u.s. supreme court has put on hold the trump administration's plan to add a citizenship question today is census actually kohei and has more from washington this decision is a huge setback for the trumpet ministration now this all has to do with the u.s.

census under the constitution the federal government has to basically counted people every 10 years and those numbers have a huge impact they determine how many members of congress each state gets and more importantly how much federal money the states get so the covers department under wilbur ross said that they wanted to add this question are you a u.s. citizen because they were afraid of voter fraud they said they need to do in force the voting rights act well the supreme court said no you made that up basically you fished around to try and find an explanation and the government's own data said that this would probably undercount about 6000000 mostly hispanic people robbing the those districts of money and representation so the supreme court said the commerce secretary can add the question he just has to have a legitimate reason to do it and this isn't it so practically speaking this probably means it will not be on the 2020 census because the government says they have to start printing the forms they need to do that by the end of this month so it seems like that they want to add that question there out of time. police have

arrested at least 39 members of an hour a political party after a failed rebellion in the northern province saturday dozens of people were killed in the attack and the fighting that followed thousands of mourners gathered to state funerals of 5 senior officials including the army chief of staff and the provincial governor the central government has accused her as full a security chief of organizing the rebellion the haunting has more now from the capital addis ababa. we spoke to the chairman of the m. hard national movement party doesn't and who told us that dozens of members from his party have been arrested since saturday's incident this is a relatively new party that's gained quite a bit of traction especially and i'm sorry state it's a rather a mad nationalistic focused party now we know that those from his party that were arrested were arrested and address here in the capital and some also in the neighboring regional states now on wednesday we also had reports of the 1st

civilians arrested linked to saturday's regional uprising 6 civilians appeared in court in the atis police and wanted to charge them with terrorism and every quested a 28 day investigation since saturday more than 100 security personnel have also been arrested in connection to the deaths of the 5 government officials those 5 officials were buried on wednesday now also on saturday the government shut down the internet across the country and on thursday we have reports that the internet has been restored to parts of the capital only earlier we were in the southern part of the country there is still no internet there earlier in the week we spoke to the press secretary from the prime minister's office she assured us that the government is in full control of the situation since the weekend regional uprising and with all of these arrests and with a partial internet restoration it seems that that is. the case. amnesty

international has accused the government of eritrea of intimidating and harrison critics who live in exile they include eritrean activists who live in the u.k. in sweden and in kenya balcombe web has more now from the kenyan capital nairobi. years or to middle of bieber was a high not so she's never enjoyed the freedom she fought for she was 17 when she joined eritrea's rebellion and fought for independence from ethiopia she seen here in one of the rebels' mountain hideout in the 1980 s. independence came in 1901 but she says freedom did not if they want to kill you they can kill you automatically. she owned a factory but she didn't join the governing party or contribute to its funding she says she's been harassed ever since including here in kenya's capital nairobi where she lives in exile she says eritrea is ambassador to kenya of terrorism and had her

arrested by local police is involved. isn't it tonight he took his saw was like 56 they. had caught of the. things he tried to deport does. rights activists say that the kind of harassment that a bieber says she's experienced here in nairobi is just the tip of the iceberg and that eritrean critics of eritrea's government you are living in exile all around the world routinely harassed intimidated and even beaten by government supporters so as a reporter's rights group amnesty international says it's documented cases of harassment and intimidation eritrean human rights activists over the last 8 years has published a report and its research is say those in kenya the u.k. sweden and some other european countries

a most risk yet their government he's gained of exporting their repression from from its territory to i know that a country and it doesn't look good but only a moderate regard and it doesn't look good to any kind of country where it is repression is happening the report document seemingly coordinated threatening tweets from staff at eritrea's embassies. its ambassador in kenya didn't agree to give us an interview. says the harassment has made her more critical most of her activist colleagues here in nairobi were too scared to speak to us. she's campaigned for 4 of her friends from her days as a rebel he was since arrested in eritrea she doesn't know if they're still imprisoned or dead the same fate she says awaits her if she ever goes home malcolm webb al-jazeera nairobi kenya well i've also been speaking to daniel meccan

and his agent either based director of the eritrean law society and now he has personal experience too of intimidation i myself have being. harassed and intimidated attacked at least since 2002 things my time in south africa when i was involved in the. establishment and the leadership of a new use movement and a very good example about this is the recent attacks that have been launched by. ambassador to the ambassador in kenya in the ambassador in japan for example there were out on twitter or attacking a certain event a meeting a major meeting of the trends that took place in london in april 2019 of course including the minister of information of eritrea mystery a monogram

a skull all of these people were attacking attacking individuals activists who are just doing their primary job of exposing the human rights violations of their return government and the new mayor of assemble a strongly taken office after winning monday's election rerun. addressed his supporters outside city hall. his victory was a setback to the ruling ak party as well as to the president bedouins dominated politics his biggest city for decades the opposition narrowly won the 1st election in march but the at passy contested the results said there'd been fraud and false. judges in indonesia have rejected allegations of widespread voter fraud and confirmed the reelection of president. his challenger. took legal action to have the result of april's election. disqualified but the constitutional court

ruled the evidence wasn't strong enough for hours louis has more from jakarta. it doesn't come as a huge surprise that the constitutional court of indonesia has rejected. application of the presidential challenger had been seeking the court to a now the results of the presidential election to disqualify president joke among other things but the judges ultimately ruled that the evidence presented to them was not strong enough to prove that there had been massive fraud or widespread cheating that would have invalidated the results of the election or had alleged that had the polls been fair he would have won 52 percent of the vote now thursday's decision is the end of the legal challenge or probably the court's decision is final it cannot be appealed and within 3 days the election commission will announce the final results of the election last month supporters had staged demonstrations and protests in jakarta which turned violent 2 days of

rioting left 9 people dead and several 100 injured this time hundreds of probable supporters had gathered as close as they could to the constitutional court to show solidarity with him however there's no indication that these protests will go on for days as it did last month because the protesters left even before the. verdict was announced they were told to move along by the police and they did now ultimately thursday's decision is not going to change probable supporters' minds that they had been robbed of electoral victory or that the electoral process was unfair but what it does do is bring a finality to the dispute the hong kong's pro-democracy campaigners have turned their attention to the police and justice officials they gathered outside the main offices of the justice department and were held back by the police just hours earlier the police had broken up a rally outside their own headquarters in another part of the city protesters are

trying to keep the pressure on the government to make it with draw a bill that would allow suspects to be extradited to the mainland. so has the latest now from hong kong. this is yet another block guided by protesters and it's time for the justice department and these rallies are simply to disrupt business and try to pressure on the government to not just to cement the extradition bill but this bill all together paula we organize protests against our secretary of justice. and our request to withdraw so will continue. and. especially. have just suspended. its as well as demanding extradition will be dropped these protesters also want to make the just sit tight this time but inside this building work because they want an investigation or buy into what they say was excessive force used by the place

during the protests over the last couple of weeks and so far that's where the government has refused. so there's a calm here in the al-jazeera news hour find out why resentment is growing in lebanon against the millions of syrian refugees there. democratic presidential candidates get a chance to explain why they think they'd be donald trump. and a major strike in major league soccer wayne rooney while the problems peter will have the key to. hello again or welcome back we're here across turkey we have seen plenty of rain showers in the afternoon hours over the last few days and that's really going to continue and some of those rain showers are making their way over here towards baku as well those rain charts could turn thunderstorms if we see nuff heating of the

day but we do think that by the time we get towards saturday we're going to be seeing those those rain showers really expanding making their way towards the west as well on court could be seeing a shower or 2 with a touch or about $25.00 degrees on saturday aleppo is going to be a warm day at 34 and plenty of sun in beirut with a temperature of 29 degrees there well here across the gulf it is going to remain dry but there are some edges are going to be coming up as well we're going to see here in doha about $44.00 degrees not much in terms of wind but by the time we get towards saturday $45.00 degrees there over here towards the dobie it is going to be warming up as well to 40 but down here along the coast of amman some clouds in the forecast for us a lot with a temperature of 30 degrees there and then as we make our way down here across parts of southern africa not much in terms of rain but we are going to see one system provide plenty of clouds across the southern coast anywhere from cape town over towards port elizabeth we could be seeing some winds as well tempter there of 15 degrees durban at $25.00 and then as we go towards saturday

a little bit cooler for durban at $22.00 which will have a spurt at 19. and they got. a pretty taking tropical paradise. ready where we explore more protected areas. are now in their careers. we followed their journey as they put their lives on the line to. respond get on medicaid. on al-jazeera. you immigration laws and projects funded by european governments have seen a rapid decline in the migrant transport for people in power travels to agadez to explore the realities faced by the drivers left out of pocket and the migrants who are choosing to return home who would like to go back to the country where they are

from. europe migration on a just. trying to take a look at the top stories here are down 2 attackers have blown themselves up in the 2 new zealand capital killing one police officer and injuring several others one bomber targeted a police vehicle near the french embassy in the center of town the other hit the counterterrorism headquarters u.s. president double trump is in assault japan for today g. 20 summit but is likely to be tense discussions on trade the president's already

embroiled in tit for tat terrorists with china and he's jew to meet president xi jinping on saturday. iran's foreign minister mohammad zarif has responded on twitter to the latest u.s. sanctions saying the measures turn a tip to war they are war america's special envoy on iran says washington is committed to its policy of maximum economic pressure because he says it's working. there are some news just coming in and that news about the testimony that the former u.s. secretary of state rex tillerson gave to the house of representatives foreign affairs. committee it's just been released we're just getting a few of the details and it's actually rather interesting let's have a look at some of what it says now. to listen told the committee that trump son in law and senior white house adviser jared operated independently with world leaders need didn't could cause and the state department and the he left the section of

satan in the dark he also said he was caught off guard along with the then defense secretary jim mattis when saudi arabia u.a.e. egypt and bahrain imposed a blockade on cattle 2 years ago he said there was confusion among state department officials about who were actually in charge of u.s. foreign policy all right let's talk to our correspondent in washington now roslyn jordan rose this is really interesting is that because this is a testimony that rex tillerson gave to the house foreign affairs committee is a month ago it's now the transcript that has been released but much of it redacted . well from what i've been able to see the report is basically. it's about $140.00 pages or so. only found about 10 pages that were actually blocked out but what was quite

interesting were the sanctions that were blacked out that talked about some of the challenges if we can use that word that rex tillerson told the house foreign affairs committee that he encountered while he was serving as u.s. secretary of state and as you noted martine one of the big problems was the fact that while tillerson allowed that a u.s. president can have his own advisors and can assign them special tasks or duties in the case of cushion or the president's son in law and senior advisor tillerson said that it was quite problematic because he said that you ended up having several different versions of u.s. foreign policy being carried out i want to read a short part of this for our audience the question came from a senior democratic counsel or a lawyer for the house foreign affairs committee. did you ever raise this phenomenon of basically doing your own foreign policy with mr kushner mr tillerson

i did then the senior democratic lawyer on the panel raised this question what were those conversations like tillerson he said he would try to do better question did he. answer not much changed question how did that impact your job tillerson well i think you know i alluded earlier to the fact that it's always challenging if everyone isn't kind of working from the same playbook picking up here there is that they prefer to have this carried out by an individual it's the president's prerogative to do that so what is quite interesting is that tillerson basically said that while he was trying to be a good soldier as it were that he was trying to carry out what he thought was the president's foreign policy on numerous occasions he would find himself basically coming in after the fact finding out for example that jarrett cushion or was

working on a new sort of official relationship between the u.s. and mexico. literally in a restaurant finding out that the foreign minister of mexico is having dinner with jared custer and mr tillotson do nothing about it is what this testimony is doing is painting a picture of what has been widely perceived here in washington which is that u.s. foreign policy under the trumpet ministration is not being conducted by the state department as the lead agency is that the policy is being put forward by the white house and that it is being conducted by the white house so very interesting testimony and one final note martine we should note that tillerson agreed to meet with the house foreign affairs committee but behind closed doors but at the committee's insistence this final transcript would be released to the public and that's what we have happening here on thursday to roll it's going back to the

tennyson time in the state department it became very very quickly apparent didn't that the 2 men didn't get on and in fact rex tillerson flagged up on officially and it was leaked that he didn't think the president had to head for detail he wasn't capable of absorbing some of the complicated details that are necessary for somebody in the oval office and he was and he was alleged to have she called him a moral. wow there is that section that is blacked out that 10 pages or so we don't know if it came up in that discussion we also understand that there may have been a classified session where mr tillerson would have been able to discuss classified information that could not go into a publicly released transcript but in the. edited part of this transcript he does go into detail about how he learned very quickly that if he wanted to get president donald trump's attention he had to keep his talking points very short he could not

go into any amount of detail that the president was easily distracted during his meetings with secretary teller son and that this basically you know was a situation where he didn't really know if the president was really clued in on all of the nuances of whatever policy the president was trying to put forward so it does go into some detail and it you know there are you get do get an initial sense from a reading a transcript that rex tillerson who was quite mystified at best by this kind of working relationship remember he used to be the head of the multinational oil company exxon mobil and he himself said he was used to very thick briefing books having to go through this sort of detail and it was mystifying for him to deal with a president who didn't seem to be all that interested in the critical details of u.s. foreign policy all right interesting stuff thank you very much ross. correspondent

in washington. well a current envoy of president for iran in this case is warning of consequences of tehran breaches nuclear restrictions brian hope is in europe for talks on the tensions in the goal for the european leaders to impose more sanctions on iran the radio foreign minister meanwhile dismissed president trumps claim that a war with iran would be short lived mohammed zarif said sanctions aren't an alternative to war they are war of the french president emanuel mccraw he says that he hopes to convince president trump to drop some of those sanctions on iran in order to help talks begin more now from our correspondent who's in tehran. it rain official say they are close to surpassing the 300 kilograms of enriched uranium at the level of 3.67 percent which is what they're allowed under the

nuclear agreement of 2015 now for the 60 day period which the iranian president hassan rouhani set on me the iranians said they will store the excess amount in the country that is the iranians part of scaling back their agreement under the nuclear agreement they say that because the european signatories have not upheld their end of the deal the iranians are doing this for this period of time which runs out on july 7th to see what the europeans will come back with of course the deputy foreign minister abbas our she is in vienna there will be a series of meetings on friday between the deputy foreign ministers from the european signatories of the nuclear agreement and the rains are adamant that the future of this deal is important not only for iran and its economic future but also for the security of the entire region. now the united states acting defense secretary marc esper has been briefing is native nato counterparts on iran and

a meeting in brussels more on that in the rest of the news from europe let's cross to our european broadcast center maryam namazie. hi there montane yeah that's right esper which is attending his 1st meeting actually with the alliance he appealed for a broader denunciation of iran mention the possibility as well of a plan to protect us from straits of hormuz he said the u.s. wanted to avoid war and move from a military track to focus on diplomacy well this comes after a recent spike in tensions which included president trunk calling off planned military strikes on iran in response to the downing of an unmanned u.s. drone john holl is following events for us. acting secretary of defense mark s. but i think broadly speaking successful here at nato in convincing allies that the iran question is a global one in need of a global diplomatic solution as opposed to simply a problem involving the u.s.

and iran successful also in setting out the parameters of the u.s. approach aimed at bringing iran back to the negotiating table by squeezing it economically and winning i think broad support among the allies for that approach this was what jens stoltenberg nato secretary general to say all allies share concerns when it comes to iran. these the velocity of it is in the regional their support for different groups there their missile program of a program over on and also the announcement that they will start to enrich uranium again will start in berg went on to say that he particularly was impressed with the u.s. core message that it does not want to go to war with iran that it does want direct talks with iran without preconditions and he said nato would support moves to deescalate to decrease tensions over the issue and avoid them spiraling out of

control but they were war words of caution from secretary of defense esper i think aimed particularly at iran we do not seek armed conflict with iran but we are ready to defend u.s. forces and interests in the region. no one should mistake restraint for weakness. and there were words of caution for the united states from within the nato alliance from france in particular reportedly joining the closed door session on iran france already in opposition to the u.s. unilateral move to withdraw from the iran nuclear deal france cautioning the united states here not to involve nato militarily in any mission involving iraq. the european union is a italy to allow 42 people rescued attempting to cross the mediterranean 2 weeks ago to be allowed ashore the rescue boat sea watch 3 is now and could just off the island of lampedusa after entering italian waters in defiance of repeated warnings

from the interior minister. the captain says the hand is being forced by worsening conditions on board and the italian our scientists have just come on board the ministry has stopped and on a sandbar on something to some they have been checking dollar subset of the cans and them has been part of the crew as of now they are waiting for for instructions from the us here yes i really hope they will take the rescue off the ship. and elsewhere in europe wildfires are burning across nearly $4000.00 hectares of east in spain and there are fears they could get much worse spain is baking in temperatures of $43.00 degrees celsius france italy and germany are also suffering on seasonably hot temperatures as southern and western europe's wealth has under a heat wave as for a challenge now reports. these are already among the worst fires in spain's

catalonia region for 20 years and the heat wave has only just begun the firefighters are warning the burning area could get 5 times as big as doing what they can to douse the flames. but for these animals it was too late they died trapped inside their bond it's clearly upsetting for the farmer. distance provide safety but it's an anxious wait to find out if houses have gone up in flames. in the afternoon when we came back we saw black smoke here and we wanted to go back home the road was cut off so we couldn't our ranch is right there and there was a lot of smoke so we came here next to fleece castle to see where the fire was going and if our ranch was going to burn. away from the flames the heat is more nuisance than danger in madrid a little cooler 39 celsius people try to stay hydrated stay protected or just took

it easy for some tourists for more northerly climbs it's what they came for it's to . drink lots of water it's very hard it's very hard for enjoying it and trying to get some time. for vulnerable people the heat can still be dangerous in france the health ministry has issued a heat wave plan for elderly care homes they don't want a repeat of 2003 as hot weather when 15000 mostly old people died. i put a small wet cloth around my neck and there isn't much more i can to i don't move around but it's our way we don't move too much we just have to wait for it to be over there is no other solution. but forecasters suggest it won't get cooler till early next week rory chalons al-jazeera. from london for

you very shortly now let's get back to martina. marin thank you very much now.