as you know some people. well still ahead here on al-jazeera we'll be live in wilmington delaware where as you can see u.s. president elect joe biden will be due to speak only a members of the electoral college voted to verify his presidential election victory. but. there's been a big drop in temperature in the last week in the siberia not in fact in the arctic all around the northern hemisphere this is represented by these these colors so really it is pink it's really cold below minus 20 that cold air in the seasonal way comes out of the warm waters the open waters the sea and the sea even the yellow sea the produces snow showers which we've seen and the snow showers will pile up

probably half a meter meet even more snow on the western slopes of most of honshu and hot card in the cold itself in hans's the showers make some diva make some big. we break into our programming course to join president elect joe biden will be into delaware as he speaks to the american public let's listen and our constitution and the will of the people prevail our democracy pushed jested threatened proved to be resilient true and strong electoral college votes which occurred today effect the fact that even in the face of the public health crisis unlike anything we've experienced in our lifetimes the people voted they voted in record numbers more americans voted this year of every vote in the history united states of america. over 155000000 americans were determined to have their voices heard and their votes counted. and

the start of this pandemic this crisis many were wondering how many americans would actually vote it all but those fears proved to be unfounded we saw something very few predicted even thought possible the biggest voter turnout in the history of the united states of america a number so big that this election now ranks as the clearest demonstration of the chair will of the american people one of the most amazing demonstrations of civic duty we've ever seen in our country should be celebrated not attacked more than 81000000 of those votes were cast for me and vice president elect erik's that too is a record more than any ticket has received and the history of america represents a winning margin of more than 7000000 votes over the number of votes cast for my pony together and the vice president elect our son i earned

306 electoral votes while exceeded 270 electoral votes needed to secure victory 306 electoral votes is the same number of electoral votes that donald trump and vice president pence received when they won in 2060 i mean excuse me at the time president trump call is a leg the electoral college tally a landslide by his own standards these numbers represented a clear victory then and i respectfully suggest they do so now if anyone didn't know before they know now. what beats deep in the hearts of the american people is this democracy the right to be heard to have your vote counted to choose leaders of this nation to govern ourselves and america politicians don't take power are people grant power to them the flame of democracy was lit in this nation

a long time ago and we now know nothing not even a pandemic or an abuse of power can extinguish that flag and as the people kept it aflame so too did courageous state and local officials and election workers american democracy works because america makes it work at a local level when the extraordinary things we saw this year was that every day americans our friends and our neighbors often volunteers democrats republicans independents demonstrating absolute courage they showed a deep and unwavering faith and and a commitment to the law they did their duty in the face of a pandemic and then they could not and would not give credence to what they knew was not true they knew this election was overseen was overseen by them it was

honest it was free and it was fair they saw it with their own eyes and they wouldn't be bullied into saying anything different was truly remarkable because so many of these patriotic americans are subject to so much a normal political pressure verbal abuse and even threats of physical violence but we all wish that our fellow americans in these positions will always show such courage and commitment to free and fair elections is my sincere hope we never again see anyone subjected to the kind of threats and abuse we saw in this election. simply conscionable we owe these public servants a debt of gratitude they did seek the spotlight you know in our democracy survive because of them which is proof once more that it's every day americans infused with honor character and decency that is the heart of this nation

you know in this election their integrity was matched by their strength independence in the integrity of our judicial system and america when questions are raised about the legitimacy of an election those questions are resolved through the legal process and that's precisely what happened here the trump campaign broad broad dozens and dozens and dozens of legal challenges a test result they were heard again and again and each of the time they were heard their own to be without merit time and again president trumps lawyers present arguments to state officials state legislatures state and federal courts and ultimately to the united states supreme court twice there heard by more than 80 judges across this country and in every case no cause or evidence was found to reverse or question or dispute the results

a few states went for recounts all the counts were confirmed results in georgia recount it 3 times didn't change the outcome the recount conducted it was constant actually saw our margin grow the margin we had in michigan was 14 times the margin president won that state by 4 years ago our margin of pennsylvania was nearly twice the size of the trump margin 4 years ago and yet none of this is stop baseless claims about the legitimacy of the results. even more stunning 17 republican attorneys general and 126 republican members of the members of the congress actually the actually signed on to a lawsuit filed by the state of texas that lawsuit asked the united states supreme court to reject the certified vote counts in georgia michigan pennsylvania and

wisconsin this legal maneuver was an effort by elected officials and one group of states to try to get the supreme court to wipe out the votes of more than 20000000 americans in other states and to hand the presidency do a candidate who lost the electoral college lost the popular vote and lost each and every one of the states whose votes they were trying to reverse its position so large 3 we've never seen it before but ition they refused to respect the will of the people refuse respect the rule of law and refuse to honor our constitution thankfully a unanimous supreme court a media only and completely rejected this effort the court sent a clear signal to president trump and that they would be no part of an on president of the salt on a democracy every single avenue was made available president trying to contest the

results he took full advantage of each and every one of those that this president trump was denied no course of action he wanted to take he took his case to republican governors and republican secretary of state as he criticized many a trip obligate state legislature to republican appointed judges at every level. in a case decided after the supreme court's latest rejection a judge appointed by president trump wote wrote quote this court has allowed the plaintiff the chance to make his case and he is lost on the merits and of crow laws on the merits even president trump's own cyber security chief overseeing our elections said it was the most secure election in american history and summarily was let go let me say it again his own cyber security chief over same this election

said it was the most secure in american history you know respecting the will of the people is at the heart of our democracy even and we find those results hard to accept but that's the obligation of those of taken on a sworn duty to uphold the constitution 4 years ago when i was a sitting vice president and states it was my responsibility to announce the tally of the electoral college votes in the joint session of congress and voted to elect donald trump i did my job and i'm pleased but not surprised with the number of my former republican colleagues in the senate who have acknowledged already the results of the electoral college i thank them and i'm convinced we can work together for the good of the nation on many subjects that's the duty owed to the people to our constitution to our history you know in this battle

for the soul of america democracy prevail we the people voted in faith in our institutions held the integrity of our elections remains intact and now it's time to turn the page as we've done throughout our history to unite and to heal as i said this campaign. i will be president for all americans and our just as hard for those of you who didn't vote for me as i will for those who did theirs urgent work in front of us and get is pandemic under control and getting the nation vaccinated against this virus delivering immediate economic help so badly needed by so many americans are hurting day and then building our economy back better than it ever was and in doing so we need to work together to give each other a chance to lower the temperature and most of all we need to stand in solidarity as

fellow americans to see each other are paid our struggles our hopes and our dreams for a great nation were good people we may come from different places hold different beliefs we share a common a love for this country a belief in its limitless possibilities for we the united states of america has always set the example for the world for a peaceful transition of power. will do so again i know the task before small pieces is tempered by the pain so many of us are feeling today our nation passed a grim milestone 300000 deaths seek to discover where's my heart goes out to each of you in this dark winter of the pandemic but to spend the holidays and the new year with

a black hole in your hearts without the ones you loved at your side my heart goes out to all of you fall on hard times through no fault of your own unable to sleep at night stand at the ceiling and weighed down by the worry of what tomorrow will bring for you and equally important for your family but we face difficult times before history. i know we'll get through this when we're together after we get through it together so as we start the hard work to be done with this moment give us strength rebuild this house of ours upon a rock that can never be washed away as in the prayer of st francis for where there is discord you knew where there is doubt # faith where there is darkness light this is houllier is english this is the america we love

and that is the america we're going to be thank you or may god bless you may god protect our troops and all those who stand watch over our democracy thank you. joe biden the president elect speaking there to the nation just as the electoral college in the u.s. . he was the rightful winner of the presidential election there with his wife dr jill biden taking off the stage and we're going to join she have a chance he's with the said in wilmington and she had just before we come to my 1st question i want to take part of a speech parts of what. joe biden said and in what part of his speech is that if anyone didn't know we know it now what beats deep in the hearts of the american people is this democracy the right to be heard to have your vote counted to choose the leaders of this nation to govern ourselves in america politicians don't take power the people granted to them the flame of democracy was lit in this nation

a long time ago and we now know that nothing not even a pandemic not an abuse of power could extinguish that flame he sort of set the agenda for how this speech was going to play out to the american people he made his position very clear. right i mean we can go into a long discussion but i think this is the place is do we know how democratic the american democratic system is but yes he was saying that the system worked well and trump had every reason to and that under every reason to have every opportunity to challenge the election results within that system through recounts through the courts judy. and so on and he failed to each time so that's that's fair you know so he will sort of saying look i mean this is fine but the system the checks and balances work he did throw in a mention of abuse of power in the middle that so it's all in all good you know working through the system and was that suggestion of abuse of power on the part of

donald trump of them he then pointed out. very sadly i think that donald trump won the electoral college by the same module as joe biden has just won the electoral college and donald trump called it a landslide when he won but by this many of it's by 30306 votes in the electoral college and he respectfully suggest of the don't trump agree that this was a pretty emphatic vote for joe biden as well well things are slightly difficult for that speech with joe biden was he said things like the american people could not or would not give credence to the allegations that were being put forth about the election being great that he said look 81000000 people voted for me and this is a huge mandate but what he fails to mention is 73000000 people voted for donald trump and a quarter of the pows about 80 percent of that number believe that the election was raked so it's not quite as easy as joe biden is putting out that at the moment that narrative is still very active for whatever reason 73000000 people voted for donald

trump and whatever reason a majority of them of the polls are to be believed do not believe joe biden don't believe the mainstream media they don't believe the democrats are they believe a lot of republicans but they do believe donald trump and this is an issue that is . cannot be ignored it can't be just dismissed as you know as if you as a few extremist somewhere in the countryside somewhere in america this is a big deal there's a loss of loss of trust in the system which is what trump has always capitalized upon the question is why did people lose that trust we don't often hear joe biden perhaps address that question which until perhaps democrats do now we're going to continue to have the these issues but what was interesting also there was and this was this is news there's been breaking in the last hour or so more and more senators are now saying ok the electoral college has done its work we will now call joe biden president elect this is dumb but i mean some very senior ones like the republican majority whip and the senate but mitch mcconnell yet the majority leader

were waiting that would be very significant but more of a son who's also. ok this is this is not over so the lindsey graham said well yeah it's pretty much over trump has a very narrow legal path now we'll wait to see how things play out but all the republicans out of the say no this is this is finally over and clearly biden hopes that he will be able to unify the country through his words and some francis of assisi interest and get a quote remember margaret thatcher using when she was she was elected in the in the u.k. it's a popular popular quotation by politicians who were recently elected but unfortunate the narrative is a bit more complex yes it looks very much like it's almost certain that joe biden will be the next president of united states without merit to is alive that's the flame that's alive and which both democrats and republicans is the word about foley update thanks so much she had a chance there for us and we'll meet and delaware joshua polacheck is the executive director at pima county democratic party joins me now from tucson in arizona good

to have you with us on the program joshua just really our international viewers we've heard so much about arizona so much about the recount what was the game changer that sort of turned from a republican state to a democratic state what was the feeling that. well i think the most important thing was the people of arizona the american citizens here we voted pretty decisively it was a close election but it was a clear election and for president elect biden and vice president elect terrorists it's been a decades wrong effort here to organize people from across a very diverse coalition from the latin xor or the spanish speaking communities here the china communities the native americans we have 17 federally recognized native american tribes here and of course a wide variety of people from across arizona who are just set up with the inability

of the republicans to govern and to delimit or because of the american people are suffering and we want real leadership sometimes that can be an issue of voter apathy and obviously as you say you managed to motivate a large proportion of the population there so what was that the main election issues no was it the pandemic cool was it immigration or is it just the economy in general. i think the top 3 issues for our voters were good governance. the economy and immigration and when we talk about good governance we talk about not just the inability to deal with a a once in a generation and make us in a way that any of our peer countries have the level of debt that we see here in arizona an economic dislocation is unprecedented across the developed world i but it's also the inability to do. basic governance whether you're talking about

trade deals that have backfired whether you're talking about us having our veterans affairs hospitals deliver the health care to our veterans it's just a wide variety of incompetence and corruption and people are just fed up with it how much of a scenario is it that the election itself is seen as trying to perhaps now a president biden elect would like an opportunity to heal how much healing is required how much healing is needed in our zone and how divisive was that. i would say it's been an incredibly divisive election i'm sure your viewers have seen most scenes from just the week after the election where we had i'm proud testers led by media demagogues like alex jones show up in our state capital and try to disrupt

the election administration the counting of all of these votes the millions of votes who were cast for both sides and these armed. i'd hesitate to call them protesters but armed supporters. of the president and and his lies who are trying to undermine american democracy and there are tens of millions of americans on both sides of the partisan divide who saw the election go through people elected through their votes whether it was a president or a senator or a state representative or their local dog catcher and they know the legitimacy of those votes and they want to see us move forward that's what we have done as a country since the beginning we have moved forward with each new election the losers accept the results like their wounds and prepare for the next set of elections while the winners from there to govern for all americans to show

a political good to get your insight thanks so much for joining us in tucson and i was on to thank you very much have a good night thank you russia has denied allegations that it was behind a cyber attack on u.s. government agencies the full scope of the breach is unclear but hack is a believed to have monitored the e-mails that the treasury commissar and homeland security departments they u.s. national security council says it's investigating the attacks that may have continued for several months. lebanon's caretaker prime minister has refused to cooperate with the investigation into the bay report explosion which happened in august as india and 3 former cabinet ministers face charges of callousness and neglect victims' families have welcomed the charges but say many more people need to be held to account so the harder has more from beirut. the rule of law is what these people are demanding they came to the palace of justice to show support for a judge who is facing a political backlash for charging the caretaker prime minister has stand and former

ministers with negligence over the baby with port explosion fadi so when it was supposed to question them this week but the defendants accuse him of violating the constitution by overstepping his powers and are refusing to comply it says me either he takes a decision that shows that he is truly working for justice and live or he don't do that and the sure that the whole decision that he took and everything that happened in the 1st few weeks was just another scenario the case is now politicized leading politicians and religious officials friends and foes rallied behind accusing so when of bypassing parliament and are calling his decision selective justice the judge has some say so one could have avoided criticism if he explained that more officials will be charged with judges or freddy's for work. is the jurisdiction

to indict to. file a claim against anybody once the judge has submitted to the parliament no i think he has the total and complete jurisdiction jurisdiction over the port was in the hands of many security agencies ministries and political parties and the ammonium nitrate blamed for triggering the explosion was stored in a warehouse 12 since late 2000. and 13. that is why some politicians believe the charges are about settling political scores they question why former ministers linked to president michel aoun for example have not been charged the president has the night accusations that he intervened in the judicial probe the families of the $200.00 people killed believe charges of negligence are not enough and that many more officials lead to provide answers. we want justice for the blood of

the victims we want to know who caused the death of our children we are with you somewhere in a country with a history of a lack of accountability and the judiciary long accused of being politicized this is uncharted territory but justice here is now at stake there are beirut nigeria's a federal police force says extra investigators have been deployed to help hundreds of find hundreds of missing school boys now they were taken on friday knowing 20 gunmen stormed a state boarding school in the town of carter in the northwestern could see the state governor says 333 students are unaccounted for or the nigerian president's office at least 10 boys were abducted parents of the missing students staged protests demanding the return of their children as i'm hammered or harvey has been criticized for not visiting the school even though he's currently visiting his home state of could see no heavy storms battering australia's east coast have washed

away a popular tourist beach the main beach at byron bay had already been depleted by previous erosions but it's now all but disappeared into the sea the heavy band of wind and rain off the coast ports $700.00 millimeters of rain in just 48 hours. what we've got here is yet another event weather event coming on the back of climate change their communities dealing with the 4th major event in the last couple of. bahrain we've got some severe weather. to make sure that we are into the future. of course you can follow all of the stories that we're covering here. on our web site. www dot com to through the day. after the break with. all of the news stories so stay with us.

an invitation to bear witness to hold that life office. the heidi's. the trials and tribulations. i'm seeing it's an every day miracles the injustices the defiance the tests of character and the closeness they takes with nice documentaries with a delicate touch on al-jazeera. decades ago

manila was called the pearl of the orient the manila metropolitan theater was once a testament to the city's grandeur but decades later the theater has become a symbol of moneyless to katie now the philippine government is changing their government buildings the universities and monasteries were just some of the many structures that were destroyed in manila drawing world war 2. but rebuilding a life and a city from scratch has proven difficult and some experts say manila has never truly recovered. i was raised in france. these are my grandparents. these are my parents and this is mean. by them both isis and the us of. the 1st of

a 2 part epic tale of a remarkable simon. the father the son and the jihad caught one on al-jazeera. you're watching i was there at least the whole robin and remind of our top news stories the u.s. electoral college has formally validated joe biden's victory in the november presidential election electors pushed joe biden over the threshold to clinch the presidency it's one of the last to finalize the outcome of the numbers election speaking in the last hour joe biden criticize donald trump's efforts to overturn the results this legal maneuver was an effort by like that officials and one group of states to try to get the supreme court to wipe out the vote more than 20000000 americans in other states.