citizeness. coverts disabled victims to josie. understand the differences and similarities of cultures across the world. take it we'll bring you the news and current affairs that matter to you. me in my pots and pans protest the people show that angle of the coup leader defends his actions. i'm charlie rangel this is al jazeera live from london also coming up. south africa's corona virus setback the rollout of the oxford astra zeneca vaccine is suspended because of disappointing results against a new covert variant. the race to find survivors of india's glassy avalanche

hundreds still missing. from elizabeth broad and the town of joy she might it was an account with the humanitarian rescue and recovery operations being coordinated from. the day before donald trump 2nd impeachment trial his lawyers claim it's unconstitutional and political theater. in mars' military rulers have imposed a curfew in the 2 biggest cities yangon and mandalay and barren gatherings of more than 5 people it's intended to stop growing protests against last week's military coup military ruler trying has addressed the nation for the 1st time since the takeover he accused the country's democratic leaders of using the pandemic to rig november's election but also promised a new election next year i think. for

a multi-party democratic system and free and fair election is important for the long term of the system. when we have completed one year of this emergency law we will continue to proceed with the 2008 constitution we will have a multi-party election and we will hand over power to the one who wins in that election according to the rules of democracy. in the aftermath of the televised address protests continued across me and are with people in the largest city yangon striking pots and pans in a show of public anger against the military leaders a week on from the military coup protests are showing no signs of abating the scott hide the reports they seem to be getting bigger and more widespread. the 1st push back from myanmar security forces on the growing number of protesters burst from water cannon and in attempt to disperse some of the thousands who

gathered in the capital neighborhood. this is the 3rd day of mass rallying against a military coup one week ago a civil disobedience movement has been called encouraging people to skip work and school to head out and protest their demanding that deposed civilian leader on song suchi and the more than $160.00 elected leaders supporters and activists most who were detained during the early hours of the coup be released immediately. i like out the weekend when tens of thousands gathered in cities across the country waving the colors of suits cheese and the party and flying the 3 finger salute now a symbol of the movement the protests and calls for civil disobedience have become more organized in the days since last week's overthrow with momentum building labor unions civil servants teachers buddhist monks and students have all taken to the streets for the good i don't know and you know we are an engine is union we are not going to allow this military dictatorship to pass on to our next generation we will

continue our protest until this dictatorship fails we have already looked down on by other asian people and others around the world for growing up in an education system in the military room made a strong turnout was one of those recently detained by officials he was serving as an advisor to aung sang suu kyi we have called for the immediate release of a starting citizen shown to nil from the detention. our embassy has been providing the face eternal with extensive support during this ordeal he is a highly regarded adviser a holler god member of the academic community. there are signs the military is growing frustrated with the demonstrations a message on state t.v. warned of action being taken against those who break the law. everyone has the right to speak freely living in the country put those kinds of freedom shouldn't disturb others it should allow others to have different opinions but these days

people have disturbing and even threatening others by breaking laws while climbing it's democracy if we don't follow the rules and regulations our democracy can get damaged legal action should be taken against those who commit acts that harm the state stability public safety and the rule of law. some supporters are determined to show their dedication to the cause one group tattooing a line of an old revolutionary song on their arms that reads we won't forget until the end of the world scott had left our jazeera well we're joined by dr ronan li author of. genocide and a visiting scholar at the international state crime initiative at queen mary university in london thank you for joining us it's the 1st time we've heard from the military what do you think the demonstrators made of the message. well they would have found me no lengthy speech today possibly time and if they obviously prostration an anger that's been demonstrated in towns and cities and villages

across me and mark for the last week hundreds of thousands if not millions of people have been protesting about the coup and on lange's response astoundingly seemed to blame the democratically elected government for not being. appropriately committed to democracy as one cause of the coup he then suggested that the economic environment for investment would be a good under the military i mean this is this is during a week when multinational corporations are running away from me and mine and then astonishingly something that certainly won't be won't be believed by the international community or the rich she suggested that the repatriation of refugees in bangladesh would continue or could continue under military rule i mean it was it was in many ways an astonishing speech but actually time death to the hatred

that ordinary me and my residents have for the military and the anger that they feel because of the coup so based on that how could we see this progressing or a call for adult to govern what has to go on strike the curfews ending in about 2 hours from now could we see widespread strikes starting. well i think we will see widespread strikes study this will be a battle of wills it will be a battle between they democratic aspirations of a very young country me and mommy most most people in myanmar we would all want went on since it she 1st came to political prominence in 1980 s. give you some idea how young the country is the there on one side and the military who desires absolute power on the other i mean i i think demographics are play a huge role in this because young people's aspirations are not to allow the.

mayo soldiers to dictate their lives to them the way maybe would have been accepted 20 or 30 years ago it's a different world now that got young people have access to the internet they've seen the world outside of me and ma and they want a different future so many don't do might not remember the violence that the military has exacted in the process saying now now take action against those who break the law what kind of action do you anticipate will minimize military a brutal and that group on the planet can explain that better than the ripping a community who have suffered decades of mistreatment and then a genocide the military if it chooses can be incredibly violent but that the protesters while they i think will be scared about the prospect that the military what will unleash violence upon them bright frankly that had enough i mean the numbers of people that have taken to the streets is an indication that from their

point of view enough is enough they do not want the military back in power they don't want the 2008 constitution it's a military constitution they want rid of it too and they want a democracy where the will of the people is what is respected and that and the military is subservient to the democratic will of the people not the other way around. those who are in need thank you for sharing your insights with out as there . my. south african health authorities are working with international scientists to draw up a new vaccination strategy against covert 19 that's after they suspended the original plan to use the oxford astra zeneca vaccine because trials showed it gives little protection against the highly contagious south african variant of the virus

one option being considered as an alternative is rolling out a new code 19 vaccine that's still in the testing phase to be diminished is in johannesburg she explains why the government is under fire for how it's handled the pandemic. according to the studies that have been done and we are expecting that full study to be published sometime today 2000 participants were studied with regard to the response to astra zeneca and the government has said that it shows that there is only a 22 percent efficacies rate when trying to prevent mild or moderate covert 19 now this is very damaging for the government given the criticism it's already faced and even if the government can be forgiven for only understanding now that the vaccine is not is as effective as they had hoped the government has also come out to say that the vaccines that received the $1000000.00 doses last week it's only on a rival that it was a stablish that these vaccines expire in april vaccines take about 6 months they

have a 6 month shelf life and already south africa has a difficulty in that it didn't have this information on hand so so that ricans are certainly very disappointed and there really is an issue of confidence with regard to how the government is managing this vaccine rollout for the time being we know that they've said that they use the information they had on hand they've said that this was the most accessible vaccine at the time and what they'll do now is one of the experts on the panel that's trying to deal with the vaccine rollout has said it would it would be irresponsible to completely discard the astra zeneca vaccine instead they will vaccinate some people at some point but at the same time continue studies to understand better how to use astra zeneca well our correspondent barker's also following the story from london need despite what the south african government is saying they might still find a way to use the astra zeneca. you know that's the signal of the south african or

thirty's in the experts are saying despite the decision to support the rollout on sunday there's been an adjustment in that position and now it appears that the rollout will continue but in a very limited way in a stepped manner according to one chief scientist from south africa who's speaking at the world health organization earlier on in the day the plan is to inoculate around 100000 people largely to see if it still has a role to play and mitigating serious infection we know that there was something of a gap in the research which prompted the pause initially focus as we've heard there on 2000 people an average age of around 31 the conclusion being that the vaccine had minimal effect on treating people with moderate to mild infections of the south africa strain what we don't know is the impact on the older sector of society and whether or not it does still have

a role to play in reducing hospital numbers and critically and also reducing the death toll as well saying that though astra zeneca and scientists from oxford union university have been forced to concede that the vaccine hasn't behaved as they wanted to astra zeneca said that the response was indeed the limit is but there is still some light the oxford research is sort of implied that they can quite easily without having to go back to square one tweak the ostrich oxford astra zeneca vaccine so that it will be effective without having to go through the whole process over a big trial after that so the groundwork has already been laid the vaccine still has a role to play in south africa and still has a role to play as a building block for another potentially successful vaccine to deal with the south african strain. that live from london thank. dozens of

people are still trapped in a tunnel a day off to part of a himalayan glassy a collapsed fell into a river causing a massive flood at least 20 bodies have been recovered 200 more people and missing is a bit further now reports from just the math in the foothills of the himalayas. the rescuers are relying on heavy equipment to barge the piles of mud and debris clearing a tunnel where workers have been trapped since a torrent of water and debris swept through on sunday after part of a glazier broke off upstream. we were working on the crown of the tunnel when we heard screams get out get out we didn't know what was happening we started running to escape when the force of the water gushed in through the mouth of the tunnel. it's thought the workers are stuck in an outlet about 180 meters then. my brother was here he used to work here and now i'm hearing he is trapped inside we have no information about him there were 6 people from our village over here. that when

they are about 2000 members of the military police and specialist the mountain best of involved in the search. while they hoping to find survivors of the tunnel some teams have been out on the river fearing the worst. our team is here searching for bodies if we see anyone near the banks or in the river our work is to recover them . most of the missing were working on 2 hydropower projects being built by the government deep in the mountains of northern state one dead was damaged another destroyed and homes were washed away experts say the glazier burst could be linked to climate change and a team of scientists has been flown to the site to investigate other environmentalists blame the construction saying it's damaging the himalayas fragile ecosystem clearly this is an unstable valley which is not uncommon in these sorts

of environments i worry i think would be that this this could there could be other such events ice avalanches landslides snow avalanches and so on in the future and that that may well be exacerbated by by climate change. food and medicines have been delivered to some villages that have been cut off and this mountainous region repairs and reconstruction will take time this is where the humanitarian and rescue efforts are being coordinated for the town of joshi much as 300 kilometers from the state's capital that are doing but takes time alice to reach by abroad the head of india's national disaster response friend said one of the biggest challenges is the difficult terrain and the rescue and recovery operation could take up to 48 hours elizabeth cronon al-jazeera joshi mother and. still to come this half hour benjamin netanyahu faces court on corruption charges as protesters keep up their fight

against the israeli prime minister. biden wages war on trump era policies vowing to rejoin a body washington views as flawed and in need of reform. but . there is a cold east wind blowing across northern europe has been doing so for days is shut down transport germany the netherlands it's maybe a bit more fun in parts of eastern england when that started right down to the beach in clarkson which is on the coast of east in england that the destructive stuff is probably heard continental europe rather more obvious good part of germany the netherlands has seen this sort of whether indeed this is 1st time in 10 years or significant snowstorm in the netherlands there is more to come and it's this bright white cloud that more the shows where it is it seems to be want figuring

northwards which is really taking it into the really cold territory so you got a feed of the atlantic averages to go all this what i can answer eastern europe and at the moment it's relatively warm in for example hungary and much colder it lets you endure and this cold is what we were. shing recently but the forecast takes the snow in the northeast was direction and keeps the wind blowing to some degree was it starts to rain in spain and france and you think well this might succeed but i think not next day or so whilst warsaw's shows or gives a hint it's cold and it snows that cold is tucking back down into eastern europe so vienna then goes subzero once for deep into winter. but. it's america's worst kept secret cracked open in the time of a pandemic exposed in the time of trump through the turmoil of 2020 the big picture

traces a century of racial injustice to reveal how philanthropy politics and economics preserve structural inequality keeping white a supreme and black in its place a race for america part one on a. the . reminder of the top stories here on al-jazeera mean most military rulers have imposed a curfew in young gone and mandalay have banned gatherings of more than 5 people it's intended to stop growing protests against last week's military coup. south african health authorities are working with international scientists to draw up

a new vaccination strategy after the original plan to use the oxford astra zeneca job was suspended a trial showed it gives little protection against a highly contagious variant. dozens of people still trapped in a tunnel a day after part of a himalayan glassy a collapsed causing a massive flood at least 20 bodies have been recovered 200 more people are missing . the legal team defending former us president donald trump in his 2nd impeachment trial will argue the hearing is unconstitutional and fisher is on capitol hill following the story well and we heard from trump's lawyers today what more did they have to say. well the very dismissive of the actions that are being brought forward by the house remember it wasn't just the democrats there was bipartisan support 10 republicans also voted for the impeachment of donald trump but his legal team see that this is essentially political theater that there is no way you can blame him for the events of january the 6th they say that he used the

phrase fight for your country on many occasions in the bin nor violence immediately after that and also they say that the f.b.i. has a dent of 5 the pattern that led to the violence on the 6th of january being established days before don't trump gave his speech his controversial speech on the mall in fact in the last owner so that the democrats who will be conducting the prosecution of donald trump in the senate have issued their own response they see that the evidence against him is overwhelming and the events of the 6th of january responsible linked to donald trump and they said it's the most grievous act ever committed by a president now the democrats will leave their case and obviously then donald trump and his team will get the chance to and so you remember that at the end of last week the democrats asked donald trump to appear in person that was turned down they will make some play of that the rules will be established on tuesday will then move

into the hearing itself it's not going to take that long and there's a couple of reasons for that 1st of all the democrats realize that they're actually not going to win this no you'll remember that when there was a vote in the senate about whether or not the hearing was constitutional or not 45 senators all of them republicans said it wasn't and to convict someone in the senate you need a 2 thirds majority and the democrats simply don't think that there's the votes the for them to flip no among those who voted saying it was unconstitutional was mitch mcconnell who is the leader of the republicans in the senate he said look you can't look at my vote there and suggest that i'm not going to look at this hearing and judge it on the merits but the democrats. a realists they realize that they're not going to be able to flip the number of republicans that they need here's the other thing that they're worried about that this could drag on way too long and it will get in the way of joe biden's legislative agenda now you're thinking wait a minute he's only been in office for a couple of weeks why they're thinking about that well there's

a few things they want to get done quickly and that includes a covert relief bill and they also want to send an immigration bill on to capitol hill as quickly as possible and what will happen is that if this drags out then the divisiveness we've seen in american politics will just grew even worse and the democrats are really not keen on not idea as well so they think that they have a case to put to the american people they think they have a case to put to the senate as a whole but they're not overly convinced that they are going to get the conviction that they want remember 3 presidents have been impeached in the past including donald trump none of them have ever been convicted an official following that impeachment hearing for us or capitol hill thank you. the white house has reversed another controversial trump era foreign policy announcing it will reengage with the u.n. human rights council secretary of state anthony blinken says the u.s. will return as an observer despite acknowledging the body is still flawed and in

need of reform former president donald trump pulled out of the rights council 2 years ago accusing it of bias against israel the u.s. can't automatically rejoin and will have to wait for elections at the end of this year or president jordan has more from washington d.c. . the u.s. is going to be an observer member of the human rights council and that will give diplomats at the council the ability to engage with their counterparts to make the u.s. argument for reforms within the human rights council as well as be able to speak out on issues coming before the body the state department's view and the biden administration's view is that you can't get change unless you are actually engaged in the organization and of course this is just the latest in a number of steps that the biden ministration is taking to reengage with international organizations there isn't any clarity as to what the secretary means

by looking for reform certainly we saw during the trumpet ministration many criticisms that or that countries that the u.s. considered authoritarian or dictatorships and had a more a leftist political view seemed to come to the fore seemed to come to get seats on the council things that the u.s. opposed even though the u.s. had very little to say about right wing governments that might have also had their own problems with human rights abuses but it is worth pointing out that the u.s. is view under joe biden the u.s. president is that engaging with the united nations and its affiliated organizations is to the u.s. is benefit not to its detriment. israel's prime minister paired in court on monday pleading not guilty to corruption charges he says he's the victim of what he calls an attempted coup the israeli leader is facing 3 charges the most serious

indictment is known as case 4000 for bribery fraud and breach of trust from when he was both prime minister and communications minister he's accused of influencing regulatory decisions in favor of telecom giant show of it in exchange for positive media coverage when elevate his one a new side next his case 2000 also for fraud and breach of trust involving the media netanyahu allegedly offered to help improve the circulation of leading israeli newspaper yet the north again in exchange for favorable media coverage finally says case $1000.00 the prime minister and his wife are accused of receiving gifts worth almost $200000.00 mainly cigars and bottles of champagne in exchange for favors the charge relates to his friendships with israeli film producer of non mission and australian billionaire james packer very force that reports from occupied east jerusalem. the protesters that have gathered

every week for the last 8 months and so i don't mean that in you know his residence or the new focal point on monday the jerusalem district court a couple of 100 meters beyond the police barricades i would not think about the public security safety economics because the only thing that would interest me is how to get out of jail and this is why a person that god cannot. in this position to be the prime minister the volume went up as the prime minister's convoy arrived and you know who's accused of fraud and breach of trust in 2 cases in a 3rd he also faces an additional charge of bribery when you go shopping with me on the eve of his appearance he issued a message to his supporters calling the investigation and trial politically motivated insisting the case was crumbling the alleged offenses range from soliciting and accepting. lavish gifts from wealthy friends to offering assistance to media owners in return for favorable coverage in court he spoke only to confirm the written defense of his lawyers in essence a not guilty plea and to thank the court before leaving after sitting through just

20 minutes of legal argument his lawyers continue to desire since to question the legality of the investigation with the judge's appearing to push back so with benjamin netanyahu as departure for all the sound and fury out here for the legal argument inside the courtroom one of the most important things they could emerge from today is the timetable something much more prosaic but could decide whether the evidence 3 phase the witness phase during which will be all kinds of allegations put under oath whether that comes before the israeli election no decision was issued but legal observers saw hints of the judges were in no hurry and the judge said well how long will it take you to send some of these documents that the other side needs and they said 3 weeks and the judges pounced on it 3 weeks on and on in another 3 weeks so it looks to me if i had to guess right now that they will see the witnesses start coming end of march early april which would be after the march 23rd election that would itself be a minor victory for the prime minister allowing him to campaign outside of the

direction of a legal battle that is just one issue among many dividing voters as they prepare to return to the polls for a 4th time in 2 years sorry for said al-jazeera occupied east jerusalem. in a tit for tat native germany poland and sweden have each expelled a russian diplomat in response to moscow expelling diplomats from each of the 3 nations last month russia says the diplomats took part in protests supporting jailed kremlin critic alexina valmy tension between moscow and the e.u. has been rising of the opposition leader's detention in the valley was arrested upon his return to russia after months in germany recovering from poisoning which he blames on russian authorities. parts of indonesia's capital have been submerged by floodwater after a heavy rainfall is triggered evacuations and power outages in $27.00 areas in jakarta riverside households of face the most damage as water depths reached about 1.5 meters indonesia frequently experiences flooding and landslides jury in the

rainy season between november and march china has formally arrested an australian journalist on suspicion of sharing state secrets chong wei has been detained by beijing since august she had been working as a traveler's television presenter for the state owned channel c g t n we're straining government has repeatedly raise concerns about how detention beijing says her legal rights will be guaranteed. the top stories on al-jazeera me and my military rulers have imposed a curfew in the 2 biggest cities yangon and mandalay and bang gatherings of more than 5 people it's intended to stop growing protest against last week's military coup military rule of being on flying has accused the country's democratic leaders of using the pandemic to rig november's a.