nothing you've ever seen at the tulkarem top what we want to know is how do these things affect people we revisit places we stay even when there are no international headlines sleep al-jazeera really invests in that and that's a privilege as a journalist. an arctic blast leaves millions without power in the u.s. state of texas with freezing temperatures set to last for days. well i'm down in jordan this is our jazeera live from doha also coming up. facebook was wrong. facebook sections were unnecessary thumbs down from the australian government as facebook blocks new sites in

a dispute over paying for content. keeping up the pressure thousands rally in myanmar refusing to step down until their leader and son soon she is released. and children head back to school in argentina year away from the classroom because of the pandemic. an arctic blast continues to cripple large parts of the united states where at least 30 people have been killed the once in a life time storm has left millions without power and 3 quarters of the country blanketed in snow the national guard has been stationed right across texas which is among the hardest hit states pipes a burst in the freezing temperatures and water treatment plants stop working 7000000 texans up and told to boil their water well over a quarter of a 1000000 have no running water at all generators water and blankets are being sent

in by the federal government but the governor of texas says it will be days before the situation starts to improve most of the state will be below freezing tomorrow morning. along i 10 and north were will remain in freezing through thursday night with ultra cold temperatures once again on thursday night we should across the state start getting above freezing on saturday. al-jazeera and the gallagher has more. snow and ice are wreaking havoc from ohio to the rio grande much of the u.s. now gripped by severe winter storms the states of louisiana missouri kentucky and texas of all reported deaths amid historic freezing temperatures in north carolina and georgia storms brought tornadoes across the rest of the nation millions are without power as rolling blackouts continue this is this is the sense that are the

worst we're better and somebody is going to do some planning after all this is over and make sure there's an alternative source of energy texas is bearing the brunt of the arctic chill with power outages forcing people to use warming centers families desperate to keep warm have taken to lighting fires in sugarland texas authorities believe that's what killed a grandmother and her 3 grandchildren just incredibly tragic young woman 41 years old. family children it just doesn't get worse the seniors to a struggling as care homes run short on medical essential slide oxygen for those already concerned about their parents amid the coburg crisis it's a worrying time if we weren't here i can't imagine. because there's really not a lot of information cloud the rolling blackouts in texas have led to criticisms over the state of existing power grids many residents are calling for alternative

sources of power others say that's a conversation for another time this week we have to get warned i mean people are losing homes they're losing food they're i mean we've seen absurd people have died so it's like we should concentrate on that 1st and maybe figure out the solution next week so it doesn't happen again the severe weather is hampering efforts to get people vaccinated for covert 19 forecasters say another extreme cold front will affect south and central parts of the u.s. in the days ahead and a gallica al-jazeera. facebook has blocked users in australia from viewing or sharing news on its platform because of proposed laws to make tech giants pay media groups for content the blackout also affected some government agencies as pages carrying health and weather warnings went blank the government has criticised the move as heavy handed google had previously threatened to pull out of australia because of the law but as signs in several deals with media outlets in recent days

well australian treasurer josh frydenberg says he expects facebook to restore government accounts as soon as possible facebook was wrong facebook sections were unnecessary their way heavy handed and they would damage its reputation here in australia their decision to block strains access to government starts be they about support through the pain to make mental health emergency services the bureau of meteorology were completely unrelated to the media code which is yet to pass through the senate well marcus traumas the federal president of australia has made the union the n.e.a. he says he's been taken aback by facebook's actions. i mean it is just such an arrogant response from a tech monopoly responding in a monopoly is. a pretty minor attempts to control some of that

monopolistic behavior kind of proves the point that their monopoly behavior needs a little bit of control of course news organizations use whatever platform they can to share their content problem is that what this is meant is google and facebook now take the lion's share of advertising revenue which makes it very difficult for media companies to employ the journalists our members need to bring quality news and so you have facebook refusing to abide by local laws not just this is not just about astronomy and they're worried about a global recession and we expect that the us federal trade commission will be looking at this very closely with some anti trust investigation into facebook's activity this is a classic monopoly move by a powerful company trying to dictate what civil society does when in a democratic society civil society needs to determine how tech companies are prime

. minister genter has issued arrest warrants for 6 celebrities for encouraging people to join and to kill protests hundreds of demonstrators are back on the streets of the commercial capital young go on in the day after some of the biggest rallies yet according to the release of deposed civilian leader and some cinci close to 500 people attended tamed since the start of a civil disobedience campaign nearly 2 weeks ago was caught hyla joins us live now from the thai capital bangkok scott let's talk 1st about ang sang suu chain she was supposed to appear in court yesterday if that didn't happen what's the latest now on how to tension. there and yet it didn't happen on wednesday that was supposed to be for the 1st charge of illegally possessing walkie talkie radios but just the day before another charge was put against her and that was something to do with her out campaigning in november during the election that is was the crux

of the military's reason rationale for taking over the government saying that that was fraudulent but they are now citing her for illegally campaigning during covert restrictions so that is the 2nd charge and they said that that hearing is not going to take place until march 1st so presumably we're not to hear anything from the courts in till then but then again daryn you know this is a military judge and they're kind of changing the rules as they go but it's pretty safe to say that they want to keep her in custody as long as possible particularly because we're seeing so many people pope pouring out into the streets across myanmar that i'm sure they want to keep her inside it sounds as though she's you know it's more like house arrest in april or the capital she's not in a prison but definitely they're keeping her kind of squirreled away locked away for quite some time now at least now here until march 1st until the next hearing yes scott i mean saw some of the biggest military rallies across the country yesterday and these protests clearly gaining traction across the country all day.

they are and it's what's interesting about it daring to is they they are very nimble this movement that they can react pretty quickly to something that the military gently does like for instance yesterday when we saw hundreds of thousands of people pour out that was mainly prompted by tuesday a reaction from sorry from something that the military just to did on tuesday held a press conference and said that you know not sort of the 2nd charge came out they said they didn't stage a coup that they had to do what they did clearly that didn't sit well with the protesters so then they kicked things in very quickly pretty much overnight to have that big rally on wednesday we're seeing that again kind of play out again today thursday starting the same way and that is with this campaign civil disobedience campaign tactic where they pretend cars are broken down in the middle of streets and bridges in yangon kind of snarl things we saw that again starting on thursday rolling into the protesters coming out in the streets we're seeing that happening right now i just got hired

a life in bangkok scott thank you. jailed hong kong media tycoon jimmy la is heading to court on thursday to continue his appeal against a ruling denying him bail he's accused of fraud and conspiring with foreign forces on the beijing's controversial national security no lies the most high profile person among the more than 100 people arrested under the new legislation agent brown is in hong kong he says the chance of the getting bail a remote. arrived here at the high court in central hong kong a few hours ago he's appearing in court because he's trying to get the judge to overrule an earlier court's decision to deny him bail in his national security case not this legal odyssey that jimmy lie actually began back in may and i remember at the time asking him whether he thought the various charges he was facing could possibly be politically motivated perhaps even backed by china and he looked at me and said you know what do you think and that's certainly the feeling of many of his

supporters they feel that he is the victim of a of a deepening political vendetta last night also came word in the local media anyway which is yet to be confirmed by hong kong police the jimmy lie has been charged a 2nd time under the national security law with helping a group of activists to flee hong kong by boat so if you're a betting man i think it's fair to assume that you know jimmy live really is facing the prospect of very long time in jail if he is convicted he is facing multiple trials at the moment he's accused of fraud taking part in an illegal assembly and now to violations of the national security law. time for a short break here now to 0 when we come back why planning to enter the controls are causing controversy even cambodia. and the man who inspired the film hotel

rwanda goes on trial into gandhi accused of terrorising amanda monistat that's. it's time for the perfect gentleman who went on sponsored by qatar airways. well it's turned unpleasant in northern egypt on the coastal event as well the temperature at the height injuries and great degrees and ahead of it all this frontal system those ways south now when that happens you tend to get sand ahead of it sand behind it gusty winds and some storms on the line itself so about time to get into thursday it will be in iraq going through kuwait the temp having dropped about 28 on his way down to as bahrain and qatar said their house forecast is quite light to be an increasingly windy and dusty evening on thursday thunderstorms overnight or on friday and then the schimmel to follow for saturday so drop in temperature quite substantially so this is normal weather she's been seen much of

it recently unfortunately it stays pretty cold on the coast all the way from egypt to lebanon gaza reasons as cold as jerusalem so 12 degrees to 16 for you it rises slowly the time we get to sunday and the showers die out mozambique not a place that's very fond of tropical cyclones with another depression is one of them may well be named as a cycle and very soon it looks like on thursday it will be just affecting the sags but on friday as it winds up of the water wars the increase in wind and rain could be affecting the puter and probably still stay south they are. sponsored paul qatar airways its america's worst kept secret cracked open in the time of a pandemic exposed in the time of tromping through the turmoil of 2020 the big picture traces a century of racial injustice to reveal how philanthropy politics and economics

preserve structural inequality keep the white a supreme and black in its place the race for america part 2 on a jazzier. welcome back a quick robot of our top stories here at this hour an arctic blast continues to cripple large parts of the united states and it's called the deaths of at least 30 people millions are without power and national guardsmen stationed across texas which is among the hardest hit states. facebook has blocked australians from viewing all sharing news on this platform because of proposed laws to make tech giants pay for journalism it's training the government to slam the move and

demanded that its pages that have gone blank be restored as soon as possible. and me a last minute agent to has issued 6 arrest warrants for celebrities for encouraging people to join anti coup protests crowds continue to rally in young dawn demanding the release of deposed civilian leader and sang suchi. now cambodia's government has unveiled plans to set up a file war similar to china's to control and monitor online traffic officials say they want to maintain social order and protect national security but critics are calling the move a violation of democratic freedoms prime minister hun sen's government is stepped up its crackdown on dissent in recent years banning the main opposition party and arresting dozens of its members and cambodia will be far from alone governments around the world are increasingly reliant on internet control saying it's for public safety or to ward off crises researchers say india the world's biggest democracy is the global leader in internet shutdowns the government blocked

services in the indian administered region of kashmir for months in 2019 men must military has been using nightly internet blackouts to control growing popular protests against the coup on for be the 1st china's great firewall is the largest and most sophisticated online censorship tool in the world it can monitor block and even replace the content of its nearly 1000000000 internet users let's bring in matthew bua he's the head of the asia program of article 19 that's a human rights group he joins us via skype from bangkok matthew good to have you with us so how worried should cambodians be about all this and why is the government doing this now do you think. yes this is a massive threat for freedom of expression and internet freedom in cambodia and it's actually something that should be worrying for the entire region really there's 2 main concerns here the 1st is censorship the government already has some tools to restrict what people can see on the internet but this will make it much easier for the government to do that with all the data having to pass in and out of

a single portal and the 2nd big concern here is certain ailments the government's going to be collecting all i.e. addresses so the government is going to know not only which websites you visited but what you've done on those websites so i think this is quite a concerning development and something that needs to be the pushback against against the cambodian government's plans yet matthew doesn't say many people will say that this amounts to censorship and could this be seen as cambodia looking for new ways to block citizen journalists and online platforms which the government sees as a new threat. yeah that's definitely the case this is just a further step by the government in and ongoing campaign to dismantle independent media and undermine digital rights and freedom of expression 7 years ago the government took a number of steps to shut down independent media outlets or to co-opt independent

media outlets. and a lot of the media and discourse in the country has now moved online and as you mentioned citizen journalism and bloggers the use of social media by the by civil society these are becoming increasingly important because traditional media has been cut off but the government's just clearly not willing to accept this type of criticism of the government or this type of free activity online and this seems just to be a further step with the government wanting to control online discourse matthew what is cambodia's history in terms of suppressing freedom but suppression because as we've seen and as he said there have been crackdowns in the past on journalists and the press. yeah. especially the history in the past 5 years has been very very grim journalists have been arrested for reporting on them on government conduct. the civil society has been driven largely underground and had to take

a security measures to protect themselves and as i mentioned independent media has really been completely dismantled by the regime so this is a regime that is very hostile to freedom of expression very hostile to free media and increasingly hostile to internet freedom as well and i think that's our worry here matthew a final thought to you as we watch events unfold in me and ma how what we value that we a saying a rollback of digital democracy in many parts of asia including thailand and now cambodia. sure. this is been a rough year for freedom of expression in southeast asia we've seen the crackdown on protestors in thailand and a lot of their online protest activities. in the wake of the coup to me m.r. there's been a lot of very stringent restrictions on internet usage internet shutdowns blocking of social media apps and now this in cambodia so i think this is

a really worrying trend and what's worrying for southeast asia is the export of sort of a chinese style approach to digital authoritarianism war restrictions on internet freedom and that's now being replicated in many countries in southeast asia it's a really huge worry matthew broderick to get your thoughts thank you very much indeed for talking to us now the man who inspired the film hotel rwanda has gone on trial in kigali facing charges including terrorism and medha who rusesabagina who is a critic of president paul kagame he is accused of supporting the armed wing of the run the movement for democratic change he told the court to contravene him as he's no longer iranian citizen but prosecutors say he never renounced his nationality was a subpoena is credited with saving more than a 1000 lives during the run the genocide after hiding people in his hotel. room who let is i am here illegally because i was kidnapped went through on the

open a case in belgium i renounced my rwandan national unity i don't have to be dots elsewhere well anyhow we spoke to the daughter of paul rusesabagina karine kemba says her father's trial is a sham. those charges are in fact ludicrous there are that's not who my father is as a matter of fact they're one the government has tried multiple times to bring about crazy charges against him this started off like by calling him a genocide denier and an indication as that does not fit because he just made a movie about the genocide afterwards to try to say that he was funding rebel groups in the congo that was in 2010 that did not work because the falsified receipts and said that he was in the us when actually and on the dates that they falsified those receipts those western union received he was in ireland so that did not fit either so it's been for many years i don't want to government tries to is to bring on false charges against them to smear his name so to make him lose credibility and so what we expect from this there's no fair trial there's no

justice he was kidnapped for want us so we do not expect anything from don't want to government other than a sham trial in theater like we saw today he wasn't of arrested in dubai he was kidnapped in dubai and taken to rwanda forced to leave where he was then held in a tight in on location for 20 days where he was his hands were tied his legs were tied and he was blindfolded and mind you he said 70 almost 70 year old men and and so that's actually the international definition of torture he so he was tortured for those 3 days taken to the hospital after wards at 3 different instances and the roman government refuses to give us the details of those hospital visits last time we spoke with him we speak with them every friday for only 5 minutes during those 5 minutes he sounds like that there are authorities behind him around him keeping him from saying anything that is meaningful or for us to say anything that's meaningful and when we do start sharing valuable information somehow the phone cuts off so they are trying to forbid him from the only having a defense and defending himself but also communicating from his or his family.

now gaza has received its 1st 2000 doses of coronavirus vaccine after israel approved a shipment delivery of the russian made sputnik jambs was delayed by israeli authorities on tuesday israel has been heavily criticized for excluding gaza and the occupied territories and its rapid vaccine a roll out or a force that has the latest from western. israelis have said that it was a technical issue they didn't specify exactly what the hold up was merely saying that the political. senior israeli officials or israeli fish were saying that the political echelon hadn't yet made a decision to allow the transfer to take place when it was 1st sent back at an israeli checkpoint that decision obviously subsequently taken and it has been allowed through i think it would be very difficult for the israelis to continue the

line of not allowing this transfer to happen it's been some pressure on israel already over its decision not to supply vaccines in large numbers at least to the palestinian authority it's pledge some $5000.00 so far of which about 2000 have been handed over but preventing palestinians from exchanging vaccines within the 2 separated territories would have been subject to even greater international pressure and so this 1st transfer has taken place enough for a 1000 people an initially we were told that it was going to be for medical workers people on the front line dealing with coded cases but how much health ministry official on accepting the vaccines also talked about them being given to the most vulnerable people people who have had organ transplants and are most susceptible to the vaccine but we're talking about just a 1000 people in a population of 2000000 when it comes to gaza where there's already been a very substantial outbreak it at the numbers there are going down but it is

a territory with an extremely overstretched fragile health system. schools in argentina's capital have reopened after being closed the more than a year due to the pandemic that's a welcome relief for some parents but a cause of concern for others special hygiene measures are in place and class numbers are limited in our ports now one of ours. for many of these primary school children and their parents it seemed like this day would never come the school year of classes last the studying at home of not seeing their friends their back cautiously carefully concerned about them up on all of the all of this is that we've got all the necessary measures in place alcoholic child disinfected mats sprays masks the moment says the idea is that everyone's relaxed to let them know they can send their children to school without being worried that we've got everything in place to look after them. not everyone however is likely to be

convinced the culprit 900 virus has killed 50000 people in argentina 2000000 have been infected or the vaccination program the still any reached a few 100000 would have made then it of course i know definitely in the next few days or when the old people's return to school there will be families who are concerned and that's fine but we all have to understand that we've got to learn to live with this virus. school attendance this year is obligatory and this really one 3rd of people returning 60 of the $180.00 who normally attend this primary school the 1st day back at school after the long summer break is always an emotional sometimes traumatic time especially after the year we've just had for the children their parents and the teachers. well the son ian says they've lost the habit of coming to school and it's a routine that having to really learn. i understand they've done everything

possible although it's still not 100 percent secure i'd rather we'd had our vaccines that things had been done differently. maybe more gradually or with the classes more spaced out. she says a year had seemed like much longer especially to her daughter lucy or you know that . i'd like to see all my friends because it's been a year since i last saw them i really want to see them. meanwhile the 1st batch of half a 1000000 doses of the oxford astra zeneca vaccine manufactured in india has arrived in one osiris to bolster supplies of the russian sputnik vaccines are already being administered as argentina slowly tentatively struggles to return to the life you had before starting with the youngest. one for the road to 01 of cyrus. a banker who run for president says he's being put on trial on politically motivated charges victor but the rico faces up to 15 years in prison if

found guilty of corruption he was seen as a major challenger to president alexander lukashenko in last august's election but was arrested in june because shankar went on to secure a 6th term in power a result which has led to months of protests. the protests have turned violent in barcelona for a 2nd day after thousands demat of the release of rap artist public hustle he's been jailed following a 2018 conviction for insulting the monarchy and praising the separatist group eta but it's under a controversial law that people say prevents freedom of speech there but in many reports. protests he took for a 2nd night across. police stations banks and several stores the damage during demonstrations. thousands took to the streets to demand the release of popular house elf from jail. for the start of the rap

his lyrics and tweets got him in hot water with the authorities after he insulted spanish royalty supported till now defunct extremist group and criticize the police . while it would seem was your i'm a musician and it effects me the fact that in spain artists musicians rappers everyone is arrested i find it quite brutal that people are arrested for the lyrics of a song i'll send the common sense tells me that i have to be here because we have less and less freedom in spain. on monday police stormed the a the university where has cell had barricaded himself in with other activists to avoid a jail sentence has said was taken away by police but remains defiant and i will try out they will never make us give in despite the repression was the worst was has south cases inspired support across the country 200 prominent artists actors and musicians signed

a petition for his release they say the so-called gag order prevents free speech spain's left wing government has moved to change the law but that's come too late for hersel the. protesters here say they'll continue to raise their voices against the silencing of the outspoken rapper. you're about among the al-jazeera. headlines here on al-jazeera an arctic blast continues to cripple large parts of the united states and us caused the deaths of at least 30 people millions are without power the national guard has been stationed across texas which is among the hardest hit states the governor says it'll be days before the situation starts to improve facebook is not to strain eons from viewing all share.