he's wanting to use a place. to play but instead they'll be getting pregnant that sample. is always of infected people all right the world people pay attention to what gets on here and how does it is very good to bring the news to the world. the u.s. secretaries of state and defense are in south korea for talks as pyongyang issues a warning to the bite that ministration. to give this is al jazeera live from doha also coming up the european union is set to unveil a vaccine passport scheme that it hopes will increase summer travel. experts say the astra zeneca vaccine appears to be less effective against preventing disease

from the south african variant. voters in the netherlands decide whether to keep this plan mark router as prime minister and his party in power as they head to the polls. a day after some sharp words from pyongyang the u.s. secretaries of state defense are in south korea on the 2nd stop of the asia tour the u.s. secretary of defense lloyd austin was welcomed by the foreign minister with a military parade north korea's nuclear ambitions are high on the agenda beyond gang us warned the u.s. not to cause trouble in the region. the u.s. our ok alliance which has been steadfast for 7 over 70 years remains ironclad and is the lynchpin of peace security and prosperity for no of the sega a free and open in the pacific region and across the world one after mouse has

robbed the pride and sell. this visit to south korea is seen as a very important way for the u.s. to reset and restore relations with a traditional ally much as it did in japan also to some extent with the hope of repairing relations between japan and south korea which have been frayed in recent times lloyd austin the u.s. defense secretary spoke about the importance of the alliance with south korea at their 1st meeting with his counterpart wednesday saying that it was very important in countering what he called the unprecedented challenges posed by both north korea and china now it's the china part of that which is somewhat problematic here in south korea which has a far more complicated relationship with its mighty neighbor china it is much more reliant on china in terms of trade it tries to avoid any head on clashes but once

again we have this u.s. mission talking in terms of china as a potential adversary so for south korea they have tried to avoid any direct confrontation and in fact the defense minister for south korea in his remarks talking about the importance of the relationship with the u.s. in deterring north korea no mention of china at all what the south koreans and the u.s. can agree on is the cost sharing agreement the cost of hosting u.s. troops in south korea after months and even years of disagreement under the trumpet ministration donald trump demanding that south korea along with other allies pay far more for the hosting of u.s. troops so the fact that they have an agreement which will be signed on this trip is seen as the biden administration in some ways returning to traditional u.s. values which is being a welcome tear and also traditional ways of dealing with its friends and allies.

international travel has taken a massive hit due to the pandemic so many countries are trying to find a safe way to open up again one solution could be a passport type document for vaccinated people the european commission is expected to produce a certificate that would allow inoculation people to travel freely within the e.u. the so-called digital green pos would provide proof that a person has had one of the e.u.'s 4 approved jobs let's get more of this from a series dominic a new joins us now live from berlin dominic this whole suggestion has not been without controversy how popular is this idea. certainly amongst the southern european union states there is a degree of popularity for this idea because they people see it as potentially a path back to having many tourists inoculated tourists or at least tourists who

had been cleared to travel by dint of having this digital green pass and that those tourists money would swell the coffers of the economies of the southern e.u. member states and there by mitigate some of the economic damage that 19 or more than 12 months ago would 19 now has caused to their economies but you could put on the other side of the equation there are those who say that there are real issues about the rigor with which the criteria are satisfied for having a digital pass the level of proof they would have to be of whether the person in concerned had had a vaccine or whether they had had covert 19 and retained enough antibodies in their systems to be if not immune but not able to pass it on to others and then just the principle of data protection of how much of a person's individual sensitive personal information should be shared so lots of different issues there one side the benefits to economies of travel being allowed and then the 2nd side the the problems with the pass how good will it be and then

also the idea of as i say data protection definitely something that some people consider to be a real problem with this potential idea but dominic another number of states have already said that they will be opening for tourism fairly soon is that of course in any any tension within the e.u. . interestingly you have tension being caused from 2 perspectives the 1st perspective as i was just saying that clearly the governments of these member states are looking at cyprus potentially spain as well the greek government too they see benefits but some people within those countries are are not quite so persuaded of the benefits as it were because they would say well how can it be that people who are an ocular to can travel to our country and move around freely but we ourselves who haven't been inoculated can't perhaps in situations where lockdowns pertain or localized lockdowns pertain there's also certainly

a view in germany certainly among some people within the industry the hotel industry for example who say they look upon the fact that germans are being told that soon they'll be able to travel to the ballet eric islands of spain new york or particularly which as which is very popular with germans how germans will be able to travel there but they can't travel within their own country because of the nature of lockdown because of the nature of the climbing infection rates again infection rates climbing death rates climbing that sort of thing so clearly tension certainly inside germany there's tension but in other countries too this idea of whether a person can travel if they're not inoculated versus somebody coming from outside that member states who is inoculated so lots of issues there that the e.u. is going to have to deal with because and deal with quickly because we know they're going to be talking about the digital green pass we expect e.u. commission president to lyon in the course of this hour to address this issue but

they're going to have to address it pretty quickly because the aim has been for this digital green pass to be up and running certainly by this summer which is not that far away now. topic a reporting live from berlin going to thanks indeed. promised to me and health officials say that 62000 doses of corona virus frank scenes are on their way to the occupied west bank and gaza strip think many fractured by pfizer and astra zeneca being delivered that was part of a done in a program guised by the world health organization let's go live to ramallah. bring him can tell us more data how soon before these vaccines begin to be administered and who's going to get them 1st. that's the big question the health officials are saying the. national. vaccination campaign a national vaccination campaign well on sunday the issue of vaccinations has been

a tough issue here in the palestinian territory because many people here do not trust the palestinian authority if in saying that after the palestinian authority has received 12000 jobs in the past few months they've given some of them to officials and their families so there is a lot of when it comes to the transparency and integrity of rolling out those vaccinations and it's going to be a true test for the palestinian authority many officials and health officials have been telling us that the health system is overwhelmed we've been to one of the hospitals. with 19 patients waiting and calling doors they wanted to get a room in some of these hotels some were even looking in other cities in the occupied west bank but they couldn't find a place so these 60000 jobs are going to be imported to relieve the overwhelming tout system let's not let's not forget that $24000.00 of those jobs are from us and the health minister has said that they're going to be putting them

in storage just until they get some sort of clearance and. because that has been concerns about the side effects that they may cause in light of the general situation that vaccinations. are growing. people infected with the bar as the bell for me. been resorting to lockdowns closures he's been there and they're hoping that some of these vaccines are going to help. the health. abraham reporting live from ramallah in the occupied west bank many thanks indeed the. dutch prime minister mark has cost his boss in the netherlands national election opinion polls suggest that his sense of right party is on track to win by a large margin that's despite his entire cabinet resigning after a child care benefit scandal 2 months ago it's europe's 1st major vote since the start of the pandemic and will be a test of the government's policy is. this if you'll be an issue.

you were. forced to fix things you see because of them and for another if you're working very hard to apply to once we have. to make the most of success out of which of course looking back last 10 years there have been some great she she did and we have to do which also you can forge and at the same time i'm proud of some of the think you're completion as a country not just me but collect whatever i was there a step in amsterdam. this is a very different election then we go of course have seen in the past as you can see people here coming on their bikes to cast their vote is a basically a drive through polling station especially set up to to have this social distancing still being protected people of course were worried to go to polling stations because of the crowds they could expect so odessa many more polling stations than in previous elections everything is very carefully organized but it is still some

concern about the turnout because some political analysts are predicting that the turnout could actually be more than 10 percent lower than in 2017 when more than 80 percent turned up 2 fold the polls are saying that the market to the prime minister is due to wendy's elections but that's also very interesting because we've got before the clone up and i mean he's his popularity was actually going down so this is what we call the rally around the flag phenomenon where the leader of a country during a crisis gets most of the support even though the netherlands has not been doing so well during this pandemic and the other want to watch is the 2nd largest party in the polls is the far right and the immigration anti islam party of the freedom party they have quite some support and they're also we're going down the florida grown up and i'm again actually picked up really some votes because of this lockdown and that's why we have to watch also these these populist far right

parties because i really have been campaigning on these sentiments against the lockdown we're going to whether up to. then. i saw my friends i didn't receive any. harrowing accounts from survivors who managed to escape a fire at a detention center which killed at least 60 people. i'm from a big job in baghdad and i'll tell you about the ancient men dying in position and how it struggling to survive. it's time for the perfect gentlemen. sponsored point qatar airways. the weather's looking largely fought in try for japan over the next couple of days but it's different story for central areas of china a long rope of cloud here this disturbance will continue to feed

a fair bit of wet weather into central parts of china gradually easing over towards shanghai and will eventually make its way out into the open waters and it will southern parts of japan ahead of that 18 celsius in tokyo similar value there for so little cooler there impatient and hopefully as we go on through the next couple of days we will see some wetter weather some wintry weather just helping to clear the air here after a recent us and storm and certainly in the mix as we head on into the weekend by the weekend some very heavy rain that continue across central parts of china then gradually moving out into the open waters but to the south of that they stick in last 5 and dry 27 celsius in hong kong in the sunshine 10 degrees warmer than that across much of south asia a lot of warm sunshine coming through that free monsoon heat building nicely few showers spilling out of afghanistan into northern parts of pakistan garage easing of it was the far north of india want to show is too much of the fun with east of

india it elsewhere the dry weather sunshine continues live with a fair weather cloud but it's also one of 2 showers this for lanka. sponsible qatar airways they offered the most hard call found after egypt's revolution that passion turned into something much bigger. on al-jazeera world.

hello again this is al jazeera let's remind you of the main news this hour the u.s. secretaries of state defense are in south korea on the 2nd leg of their 1st asia tour pyongyang has warned the u.s. not to cause trouble in the region. dutch prime minister mark ruta has cast his ballot in the netherlands national election opinion polls justice center right party is on track to win it europe's 1st major vote since the start of the pandemic a palestinian health official said that 62000 doses of coronavirus frank scenes are on their way to the occupied west bank and gaza strip think shots manufactured by pfizer and astra zeneca provided by the un's kovacs program. there's been another setback for the astra zeneca vaccine a new study from the university in johannesburg shows that it's less effective at protecting against the south african variant the early trial of more than 2000 participants found the job is less than 60 percent effective at preventing mild to

moderate infection but a wide that but why did data shows that it can still help prevent severe illness and death from covert 19 even for high risk individuals the world health organization supports its use in all countries including those with a new variant of south africa cancelled its rollout of the astra zeneca shot in february after concerns about its effectiveness opting for the johnson and johnson job instead should be a multi has been leading the vaccine trials of love of x. and astra zeneca in south africa he says the job still has a vital role in preventing illness. it does spectacular medicine put it and that is it protects against disease and it produces that's got people dying from carbon 19 including possibly rib you on $3.00 to $51.00 pm recently had in that this was identified in south africa you circulating unfortunately this that's in doesn't do it and the same will apply for many other 1st generation 'd covered 1000 seems he

said it's i'm likely to detect in a saying at the same never again and smiled at moderate intention due to be 1351 ph and that there couldn't just be violence so many of the 1st generation covered $1000.00 that seems to have clearly been designed around just the right as a construct they shouldn't come to much as a surprise for does that scene and probably pretty perhaps not so far that it seems that those were not that it was a method to get smart infection but for all of these covered 1000 vaccines expect them to perform reasonably well against you disease unfortunately deceptive shows that what in fact in times of extreme confidence but at a same time i think we need to be caught at any time somewhat the way that patients are now covered one thing that seems and particularly countries such as the go to get these sort of latency are dominating getting to hard unity with the 1st generation of code 1000 that seems in settings such as in south africa yes and i'm

realistic option in the near future so we really need to recalibrate our expectations or discovered one thing that seems and the focus really needs to be centered that architecting savitt protecting people in developing so it isn't dying india is telling the 1900 cases have risen to the highest level since december cases have jumped by almost 29000 a day from the country's health ministry shows india has the world's highest tally of infections behind the united states and brazil the federal government has claimed crowding and people not wearing mosques. there's growing alarm about the increasing number of covert 19 cases in chile despite the nation having a successful vaccine rollout about 5000000 people have now at their 1st job but cases are rising by an average of 5000 a day in america at a selling c.n.n. reports from santiago. a severe health crisis in the latin american country one my gleason have expected when chilian is dying from cold and 19 every 15

minutes and critical care units are overflowing the doctor said that they runs the i.c.u. at a clinic and takes us to see for ourselves that every bed is occupied even though the number of critical care units nearly doubled this week. people over 17 most of whom have already been vaccinated have almost disappeared from our emergency rooms now we have younger patients but some gravely ill. chile's 2nd wave is turning out to be far more aggressive than the 1st even though more than 33 percent of the population has received one or both jabs these people are among the 10s of thousands of chileans who were killing at this hour for their corona virus vaccine and while chile is a world leader in terms of the percentage of the population that has already been inoculated health officials warn it will not make much difference at least not for some time. in order for herd immunity to be effective 80 percent of chileans

must be fully vaccinated and that won't happen for another 3 months. now judy is to make the vaccine available to everyone free of charge and to convince you all that it's a fictive and saif. back at the hospital doctors and nurses concede they're exhausted 30 percent of staff are on medical leave from illness or stress and they're more difficult to replace than a bed or respirator. we caught our breath between the 1st and 2nd wave but the patient load never dropped enough to really let us recover so here we are practically living here. with d.s. had none this hasn't been able to travel home pretty nearly a year so. i think it's very stressful the patients are in a critical condition there's no time to rest because the number of patients multiply faster than we do but we do all we can. to be in suffering from pandemic

burnout have clearly let down their guard dr we've got a d. is one of many questions the government's overall pandemic strategy. the strategy was not to suppress the pandemic but to contain it a delicate balance in which flexibility and easing restrictions led to thousands of patients despite the inoculation a bitter lesson for a country that thought it was out of the woods and a wake up call for others who are counting on vaccines to be the magic cure you see in human al-jazeera some p.r. at least 8 people have been killed and one injured there the u.s. city of atlanta in 3 separate shootings targeting mass policy to the shootings were at spas which were across the street from each other police say the 4 women killed were of asian descent a male suspect has been arrested gunmen on motorcycles have attacked a group of civilians in a jet killing at least 58 people it happened as they were returning from a livestock markets in. near the border with mali the attackers also destroyed

nearby structures used to store grain over a gray who is a security analyst who specializes in the sahara region he says these types of attacks are a growing challenge for the jazz new president mohammad buzz whom. within the norway group behind this recent attack just like you would get that in general us will need that over 800 they were just before the elections in nigeria public and also before the g 5 so i hear so many. in german so very differently with the new president in office office now mahmoud abbas whom either you minded of the security situation on. your of the trip if this is what the president in monday to secure. he's going to have to think of new with new approaches and that of course that will evolve

collaboration with rich region usted our international partners for you know for a more lasting solution to to to be implemented in this area because these are most stopping time soon even looking changes human rights watch is blaming him and the rebels for a fire at a detention center last week that killed at least 60 people most of them ethiopian the incident highlights the dangers that some are willing to face in a search of a better life and schapelle reports before a devastating fire ripped through this detention center in yemen's capital last week the ethiopians being held there confronted their guards to demand better living conditions that's when survivors say who the security forces locked them in a hangar and told them to say their final prayers before firing something at them oh my god i have as i did he fired to projectile at us through the hole and the fire onto the piles of pillars was sleeping on the room filled up with smoke and we

all sort of just screamed as a crowd for help some of us started to faint and fall to the ground. i saw my friends burning to death i didn't receive any help after that made me. dozens of people were killed in the blaze after tore through a hangar with 350 people inside mostly migrants from the horn of africa. the united nations is calling for an independent investigation into the cause of the fire. tens of thousands of migrants pass through yemen each year attempting to reach wealthy gulf countries in order to provide for their families back home they're exposed to kidnapping torture and abuse on navigating a deadly conflict survivors of the fire accuse the who these abusing them to feed the war effort. when we told them we were going on a hunger strike they said they'd force feed us and send us to fight on the front we said we would not fight because this isn't our country we are refugees our country is facing a bigger war than the one here we could live in our own country so we escaped here

the international organization for migration has demanded the release of thousands of migrants being held at hoofy run facilities these young. 'd journey by smugglers and traffic and they are not any. one group at least was given a way out 150 ethiopians were evacuated on tuesday on the 1st repatriation flight since the pandemic began and al jazeera. one of iraq's religious minority groups which has survived for centuries is rapidly disappearing and then said that security issues of forced many of us into hiding some of in job reports now from baghdad as follows gather to mark a sacred ceremony known as the banjo festival. the hit men

women and children submerged in running water of the tigris river. defend their bodies and wash away their sins this baptism is a mending and ritual also known as sab ians in iraq they are the followers of a monotheistic religion which predates islam and christianity. but you comes here every year for either a 5 day festival where everyone dresses in white you must change into the special robes and head to the river. they pray before being baptized in the chinese water ritual it's time for reflection. the grandfather explains the belt worn around the rule is made with 61 threads representing 61 angels but he loves being here i knew i had. i like meeting friends and playing here i like this festival more than others because we get but ties in the water. after the baptism food is served but just cooked using clay from the riverbed during the budget festival all food must be washed in the river and they must drink from it as well their patriarch is john

the baptist called prophet in arabic. and day and see all good comes from a world of light and all evil from the world of darkness. is the religion's ground share a priest. mandy ism is the 1st religion in the world we believe in one god who created life anees everlasting holy book is considerable well the 1st books of prophets adam a sheet and yet we believe in charity for the poor the running water gives us purification the religion forbids any partners with god adultery killing witchcraft our holy book says don't go to that which is a magic they align. but for centuries they were considered heretics and in the digital age their faith is linked to spells and sorcery they want to dispel the myths about witchcraft and magic being associated with the gnostic religion so their numbers are barely a 5th of what they were before the 2003 invasion because of iraq security and there

is being a close religion. one can only be born into the faith and marrying into their religion is forbidden and the population has dwindled even further because thousands have taken refuge elsewhere for safety sima and her sister left iraq because of airstrikes and war today they say they're happy to have returned home and the tenement when we left for jordan we thought we will never come back we thought we would never participate in a religious ceremony as again i'm happy to see our relatives and everyone participating in a festival. festivals like this bring people together there are fewer temples but because of the pandemic only outdoor gatherings are allowed in say instead of restoring places of worship the iraqi government even wants to take away the small base of rituals on the riverbank. and we demand the government to take. as an ancient religion religious harmony gathers people and interfaith relations promote respect and humanity we have suffered in other provinces from persecution in

targeting of our people nearly 2 decades of violence neglect and indifference have destroyed iraq's rich heritage and one of its ancient religious groups fears extinction unless its traditions and people are protected some of the job. back that. it is good to have you with us hello adrian for the good here with you the headlines on al-jazeera the u.s. secretaries of state and defense are in south korea on the 2nd leg of their 1st asia tour for the u.s. not to cause trouble in the region the u.s. are ok alliance which has been stuck for hours for several over 70 years remains on point it is the linchpin of. security and prosperity we were with.