marble, although i have a message for young people in both me and has a governor to fight for ideas that are right and to persevere. they have to be persistent and there is no giving up. and i think they need to put the focus on water. because water sort of like a call to protect buzz news, environmental treasures, the call that will resonate in many countries around the world. sony diagonal algebra, ah. type a quick check of the headlines here on out to 0. poles are open in iran presidential election with supreme data at home and a constant ceremonial 1st vote. his protege, abraham racy, is widely seen as the front runner for my records. president of the ra back bow has returned home 10 years after being expedited for war crimes. he was tried and acquitted by the international criminal court. the charges day back to 2010. when

he refused to concede defeat up to a presidential election offered to drink as more from amazon. well, the last one i was has been said is free for porters on bus, in buses, on cars, on motorcycle moving towards the headquarters just far away from where we are now. and this is telling us they are going to party all night in the midst of incitement. you're also here, anger your hear about frustration. we also hear about the possibility of challenging the party in power. want to clear, is that or is back home 10 years after and the process of recommendation could take longer than expected. israel says it's fine to jets of loans. to ask strikes on garza targeting how my sites. it says it was a response to incendiary balloons being flown into southern israel for a 3rd day. doesn't let up in the violence in me and my videos posted on social

media show most buildings destroyed in can manage in the migrate region. residents accused the army of firing of them before burning nearly 200 tons, as well as killing capital on tuesday. zombie as founding president kenneth calendar has died age 97. after a short illness, he led from independence in 1964 until 991 calendar oppose apartheid south africa and white minority rule in venetia. now, as in bob with us, supreme court has rejected a challenge to the affordable care act body known as obamacare. it's one of brock obama signature policies. the judges rule $7.00 to $1.00 rejecting the republican challenge is the 3rd time the courts preserve the law since it was introduced in 2010, a bama k as why they credited with helping millions of americans gain access to medical insurance. so those are the headlines. these continues, hey, on al jazeera, after fort lines, thanks from thanks for watching bye. for now. i am sorry,

should be about raising prices and harley down to the government. we bring you the stories and developments that are rapidly changing the world. we live in time in the adult who has the task of fixing a war torn economy. counting the cost on al jazeera, me, the temperature drops in a very low and out of power in a city to begin shut down. right. and how i thought a whole debbie, wary the lights went out for millions of people in texas as a crippling winter storm to down the state's power grid. more than 4000000 people were plunged into darkness and left without heat or water. i can imagine that she froze more than 150 people night and freeze. according to the news tallies at the death toll much harder. it's projected to be the most expensive

disaster in texas history. all of the step instruction wasn't just from the weather or a lack of power, but also from choices made by stake. leaders, texas is the only state in the us where the power grid is not under federal oversight. instead, there are more than a 100 companies selling electricity, the system, the collapse, than, or the way to the store. but the market in work, they didn't stop 4000000 texans from losing power. those market signals didn't stop 14000000 texans from losing water. didn't stop 200 texans from dying in the market just didn't work. in this episode, we report on the aftermath of the priest and ask if years a deregulation and prioritizing profits lead to the state power grid daily. 2 months after texas went dark the spring, he could make it hard to remember just how soon where the winter storm was but its

impact and loss are still being felt. she's good. megan lane. yeah, that's a great picture. there's a life oh, tension. she was the one for me. so she lot of people in mid february, as temperatures began to drop. rachel asked mary, her 84 year old step mother to come, stay with them but the worst in the storm. and we was trying to get her to come and stay with me. and then i remember saying caroline had been through worst and miss be okay. so we made sure that she had everything, she need water, food or whatever. she wanted the night a february 14th and into the morning temperatures plummeted to some reason. hitting lows not seen in decades of snow and ice accumulated. ah, that's when the power began to go out throughout houston. when did you guys know

that this wasn't just going to be a normal storm like that something different was happening. was like the day before because the way that they did it on the news, it was like maybe a little bad. yeah. they down played a lot. they did not say that the thing was going to be as big as it was when the kid called her grandmother that february 15th mary, still have power in her home by 715 and i, we called again i would like to know where she okay with her lighting on to my lights and stuff was off already and she's i yeah, my lights and stuff is on my heated my he to say i'm good, but overnight kill us as the power. and he went out where her grandmother lived the next morning. rachel received a call from mary's neighbor and she said, miss rachel, i'm calling you because there's something wrong with your mom. she say, well, i don't was opening it. she just turn around and say, oh she's i just

we ran and got my brother, toner mama was there and we needed to get over there. and it was this greenly screening call. they said we couldn't touch your phone and say we could. my brother had already turned to the lady who said, oh my god, no, i think she froze the most. i don't say the whole time i've ever gone up. when she talks about this, the 1st thing she says, she always prays for god to take her while she's asleep. jeff, the die of death. freezing to death. i can't imagine just what she might have went through. right. as she was asleep, i pray that god took her watching because that is a bothers me. it bothers me. i wouldn't want nobody to go to the, you know,

bag the winter storm was one of the coldest texas as seen in years as people blasted their heaters trying to stay warm. the need for power searched the power grid, couldn't meet the demand. so operators began to manage the problem with rolling or short term blackouts. but as equipment froze at both power plants and fuel suppliers, the grid was too stressed. and blackouts lasted for days, from millions of texans. for most of the people who died for the storm, including mary, the cause of death was hypothermia. emergency workers had an upsurge and calls for carbon monoxide poisoning. as people tried to stay warm in their cars by using their stove for the carbon monoxide coast. i'd never seen apartments for people getting transport to the hospital who had barbecue pits and

charcoal burning inside their apartment. on a normal day, houston's firefighters response roughly a 1000 columns, like the small house fire. but during the winter storm, their calls triple. as residents tried to find any way to stay one, so even as houston froze, the city was on fire. and this is at night what transpired. the fire started or by started using whatever means they could stay warm. and then here's where the freeze comes in. at night and you can see all the fires that are coming in. 2100 runs 3300 runs 2800 runs. now it's starting to drop down to $1714.00. and now we're getting back to 1100, which is pretty typical. your 3 times your capacity right in here. oh, absolutely. we were really stretching ourselves then. is it common on cold nights that you have more house fires? oh, yeah, because there's always people seek and trying to seek heat and whatever they can do

to find that houston's emergency workers are used to disasters, since hurricanes are common here. but this year's winter story and the power outage is over to the city and state are different than long as the electricity is working and they could heat their homes to a somewhat comfortable agree that everything reason everything was good. but when that kicked in it, it was a game changer throughout the city. when we lost power, the black out started rolling. that's when i knew it was going to get really bad. immediately you lose power, use water. the hospitals have the same problems. there's no where to take people. what was it like for you guys to have to respond to these calls for a little tax and didn't smell great around the fire station? no showers, no, nothing for us either. same wet clothes. i can imagine you're putting back on they got to the point at the fire scene when fire out, when you stand still, it just freezes up. it's a blanket. she actually take it off like

a sweater and late in here. and hopefully it's going to be a little warmer here, but when you lost all the heat, they were just a blanket of ice, but you have to put it back on that's. that's our protection. do you remember the moment you realize the blackouts weren't going to be rolling? i kinda suspected that when all of a sudden it felt like someone just flip the switch and it was very quiet and everything just kind of went dead and it didn't come back for about 12 hours 1st time. and i said, you know, i think, i don't know if this was a natural and then it seems like something happens. how long have you been in the car for 39 years and how long have you been in 1770 years and you guys ever seen anything like this? nothing. nothing like this with this non stop for for days. the recruit operator would later admit that the grid a come within minutes of a complete collapse since the local and state officials have raise questions about

who was responsible for the black house and in doing damage. we've been hit hard by nature this week, but we can't deny that some of this is a man made disaster as well, but we weren't the depth of the crisis kept the story in the national news. we were told by the state and the power grid that we would experience rolling blackouts of 30. ready minutes to an hour. well that's rolling blackouts turn to a complete catastrophic failure as far as we're concerned in the heart of the issue is the power grid and how it's controlled. there are 3 power grids and us one covering the eastern part of the country. another, the western boat under federal oversight and then there's texas the only state in the us to have its own power grid, 90 percent of the stages, part of it with the rest of the border. still part of the 2 national grids. traveling east from houston, just one county over at liberty county,

texas. you're off the texas power grad. you're on the national eastern grade year experience rolling blackouts. if that pack there during the winter storm, they lost power and water for day 2 decades ago. the texas legislature deregulated the energy market here and went from a state control system to a lightly regulated open market. so before that, it used to be just a few entities that you would sale, fell the power and that was your regulated utilities. but after that, in majority of the market, there were hundreds at some point up retailer. so those are the retail electron providers, the change the energy market here was supposed to provide lower price to consumers . but as did prices for residents have gone up over time, while industry from power companies to their fuel suppliers have profited with

little regulation, texas. we're left with a less reliable grid. by the way, the texas market is set up means that power plants don't have to maintain a pack of supply of energy. it is what is known as an energy only market. right? so you are not, you don't have capacity sitting around that you're paying you, you be there and we'll call you and the need arises. the idea is consumers won't pay attic costs for reserve. energy in the market will always be able to meet demand except that didn't work during the winter storm when power plants as well as, or hills versus froze and didn't reserve or back up to rely on. this wasn't the 1st time texas has created a severe weather challenges though in 2011, a severe winter storm led to rolling outages and prompted state inquiries, federal investigation into what could prevent this from happening again, you have to build in resiliency into us, into your system,

if you don't want this to be repeated. houston's mayor, sylvester turner was a state representative at the time, i would say, after that storm, he proposed to bill requiring texas to maintain enough reserve power to prevent future blackouts. but the bill didn't even make it out of committee. that bill, unfortunately, was never given a hearing because the powers that be felt that there was no need to impose these type of mandates that they, they, they chose a market driven approach. and that means what they did with the what the, the policy makers made the decision that instead of mandating adequate supply to prevent blackouts, that they would allow the power generators to earn more, to charge more when the demand exceeded supply turn. it was also part of the legislature when voted to deregulate the energy market and something he's supporting that it now says nice to a caviar grid. but if you're going to have young grid, then you have

a greater responsibility to make sure that you have adequate supply power to meet the demand. and you need to make sure that you factor in effect the climate change is real. so you need to build a resilient system, okay? all of those things need to be put in place. if you do that, you can have your own system and you'll be responsible and accountable. if you're not willing to do that, then the consequences are going to be huge in the aftermath of the storm. texas is now faced with the question of if and how should prepare for another hard winter me recovering from the storms expected to cost more than $100000000.00. and months later, residents are still dealing with the damage to their homes in their lives. here maddy thing happened like this before. never had been to hurricane i down. i are again army allison,

but nothing with the water storm like this when. when the winter storm hit in temperatures dropped water parts frozen burst throughout homes like 12 degrees is cold and pipes bus in the bath. and i didn't know that fighting i added, i knew we had no back yard, but i on attic and i want to die. gushing and just coming down to the ceiling is coming down. how long would you without water? back onto march to 30 almost 50 days because i didn't have insurance to get the high fix. so i had to wait to someone to come help me right now. okay. with no insurance and unable to afford the repair, it has been connected with volunteers working to help homeowners recover from

storms damage. there still thousands of families across just are just in houston that are waiting on insurance waiting on their application to be submitted for assistance or, or waiting for volunteers. yeah, going to do that let's, we'll finish this side here and the group became working in 2017 after hurricane harvey's and has continued through other disasters, including the winter storm. the fries caused a flood from the inside were used to floods from the outside. we've had 7 floods in the last 6 years. do you have a sense down here that the climate change is playing a part of this? does it just seemed like well kind of weird weather or that this is driven by the larger forces? yeah, i think the climate change in constantly and there's a lot of things that that are impacted between. just having more people living here . more people living on earth. we're going to have larger swings of

disasters. i mean all the disasters are getting bigger. it will show back that even after that week that we still couldn't get water. they had to wait for the truck to bring the water to the stores. it was running out of water and people fan. this is not like a 3rd world country. you know, they called to stuff like this, that's what we was going to, that we could not get water, not right. what they're doing. they, they need to get the right people in there to do what they need to do. so this will never happen again. so you think the problem is the problem of resources or is it a problem of politics? politics, not resources. not resources, politics. a need to be more concerned about the

newer trina, like sister stores, potentially fall into the visuals that manage the grid for the dork or region has been able to operate as its own interconnection. the organization operates degree. it is called her and her car is regulated by the public utility commission, where the p u. c, whose officials are appointed by the governor, the ability to manage a wholesale electricity market that operates differently from most other parts of the country, is proven very effective. getting the top officials of both and the p u. c. reside, not long after the freeze generation, but any real change to make the grid more reliable and prevent another disaster will require action from the state legislature. after the winter storm in 2011, the rule officials warned that the texas crit would be susceptible to another cold weather failure. and one of their main recommendations was winter riding power plants, or clipping them for cold weather, as well as fuel sources. specifically,

natural gas, a deliciously cher, didn't expect that the legislature didn't require the energy and energy industry to make investments, and the industry didn't make those investments. many of the companies that failed this year 2021 of the very same companies failed. 2011. i think the failure was in basically taking the companies words forward in the industries word for it. they didn't invest and as a result, all of texas suffered because the texas legislature only meet once every 2 years. it was added pressure to address the grid failure before this session ended, we're told to leave it to market participants to solve and they keep failing us. right? so just so if i could, oh, they did pay was. so i'd like for you to go and answer to those families who's who lost loved ones in the day that they didn't during this year session,

the legislature seem to be making steps to require power plants to winter rise. but that's still not the question of if they would make the same requirement for their energy supplier. namely, natural gas officials have tried to blame renewable energy like wind and solar, including the governor, john. this shows how the great new deal would be a deadly deal for the united states of america. who went on barclay's in the middle of the crisis to blame renewable energy, central gas, and oil. but the primary source of energy during the winter and the one that killed the most was natural gas. gas failed more from a total perspective, right? the, the total amount of failure, the majority of that came from natural gas energy generation. and so when supply fell, because well heads were freezing, they weren't able to sell to the electricity generators, and those generators failed addressing that particular failure means questioning

the oil and gas industry, which has a powerful and influential lobby in texas should be more regulated. that would require not only the legislature to take action, but also the text is railroad commission, which has nothing to do with what it sounds like in that in charge of regulating the states, oil and gas industry. the commission itself is made up of 3 elected officials, all of whom come from oil and gas and have been resistant to any attempts to regulate the industry. there is a serious commingling of interests between the regulators and the industry actors and the results that we get. what are sometimes referred to as captive agencies, right? administrative agencies that are run by the very businesses that they are intended to regulate in the wake of the winter storm and the power outages. the commission has opposed any move to winter rise, natural gas facilities. thing the problem isn't them only power plants

that will fill simply cannot run without power making electricity the best when a relation tool, they oppose any efforts to prohibit them from taking money from the very industry that they're regulating. i mean we've, we've had bills that have said, now you can't take money from the industry when they have pending cases before you never passes and they resisted well fail and cheer is a member of the texas house energy committee. he's trying to push for a more transparent railroad commissioner. so when you look at the railroad commission argument assumes that they're saying, as long as the supply side has electricity that they'll be able to provide. so they don't need to take steps to winter rise, even though after 2011, the federal officials, recommended winters ation. does that? does that argument hold water?

no, i mean it's just inaccurate. and it's, and the only independent parties that have looked at what happened in texas, they've said that we had a major failure at the wellhead and the gathering lines and the well operations, like stuff froze, why? it's not magic. it's not this crazy rocket science because they pull up water in these well operations and they use water and he's well precious guess what happens of water. it freezes, not complicated. and for them to deny that there were 3000000000 cubic feet of gas that frozen those operations. it flies in the face of science and of all of the independent assessments that have been done on this, including by the federal government. federal economists have said the benefits of winters ation outweigh the cost. but the legislature following the leader, the oil and gas industry has resisted the move. what in the world would it take for texas to actually mandate oil and gas industry?

you know, i often times wonder the same question and sometimes we operate as a legislature or as regulators. it's a holy hon subsidiary for gas. and that's a 9 sessions into this. i'm pretty cynical about our ability to move the needle and, and for oil and gas to kind of accept responsibility here. and if, if they don't want to build a pass doesn't pass. so bottom line, the texas railroad commission declined our request for an interview with only days left in this year session to rep the legislature finally voted on a bill to entrust the winter storm. 342 eyes and 09. the conference committee report is adopted. the final bill required power plants to winter rise within 6 months. but when it came to natural gas suppliers, the legislature made no firm requirements for winters ation. leaving any possible

rules to be created and implemented by the texas railroad commission. we have the problem in texas that we are willing to privatize profits and subsidized losses. we are once again say, you know, i, the either tacitly or explicitly that we are okay with private companies making profits from energy production in texas. we are okay with them. not providing us a service that is reliable enough to keep the lights on to keep the heat on that we're not requiring them to provide that service. and that is just a very disappointing position to be in. it's also a position at least texas to wonder if the state will be ready when another disaster hits in who will pay the cost? if not. so what would you like to seek change from this? they need to go back and they need to wait, arrive everything we need to be. we need to be good with winning need to go with. i mean, they got a lot to do. we pay too much money in faxes for them not to do it. they're always

saying what they will do and we don't, it doesn't get done, but then it takes all of this a whole winter storm, all winter disaster to now for them to try to clean up what they did. and she was a good person, a very brilliant old guy. she was awesome. awesome, awesome. so the way you tell me, i like to tell me what the people need to look at. it is who's subbed for losing a lo was a sampling. you was negligent. no. man, that's wrong, me out there well is into the murky world, a state sponsored spyware. and the discovery by al jazeera journalists is 06

technology. smartphone system. is this the new frontier, espionage ah, think about this occasion of exploits to breaking the phone. this is fine and your phone on our in the next episode of science in a golden age, i'll be exploring the contributions made by scholars during the medieval period in the field of chemistry, they transformed the superstition of alchemy into the science of chemistry. many of his chemical procedures are those which may still be used today. oh wow. science and a golden age with professor jim and. and i'll just 0. ah,

which is here. when ever you ah, ah . voting is on the way in iran presidential election, but there are concerns about low turn out ah hello jordan, this is not just a lie from also coming up on the board. has greed, former president in the wrong bag bo, as he returns the ivory coast 10 years after he was expedited on war crimes charges .