well, in london to activate tackling the root causes of youth violence, many young people die perpetuating violence again of the young people themselves. also been victim multiple times. my generation can try me design and shape this generation change on al jazeera. ah, me, this is al jazeera. ah, hello, welcome, i'm pete adobe. you're watching the news out loud from i headquarters here. coming up in the next 60 minutes. the corona virus pandemic gets worked in se asia with the numbers of deaths and infections soaring across many countries. central china were floods in recent years, provoke anger and scrutiny about the government's failure to prepare for the

disaster. the french president manual macro calls and urgent national security meeting. after reports, you may have been targeted by israelis, spyware. thousands of people gather in the e. c o, p, and capital to show their support for government troops fighting into gripe clubs. i'm the richardson at the tokyo olympics were on the eve of the games beginning. the man in charge of the opening ceremony has been fired. me let's get going. beginning in se asia where the highly contagious delta variance of cobit 19 is fueling infections across the region. this is indonesia, the epicenter of the outbreak in the continent. it's reported nearly 1400 deaths and 35000 cases in just one day. but testing rates are low and those numbers could

be much higher. in thailand, there's been another record day of new infections, but there aren't enough vaccines. the nation's vaccine institute has apologized but not buying enough jobs and is now promising to join the global kovak scheme. and in south korea, which was arrest excess story last year in containing the outbreak cases have been rising at an alarming rate. more than 1800 new infections were reported in just one day. we have correspondence across the region. tony chains live for us in bangkok, rob mcbride isn't so 1st let speak to jessica washington, his life for us in the entities and capital jakarta. jessica hi there. is there a sense where you are that the authorities simply cannot contain corona virus at the moment? well at this stage, as you mentioned, those alarming numbers in individual is dealing with, asians was covet 19 outbreak. and despite those concerning numbers, if more than

a 1000 deaths each day, there was a sense. but that does not capture the reality on the ground. some independent data groups say that by their calculations, the actual dest hole is 3 to 5 times higher than what the authorities are saying. we have had restrictions in place for some weeks now. and yet we are not seeing any evidence that cases have started to drop. just a few days ago, we heard from the division president who said that he is positive, that there is a downward trajectory that he can see. and that if that continues, by monday he would consider easing restriction. however, what we're hearing from me all the just and experts on the ground is that if it has been any downward trend that is only because testing has reduced rather than what they have been calling for, which is to ramp up testing the government set a target of trying to a full 100002500000 test each day. and what we are seeing right now is around 140000 test, which is substantially less than last week. and more concerning the intensive care

unit bed occupancy rates remain high. what we're seeing is that that situation is extending beyond java. beyond bali we are seeing and more promote provinces such as was proper that they too are dealing with the surgeon cases and their intensive care units under strain and epidemiologists. strongly urging the president to keep these restrictions in place because these are simply not in a position to consider easing. jessica, thank you very much. let's talk to corresponding sony chang, lifers in bangkok. so tony, another consecutive 2nd day of record cases where you are and they were saying that, oh, when the numbers have been climbing up 1st over 10000 than to 12 now a 3rd more than 13600 cases. and it seems that while the government, on the one hand is imposing stricter and strict locked measures,

today they close parks sporting arenas, beauty spas, things like that, that there is very little they can do about it. central, bangkok is now what the government refers to is a deep red zone. flights in and out of the capital. domestic flights have now been stopped. people i think, are expecting this to carry on for some time. these low measures actually expire this. we can expect taishan is here that they are going to continue for the foreseeable future. certainly while these numbers continue to climb, and you just have to go around the city to see the cues of people waiting to get tested, hospitals and other mobile clinics to realize that the testing system is not adequate at the same time. there's a lot of anger about vaccinations. ty government had the opportunity to buy vaccines this time last year when, when it was very clear when we were seeing internal infections of only single digits in the whole of 2020. the fatality rate right from $900.00 was only $61.00.

and then i think there was a feeling that the government had succeeded. what we didn't know then was that they hadn't really put the building blocks in place for a vaccination program. now, just over 10 percent of the population have been vaccinated with one show. there are more supplies coming, but they have had real problems getting supplies to vaccinations. here and thailand is supposed to be supplying one of the main supplies of astrazeneca for the whole of southeast asia. well, the supplies are just not coming out of the factories here. it's a real concern and there is a lot of anger with the government. we saw protests on the street last weekend. it's relatively small in number. all. they were fears, protests, many people, i think at this stage not prepared to go out and join crowds on the street. but as we saw last year, when tens of thousands marched against the government, there is a lot of dissatisfaction. and i think when people feel more comfortable,

they'll be coming out to air that dissatisfaction with the prime minister and the government understood tony. many things live now too, so and i corresponded there, rob mcbride, rob says korea was the benchmark of how to push back against cobit 19. what maybe a year ago now. so what's changed? south career again, setting another record for new cases. it has to be said that said, this latest figure is actually slightly inflated because it now includes the crew of this stricken navy ship. this was a destroyer that was out on anti piracy patrol off the coast of east africa. there was an outbreak on board just over a week ago and it really spread very rapidly through the entire ship. the whole crew of around $300.00 sailors has had to be flown back to south korea with now a full 90 percent of them testing positive for the corona virus. if you strip out that number than the daily increase we have seen,

it's still quite substantial and it follows a pattern that we've really seen establishes this 4th way, but is really taking a hold in south career of well over a 1000 new cases. a day. there are predictions that we are going to go well over 2000 new cases per day before the authorities get this under control. that's assuming now that they do get this under control as they plan to the south korean capital sol, area and surrounding area is now under the highest level of restrictions. they've also been extended to other parts outside of as of sol, especially some of the tourism destinations. which are getting very busy with some a traffic, but there are warnings from experts that the authorities here i've really underestimated the virulence of this a delta variance. it's, thankfully, we are not as nearly as many hospitalizations or deaths that we saw with previous waves. that's because with vaccinations being rolled out, some of the more vulnerable groups, like the elderly and seeing homes have a level of protection now around a 3rd of the population had had at least one job. but that does point up the fact

that there are 2 thirds of south koreans who still have no vaccination per protection. really fueling at ongoing debate and control the c a here over what seen as a very lack luster. a very sluggish vaccination campaign. ok, wrote many things from it, right? they are reporting live from. so let's turn our attention to neighboring. japan took care of the host city, of course to be a lympics, like no other is seeing its highest number of infections in 6 months to more athletes of the olympic village have now tested positive. they are among 12 cases linked to the games announced on thursday that brings the total $287.00. the threat of infection is not the only problem clouding these games just 24 hours before the opening ceremony as director was sacked. after organizers were made aware of a holocaust joke he made during a comedy show in 1998. a composer resigned earlier in the week because of historic bullying. can you guys, you know, can thorough korea?

she was a member of the opening ceremony production team had in the past, due in his own performance said, lines said, walked a painful historic that as such, the talk, your 2020 organized committee today has dismissed him. kurkoski guy. we just a day before the opening ceremony, i apologize deeply to all the people involved in this event and also the japanese people. i would like to extend my sincere apology life to my al jazeera colleague and richardson, who's in tokyo for us here on the news. so andy, i mean it's impossible to remember an lympics like this ever yeah, absolutely. i agree. and often as we get towards the opening ceremony, even in the best of times, there is a degree of public reticence and concern about the games and how much they cost. and will it really be any meaningful legacy when these games finish? and hey, we are on the eve of the opening ceremony in the chart director has being fired and

this just piles on top of previous control was he's, we've had, we mentioned the, the composer for the opening ceremony having to step down earlier in the week. let's not forget in february the share maury, the president of the organizing committee, he had to step down after making sexist comments. so really, it's been one problem after another. and here we have this balancing act where the governments, the organizing committee, the international olympic committee are all hoping that once that ceremony gets on the way public opinion starts to shift. and they've really got to balance the spectacle of a $100000000.00 show with the seriousness of the situation facing tokyo in japan. in terms of coven 19 we're here in in so carry the heading co. 19 levels. i've not seen since january. why are they getting more infections, the and the, i mean when it comes to what the people who run the games have been saying that

basically saying there is 0 overlap between the local population in japan and the athletes. the athletes. a basically living in solitary confinement when they're not competing, and of course the mosque wearing social distancing and alco jail every place. so once it gets in there, why is it staying in that? i think the from a and a lim picked perspective. the organizers would say that the fact that athletes all testing positive, all being identified as close contacts, is evidence that their policies are working, that more people all being tested. and that would perhaps explain the increase in cases. but there are huge concerns still from athletes represents as we spoke, can see that the measures are tough enough. for example, a daily test, the athletes go through a rapid result antigens. that's not the sort of gold standard p c,

s. there were concerned that some cases of being missed up until a point where more serious symptoms could manifest themselves. there's also the fact that despite the fact individual countries all sorts of isolated amongst themselves and when the police village athletes are still being asked to share rooms that some of the rooms have poor ventilation to repeat, concerns about that. and the other thing that's always been brought to my attention by people that are coming to fill in picks is that athletes have to sign an insurance, waive, and nothing entirely unusual or not. but this time around there is an added clause about cobit 19. effectively the i c washing their hands of any consequences for the athletes. for any detrimental, long term effects of coven 19, which doesn't exactly ring true with their other claim that they are more than capable of running a safe and secure olympics. and the thank you very much and the rich and the reporting live from the olympic games in japan. plenty more still to come here on the news for you, including the pentagon, sounding the alarm out of the taliban,

recent gains, and again, it's done well. us horses finalize their with and find out with us why the global car industries growing appetites for allie minium may be harming communities in guinea. depleted us men's basketball team, get so much refined boost the head of the olympics. that story coming up in about a chinese deployed its military to hit on province. the central region is struggling with the west flooding in recent memory. at least 33 people have now lost their lives, and 800000 have been displaced. his adrian brought an image of normality, turned upside down like a giant scrap yard, abandoned cars block

a tunnel in central gen, joe roads transformed into rapidly flowing rivers. where in some areas, boat is the only way to get around. the city's inhabitants are used to typhoons, but they're still coming to terms with the scale of this week's deluge. it was the heaviest rainfall in 60 years. on tuesday, more than 200 millimeters fell. it just went out on state tv. the images have been more uplifting. rescuers bringing young and old to safety. some of the estimated 800000 residents who've been displaced. the emphasis is on the positive work being done, not on those who died. doubtful can are teams of rushed to many places we are carrying out towns like blasting and flood diversion, flood, fighting and rescue, as well as mass evacuations. the underlying message, the party will protect you. on social media though,

there's anger at why local weather forecasters fail to warn residents properly. the city lies in a flood prone area. the provincial government reportedly spent more than $8000000000.00 building defenses that were supposed to prevent disasters like this happening. now, more extreme weather is selecting the area. a tie. food is bearing down on china as eastern coast and could make landfall this weekend. adrian brown, al jazeera hong kong, katrina hughes engine, shang in hand, and province with a look at the crisis there. the rain has used, but millions of people are still struggling to deal with the devastating flooding, which is what many cities and towns, dancing. i'm students young as city on the north and a non problem. and to venture rain hit this region on wednesday, just off the passing the provincial capital of young joe,

in the space of just 2 hours. 26 centimeters of rain was dumped in this area. now, many houses, the rural areas, the northern outskirts of this region collapse. as a result of the torrential rain and half a 1000000 people will lose, relocated to save the areas. now we're just standing the beginning of the highway, which leads to the main area of downtown job. this area has been unable to get rescue workers and teams have moving parts to try to clear the area. and they're also getting food and wanted people who've been stuck in the cause our authority say $3000000.00 people have been affected by the severe storm and it's close to $100000000.00 worth of economic losses. now as the clean up continues, questions are being raised as to why people living in home. and we're not adequately warned about the severity of the storm before. but the government is choosing instead to focus on rescue. and it's sensory, any criticism of the timing of the disaster online and on social media. and there's

been more severe weather in other parts of china as well. a tornado read through a village near about city and northern. have a province killing at least 2 people talk through houses and scattered every across . nearby roads relief workers are trying to restore power to the area. a hong kong court has jailed 7 men for their role in a 2019 attack on pro democracy protest has more than 100 people dressed in white civilians and reporters with sticks and poles at a train station. there were accusations, the police conspired with the attackers and in another court in hong kong hearing therefore employees from a pro democracy newspaper. the apple daily have been charged after their arrest under the cities year old national security law. the former edison writers were charged with conspiring to quote, collude with a foreign country or endanger national security. the apple daily closed last month and in the papers $26.00, you run media outlets have been under pressure from

a new national security law. that does restrict criticism of the government officials in madagascar say they've stopped a plot to assassinate the president's andre roger lena. according to the attorney general, several foreign nationals and citizens have been arrested. no further details have been given out last month. the military said it had prevented an attempt to kill a top general. who is the president's right hand man. turning our attention to france now, where the president has called an urgent national security meeting to discuss the pegasus spyware scandal. it follows reports that say manual macro and several government ministers were targeted for phone hacking by an unidentified moroccan security service. morocco has denied those reports. let's get more now from our correspondent natasha butler, who joins us live from paris. natasha, what do we think might come out of this meeting with monsieur macro?

while since these allegations emerge on tuesday, we have heard extensively from the lease from the french prime minister cath stacks . he will say, of course he's allegations or something that cannot be tolerated and that full investigations are being launched into these allegations to see whether or not they are verified. so it's in that context that the french president is holding this meeting with the cabinet to discuss, of course, these obligations. the main one being that the french president actually had one of his mobile phone selected as a possible target by american intelligence services. a target that could be put on the survey and now the, not only the french president phone, but also his former prime minister at watha leap and more than a 1000 ministers. a very serious allegations. indeed, as you can imagine, we can imagine that the french president is talking about these is talking about

how to put in pop stronger security as well. we know that a more moroccan authorities have denied these allegations they did. so 2 days ago they continued to do so, but it's not the 1st time that a french presence has been put, apparently on the survey. and they were allegations against the us a few years ago, putting former us a former french presence on this events is the issue as far as the authorities. they're concerned, natasha. the same as it is for other countries around the world is not just politicians, it's judiciary, it's lawyers, it's people that work for n g o groups. it's everyone who kind of runs the country. yes. well, on tuesday, paris, prosecutors launched an investigation into similar allegations that market intelligence services had also selected the telephones of a number of prominence and less prominent journalists. addresses tv commentators in

frauds as possible targets for survey. and i'm a senior national, one of the organizations behind these findings even says that a can prove that some of these telephones were indeed access. of course, it is a huge concern in terms of security. at the same time, to an extent, i think that nobody would be surprised, perhaps that intelligence services do try to look into the people in power or people in certain positions in other countries. but what is difficult and tricky in this situation, of course is morocco is an ally, france. natasha. thank you very much. natasha. about the chinese live there from paris. the pentagon expressing alarm today about the rapidly deteriorating security situation in afghanistan. the most senior us general says the taliban now controls nearly half of the countries $400.00 plus districts. it coincides with the continued pullouts of us forces fighting between african government forces and the

taliban is intensifying at the 7 people were killed in the southern province of kandahar on weapons date. it happened during schilling between the military and taliban fighters is more of what general mark milly had to say about the taliban advance. i would tell you that as of today, more or less, i guess it's about $212.00 to $13.00 in that range. 2 hundreds of the district centers are in taliban control. it's about half of the $419.00 that are out there. you've got 34 provincial capitals in afghanistan. none of them have been seized as of today by the taliban. although the taliban is putting pressure on the outskirts of probably a half of them. 17 of them in fact. and what they're trying to do is isolate the major population centers. they're trying to do the same thing to cobble. and roughly speaking, the order of magnitude. a significant amount of territory has been seized over the course of 6, a 10 months sort of thing by the,

by the taliban. so momentum appears to be strategic. momentum appears to be sort of with the tell him the afghan security forces that are consolidating their forces west, bring in our diplomatic editor, james base report in life for c on the news out of cobble. so james is the key, significant dynamic here. the fact that this is america's top military man and he's in the united states. james, i'm going to stop you there and apologize because we've lost your sound. we can see you, but we can't hear you. we will try and get the socket back in the plug hole if we can. if we can't, we'll carry on and we'll tell you that these stories are still to come here on the news. drug companies reach a landmark settlement for their road in the us opioid epidemic. and that you can and weightlifter who disappeared in japan last week makes his way back home. will

tell you how and why in the sports news in about 20 minutes. ah hello there, it's all about the record breaking heat across parts of europe. in particular for the south east and the north west. we are expecting those hot and dry conditions to continue over the next few days in particular for the british io. we've got a heat wave here, and northern ireland has had an all time high temperature record for the 2nd time in 5 days. as temperatures touched up to 31.3 degrees celsius in county high road. now we've got an amber alert for extreme heat that continues fall than island and wales and central and southern parts of england through to friday. but as we go into saturday, the wet weather kicks in and we've got a yellow alert out for rain. you can see that weather system sweeping into western

areas of france. it's going to affect northern areas of spain, but down in the south it is still rather hot and dry. well sensually we've got quite a lot of cloud cover. some wet weather for more than parts of italy and parts of the balkans. but much of the wet and windy weather can be found in south west in areas of russia. up in the north, the temperatures have picked up, but not as high as we've seen recently. and down in the south, the heat continues to build for turkey and for grease, with plenty of sunshine coming through. and it's a similar story for north africa, with temperatures climbing in morocco. the stone, mum, flying the flag for her nation. we have been putting in flame crickets on what be country must my dream play in the woods

while providing family ways cleaning game. that's my precious game in the game. my them bob way on al jazeera, 2020 the year of look, downs and social distance saying you can't reach across the screen and get someone . ali re explore one of the global pandemic. biggest side effects loneliness, everyone who lives alone has been forced to be socially isolated for the 1st time ever highlighting its effect on physical and mental health and discovering unique ways of coping. controlling, being alone to get episode of all hail the locked down on al jazeera. oh,

a welcome back. you're watching the news, your top story so far today, countries across se, asia struggling to contain the latest wave of corona, virus, thailand, and south korea at both reported a record number of new infections. the highly contagious bill to variance is driving the search. china is deployed as military to the province. the central region is struggling with this was flooding and recent history groups burst in near by them deliberately to reduce the risk of more flooding. he's $33.00 people, have been killed and the pentagon is expressing alarm about the rapidly worsting situation in afghanistan, the most senior us general to the ton of control in the half of the countries $400.00 plus districts. not only can we see james space, we can also hear him. he's on the classic editor. joining us again from carville

james, we got the technology sorted out. so i was asking you 10 minutes ago, 5 minutes ago. if the significant dynamic here is the fact that these comments come not from a leak, not from somebody in f canister, not from somebody speculating, but from the guy in the uniform in washington. yeah, peter, we've got some new batteries in the microphone so i can tell you yes, that's the significant part. not what he's saying. we know the situation on the ground in afghanistan, it's the person who is saying it on this occasion. remember that some senior african officials have been pushing back the narrative that the taliban is winning, and they're worried that that is causing fear among the african population. you just need to look at the cues of people lining up a visas and passports. they're also worried about morale, or among the africans to security forces. well, this can't be blamed on the media. this is the top military official in the united states saying that the taliban have momentum have made really significant gains in

recent weeks. now he's also saying that there's not a forgotten collect conclusion that the title about will take control of the country. but he says it's one of the possibilities. he says there's still the possibility of a negotiated settlement between the government and the taliban, but they're all sorts of other bad scenarios where the country could face with breakdowns across the country, different fighting, taking place in different places and the return of warlords. so very worrying picture you were reporting a little earlier, james, but it's been kind of quiet over the past few days. partly, i guess because of the ead religious holiday. but what do we think could happen next? when we talk about the military operation? aid certainly has cotton things down. that's been a slight law, but that law already appears to be ending. it may well be that the african military are trying to get the offensive. now we know that president ghani has made a visit down to 90. ha.