al jazeera ah al jazeera, as a you ah, all. ah, me. this is al jazeera. ah, it's just gone 10100 hours, gmc, hello, i'm come all santa maria, welcome to the news, our hero now just read, getting out for their own safety. the 1st flights of afghans who helped american forces arrived in the united states, also in the news 9 years in prison for an act of defiance. the sentencing of the 1st person convicted in hong kong under paging national security. and there fenced

off the fans, but just a week into the lympics there is growing concern about japan's corona virus christ . i'm the richard finance. the hotel, intakes organizers has said some people working on the games have been breaking strict cove at 19 safety rules. mm. so the united states is carrying out a huge operation to relocate, ask and interpreters and their families afraid of taliban retaliation. we don't know the specific numbers, but thousands of people could be flying out in the coming weeks under what is called operation allies, refuge. in fact, $221.00 afghans including children, landed in virginia early on friday. we're through this action seeking to meet our commitment to those who made commitments to us and acted on

that 2nd to the larger population. here i would say 1st, we continue to to provide strong support to the afghan defense and security forces into the government to defend the people of this country. and to provide the necessary security in which in which they can live in a safe and appropriate manner. 3rd, we're trying to promote a peace process and get traction there in a way that ends violence on a, on a permanent basis. we are of course, engaged with our other friends and allies who are here, our international partners. as all of us see collectively to try to meet in particular the needs of those of us, those who served our countries. and i think we're going to continue. we will continue to work on all of those avenues and, and seek to achieve success. 20000 others have applied for an s i. v. a special

immigrant visa as it worked for the u. s. governmental military for at least 2 years are eligible. the process, though, has been long and confusing, though. on thursday the u. s. congress did ease some of the requirements allowing more visas for afghans and provided emergency funding for their transportation and housing. so let's go to couple charlotte bellis reporting for us on the news a. hi, charlotte. it is been such an important day. we know who this is. coming for so long and yet it was all a big rush in the last few weeks, really it has its really been put on on fast order and us and that sound bite from the the challenge is that they are they really trying to look like they are acting responsibly and they stepping off at this point, the only got a month left of the military mission and that's going to stop and they really need to be seen to be looking after these people who work. so half of them are the last 20 years and a government capacity on

a military capacity. so what you're hearing there from him is that, you know, we are stepping up to the plate and we're doing everything we can look after these people who are loyal to us and look after us as well. but they're also having to balance privacy and security concerns around getting these interpreters out. say the 1st flight arriving now. but by the end of the week, we're expecting about 2500 scans to depart. cobble would arrive in the united states at the moment, as you say, 20000 people have applied for these. these is what the families that's going to be about $90000.00. so that is a huge logistical undertaking. they're working very hard to make sure no information gets out about when these flights take off, who the carriers are when they'll land because they're incredibly worried about the security of these people over the next month, will exactly so many of them still in afghanistan and not just living they liked a lot of them in hiding, i think. and they, every day we hear of more people who are looking for avenues out as the security

deteriorates across the country. and you think of all the number of people who worked for nato allies, the number of people who worked to media are good organizations affiliated with the us and internationally in g contractors. all of these people, well no one in the villages in their town for working with americans and foreign forces who are not eligible to get on these evacuation flights. wondering what do i do? and a lot of them are leaving. the un told us that 20 to 30000 guns leaving every week at the continues like this, going to be one and a half 1000000 f can see country by the end of the year, not to go back to the spatial immigrant visa people. there is still even for them, a lot of confusion about what's going on. we'll talk to a number of interpreters this week. you put in their applications in 20142017. i haven't heard back. one young man heard back last week saying he would be on on evacuation flight, and he has heard nothing since. and as this continues being zeiss, he grows,

he has the story. 3 years ago, he was a translator for the us army in his home province at home. and in may, he took a bus to cobble for an interview at the us embassy. and his waited since then at this guest house. last week he was approved for evacuation, but he has heard nothing more. when i come in the morning in the morning to check it again, but there was nothing. so i called to my other friends, but nothing happened. and he said they be patient. ali is one is about $20000.00 africans who replied for a special immigrant visa. those who worked for at least 2 years for the us government or military eligible. the process has been long and advocate to say, increasingly confusing. a lot of people have received, offers to relocate them and evacuate them safely out of the country. the problem

we're seeing is that these people are responding to the letters. and at this point there are some that are saying it's been a week. it's been 7 days and it had no response back as to tell a bon take more territory. the stakes arising from many of those who worked with foreign forces, all of my relatives and other people who are living in our area. they know me like this guy was interpreter and they will tend to talk about like, there are some people that they will tend like he was a linguist. so i will not go never to that again. are you a mattie worked to the translator for the us department of defense and state she 1st applied for a visa in 2017. her application is under review. it's really difficult survive here . and every the way thing if, if i gave any mean for the location and evacuation, but unfortunately, we don't have con approval yet, so it's making me hopeless. who knows?

i will get it or not. in a statement the taliban suit. africans who have worked with foreign forces should not be scared. it sees it hopes interpret his stay to serve their country. and if they do, they will not be threatened by the group interpreters we spoke to found that hard to believe is not even the threat to thrash on thought of them. we cannot guarantee our lives with them. they cannot trust them. security is tight with the u. s embassy refusing to release any information about who is on the life when they will call them or arrive in the united states in order to protect those who are leaving us. going with these might expect that to continue for the next month. the word, any information and put further evacuation in charlotte bell is 20. my pocket sounds prime minister has strongly denied that fighters from his country of cross the border to fight alongside the taliban among khan was depressed about the allegations during an interview with us media. he added pakistan had suffered

tremendously during the long us lead african war. and american forces will not be allowed to launch missions from pockets done like a son was more like a hired gun. the u. s. is that we paid you gave you aid, and that's why you were fighting this. so called war on terror. by august, 3rd, on the other hand, felt that here was a country which had no need to be part of this war. it loses the $70000.00. i mean, where, which other country has lost 70000 people fighting for someone, someone says war. so pakistan is felt that here we were fighting us his war. i economy devastated ed was miniscule compared to the amount of money we lost in the economy. and yet, we will blame for the failure and apply this done. this is a bucket study point of view. let's move on to other news in the 1st person to be tried to under bay james national security law in hong kong has been sentenced to

a total of 9 years in prison tongue. in kit was convicted for inciting the session of terrorism. he was arrested last year for writing a motorbike into a group of police officers while flying a flag calling behalf of the ration amnesty international condemned. his conviction is the beginning of the end of freedom of expression in hong kong, etc. from emily lounge chair, person of the international affairs committee of hong kong democratic party, who says the length of the sentence is designed to really send a message. it is a very, very heavy sentence. and if the chinese government wants to send the signal to the home, people about not reaching the national security law, they have really done it quite successfully. and i think many people are being in jamaica aged and but i just wanted to tell you the game is not over. we will continue to fight for civil and political rights. and in a way,

it truly is stressing that in the judgement, there was little mention of the protection of civil and political rights, which are in fact in the national security law. so now people just don't know whether these rights are protected at all the boundaries. i'm not very clear and hence it make people even more vehicle. i think nobody like to see time i oh and you know chaos that's true. but we also warn hong kong to be what he was not too long go of safe by granted. i know 3 city, but that is know, many people, a very, very worried in spite of now we have jubilation in the city. about our swimming is our friends is winning gold medals and silver medal in tokyo. but the people are very, very worried. they don't know when they will step on the red line and get arrested

and may be sent to jail for many, many years. we are 11 minutes off the news on here's what's coming up, counseling and assertive china. the philippines in the united states restore a major military agreements or israel begins rolling out a 3rd shot. have 19 back. st. slowed the spreading delta barrier, and then for the us swim and makes waves by claiming not everyone competing in his final may have been drug free. in a while, a corona virus crisis in the lympics house countries getting more worrying by the day. japan is now expanding a state of emergency and restrictions will remain in tokyo until the end of next month. prime minister, you'll see he just says the virus is spreading at an unprecedented speed again because of the delta variance, more with andy richardson in tokyo. in a moment. first, this report from rob mcbride, with cases spiking tokyo, it seems,

has no choice, but to extend it state of emergency through to the end of august. japan is struggling with competing trends. the increasing spread of the more transmissible delta variant accounting. now for nearly 3 quarters of all new cases in tokyo versus growing pandemic fatigue. with noticeably more people failing to stay off the streets than they did off the state of emergency announcements in the past. like the state of emergency being enforced so many times i think people are start to not to take it so seriously. and because of that, there have been more cases at this point. i think there's not much you can do, even if you get the corona virus, i don't want to get infected, but there are a lot of people who can't avoid it. states of emergency are expected to be extended to 3 more prefecture as neighboring, tokyo, as well as o sucka,

which was badly hit by an earlier wave of the pandemic in the spring. when it's hospital resources were stretched to the breaking point. the fear is unless this wave can be brought under control of the prefecture as will suffer a similar strain. it has been recognised that both the infection situation and the pressure on the medical care provision system is extremely severe. and still, even as these games finish their 1st week, protest is continue to demand that cancellation, taking the message to the office of the prime minister, your should have a super in this election year, suga may find pushing ahead with these games will cost him politically. with still deep uncertainty over what price japan will bear in terms of public health. rob mcbride al jazeera, as promised dandy richardson now sports correspondent, live in tokyo. now exactly what the organizes of these games and what the,

the people of japan didn't want. corona virus basically becoming the story of the games they really is and such strong words from the japanese prime minister talking not only about the unprecedented speed of this particular outbreak, but also warning of a surge and younger generations as well. in terms of the state of emergency being expanded in terms of geography and duration, that's quite significant for the paralympic games is now being extended until at least august the 31st. the had been hope for the start of the parliament games on august the 24th. that would be some fans inside the venue start. now it looks very unlikely about the games. do go on until september. the 5th is still a chance that the latter stages of those events could see the turnaround in that policy. in some spectators may be allowed in the state of emergency. it is an interesting one. it sounds very dramatic, but it's not a law or an order. it's

a request from the government for people to perhaps stay at home and, and socialize a bit less. and what critics of the government a saying is that by carrying on with the games, it sends out the wrong signals. it suggests that things aren't serious and results in people underestimating just how serious this outbreak is. right? that's interesting. state of emergency actually being more of a suggestion of emergency to that end. what effect does it really have? have you felt a change in the time you've been there? you know, a change in the way people are reacting and going about their days. we're already working on the very tight conditions. we have a 14 day activity plan that we're working on, that we can't go to any venue that on on that activity plan. today is the 1st day of the truck and field events and be elim picks. it should be a time when $68000.00 people are going into the $1400000000.00 national stadium that was built for these games. sadly, the closest i could get to is, is

a photo opportunity. olympic rings outside the venue. so people know these games that going on, that enjoying on some level because the japanese athletes all doing so well tantalizingly, out of reach in gangs organizes and the government still very keen to stress that there's no link, no direct link between the games going on on the rise in numbers, although there was an admission today that some people working on the games have been breaking. strict covered 19 safety rules. so it's this constant manager that we're capable of hosting a safe and secure games has been challenged on a daily basis. we also heard from, from the australian team doctor he was talking about 3 of his team having to go in twice elation after becoming close contacts with the american po voltage, some kendrick seen as a positive covered 90. if it came down to a brief hug, a brief handshake, and there were then to find as close contacts and thought is that the high was ranked all the athletes. a walking here that

a brief moment like that could end the olympic hopes and richardson and tucker and more with him. later on during our sports bulletin, china is battling its 1st major cove at $900.00 outbreak in month. hundreds of thousands of people are in lockdown in jung through province, a cluster of cases with 1st to fit 1st detected, and the regional capital managing that. it's now spread to 5 provinces and the capital beijing. and a $200.00 people have been infected sincerely this month. officials believe it is again linked to the delta variance, 13000000 people in and around manila, the will go soon go into the toughest tear of restrictions. once again, a 2 week lockdown will be imposed next week. people won't be allowed to leave their homes except for essential shopping about on travelers coming from 10 countries has also been extended. and israel has now the world's 1st country to offer a 3rd shot of the coven, 19 back. same president as it hurts logan, his wife, the 1st to receive the booster. the extra shot will be for people above the age of

60, who got their 2nd dose more than 5 months ago. an attempt to curb infections caused by guess what? the delta variance will be talking about that more later. first that's check in with hold up bill, how made in western then when we say rising infections, how much they've been rising harder and they've been rising pretty steadily for the past 2 weeks. i mean, for the past few days, they've been more than 2000 new cases very day and there is a pose of worry for the government, even though the number of people who are seriously remained quite low. now days really have been saying for quite a while now that they had noticed that the effectiveness of the pfizer by and take vaccine, which is the only one that has been rolled out in this country, has gone down to about 64 percent when they came to the delta

very and even though they kept on, always insisting that the number of seriously ill patients is still quite low. but on the right now, they had already started that 3rd vaccine about 2 weeks ago. but that was physically for patients with a compromised immune system, patients with a chronic disease. now what has happened today is that both the president and the prime minister and actually even opposition leader, former prime minister benjamin netanyahu had that were filmed. taking the 3rd vaccine, tally bennett, the prime minister, telling people tell your grandparents to go and take that 3rd vaccine, but they've only available for people above the age of 60 who had received their 2nd vaccine at least 5 months ago. do i did suggest that there's any politics

involved here? i mean, just the way you describe the, the televised vaccinations going on oh, there is politics involved here. i mean, a lot of the campaign of, you know, nef tally bennett peed when they were in the opposition was that benjamin need to know, had dealt really badly with the pandemic at the beginning. israel has had 3 ways, even though he back the been now rectified that by having i would say, one of the most successful vaccine campaigns in the world, having more than 80 percent of the population over the age of 40 having received a both vaccines. but now you have nathan yahoo in the position of very strong opposition figure who has been putting enough tally bennett under stop on the spot rather when it comes to this rise in numbers. school the opening on september 1st.

the last thing the new prime minister wants is for that date to shift. he also wants to avoid by all costs another lockdown, even though a bit more measure, more restrictions have been put back in place. now for example, we have to all go around with musk indoors again, that wasn't the case only 3 weeks ago, actually 2 weeks ago, certain countries have been put off, limit israelis. one thing to go on vacation, do you be one of them? cypress is another country, anyone who goes down vacation. well we'll have to pay at least $1500.00 of fine and go into current teen about arrival. so you have these restrictions coming into place. the taliban is trying to avoid the lock down in the country and certainly trying to avoid that. you push back the opening of the schools days because he knows that that strong figure in the opposition benjamin netanyahu will not let

that go easily. so a lot of politics is indeed involved and all of that, of course. thank you. hi, bill. how may reporting from west teresa them this friday? let's keep talking current of ours. there is an internal report from the us centers for disease control and prevention. the cdc, which says the delta variance, which we're always talking about, is now as contagious as chicken pox. a copy of the document obtained by us media shows the variant is more transmissible than the viruses that cause bola the common called the seasonal flu. and smallpox analysis also indicates people infected with the delta variant, carry large amounts of it in the nose and they throat regardless of their vaccination status. so how can we visualize this delta variable? got a great website here. it's called covariance dot or which basically tracks all the different variance. there are quite a few actually, but the 4 main ones and you see them on the side here, alpha, beta, gamma and delta. so i'm just going to quickly run through them all. alpha 1st rule,

this is the one which originated in the u. k. brought just so you know, the lines you're seeing a basically covering any country that we can get data from here. alpha variant has very much gone up and down again, it's tapered off. you could say it's kind of what's not going away, but it's certainly different to the others. this is beta, which started in south africa, you know, quite erratic, over many countries. but if you look at the bulk of them down, they're kept low as well as has the gamma very, which came from brazil. again, down the bottom, you see most of the cases apart from a few spikes and other countries. but now look at delta, delta just goes up and up. we're looking at april here, and all it is done then is go up with absolutely no sign of coming down again. just so, you know, in this is from al jazeera dot com, a map showing where the delta variance has spread to over a 100 countries. and in the last 2 weeks, look at these places, the us, the u. k. russia, singapore, indonesia,

or upwards or 90 percent of their cases are or new cases i should say are delta various cases. so we're going to try to get to the bottom of this with dr. gloria tell jani, who is a verola just and professor of infectious disease that diseases at laptop ends at university of rome. she's on skype, from abilene in italy today. great to have you with us doctor. this is going to sound very, very simple, but is the delta variant essentially cov at 19? now i know it's an evolving disease that has all these different variance, but when the bulk, now this delta variance is that now almost the baseline for cobit 19. this is a difficult to answer the question because you know, are in a very producing and overwhelming number of very and every, every step of replication. and the most advantage the,

the changes div give to the virus and that most fitting the virus becomes and the, the mostly it becomes dominant relevant for the other very. and therefore, what we see at the moment when we face is that these by n is became in the prevalent one, simply it's capable of infecting more easily. the patient is producing a larger amount of particles of particles and therefore is able to spread with a much higher efficiency than before. and so we have, sorry to interrupt you. and so we haven't, you would have heard my discussion without correspondence in western mom about israel. israel saying, let's do a 3rd vaccine. does that now suggest that what we considered to be fully vaccinated, which was 2 shots is not fully vaccinated anymore, that this is now? well, is this now just another booster on top of this? yeah, yeah. in fact,

and what we really don't know is how to protect. i was so since the changes in the pipe crossing are some of the relevant changes we can see and we can face. but there are other changes that we really don't care enough, but they produce some effects on the biology and the capacity oh, group location of the virus. and the probably more responsible for what we face in terms of clinical severity and the capacity of spreading. and, and what we know at the moment is that by vaccinating and by producing a high amount of tea, but in the vaccinated subjects, we can protect with a sufficient acceptable protection the vaccine use. but we really don't know for how long this protection will work. since

the variance from the can appear in the future, but we should always still have sites in the vaccine certain way. i mean, as ever ologist. are you happy that the vaccine that doing that job against delta variance? well, for the moment since we don't have anything else, i think we should be, every must be happy because what we have is much better than having nothing but, you know, we can always get an improvement in the protection given by the vaccines. and probably what we have to understand if he's, if we need to change the sequence included in the platform of vaccine in the future in order to obtain why the broader and larger protection against the new variance that appear at the moment. and probably will appear in the future. dr. greg to talk to you as always dr. glory italy,

and he thank you so much for your time. thank you. plenty morehead for you on this news. arg vishal have vaccinated more than 1100 people here. all of the migrant farm workers and 20 percent of them have no legal work papers, least undocumented migrant struggling to get back code 19 back thing and, and thought the fastest women on the planet get the track and field events underway at the tokyo and ah hello good tissue, we're going to begin with that nasty storm system lashing that southern united kingdom. this is a name storm everett. and the biggest concern here will be those winds whipping up to about a 120 kilometers per hour. so this is going to have

a major impact over exposed areas, and that's why we think the biggest threat for this storm will be cornwall. now we track where it's going on saturday. we see it sling into the low countries and southern scandinavia it will be their turn, afford that wild weather. take it back to friday now because we are tracking energy around the alps and this could produce some very big storms here. a batch of what weather moves from southern scandinavia into latvia, and we've got some rain for western russia and eastern ukraine. so of all of this, it's all about the heat. heat alerts in play for the balkans, widespread, sophia bulgaria up to 38 on friday. now before i show this, next video, one is set this scene, it has been hot, it has been windy, tender, dry conditions in antalya. so if we look east of on talia, we've got this wildfire burning, 454 st workers are they're trying to battle back against the flames. and 4 areas of africa, we've got some heavy rain toward molly and synagogue.