[000:00:00;00] ah, this is al jazeera ah hello, i'm barbara sarah. this is the al jazeera news, our live from london. thank you for joining us. coming up in the next 60 minutes. a bad week for facebook. all that social media platforms are hit by a major outage affecting users around the world. and this as a whistleblower accuses it of prioritizing profit over clamping down on hate speech and misinformation. several u. s. pharmacy chains go on trial accuse the fueling, the nation's opioid epidemic, and the c o p as prime minister is sworn in for

a 2nd. the term is people starved to death in p dry, and the war spreads to other parts of the country. and in sports at tennessee safe an investigation into abuse allegations against alexander's vera of the german denies. the claims made by his former girlfriend backs the introduction of a domestic violence policy for professional players. ah, facebook, instagram and the messaging service walks are have suffered wide spread outages for at least 5 hours and counting. it's cut communication between people right around the world. well, what's up is the world's most popular messaging app with more than 2000000000 monthly users. facebook owns both instagram and what's up internet users have been taking to other forms of social media to vent their frustrations. well,

one of them is facebook's sheaves tech officer who has tweeted his sincere apologies for the outage. micah shrub 1st said the company is experiencing network issues and teams are working as fast as possible to debug and restore service. twitter is one of the few major social networks that's not owned by facebook. it's get more not from rosalind jordan who is live or for us in washington d. c. so he's mentioned network issues. do we have any more detail a rosalind as to what actually caused the sausage? we don't have any more ra confirmed information from facebook, but industry experts who studied the tech industry and who was in particular look at the guts of how high tech operates around the world. saying that apparently facebook was making some changes in the way that people are able to access a it's a products and services,

but that it's system also happens to include internal corporate to functions. and so this is affected, not just people who use one of the social media platforms, but it's also affected the people who work at facebook's headquarters in california . this outage happened just before 9 am local time in california, which is when most people would be heading to work. and some people reported that they were unable to even use their building passes to get into their office. because this is all connected to the same, a computer infrastructure that you and i would use if we have accounts on facebook . so beyond this explanation from mike shop for who is the chief technology officer that this is apparently a network problem. there's no really good way of predicting how long it's going to take. we don't know whether this was simply a maintenance issue gone wrong. whether this was

a system upgrade because of course the systems have to be upgraded in order to continue to be viable. but certainly it's been a rather quiet day for people who are used to using what's out instagram and most popularly facebook or not just of, for us seeing what's going on in the world. but staying in touch with their relatives, staying in touch with their friends. and we're a lot of businesses using that particular platform to connect with customers. so it's still a work in progress. there hasn't been much more beyond a couple of tweets from high ranking facebook officials, if there's more certainly will bring it to you. also, jordan, with the latest on that story from washington d. c. rosalyn for the moment. thank you. or meanwhile, members of the european parliament have called for an investigation into facebook after a whistleblower, a ledge. the social media giant prioritized profit over clamping down on hate

speech and misinformation. frances hogan worked on facebook's civic misinformation team. she has share of internal company presentations and emails with newspapers and attorneys general from several us states. that the documents alleged of facebook contributed to increased polarization online when it made changes to its content algorithm failed to take steps to reduce vaccine hesitancy, and was aware that instagram harmed the mental health of teenage girls. how get also said that facebook was used to help organize the capital riot on january 6th. and the company turned off safety systems following the u. s. presidential elections or how can is due to testify in congress on tuesday at a session on protecting children on line. the biden administration says it will continue to push for reforms of social media networks interview. this is just the latest in a series of revelations about social media platforms. they make clear that self

regulation is not working. that's long. been the president's view. in the view of this administration, they validate the significant concern that the president lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have expressed about how social media giants operate and the power they've been massed or cow taylor is a project director at the advocacy group, the real facebook oversight board, he joins us phi skype from london. sir, thank you so much for joining us here on al jazeera without doubt, a terrible couple of days for facebook. the outage that we've seen over the past couple of hours and all these questions being asked. i mean, over the past couple of years, facebook has at least tried, i guess, to put some safety systems in place. they've tightened up, for example, they're political ads. who can booster posts? do you think that this is an issue of them? not wanting to be strict or not actually being able to properly monitor the content on their sites. thank you very much for having me,

barbara. i think that we have to start with sort of asking ourselves the question, were they actually doing these things? because i think what these whistleblower allegations show us 1st and foremost is that everything that we believe facebook has been sharing with us may not actually be true or is, is broadly misleading and often a straight up lie. so it's difficult to know whether they have actually been making concerted efforts to change anything. and i think it was a more harder. i mean, i know this for a fact. it's become harder to boost any post that contains any kind of political content, unless you verify your identity. so those, those things they have done that's, that's, that's true. but paid advertisements are completely exempt from fact checking completely exempt from fact checking. so it may be harder to post it, but once you can post it, you can lie with impunity. you know, you can pay to spread this information basically. and, and i think that these are the sort of nuanced pieces, but that is central to facebook's efforts to dominate the conversation. you know, the end of the day, this is

a for profit business trying to maximize profits. and when the missile blower said, you know, i, i really see in the situation that sometimes they were putting profit over public safety. it's sort of like, well of course they were, you know, they're a business, they're an ad business, and we can't trust them to put public safety 1st, which is why regulation is so important right now. and you know, it's, it's amazing to me as well to see this outage happened today it's, it's fairly convenient from a p r perspective because now the entire world is looking at facebook and going, oh no, it's down. how can i access my group this out of the other as opposed to the day after? what are, quite frankly, the most mind blowing allegations we've seen about this company in for 5 years. so what action do you think should be taken? i guess on both sides of the atlantic, we're seeing the european parliament calling for an investigation, of course is it's going through in the us as well. what do you think government should and can do? well,

just like any other industry where there are risks to public safety from food to tobacco, to oil in the environment, we need statutory regulation. you know this, this shows us that we cannot trust facebook to even take their own research and take action. so, statutory regulation should start with transparency. government regulators should be able to see what's happening in the company. they should have access to this data that showed that a 3rd of teen girls have body issues because of instagram and that one percent of team growth i for isn't driven to aside. but if i can just stop there, i mean that's the research that, you know, allegedly came out of instagram and facebook. it's not just instagram, they'll take tall cas filters, that chat has filters. so it's not just instagram in the facebook group that perhaps should be blamed for some of the very real issues around social media. no, but i would suggest that statutory regulation should apply to all major social media companies that are at this level of influence and hold on our society. i mean,

we're looking at companies that, that have, for example, with facebook has twice, twice as month twice as many daily active users as the population of china. this is a very outside influence, just as the segment said earlier, 2000000000 people globally use what's up, what's that goes down today and look what happens because of the dependency on this one company. you know, we talk about banks being too big to fail 13 years ago. facebook now seems too big to fail. and that is, that is a detriment, not just the day to day activity of users, but to society as a whole. and i think we really need to remember that as we move into this next period. and it's really on our, our legislators who are in demo democracies, elected by people to act in our best interests and in the interests of public safety. you mentioned the numbers and they are staggering. so we've mentioned to 1000000000 people on whatsapp, correct me if i'm wrong, but i think it's 2 and a half 1000000000 people are on facebook at 1000000000 on instagram either they really are some of the most popular platforms out there is that part of the problem

that it's become so big and so influential. well, and it's so big and, and there's, there's dependency now. right? so we look at what happened in australia when facebook turned off news, they accidentally turned off, fire safety and bush fire season. you know, because we, we've made ourselves believe that these things are just there for us and they're free. but the reason that they're free is because we're the products, you know, their, their customers are advertisers, they're selling our attention. but if we allow it crucial services to be placed there and exists nowhere else than what happens when something like today occurs, will suddenly we can't function. and that to me isn't, isn't acceptable in a democratic society. so, you know, break up the companies. what's up instagram? facebook of course, but also start thinking about these companies as public utilities. there is a dependency in society, just like water, sewage, electricity, business, digital inclusion. it's the digital public sphere and we've got to treat it with the reverence that it now holds in our society. and that's the golden rule,

isn't and if you don't pay for it, you're the product. well, kyle taylor, it's been great. exactly. project director if you have anything group, i'm sure we'll, we'll be talking about this issue again for the moment. thank you. now the u. s. president has branded that republicans reckless for refusing to joined with democrats to stop the government defaulting on its national debts. congress must raise or suspend its borrowing ceiling within 2 weeks, or face triggering an economic crisis. the reason we have to raise a debt limit ism partner because of the reckless tax and spending policies under the previous trump administration. in 4 years, they incur and that incurred nearly 8 trillion dollars in 4 years, a trillion dollars in additional dead. in bills we have to now pay off. not only republicans refusing to do their jobs,

were threatening to use the power their power to prevent us from doing our job. saving the economy from a catastrophic event. i think quite frankly, shipper, critical, dangerous, and disgraceful. several major us pharmacy chains have gone on trial, accused of fueling the nation's opioid crisis by selling addictive pain killers like a vending machine. nearly half a 1000000 people died of opium overdoses in the u. s. in the 20 years leading up to 2019. the pharmacies are said to have misrepresented the risks of long term opioid use and failed to properly monitor suspicious orders of these drugs on hendern has worn out from chicago. had one of chicago's black market drug bazaars tie can't escape opioids. are you doing in bad real bad. he's woken up in an ambulance more than once. he's joined a rehabilitation program,

but he can't help coming back for more. more rose robot. real bad. so i leave you believe j. c. without me again. he'd like to kick the habit with the draw of opioids is too strong. this block on chicago's west side is of fentanyl epicenter. last year, deaths by opioids went up 30 present in illinois and 83 percent of those were due to fentenol. located mar, nell brown, says the fault lies with drug makers who dramatically underplayed the powerful lou revoke oil. is supposed to be a controlled substance. does, would occur, does what it unfolded as the controls of the not there is auto control many start with legally bought, but highly addictive prescription painkillers like oxy code on in move to st corner drugs when their prescriptions run out. the street corner pills they buy are often laced with fentanyl and opioid 50 to

a 100 times more powerful than heroin. they don't know what they're getting before they would just get oxy code on. and now the oxy code on is compress, is, is, is there crushing up of fitness and compressed in the on to the peels, all the different peel. so now the st. villers i, our path and on these joke to alien everybody. every day on chicago's west side, john, right morning brown and his brother, kevin brown patrol for addicts and often find someone overdosing when they do, they administer. nor can kevin has done it so many times. the addict have a name for him. look up in the sky, it's the birds, the play? no or just me, nor can on the sooner man a does was a repo, was there for more know brown, a recovered heroine, attic. the culpability of opioid manufacturers is personal. he says he can't escape

his own responsibility for past drug use. with that for many addiction is aided and abetted by the industry. are take this very personal, very pros, kazama survivor, prisoner of their war on mcnelty from that war. a war against addiction that plays out in the streets of every american city in cities around the globe. john henderson, l g, 0, chicago. or coming up on this news hour from london, an approaching storm threatens cleanup efforts after an oil leak that's closed, the beach is south of los angeles warnings that sudan is running out of vital medicine fuel and wheat because protest her as of shock bound port, sudan and 7 time super bowl champion, tom brady said another nfl record jemma will tell you what it is later in sport.

ah, ibm, it has been sworn in for a 2nd. the term is ethiopia. as prime minister, he vowed to protect the country from foreign interference, amid global criticism, over the conflict and the t gray region where the un says, people are now starving due to a government aid blockade. and there are reports of fighting in the west of the country while they are clashes between rebel groups and security forces have displaced thousands of people since sunday news is also emerging of a mass kidnapping that took place last month in the same region. katherine sawyer has more. you have either been hello, prime minister abbey ahmed, and a parliament dominated by members of his prosperity party. warning for a 5 year term. the party was declared, we now of the june parliamentary election. there was point quoted by some

opposition. parties. voting was also postponed in several areas because of logistical and security problems, including in t guy where the government is facing a rebellion. 3 of those areas held the elections a few days ago. but despite the problems, the vote was seen by some electoral observers and the african union as better run and more democratic than previous poles. the prime minister then went to the historic mask elsewhere in the capital, addis ababa with thousands of a few pins alongside several heads of state. helped him celebrate the victory. ah, well, ether european needs the co operation of its friends for its journey of prosperity . ethiopia wants the friendship from the international community. however, any friendship must never undermine ethiopians, honor and sovereignty. but some, if you can octave, they say the prime minister's moment has been tainted by his inability to deal with

a conflict in te gray that has now spreads to neighboring regions. and rising ethnic tensions and fighting in other parts of the country for what people were asking whether they were protesting from 2015 to 2018 is not a radical change or the return to a past. but democratizing the system that existed in what ibm it tried to do is basically centralized power and, and signaled as much as his intention to return to the country back to the kind of imperial k i, the prime minister said he's government is open to dialogue with a few pins who want peace, he did not mention the t guy, people's liberation front or a p l. f and it's fighters. were battling security to declare and whom the government has labels a terrorist organization had to put them in the north of the country. betrayal and arrogance has made us pay a heavy cost as a nation. the conflict to cry is inflicted on us by few individuals who said that

there shall be no e, the opiate, if they can't arbitrarily govern, they created this conflict. the u. n. c's decry is facing a farming, and 8 is not quickly getting to those who need it most. both the government and t p . a laugh, accused each other of provocation and hindering humanitarian assistance for the region. as he begins his new tom, menifee peons, hope the prime minister will resolve the t grey crisis mand ethnic divisions in different parts of the country and bring it feel peer back on track. catching soi alta sir said, as government has warned, the country is about to run out of medicine, fuel and wheat because of the closure of its main port for weeks now, protest her as of blocked roads, around port sudan, and the east. they're angry at what they say is a lack of political power and poor economic conditions in the region. last saturday, they shut a pipeline that carries oil to the capital. cartoon mohammed though,

has more now from port sedan. there is very little activity going all not pulled sit on the beach or tribesmen will, protesting what they call marginalization by the government of body. k. did the gates to the port with huge rocks and also have lined the gates to the port a with protest. us was holding hands to ensure that nothing exists or nothing, and thus the port. and there was a delegation from the government led by competent ministers. and the only thing of the days of negotiations that they were able to go back with was m. yes. add to the x partition of south sudanese oil from these port. these port is a mid de lifeline. not just for sudan, but also for neighboring cells. have done the 164000 bottles of oil salsa done producers. every day are exported through these port m and m right

now, the government is complaining that there is a shortage of med since and vital commodities. and it says, this cannot continue the calls, the actions of the b j at tribesmen who have a cut of these action out as criminal unsafe. they will not allow them to continue holding the government hostage. however, talking to some of the be the protest as they told us, that they will stay put, they will not move on it until the government accepts to listen to their grievances . on top of that is what they say that they were not consulted when the government signed the juba piece, a court with other armed groups in the country. there's been a shoot out incidence. capitalistic purity forces investigator cell allegedly housing members of an armed group. witnesses say that they saw security forces exchange gunfire with a group inside a residential building in cartoon. sh,

this comes almost a week after 5 intelligence officers were killed in a separate shows out was suspected. i so fighters that ray that led to the arrest of 11 suspects of different nationalities. according to the intelligence service, are you an investigation? says all sides in libya's conflict of committed violations that may include war crimes. it details, accounts of murder, torture, enslavement and rape. libya has been marked by conflict since the death of its former ruler, more market off in 2011 with rival administrations fighting for power. japan's newly appointed prime minister for me, oki shita has announced a snap the general election on october 31st. the 64 year old says you'll push to achieve economic growth and will consider offering cash payouts. the households hit hardest by the pandemic. he, she'd have replaces your she,

he'd assume go who resigned after just the year and the job florence louis reports formula key. she death who one party pulls to lead japan's governing liberal democratic party or l d p. last week has been elected by both houses of the japanese parliament is in accordance with article 18 paragraph 2 of the rules of the house of representatives formula cuz she does hereby nominated as prime minister of japan. his 1st order of business was to select his cabinet. there were 13 new faces out of 20 posts, but many important portfolios are going to powerful factions that voted for key cedar in the party election. his predecessor, you shaheed, a suger had announced last month that he would not be seeking re election as party leader after less than a year in office to get approval ratings had plummeted for his handling of the pandemic. and his insistence on holding the summer olympics, despite public health concerns, he,

she has inherited an economy that's been battered by the pandemic. in his 1st news conference as prime minister, he promised to make corona virus counter measures a top priority and to work on rejuvenating the economy. and o emma emma, colonel, under my cabinet. first of all, i will do my utmost to take measures against coven 19, which is an urgent and top priority issue. we will carefully explain to the citizens, so they have a sense of understanding. and we will always be ready to respond to the worst case scenario. they feel as prime minister, he will also have to deal with an increasingly assertive china and security threats from north korea, which has conducted a series of missile tests. in the last few weeks. he should, i says he's prepared to meet north korean leader kim jong own without any pre conditions. but kish it as 1st challenge will be leading his party in the general elections, which will take place at the end of this month. some analysts say it's likely casey,

that is hoping to take advantage of a honeymoon period, usually given by the electorate to new governments. florence louis al jazeera north and south korea have restored a communication hotline with pyongyang, urging saw to mend strained relations between the 2 nations north korea, cut communications back in august and protest that military drills that sol conducted with the united states. washington says that strongly supports the reconnected lines, calling it an important component in creating a more stable environment on the peninsula. the former george and president make how such really is continuing, continuing, his hunger strike after his arrest on friday. as he returned from exile, hundreds of his supporters of stage the protest outside the prison where he's being held. he says, he'll maintain his strike until he is released. but the current president says he has no plan to do so. soccer really slipped into the country last week,

despite being sentenced to during his 8 years abroad for abuse of power. he said the charge was politically motivated. he had returned to boost the opposition ahead of sunday election, where his party finished 2nd and made allegations of fraud. lots more still to come in this news our including it, british soldiers has started delivering fuel to ease a crisis that scene long queues that petrol stations for more than a week. more earthquakes shake la paloma as part of the erupt. volcanoes crater collapses sending lava surging towards the sea and strict measures in place for all athletes wanted to compete at test events for the beijing winter olympics. ah,

with hello, thank you for joining in. here's your weather story for europe in africa, we're going to start where the action is this part of europe, we've got some big storms bubbling up here in a number of weather alert. so let's go over them together. still for the south of france, i think the potential for flooding, but as tuesday carries on, that threat will dissipate big storms for a northern and also southern sections of italy, especially over sicily. we see some severe thunderstorms, the risk of what being wins and also are the potential to see some hail. and if we look toward the eas stuff, this is finer and dryer weather, but it's still weather alert here. just isa belgrade, where those winds could a crank up to about 85 kilometers per hour toward the northwest star. next fall storm it swirling around the united kingdom on tuesday, eventually slamming into the low countries. brisk winds around this and you know, for london, let's check out, see what you could see about 20 millimeters of rain. look at that. those when 60 kilometers per hour drives out on wednesday and your temperature is closer to where

they should be for this. have the year off to turkey, and we see that what, whether across the black sea coast also heavy falls for the northeast. places like our hobby. we trace a wind from the mediterranean right through to sudan chat and share where we're seeing the sand and dust kicked up in some spots there. ah. with 20 hidden cameras, criminals are illegally filming, and sharing people's most intimate moments. when used to investigate south korea by coming the demick on algebra, october on al jazeera and brewing vaccine inequality to the political and economic impact. the latest development at the corona virus pandemic continues to spread across the globe. democracy made an expensive new series, explores the ever growing challenges to democracy around the world format. but he,

macbeth of president, blaze come for, it goes on 5 for the assassination of his freed assessment. thomas, my current context, india direct from move by brings inside some perspectives from the world's most populous democracy. you work, you go to the poll in an election likely to define the countries you check. october on al jazeera