>> reporter: meet bethany vierra and her 4-year-old daughter zaina.n saudi arabia. >> cell phone videos, all of the contact grandma and granddad back home in wenatchee, washington, have right now and all of the contact they might ever have. >> if zaina can't leave she won't leave. >> it makes perfect sense that she won't give up. we realize she may lose her life doing this or we may never see her again. >> she divorced her saudi husband and claims he was a drug user and he declined. bethany vierra denied custody of her own daughter saying the mother is new to islam, is a foreigner in this country and continues to deafen tivoli embrace the customs and traditions of her upbringing. we must avoid exposing zaina to these customs and traditions especially at this early age. >> we may have different language e but we're really the same. we're human beings. we should be able to get along? custody of zaina given to her saudi grandmother. both bethany and her ex were found unfit. her parents tell us there is a warrant out for bethany's arrest after she missed

so as we understand it, little zaina is still with bethany for now.ll, happens next >> reporter: yeah, she hasn't run out of options yet this week, she began her appeal to a higher court. that will take some time the family are still full of hope, but saudi law does discriminate to ensure that children are raised in accordance with islam. so it will be a tough battle as you say, for now, she's in riyadh with her daughter, but they are both clearly suffering, as the family says it is absolute heartbreaking back to you. >> really quickly, is this unprecedented? has there been a case like this in saudi arabia before >> reporter:o. there have been court tussles before remember, saudi's effective ruler, bin salman, are trying to change things. the new law passed allowing women to drive, with passports there is a change on the law with divorces. this is almost a test case for his reforms and in this whole area it'll be really, really interesting and, of course, crucial for this family to see what happens >> yeah. chief global correspondent. >> the fact she'

. >> i am the princess, ella zaina. i'm on my way to marry a very important man. >> the princess ella zaina is played by ambassador carla stans. she stars in the 1988 classic movie death stalker and the warriors from hell before she became an international diplomat, she had what could generously be called a movie career. i should say and be very clear here that the underqualified major party donor ambassador is a long-standing and embarrassing bipartisan tradition. today the daily beast did a profile of the ambassador and thanks to their reporting, we know that after a brief career as an actress she went on to be a chiropractor. the report reveals she has combined an active social media account with an active imagination re-tweeting conspiracy theories and wild ideas. among them are tweets about how humans are not responsible for global warming because humanity lived through the medieval warm period. she tweeted kevin ssorbo calling for prager university to be taught in all schools. it's not accredited. it's the name fo

hoping it's successful and hoping that some day she and zaina will be able to come back here for a visit. nick watt, cnn, wenatchee, washington. ♪ ♪ >>> you are live in the cnn newsroom. thank you for staying with me. i'm ana cabrera in new york and new this hour. 2020 democratic candidates today are reaching out to black voters especially younger millennials. elizabeth warren and bernie sanders each delivering speeches in atlanta, framing their white house and faith-based concerns to young, black christians. soon warren will host a town hall reaching out to african-american students there. young democratic voters, joe biden leads with 37% followed by bernie sanders with 18% and kamala harris with 10 and two points behind harris and let's go to layla santiago. what are you hearing about these 2020 democrats? >> reporter: there was a long line as folks were starting to come in. folks are setting up here, picking their seats and wait for example elizabeth warren. i talked to them about the short list for 2020 as well as the short list of issues and not just the candidates and the candidate

there is one particular contributor, zaina erhaim, she writes about when the uprising started in syriaand increasingly the cntry descendeinto utter chaos, she was faced with a situation in which she was told repeatedly to cover her hair. she wasn't ablto move from one place to another unless she had a male chaperone. that's also a common theme in several of t essays. and she felt that one way to navigate this was to actually embrace the fact that she could enter spaces which were t inaccessibanyone who was not a local and who was not a woman. >> nawaz: in other words, she could have unique access that other people would not. >> so she was going into a syrian gynecological clinic and she was taking the cameras in there with h you couldn't conceive of that story being told by someone else. >> nawaz: and hannah you touch on this too in your about "the woman question," right? the idea being that when you are ouvering war zones or conflict zones or places ere there is conflictf some kind, when you start touching on things that are under the label of "women's issues" they're seen as illegiti

and southern province the syrian government has been gaining ground in the largely rebel held region zaina hall there has moved from beirut. homeowners back under the control of the syrian government images released by pro regime media show the town in southern italy empty of residents and fighters rebels withdrew early on tuesday after days of fighting and hundreds of air strikes its location gives the syrian government access to parts of a vital commercial highway that connects the northern city of aleppo to the capital damascus and has been a military objective for months this is a very important development in the course of this conflict. this is the 1st step in the 1st stage maybe. efforts by the government to regain control of the territories along with him 5 road between. aleppo i think the next target would be moderate to normal. the opposition didn't just lose. rebel fighters had little choice but to leave towns further south in the northern hama countryside they would have risked being besieged if they didn't move further north the opposition was hoping the presence of a turkish

one hour from al-jazeera zaina harder in beirut. lebanon has mediated the release of a canadian national who was being held in syria the one of the top security officials in lebanon about for him was the man involved in this mediation effort he said that the canadian national mr baxter was detained last year for violating laws in syria they really didn't divulge much details concerning the circumstances of his detention this is not he's not the 1st foreign nationals to be released in the past months a few weeks ago an american national was released about him himself playing a crucial role now he's calling this a humanitarian gesture but many here believe that these are messages messages that the syrian government wants to give to the west as it tries to regain legitimacy as it tries to and sanctions at the end of the day these 2 these 2 foreign nationals who were held and in syrian jails are not among the high profile people who went missing and believed to be held by the syrian government so messages possibly from the syrian govern