zodiac killer the 340 character coded letter was mailed to the san francisco chronicle by the serial killer in 1969 a killer who was never caught loaded 5 people in a string of assaults that terrorized the san francisco bay area the f.b.i. confirmed the claim by australia mathematician that to samuel blake and to cryptologist from the u.s. and belgium part of the message reads i hope you're having lots of fun in trying to catch me without giving any further clues to his identity. look at the headlines now exactly 5 years since the paris climate accord was signed and while leaders have been urged to declare climate emergencies in that country's speaking a virtual climate ambition summit to mark the anniversary the u.n. chief intended to terra said it was vital to stop the assault on the planet for the sake of our grandchildren in 2015 countries agree to stop global temperatures rising 2 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels. these

a moment of juice this is also a lot of hope more and more countries it could be if you do not see the emissions the business community is getting on board the sustainability dream we see cities striving to become greener and more live a ball we see young people taking on responsibility and demanding it providers the promise of n.f.c. toward good reality no on the press to cop 26 i urge everyone to show and be sure to stop the assault on our roads and do what we need to get into the future of our children and grandchildren in all the headlines nigerian police are searching for missing students after attackers armed with assault rifles stormed a secondary school a large number of gunmen on motorbikes attacked a boarding school and can car a district in katsina state late on friday one officer was shot during an hour long gun battle between the military and the gunman many students ran away when the attack started and police say 200 have since returned the police and the defense force are trying to still establish how many of them still missing. the head of the

u.s. drug regulator is working to reassure americans that lee pfizer biotech maxin is safe for szell's hope distribution of the vaccine for monday will provide relief to hospitals overrun with coronavirus admissions us reported more than $230000.00 new cases on friday thousands of dollars from supporters demonstrating in washington to denounce the election result on the u.s. supreme court's decision to throw out a last ditch legal challenge hundreds of protesters will black and yellow which are the colors of the right wing proud boys classified as a white supremacist group by law enforcement. owes the headlines this hour listening post is coming up next examining the political and economic battle in the gulf.

but he talks that's. ok to see which sic. let's say constructive talks taking place between the formations and they want to reach a final agreement hello i'm richard gives birth and you're at the listening post where we don't cover the news we cover the way the news is covered here are the media stories we're looking at this week there's news of a possible reconciliation in the arabian gulf the end of the blockade of kentucky the french president but still is president sisi of egypt with the legion of honor but make sure there are no french journalists there to cover it science reporters have proven their value in covering the pandemic they've also taken some heat and

finally what are the chances that the planet earth will be accepted for membership in a guy like that federation is there enough food to go around it looks like some people are starving based on our track record not great. it's been 3 and a half years now since 4 arab governments led by saudi arabia cut off relations with kid tar and imposed a blockade on the country now there are headlines suggesting that a rapprochement is that hair when this rift opened up back in 2017 hours critics which included the united arab emirates bahrain and egypt all demanding that this network al-jazeera be shut down while accusing qatar of backing political movements the trade in terror in the years since the information sphere has proven to be a crucial battleground. from the competing television channels own and influenced by the governments involved to the armies of trolls and influencers on twitter and facebook to the millions of dollars spent on lobbyists trying to get washington

onside now with riyadh showing signs of making peace with doha there is some careful message management underway and everyone covering the story has to read between the lines our starting point this week the arab airways. for almost 4 years now a saudi led coalition of arab countries has tried to isolate qatar politically and economically blocking trade with qatar forcing it to import food from iran and turkey turning the airspace over their countries into no fly zones for qatari passenger planes and turning their air witness into delivery platforms for antique atar rather. how. many are. going to. be is just one example the channel is saudi control based in dubai

abu dhabi the capital of the united arab emirates has a majority stake in sky news arabia the channel is a central protagonist in what has turned into an antique attire media coalition. that. after more than 3 years of that kind of talk there is change on the air certainly in saudi controlled me although you still have to read between the sound it's. hard to not harming the shabda cannot happen at a crime no matter how. the tone also appears more conciliatory on al-jazeera arabic language news channel which like this channel is funded by the government of qatar . b how did those who had been a little get all the additional. will jimeno in love. with us all we all know how over the autumn of the the other day how did the one who is

a very very serious situation a very serious crisis multiple levels. and also. we saw different looks in words go she only knows that the gold entries are actually divided and that they don't all have one policy out that while culturally white united looked equally economically strategically it's definitely no information war all countries in 2017 where ready for such war they have the experience on how to control the social media sphere of the media sphere to use their trolls to use their armies so these governments they were all ready for the fight. saudi arabia and qatar have not been on the same political page for decades . independent brand of foreign policy took form in the early ninety's. and its launch of al-jazeera arabic in 1996 changed the relationship qatar had with

its neighbors in the gulf al-jazeera journalists offered the kind of reporting critical of authority that the saudis and other arab governments did not tolerate on their own state funded chantix they still do in 2017 when muhammad bin salma m.b.'s was made saudi crown prince the gloves came off the blockade was in place. as the saudi ag bahrain and each issued a list of 13 demands the guitar is happy to meet its relations group to be normal. has not turned to turkey and iran for trade and has drawn closer to the islamic republic directing its planes through iranian airspace. the site. the political transition now unfolding in washington and the management of m.p.'s his reputation also appear to have factored into this current shift in riyadh's

tactics mohammed and so my name was synonymous to so many negatives in the region he was there when several saudi businessmen were in a hotel in riyadh his name is there in yemen we saw his name involved with jim she so he has so many negative things associated with his name so i think most of the people who followed his policies so that there was a time when it had been said man will start a new strategy and i think that it's the easiest issue he can solve with the end term of. a new administration that will likely be harsher on saudi arabia. the saudi crown prince to find solutions to some of the foreign policy issues to make his. international wrongs so this will also help his ambitions to become the next king of saudi arabia. the list of the 13

demands the coalition made conditions to end the blockade started with qatar curbing its diplomatic ties with iran and bringing an end to military cooperation with both iran and turkey countries of the saudis and emma rocky's consider their absence in addition the coalition demanded guitar sever all talks with what the quartet calls terrorist organizations including the muslim brotherhood ties qatar has denied also on the list was al jazeera and the requirement that guitar shut the network and its journalism down those who follow politics know that. was the main focus of all these countries the move. from targeting al-jazeera directly into targeting al jazeera and washington d.c. trying to convince congress to shut down and just get out to constrain their

movement in washington and in the u.s. just survive and it will survive for a very simple reason there is no foreign official who respects freedom of speech will go to qatar doha and tell them please close and just to end this rift there are a lot on the saudis eye and sky arabia on the u.a.e. side and then there is a whole bunch of different. smaller networks but the flagships are a lot of and sky arabia and neither has had the experience the quality the money the resources. staffing that. on the other hand as i say its reputation. of being above the fray has changed so now i think what a lot of people do is they watch and they watch some other be your only assume the truth is somewhere. actually not predicting what will be the future threats to i

just you know will be i think times. that just you know it's. just you know also i think kind of seen as a response to now there's. just you don't was kind of. policy on the other hand i think also trying to really also defend themselves i think that was directly under attack and you know it happens as you know it was an attack. on. the rift has also transformed the online space in the gulf just prior to the blockade network of twitter accounts was born in saudi arabia and the emirates. is tweeting and retreating hash like qatar funds terror or we demand of the closing of the channel of papers there was evidence of some prokop term driven by bots too but not to the same extent it's been 3 years plus of toxicity online between. gulf

arabs that will not be easy to just turn. on twitter also on other social media outlets which actually increase and dug in isn't it to not only these governments but also between the peoples of the g.c.c. states which actually have common cultures among themselves and there was a cast which basically you know lies any sympathy towards. that people to stand against. siri thing that i think was also very interesting and also very shocking was using . as a tool to mobilize people against their government or against their leadership so i

think the blockade has definitely changed. the entity of late and nationally and this is the thing that is difficult to repair now their door is for the people. in the media. and media stream down there and that's the other. maybe go back to normal qatar has always wanted a situation without. the u.a.e. i think. for some i mean this is an. unbridgeable divide nobody invaded and occupied something so this is a you know remember. something but there is real bitterness and the bitterness is not going to go away that quickly. one of the countries in the attic attack or tat that's been less visible in this potential of rapprochement has been egypt presidency seems been busy with a few other things including a state visit to france and actually rob you've been keeping an eye on that you

know how did this visit turn into a media story one of the big reasons richard was when the french government attempted to hide one of the main events in this visit when president was presented with france's highest award the legion of honor it was a gala event held at the palace capping a 3 day visit and there were no french media present which is absurd the palaces website had no mention of it and the french president's office that is micron's office failed to provide any footage or images to french media french outlets only found out about this event after an investigation by a t.v. show which was tipped off by coverage in egyptian media. don't know if the. yes well i did return to iraq you know all told so that you could you know. evil don't get to the sooner it's the tories are in me yes well look in terms of process. here so what are we to make of the secret of approach that the french

government took but there's been a lot of pushback against president macron hosting let alone celebrating presidency of the past couple of months france has been grappling with debates about freedom of speech and religion we've covered some of this on our show and mccrone has spoken about the fact that france up holds people's right to not just speak but to offend he's also talked about french secularists principles saying that the country is in a battle against what he calls islamic extremism and that the religion isn't some sort of crisis so how would mark ross square that against what's happening in egypt under says well that's where the problems of marriage egyptians can be arrested and tortured simply for participating in protests they can be jailed for social media posts that supposedly offend people's religious sentiments and if you're an activist origin list there's a target on your back and readers on mahmoud hussein has been in jail for 4 years in egypt but the government has yet to charge him with any crime so clearly the french government realised that lecturing people on secularism and free speech why putting an award on an authoritarian leader of

a deeply conservative religious country is not a good look so they just pretend it didn't happen next. journalists around the world will remember 2020 as the year they took a crash course in reporting on medical sites they had no experience in covering a pandemic and we've documented some of the shortcomings in their reporting now we're turning to journalists with some actual credentials in this field science and health report it's been a year to the month since they 1st recognized the potential dangers of the outbreak in we talk leaving the rest of us to play catch up historically underappreciated and usually underrepresented in newsrooms science and health reporters now find their expertise is in demand their rise to prominence has been accompanied by a new level of scrutiny in the kind of work that they do and the critics have come out of the woodwork the listening post flo phillips now on science journalism the highs and lows in the age of covert 90. 4 20 pm december

31st 2019. hopefully this is nothing out of the ordinary but an ad permit mail posting episode and explain the mon years in china is giving me hashtags sours flashbacks. boston usa in the last few hours of 2019 helen brown's well senior infectious disease reporter for stat means started tweeting about the reports coming out of. it was something i definitely thought we needed to be watching this was something that was setting our whole our bills. 12 31 am january 15th 2020 years where we are on the sars like virus found in china still many many questions. 2 weeks later in berlin kai cooper schmidt a molecular biomedicine expert and correspondent for science magazine joined the discussion about the still undefined virus was really becoming clear that the

pandemic was just not going to be stopped it was clear to everyone what it was about. so how. might you know in january 29th. governments find denialism when you get the wrong people bash you can get it on. i started an online spawned. by the end of january health and science journalist video krishna was trying to get the word out in india despite facing significant political challenges because the entire polity was union was only. on the. no longer. you need to find me. if you gave. 3 science journalists from 3 different countries all sounding the alarm on the virus that would come to be known as coded 19 well before the rest of the world realised what was coming. their readership and online followings have skyrocketed

as they've taught you terms like flattening the. they've schooled you on the importance of lockdowns a mass testing they've documented the failings of governments to act when the data was that for all to see and they know how to deal with scientists in early february helen brown's well challenge dr anthony found who many consider to be the voice of reason on the trumpet ministrations coronavirus task force present given everything that's going on the risk is really relatively low. when i look at this fire of. pressure for all i care. but there's no. it's not going to stop. and you seem pretty frustrated in that forum one was that. you know i had been hearing for several weeks stories in the

u.s. and other countries outside of china saying that they thought that the. outside of china was loaded me 0 sense to me because viruses spreading really effectively from person to person in china so when dr frenchie said that he thought the risk was for the united states at that point at pushed back because it made no sense he did say you know could this become a pandemic absolutely but it felt like they didn't want to alarm people at that point wasn't can make them it was already you know spreading the united states just had been repeating. your work has also proven to be prescient an article you wrote back in 2013 included a quote about a bat in china carrying a potential pandemic this was peter dash the researcher that i talked to the quote comes from him so i was just doing my job as

a reporter reporting his views so you know if anything he predicted it again and again in the in the last 10 years or so when i was doing my reporting this sentence came up from scientists where they were telling me you know it's not a question of if there will be a big pandemic the question is when scientists like peter dash are crucial for reporters like it because like most areas of reporting science journalism starts with the sources and there are 2 sources that many science journalists have in common the 1st is called pro med it's the place where both brands well and compassionate 1st heard about an outbreak in which. it's an online portal where infectious disease experts share and discuss information on unusual health of ads it's not designed for journalists but has become invaluable for many health reporters who have the background to understand the significance of what's on that the 2nd source. these journalists have in common is what they call pre-print.

they're kind of testing ground for academics a place where they share their research online before it gets peer reviewed and published in normal times a lot of scientists hold that research back play it safe until they're sure of that work because at 19 has changed things scientists are flooding the servers with information they hope will help curb the virus maybe even cure it and some of that material is making it into the headlines when that happens and potentially invaluable but often unverified information reaches the public it can easily end up being misconstrued by both the press and politicians and that i should supposing it were to later say the word could which you could do either through the skin or. in some other way. and i think you said you're going to test i was interesting one of

the things that i found tragic about. the stand i make in the coverage of the pandemic is how politicized the whole thing has become which side of the divide people on which or this is a misunderstanding of what's going on in certain parts of the country anyhow lightly and i signs nominee to be nontraditional let me be and it has been asking our. population to lie are you. not or you'll go or greek medicine to lose your unity up with me. on common. ground there. god. got a plan. in the country on this one they wonder lupul or do you believe in line with the politics so that it doesn't look back the minute the story goes on lines

need not go into handles and politicians you know would you employ those and questioning. and dismissing the story without actually linking all what's wrong actually that's. one of the reasons the politics tends to trump the science is because that's the way the politicians want to perspective the official say make available it that we think it's scientific experts are usually count numbered by political. reflected also in the press corps covering a shortage of reporters trying to have science of the story i'm not sure that sanctions need to take the lead but i certainly think they should be you know at the table and i think that is something that also bothers me when i see the press conferences there are a lot of important questions that science journalists you know to ask the political journalists don't know to ask do you have true or people in georgia who are soon to

have a choice about where saddam now from on our getting that tattoo retail businesses need a bit of time to shop did a bit of time to prepare to wipe out all the opening of german. provision title which one to the soprano you can. put it in. the presidential order. and buy on off the reason it just seems like this press conference would really profit if there were also science journalists there the only body not einstein i know by we don't act instantly. i'm not a scientist well i'm not free to express that we have indeed immediately think we joe at this point does not have a single scientists us and does not have a single science journalist in the audience speaking of the other cats and you look at so don't know what they're talking about and the politicians journalists don't will. on the asking the wrong question. another way to put it

rather than dispatching medical specialists to diagnose the biggest story of our time to surgically dissect political narratives it 19 most news organizations are sending in the equivalent of family doctor the general practitioner. that's hardly the best use of available resources when the story you're covering is a pandemic. and finally as this problematic year draws to a close with its biggest news stories still swirling around us the pandemic racial and social unrest climate change how to makes you wish you could just leave it all behind maybe jump on one of you on mosques rocketships find another planet to live on except one of those rocket ships just crashed and burned this past week somewhere in texas 2020 wins again very thomas a us based comedian is thinking along similar lines in this viral video he imagines

what it would be like if the planet earth was to apply for membership in a star trek like the lactic federation sort of like a european union except for outer space and he concludes that earthlings would be long shots unless we clean up our act we'll see you next time here at the listening . how fast argue or teleporter no teleport. flying cars. a high speed train that goes around the planet no you don't have that either ok what about does everyone have health care is there enough food to go around it looks like some people are starving you do have enough food then why isn't it logistics you want me to write. logistics ok starving because of logistics i mean things could be worse right imagine if you were still fighting over resources. oh you do you have big

wars when you have a pandemic right now you have a pandemic oh no it's jason bring the cep bring the thing i don't think you take you need to use the bathroom we haven't done that in centuries we don't do that here oh you still have prison. jason they still have prisons ok well i think that should be enough you've given us a lot to think about we'll see soon by jason burn their application it's just gusting the whole planet.

revealing eco friendly solutions to combat threats to our planet on al-jazeera. i know i'm maryam namazie and london a quick reminder of our headlines now and it's been exactly 5 years since the paris climate accord was signed and world leaders have been declared climate emergencies in that countries speaking at a virtual climate ambition summit to mark the anniversary un chief antonio caetera said it was vital to stop the assault on the planet for the sake of our grandchildren world leaders use the summit to pledge to increase that emissions cuts and boost renewables in 2015 countries agree to stop global temperatures rising 2 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels these are.