coronavirus sunni provinces the center of the outbreak in china. and election victory overturned malawi's constitutional court nullifies the 21000 results and orders a rerun also ahead. air pollution in the news is basically resulting in a public health crisis with elections on the horizon a call for action from residents of one of the world's most polluted cities. well the race to decides who will be the democratic challenger in the embers us presidential election is underway candidates are facing their 1st big test in iowa unlike primaries these are caucuses run by the parties themselves people meet in small gatherings in churches in tone holes rather than in official polling centers the focus is on face to face engagements no caucuses will be held in more than $1600.00 venues as well as other locations outside the u.s. the last 4 democrats to. when iowa all went on to win the party's nomination along with their backers this year's candidates of spent nearly $80000000.00 on iowa t.v. and radio ads in the lead up to the votes now we have 2 correspondents following developments in iowa in a moment we'll hear from john hendren who's with people taken parts in the caucus but 1st let's bring in our own fisher allan those caucuses are no underway is there any indication at this stage as to his ahead. well i can tell you it's not just the democrats that are caucusing tonight the republicans are as well if you take a look at the big screen behind me here in the media center you can see that as far as the republicans are concerned donald trump is running away with the as we expected he would 70 percent of counties reporting he's got 96.85 percent of the vote that kind of reflects exactly his level of support in the republican party at the moment is close and closest challenger is former massachusetts governor william weld he'll be hoping to do better next week in new hampshire but donald trump is the incumbent so to suggest that he wasn't going to win would just have been ridiculous no let's talk about the democrats because that's where the main focus is going to be this evening across iowa where we're hearing that there is record turnout in so many places which is really quite interesting and that would suggest that there are a lot of people who want to beat donald trump when it comes to the election in november the question of course then is who do they believe is the candidate best placed to do that their lead results are suggesting that bernie sanders is ahead joe biden isn't doing terribly well but judge is doing better than expected as is elizabeth warren no speaking to some of the campaigns here in iowa over the last few days. privately and quietly they were saying look elizabeth warren has got a very good organization on the ground here in iowa she's going to do very well and if she does do well then next week we're in new hampshire right next door to massachusetts where she is a senator she's expected to do well there as well so we're talking about momentum building for her then it becomes a problem for the likes of andrew yang and even. looks as if they're going to finish it say the top 4 and if they don't get in the top 4 can they keep their campaigns going so very early stages yet but it seems as if bernie sanders is heading for a win that wouldn't be a huge surprise given that he not only lost he. 4 years ago to hillary clinton ok alan fischer ends up on thank you very much in seeds let's cross night see john hendren he's also ends up going far as we can speak tonight john you're among the caucus goers what's the atmosphere like where you are. now a lot of people are coming here for the 1st time according to our n.b.c. entrance poll one 3rd of the people who have walked into the doors of many of these things are new need voters and suggests there's high turnout and that suggests people are very excited about this going to step out of the way and just show you a little of what is going on here right now if you look to the cameras extreme left this group here just over the basketball basket those are supporters of bernie sanders and they just have a no votes to clear the 50 percent they need in order to be viable if you look at one over that he crowned for peace through georgia and one more is amy quote which are which you can't see right now. joe biden and it was a big one supporters they all horrified more than 15 percent in vision or one precinct happens to be the biggest precinct in the state of iowa but you can suit people just see it in groups now what happens is those candidates who've been declared not viable like the people who support tom styer and andrew yang they're now going to be quoted by the other candidates wranglers so they're going to try to get them to vote with these people and that outcome statewide will determine how many delegates they are so it's an interesting exercise in democracy but we've also learned from those exit polls are that you know voters tend to support biden people over $65.00 and the younger voters people under 30 surprise you seem to suppose support bernie sanders it's surprising in the sense that sanders is in his seventy's not in the sense that he hasn't always had a young. group because he has that most voters are just looking for a winning hand it is a lot of those in that entrance poll say they didn't make up their mind reading till recent days 63 percent say they would rather have someone with beach trump than somebody who agrees with them on the issues only about 35 percent said that there's going to be a lot of straight it here and people who don't get their point of view about 15 percent level are going to find somebody else ok john hendren in a very busy caucus point thank you very much indeed supposes appearance of lost on that before i could say goodbye properly i bless get more on this because it is rather important these i will caucuses for the democratic presidential process let says speak with amazon or he joins us now from detroit's in michigan he's a campaign surrogate for us presidential hopeful bernie sanders good to have you with us on than you or i would been hearing there this says certainly some polls that have been coming out ahead it's all the indications are that bernie sanders is doing particularly well why do you think he does so well in iowa. well 1st of all thanks for having me on look bernie has 3 things going for him that makes him really unique 1st he he expands the electorate right he brings people into the political process that have never been in there before that are doing it for the 1st time we see tonight in iowa so far that lots of people are registering at the door and or coming to a caucus for the 1st time 2nd he has the most diverse electorate i've been and i will many times now for bernie and i see that he has the most racially and age wise diverse electorate in the in the campaign and lastly he's the only candidate who actually can bring some of those trump voters back into the fold of his campaign he already did in 2016 we already know that there were a lot of people who voted for bernie in the primary and then turned around and voted for trump in the general election because he appeals to those independents with his honesty and consistency in his ideas so i think we're going to see a lot of that coming out of iowa tonight and showing that he's very very successful and electable against donald trump well the electability question this is a rather interesting one because you say he made appeal to voters he might vote for trump but there are lots of republicans a centrist forces he is not the ideal cans that they would prefer 1 somebody else so assuming that he does make it to the to the general do you think he's electable enough to bring the entire country on sites or just those who are enthused by him. you know i think this is a narrative going around that that people in the middle are somehow not attracted to bernie sanders is not true he's done well with independents from all of his political career and the ideas that he pushes appeal to people across the political spectrum but most importantly when people talk about electability you know joe biden ran for president this is 3rd time and he's never won a single primary bernie sanders ran in 2016 and he won 23 primaries he won 45 percent of the votes in the delegates we're talking about somebody who has proven that he can put together a real grassroots campaign of the people and win and so the notion that bernie is not electable or that his ideas only appeal to a certain slice of the ideological spectrum is simply not true and you you mentioned also that he's certainly appeals to many demographics particularly younger people but i was not really a very diverse state is so i gain a return to this question about just how much whites are repealed does he have sights of the state of iowa or perhaps sides of the younger mutes a politics a kind of demographic because he does tend to receive some quite harsh criticism from not just people on the right but certainly within the democratic party of which he is a member. well here's here's what we know america the electorate in america is becoming younger and browner so for instance tonight in iowa and i was in i was helping with this effort tonight in iowa there are many satellite caucuses places that are caucuses for the 1st time the bernie sanders campaign was able to help the muslim community there make 5 mosques as new polling sites and caucus sites in iowa and those places are overwhelmingly going for bernie sanders and so we have a campaign here that is directly reaching out to communities that have been disaffected or untouched by many political campaigns in the past so bernie has this wide appeal yes he appeals to people that are sort of a lot of traditional white voters but the truth is those groups are becoming smaller brown voters black voters young voters we've all seen they're overwhelmingly going for bernie and their numbers are growing in the overall electorate i mean tonight if it's a close election it could be the arab american and muslim american vote that puts bernie over the top in iowa so any group can tilt an election and bernie is only campaign that's appealing to these groups especially our arab american and muslim american communities that have been forgotten for so long by the political process bernie sanders reaches out to us ok remains to be seen whether the moves of american votes is the is the vote to elect the president but what happens if he doesn't get the nomination if he doesn't become the democratic nominee or his supports is prepared to get behind the nominee that the entire country cheese sees or is it bernie or bust. no i mean this is another narrative that people put out tonight there's been many people interviewed that said that they would support the democratic nominee no matter what in 2016 studies came out that said anywhere from 88 to 94 percent of bernie's supporters voted for hillary clinton whereas in 2008 something like only 75 percent of hillary clinton supporter supporters voted for barack obama so the notion that our voters and our followers are stubborn people who are burning for a bus this is another false narrative out there in the media we are going to win this nomination and we're going to lead america in a new direction so i'm not entertaining the notion right now of bernie doesn't when all think about that in a few months of that happens right now we're on the road to win this nomination and unite america and make sure our ideas are the ones that show the american people the path forward ok i'm going to get your thoughts thank you so much indeed for joining us on al-jazeera. thanks now after 2 weeks of debates both sides presenting their closing arguments in the impeachment trial of u.s. president donald trump democrats say trump pressured ukraine's investigate a political rival and withheld security as leverage but sees expected to be acquitted of the charges by the republican majority senate's on wednesday i do joe castro has more from washington said it will convene as a court of impeachment chaplain will lead us in prayer for the final time democrat serving as president trumps prosecutors made the case for his removal he has betrayed our national security and he will do so again he has compromised our elections and he will do so again you will not change him you cannot constrain him he is who he is truth matters little to him what's right matters even less and decency matters not at all but these arguments are mere formality the conclusion all but certain that the republican senators making up the jury's majority will vote to acquit trump they said so themselves i think what he did is a long way from treason bribery high crimes and misdemeanors democrats have known from the beginning their effort to remove trump was a long shot they argue they nevertheless tried because the constitution required it the question now is how this impeachment will impact trumps reelection bid in november trumps lawyers maintain american voters should be who decides the president's fate and if you do not like the policies were particularly ministration or particular candidate you are free and welcome to vote for another candidate but the answer is elections not impeachment. trumps approval rating is currently the highest it's been since he took office on tuesday he'll tell his administration's accomplishments at his annual state of the union address a chance to revel in his impending acquittal. hi joe castro al-jazeera washington plenty more so to come on the news hour including the chinese community in the philippines is facing growing is still a thing over the corona virus outbreak. excluded from workers protections human rights groups say a quarter of a 1000000 migrants in lebanon are vulnerable to abuse. and the superstar of the super bowl is living the dream at disney world and it's more it's part. of a death toll from the coronavirus site break in china has risen to $425.00 days after dozens more deaths were reported in who bay province the epicenter of the outbreak is more than 20000 confirmed cases across china and the virus is continuing to spread elsewhere with more than $150.00 cases confirmed in $23.00 countries the pressure is growing on hong kong authorities to contain the new virus with the territory shutting down most of its border with mainland china tonight of 13 cross and have been cool's earlier on monday hundreds of medical workers went on strike demanding that the border be shot completely. well a.j. and brian jones is there live from hong kong for the latest on the story at aging your beside one of the few border crossings is still open we'll carry one they go a step further and cause the fronts here completely. well she's certainly under pressure to do that however but i don't think she's going to be for the very simple reason a lot of people who leave hong kong to cross the border every day work in chains in that city on the other side of the border you know thousands of hong kong people live and work in cheyenne san as well they go backwards and forwards it's a very very busy border and she's saying that's one reason why she doesn't want to close the border the other reason is that hong kong is very reliant on food from the mainland vegetables milk that all comes in and has to be trucked in so there are very practical reasons for wanting to keep the front here over behind me you can see the bridge that connects hong kong with china at this bridge was opened less than 3 years ago it is if you like a concrete reminder of the deepening times between hong kong and china but very little traffic moving on it today this is one of only 3 basic ways of now entering hong kong from the mainland the other being another crossing point in shands in bay and also the international airport which is very close by where i'm standing at the moment and age and the leadership in beijing they've been doing some soul searching admitting failures in the response to the virus a break how rare is that. well what happened last night was a meeting of the standing committee of the politburo this is the most powerful political body you know in the country and what was interesting was that was the language that came out of that meeting they said that you know basically the system had failed they said there had been deficiencies and shortcomings this is very rare sort of language to hear this was the senior leadership of the party essentially admitting that they had failed the people they said that officials who were responsible would have to be punished they said that china would have to improve the way that it responded to these sorts of national emergencies in the future now this was all came in a report from the official news agency shin while which was then broadcast on state t.v. but again we saw no images of president xi jinping he has been in many ways sort of in conspicuous for the last couple of weeks he of course left it to his premier league chung to visit and last week he made a very high profile visit to the epicenter of this fire is here in hong kong of course we have this ongoing strike by medical workers this is entering its 2nd day last night talks to try to prevent these workers continuing their action sales these workers are part of a newly formed union that's born out of the protest movement and they are saying that their actions here to continue until all the crossing points between hong kong and china a close they say that's the only way of containing this virus but carolan has said that that is discriminatory and also goes against the guidelines of the of the world health organization so a lot stand to be happening in hong kong today i think we did see some you know raised passions in hong kong because a lot of people are unhappy that these medical workers are going on strike the government saying they should put the interests of patients 1st i mean a number of operations had to be canceled. a monday including patients being treated you know for cancer but you know supporters of the medical workers say that you know during the sars epidemic a 17 years ago medical workers bore the brunt of that outbreak ok agent brian life is in hong kong and i thank you. that in the philippines the spread of the virus is fueling reports of racism and xenophobia towards the chinese asian nation confirmed its 1st death from the virus and sun city fronting a temporary travel ban to one from china want to be low reports night from manila. empty streets empty shops and empty restaurants this is manila chinatown bustling on almost any day of the year but recent days have been anything but normal fear has gripped the city's chinese community as a corona virus outbreak continues to spread the community itself has now become a target of discrimination on facebook photos of chinese businessmen distributing face masks were met with offensive comments this one reads you can keep those face masks go home to china one university was criticized for a memo require isolation for all its chinese students regardless of travel history . a number of chinese schools however took it a step further by suspending classes altogether for 2 weeks the beauty of the beauty that we have because. they think you know. it's not only because you know it's also about to come to. you i know. many people. and it's not just in the philippines elsewhere in asia there are examples on social media has still of the against those who chinese if this city leaders of the chinese filipino community however say the issue of racism has been blown out of proportion you know this could mean anything the chinese were going to and this would mean the thing is the koran why it was the good though then the this from the bin those came from and then his coughing and then the reason in the bin as i would do it thank him. community