Rain from a record breaking monsoon season in indonesia has thousands of flood victims blaming the government for not being prepared to. Conflict through the eyes of children a sneak peek at 2 critically acclaimed movies the viewing at the Berlin Film Festival. Hello the United States and south korea have indefinitely postponed joint military exercises as a result of the corona Virus Outbreak south korea has recorded its highest number of cases in a single day so far pushing the total number of people in fact its almost 1600 and in the middle east saudi arabia has announced its temporarily halting visas for both the on the pilgrimage and for people coming in from affected countries. Iraq has closed schools universities and banned public gatherings as well as flights from several countries and qatar has ordered the evacuation of cats harry and co wady says it citizens from iran due to the spread of infections there over the us President Donald Trump has appointed Vice President mike pence to lead the response against corona Virus Outbreak and an hour long press Conference Trump downplayed any criticism of his handling of the issue but were very very ready for this for anything whether its going to be a breakout of larger proportions or whether or not were you know were at that very low level and we want to keep it that way so were at the low level as they get better we take them off the list so that were going to be pretty soon at only 5 people and we could be at just one or 2 people over the next short period of time so weve had very good luck and in europe rons has recorded its 2nd death while italy has confirmed its 12th and the man who returned to brazil after visiting italy has become latin americas 1st case globally more than 81000 cases of corona virus have been recorded in 44 countries and territories robert bride is joining us from seoul with more on the developments from south korea and we have confirmation that the u. S. And south korea are calling off their joint military exercises because of the virus rob what more can you tell us on that. Thats right theres been growing expectations here that these exercises would have to be postponed and now weve had confirmation of it if anything it would have been strange if they had gone ahead hosted by a government which is telling its own people to avoid crowds do stage exercises that bring thousands of soldiers together so they have been postponed we had yesterday the 1st confirmed case of a u. S. Service personnel getting the coronavirus and we have various quarantine provisions in place of the number of bases military bases in south korea its interesting these these spring exercises are always controversial it always provokes and angers north korea but they have always been staged for decades now even during times of heightened hostility with north korea they have gone ahead even the last couple of years when weve had this process of reconciliation and they have still gone ahead but its taken this coronavirus now to put an end to them at least till later on this year also south korea is coming to terms with the growing number of countries and territories basically imposing travel restrictions up to 40 countries now have travel restrictions back and forth with south korea the latest being the u. S. State department to re raising its alert level telling its citizens to seriously reconsider any travel plans to south korea and what about the latest numbers that youre hearing of bring us up to date with. The number of new infections that south korea is reporting. You know this has been the largest single spike in new cases 334 bringing the total up to nearly 1600 so it is a cause for heightened concern here there are some respects quite alarming but then to look at the Positive Side there is increased testing the especially around the daegu city area in the southeast corner of the country the governments been really pushing its testing Testing Centers on the number of people being tested so we could expect to see a spike like this in fact in the last 24 hours 7 and a half 1000 tests and these tests are quite complicated. Involve a lot of personnel hours to conduct them so they have been conducted in the past 24 hours and in particular we are seeing more members of this church the sheen showing g. Church of jesus which is at the center of the outbreaks down in the southeast of the country were seeing more of those members being tested who are proving positive and in fact of the 1000 test results that have come back from Church Members a staggering 82 percent have proved to be positive all right robin wright thank you for that update from seoul. Kimberly healthcare is at the white house with more on president trumps coronavirus briefing. The u. S. President may be eating his words when it comes to some of the numbers he really tried to stress the and downplay the number of cases of corona virus in the United States originally talking about the original 15 as he called it but we know that there are at least 60 confirmed cases in the United States including one case in Northern California where Public Health officials are not exactly sure how that transmission occurred given this person had not immediately returned from china had not had any contact perhaps you know with the Cruise Ship Passengers or any other so this is something that is very concerning theres also the concern that by the fact that there is not adequate testing in the United States very few people lee hundreds have been tested versus thousands in other countries so there has been an effort by the trumpet ministration to cut it down play but many are questioning the facts given the fact that there is not sort of this widespread Public Health response that is currently in place having said that as the president tried to sort of allay the fears of the American Public the Public Health officials here at the white house who appeared with him didnt quite do that in fact they said that its time for businesses to put their pandemic plans in place that schools should be doing the same and they also prepare the American Public for a rise in the number of cases weve seen here in the u. S. So as we mentioned drastic measures have been announced in iraq to stop the spread of the virus 0 simona for those in baghdad and shes us its unclear how the containment measures will be enforced. Ministry of health issued a new decree earlier this evening announcing far reaching measures in what appears to be an effort to her terrible spread of the virus here in iraq so far there have been 5. 100 cases of the coronavirus including in the southern cities of measure and in the Northern City of kirkuk perhaps in the most surprising what measures to help ministry has said it would be for building any public gatherings closing down her face sooner and that clubs prevent that lyras from spreading and now its uncertain what exactly will fall under these public gatherings the degree specifically mentioned tastes in the most and clubs did not for example mention restaurants or gentlemens to be seen whether those will also be closed and whether and how these measures will actually be enforced so neighboring iran has announced Domestic Travel restrictions at least 19 people have died there and more than one 130. 00 are infected including the Deputy Health minister zambia striving isnt to her on. During a weekly Cabinet Meeting iranian president Hassan Rouhani struck an optimistic tone saying that the reports about containing the coronavirus in iran are promising a taskforce set up earlier this week by the president including senior members of the government and armed forces he said are making gains in controlling the spread of the disease something that has become a major Public Health crisis here in the country he also addressed public concerns about whether or not the information coming from officials could actually be trusted this after a member of parliament representing the city of home where the 1st case was detected said the number of cases and deaths from this virus are far higher than official figures reported by the government heres what the president had to say about that and i dont mean. I emphasize that we dont manipulate the figures we know the increase no decrease them nor do we exaggerate or downplay him ive told the Health Ministry to announce the figures they have this is a plot we see today in foreign propaganda recently a high ranking u. S. Official made a comment about coronavirus in iran that it themselves are dealing with the flu 16000 died because of that the cea but they dont talk about it and now they are turning their attention to corona virus in iran earlier this week president Hassan Rouhani also said that the situation in the country could begin to normalize as early as saturday just a matter of days now but during a briefing by the spokesman for the countrys Health Ministry he said that the government officials are expecting the number of coronavirus cases in iran to go up in coming days lets speak to dr van thats a hes an affiliate assistant professor of Health Metrics sciences at the university of washington hes joining us via skype from seattle hi there thanks for speaking to us on aljazeera so lets talk about some of these measures being put put in place in the middle east iraq banning all public gatherings in suspending schools in universities saudi arabia as well temporarily suspending entry to the kingdom for religious purposes and several countries shutting their borders with iran how effective are these measures in your opinion. They are ineffective and what we know about or intervening in the study of a pandemic is that it doesnt work earlier in the report we talked about a patient of that in Northern California who has the virus tested positive for it without a compelling travel history this goes to what weve been talking about now for the past month which is corona virus can be transmitted in a sense a matic fashion a piece you can happen in the saliva they can transmitted to someone else. And given that transmission hatter and we havent seen anything like this in recent history at least flu sars mers you you had a cough to transmit that disease coronavirus its different so how are we going to quarantine or block all borders to some of protect global Public Health is not going to work diseases like this find a way this is just going to cause massive steria in yeah but this is also about a reassuring the public what is the risk to the public at the moment particularly in this region in the middle east whats your assessment. So i think theres an old lets draw a line between preempting gatherings of like gabbys and mek and medina i think that that is forward thinking that makes sense to me if we can prevent a large gathering of people as a pandemic may be happening regionally ok that makes sense to me it doesnt make sense though to close off borders to quarantine to stop flights when we cant even detect. Coronavirus accurate you cant do a United States you cant do it on the Health Systems it takes too much time the technology isnt there so how we can basically a group of individuals who are suspected disease we dont even have a good way of testing for it this is just going to create more chaos more public distrust of government not increasing trust and so i think we need to really focus on whats the truth here the truth is we just dont have Good Technology to test for chronic irises we should be instituting policies like norms and what about the even medical equipment in the infrastructure to deal with this in the middle east how do you assess the countrys capabilities and particularly we know that there have been several countries that a war torn countries whose Health Systems have been weakened by war so how worrying would an outbreak in those countries be like iraq syria yemen for example. I dont think that you are touching on the point that concerns us. A pan and epidemic pandemic and for going there calling this a pandemic it will become a pandemic because it takes root in countries like you just mentioned syria yemen iraq these are countries that have fragmented Health Systems at best were being generous in calling them fragmented theyre very weak they have no ability to accurately detect surveil much less treat patients with chronic virus with any degree of precision or confidence how so of course this is going to take root and this is the concern that detainee groups and others of the job he messaging on that if we cannot control coronavirus its going to take root in Subsaharan Africa and take root systems in the middle east and come fall in 2020 in the in the western hemisphere so Start Research way to again across the globe this is the major issue here are we arent talking enough about it all right we appreciate you giving us your analysis dr van thanks very much. Still ahead on aljazeera. A bird in the u. S. Becomes the latest. And the ference funeral for egypts former long time president forced from power during the 2011 revolution. Welcome back home have a look at weather conditions across the americas the main feature in north america is the snow across ontario into quebec and eventually pushing into newfoundland and so thats really quite heavy the front itself associated with the rain across eastern seaboard is moving away so fine conditions roughly speaking for many areas moving on through into friday snow begins to clear away little bit of rain across some more eastern areas and fine across the west except for the Pacific Northwest where we have got some rain and indeed snow Higher Elevations into central parts of america weve got these strong winds extending further towards assize during the course of thursday so run into the gulf of sirte should get better but as we move further into wards guatemala and honduras and its looking very wet and search for coastal parts of honduras and caribbean side that would like to see. Times as a move the forecast through to friday not a great deal of change that rain really a static so large amount is going to build up from any of his the caribbean weather conditions are looking pretty good because we had done it to south america we have seen in recent days some very heavy rain affecting southern parts of peru some really severe flooding has been occurring in placing say mudslides of course some fatalities still some heavy showers in the forecast the past looking at highs of 12. Americans live side by side in 2 parallel universes the truck parts of america are getting trampy or there is a poll out a few weeks ago that you had 30 percent americans believing they were on the cusp of civil war both sides accuse each other of doing things that are so plainly wrong the bottom line on u. S. Politics and policies and their effect on the world. There is no channel that covering world views like we do revisit a thing ill just say are really invested in them and thats a privilege as a journalist. The end. Hello again the top stories on aljazeera the United States and south korea joint military exercises as a result of the corona Virus Outbreak south korea has just reported its highest number of cases in a single day so far pushing the total number of people infected to almost 1600. 00. U. S. President donald trump says his country is ready for any potential outbreak of coronavirus that the u. S. Would spend whatever is appropriate to come back they dont know this trump also pointed Vice President mike pence to manage the countrys response. At least 5 people have been killed in a mass shooting in the u. S. State of a walkie and the attack took place at the headquarters of the most and poors Brewing Company local media reporting that the shooter is now dead. This is a time for us to think about those families. Because there are 5 individuals who went to work today. Just like everybody goes to work. And they thought they were going to go to work. Finish their day and return to their families. They didnt. And tragically they never will. Indias Prime MinisterNarendra Modi has called for calm after 4 days of violence in new delhi at least 25 people have lost their lives and more than 200 are injured in hospitals and there is now anger over the decision to transfer the capitals 3rd highest ranking judge after he criticised both the central and state governments as well as the local police force Tony Berkeley reports from delhi. Im going there no no no after the street battle subsided wednesday was a day hindus and muslims mourn the loss of loved ones after some of the worst violence delhi has suffered in decades this is the funeral of muhammad 1st can a father of 2 who was killed when the violence began a few days ago he was on the way to shops to buy food for his kids at a bus the college i received a call saying that my brother has been shot i couldnt believe it i was with him an hour earlier i rushed to the hospital but i found that he was already dead he doesnt know who was responsible. That both sides of the Community Hindus and muslims have suffered outside the morgue of the state run hospital relishes await the completion of