On a ceasefire in the going to karabakh. Unrest in athens after leaders of the far right Golden Dawn Party a found guilty of running a criminal gang. And for the 1st time in its history the nobel prize for chemistry is said by 2 women that were developing the ability to edit d. N. A. The 2 candidates to be the next Vice President of the United States are preparing for a showdown in Salt Lake City in the coming hour as clear plastic barriers will separate my pens and call me the house who both reportedly tested negative for corona virus but the virus is likely to dominate the 90 minute debate which will focus on president Trumps Health and has been astray sions handling of the pandemic. Amidst the head spinning events of the past week the Vice President ial debate on wednesday takes on unprecedented significance this is going to be a critically important debate usually v. P. Debates are side shows with the kids dates earnestly discussing issues and tossing the occasional verbal zinger but as Vice President mike pence and senator camel harris take to the stage in Salt Lake City the main issue is literally a matter of life or death i think theres going to be an enormous. Focus on the president s health mr bidens health as well frankly they are the 2 oldest president ial nominees in American History but right now with the president ill and some questions swirling about how truly ill he is it really puts into stark contrast what this debate is actually about in it it is making sure that a person is ready to become president at a moments notice in terms of substance the debate will almost certainly focus on how the trumpet ministration has handled the pandemic that puts pince who chairs the White House Coronavirus task force in a difficult spot he ran the task force he was chosen by the president to do it he was responsible for those early you know statements about just flattening the curbs i mean i imagine those that are working with county laris in preparation for this debate are spending a lot of their time coming up with creative ways to lay this all at the feet of the Vice President and the president the style of the 2 candidates is quite different pences stoic unflappable and unlikely to get rattled on stage hes a seasoned debater and his experience as a radio talk show host in the 1990 s. Prepared him to think on his feet harris a former courtroom prosecutor has shown her ability to disconcert Administration Officials in Senate Hearings i wouldnt i wouldnt. Yes im not a trick if you repeat that question i will repeat it with great uncertainty over whether the 2 remaining president ial debates will take place at all the showdown in Salt Lake City may be the last debate before election day in a campaign full of unpredictable twists. Well rob reynolds joins us now from Salt Lake City utah where the Vice President debate will take place but that 1st president ial debate between Thompson Biden was short on policy and big on shouting how could these 2 compadre think well see a more civil discussion on that candidates vision for america i think we can all count on that sally and i think it is generally acknowledged even within the Republican Party that President Trumps. Unhinged performance in cleveland in the 1st debate was bad for him was bad for the party and numerous polls showed that the voters agreed with that. As joe biden gained ground on the president nationally and in several states after that debate so what he can expect to see here i think is a much more civil whats more sort of normal political discourse between the 2 candidates thats not to say that they wont spar with one another verbal e but that does happen in debates but as far as screaming over one another i think that americans have had plenty of that lately and voters will reward candidates who appear to do a more normal job of politics i mean and as well the styles of the 2 candidates are much different no one of course has the same style as President Donald Trump but. Mike pence the Vice President is very kind of unflappable he is very quick on his feet he has had this training as a talk show host before he began his political career he knows how to slip in a very subtle dig but do so in a court of sort of you know hand you know a velvet glove type of manner on the other hand kamel harris less experienced at debating but she had some standout moments in her de debates when she was running for the democratic nomination at the expense of joe biden in some cases so shes good with a prepared line but i think what her job is here is to put the focus squarely on covert 19 on the 210000 more dead in the United States and on the fact that Vice President pence at least nominally in the early days headed up the White House Task force that was supposed to deal with the covert 19 pandemic so hopefully most civil but the has already been some tension between the 2 camps as a new kind of admissions to be used during the debate what more can you tell us. Right so originally they were supposed to be about a metre apart seated now they going to be more or less 2 metres apart and the Congressional Committee on president ial debates the commission has decreed that no one in the hall except for the 2 candidates and the moderator susan page of the newspaper usa today will be allowed to go bask list as you recall in cleveland the trump family and some of their guests they do all took off their masks as soon as they walked in this time anybody who takes off their mass is going to be escorted out according to the commission now the question of plexiglass shields it comes up because of course President Trump has been with President Trump who has coded and hes been in the white house which is rife with covert 19 at the moment so it was. Suggested by the biden harris camp that there be a plexiglass divider between the 2 the. Trump parents camp tried to make that into an issue they they mocked harris they said if she wants to build a plexiglas fortress around herself thats just fine with us so she will have a divider near her not so much for Vice President pence so you know covert 19 is is reshaping the way these political debates are taking place and we still dont know of course whether in fact the president ial candidates themselves will have another debate President Trump wants to vice former Vice President biden says hell follow the science. Run on funding the debate and lake city thanks and. Polls consistently show that one in 5 American Voters do not have a strong opinion of either of the Vice President ial candidates so there is an opportunity for the shift to for them to shift the Voter Perception and it source poll released on tuesday shows kamel or her school as a higher fave ability rating with 45 percent of voters viewing her positively mike pence cooled 37 percent mike pence scores more favorably amongst white voters with a 47 percent rating 32 percent view karma harris positively but 48 percent of black voters back harriss pence manages just 16 percent favor betty and in polling conducted off of President Trump announced his Coronavirus Diagnosis 62 percent of americans said they thought pence was qualified to serve as president men were 12 percent more likely than women to agree with that statement well for more on this lets speak to long a concern shes a professor of Political Science at the university of new mexico and she joins us via skype from albuquerque thank you for joining us professor tell us what is the role of the v. P. Debates and how are they generally viewed by the public well you know we certainly watch them the Vice President ial debates are not the biggest focus usually because obviously thats on the president but theyre obviously in this case more important because of the. Possible decline in both of the candidates on both sides of the aisle so theyre very important and bennett is currently head of the countrys covert tussles but he also has to back his president who did tweet that covert is no no more lethal than the common flu how can he possibly reconcile those 2 roles and will horace use this as a way to attack him. Absolutely the Democratic Campaign in harris will focus on combet that is the weakest evaluation of President Trump and so you know trying to set the agenda and get the focus on that is what they want to do in order to maintain the negative feelings towards the current president and his staff and we know that the republicans are planning to paint comma horris as radically left wing how do you think she will will counter that what you think will be well her strategy is going to align herself with biden who is seen as a moderate shes going to talk about how shes the Vice President and shes going to be following his lead and thats going to be her focus and what kind of tone do you think they need to strike in this debate to persuade those undecided voters to vote for their candidate well i think they need to have a good dialogue they need to have a discussion that is you know not filled with yelling which i dont think it will be and i think they need to get their points across so the more that the harris can buy and Harris Campaign can talk about combet and the more is going to be good for them and the more that the. Trump Pence Campaign can talk about the economy thats going to be good for them and what i dont really have different in terms of their focus what about their backgrounds mike pence former radio host. California prosecutor how will that help play into this debate tonight. They are both going to be excellent sparring partners with each other in terms of a debate they both have a lot of experience as a prosecutor radio host and as u. S. Senators where they spar on the floor of the u. S. Senate so this is going to be a. More. Typical debate than what we saw previously on actress and from the university of new mexico thank you for joining us thank you so much and you can watch live coverage of the Vice President ial debate right here on aljazeera thats from 01 g. M. T. On thursday morning coming up on aljazeera this news hour confusion over who is in charge of kurdistan as opposition parties pitch that a replacement after the Prime Ministers resignation. 7 years after the kenya want to tag guilty verdicts are handed down to 2 men for their involvement in the massacre of. The Foreign Ministers of armenia and azerbaijan will meet separately with the u. S. France and russia over the coming days the talks in geneva nasca aimed at convincing the warring sides to negotiate a cease fire and then to go in a car back region hundreds have been killed during 11 days of fighting and both sides have accused each other of targeting civilians sin and cos yoga reports. Well was a teacher who was killed 2 days ago when a software johns and to city was hit by rockets. She was struck by fragments in the back and other parts of her body on National Teachers say. Her sisters are mourning saying that they got. Big you showed the atrocity against our civilians here she died and how our inhouse quote on how we act we are all ready to die for our lands. In the backyard of her house her neighbors gather to honor her memory the rocket left its traces on the ground and on the walls. Shares rather so ill guard was also caught in that attack he shows or his house was also hit by a rocket and then called fire. These paper boxes were scattered after day explosion his son collects and sells them to make a living. Situation whatever we were at home 3 rockets hit this way then i went out my son told me it would be dangerous there were 9 people at home 5 were our guests displaced from elsewhere now all family members are staying with our relatives around here just as. The Azerbaijan National agency for mine action or out of us a stone rockets hit the city Affairs Office over 5 a day you want us or break john accuse our menu of indiscriminate the targeting several cities an accusation our menu has also leveled against us our base jump in their conflict over knock on the car of our. Nagar knock out a box main city or step on a carriage suffered the most intensive not time more bargeman since the previous weekend according to the car about where its been more than 70000 people or 50 percent off now going up car bucks population loss to women and children are estimated to have been displaced russian president Vladimir Putin has called for the end to what he described as a tragedy and free but i do it all fathers and brothers and everyone will fight to the end thats it our people wont be broken this land is ours was ours and will continue to be else the fighting is the worst round of violence between the 2 countries since the early 1990 s. Then 30000 people were killed and thousands displaced un resolutions and International Organizations have demanded the whats role of the Armenian Forces from the ground and at jason does there is citys many World Leaders have called for a sea. Fire. And Ethnic Armenians both claim these lenses that there is their battle has spilled over into cities far from the front side and neither side seems to be ready to step back see them also see rami to charles our picture theres confusion over who has taken over as kyrgyzstans Prime Minister following coup but back bar enoughs resignation a replacement was named after a parliamentary session on cheese day but a group of opposition parties says that choice is invalid and has nominated that own man for the job he uncertainty follows the inno meant of sundays parliamentary election that many say was rigged Charles Stratford is in bishkek following one of the challenges for leadership. Were inside the Prime Ministers office here in risk working for the arrival of the man who describes himself as being the only legitimate Prime Minister of this country sorry to part of now he was voted to become the new Prime Minister last night in an emergency parliamentary session but according to opposition figures there were not enough m. P. s in that session to make him a legitimate leader in any kind of vote so were expecting a meeting now which we are of and other opposition figures. The situation can only be described as very tense there is a sense that nobody is in control of this country and your power of himself told a television station earlier today that he believed that there were forces in kyrgyzstan trying to mount what he described as a counter revolution. His supporters say he is the man to help lead this country into the crisis is in the community such as your party is supporting young people so weak she support him or Something Else is a trying to divide and smear like i said. There are many here lists a full suit with the new Prime Minister. Saying that their customers to show them that if we are to put carries point between a pattern and a good life its up to us we havent got. The meeting between over members of the opposition parties never happened by early evening there was an explanation why the coalition of 13 opposition parties has now nominated its own candidates to be the countrys Prime Minister has described the parliamentary session devoted to make salt or japan or of the Prime Minister yesterday as invalid it is demanded that a new parliamentary session be held to vote on the issue in a secret location there are growing concerns in the clearest capital this evening that were beginning to witness what could potentially be a serious standoff between supporters of mr parr of and other opposition parties a growing sense of uncertainty here in kyrgyzstan with no real understanding of whos in charge of this country well lets speak now to any advice love hes the ambassador of the republic to the u. K. And he joins us via skype from london thank you for joining us tell us who is in charge in kurdistan. Our country has a functioning Parliament Just for to report we have a fully functioning parliament the incumbent parliament there still in force and well be legitimate by did it our best course inside and outside the country until our new parliament is installed and then we have the. Incumbent president the head of state who is also as i would just a much constitutional figure and boss arthur iced of course. To what what is got currently going on and i know it looks quite. Sometimes very noisy but this is how democracy looks l