Hello, im karin giannone, this is outside source. The un warns of a humanitarian catastrophe in ethiopia after nearly two weeks of conflict in the tigray region. We are needing desperately to have access, unhindered, unconditional access to the refugees. 30 000 ethiopians have fled to neighbouring sudan almost half of them are thought to be children. Well look at the regional implications with our sub sa ha ran security analyst. The ceos of facebook and twitter defend the role of their tech platforms in the us election as they face a grilling from senators for the second time in three weeks. Terrifying scenes in colombia as a powerful category four hurricane hits its coast. Well be live from bogota. A development in kenya after an africa eye investigation uncovers shocking evidence of child trafficking in nairobi. Within 2a through 48 hours within 24 through 48 hours we should have arrested anybody who was involved in this issue. The un is warning that a full scale humanitarian crisis is unfolding in ethiopia where a two week conflict in tigray is threatening to descend into civil war. Up to 30,000 people have fled a government offensive by Ethiopian Forces against tigrays powerful local leaders the tplf. Hundreds have died in the fighting. The government has rejected calls for mediation and had this message earlier. They would not hesitate to strike anybody around, create havoc and hysteria in ethiopia and that would result in civil war. That is why the government and we now we keep on nicely go along. Its almost impossible to verify any information from tigray. Virtually all communications are blocked. These are the latest pictures we have from the region. This was broadcast on state media and is said to show celebrations of federal troops arriving into the town of raya alamata. The onslaught continues. Earlier Prime Minister abiy ahmed warned a three day deadline for local forces to surrender has now lapsed. He posted this message on facebook threatening final enforcement action in the coming days. In the past few hours hes said his troops are marching on the regional capital mekelle which is held by tplf. And hes claiming significant victories. 5 Million People live in tigray and aid agencies warn theyre unable to reach those who need help because of the deteriorating security situation. Heres the unhcrs assessment of what its hearing about the situation in tigray. We are needing desperately to have access unhindered, unconditional access to the refugees but also the other 600,000 among the population of ethiopians who depend on humanitarian assistance. We have had no responses so far. We also need access to bringing supplies, fewer, very little food in the market, cash is nonexistent because the banks have been closed for weeks now and so its really a dire humanitarian situation that we are facing that we have not seen for over two decades in this part of the country. This is playing out across ethiopias border. The un estimates 4 thousand refugees are crossing into sudan daily. Were told half of them are children. This Border Crossing is now overwhelmed. Were told many arriving here are hungry and exhausted from the heat. Conditions here are very poor. There is no electricity or clean water. This is the um raquba camp which once housed refugees during ethiopias famine in the 805. Its been closed since the 2000s but has reopened to cope with the influx. Heres another unhcr spokesperson dana hughes assessing the situation in sudan. Because this is an area that has not seen displacement as i said in light over a decade, almost two, this is an area where we had a Reception Centre for about 300 people and now it is trying to keep track of at least and help 15,000 people with more people coming. We have taken immediate steps working with the Sudanese Government to try and provide assistance. We have identified a site about 80 km away from the border that we are trying to at least set up a settlement to a camp someplace where people can go so we can give them immediate assistance. Refugees from tigray are also reporting horrific accounts of violence in the region including street shootings and machete killings. Heres dana hughes again. This happened so quickly and for the refugees that we are talking to, they are stunned. There is i woman that we interviewed and she talked about how less than a week ago her life was fairly normal and for five days she has been searching for her husband, she had to grab her children and people just ran. They randomly really nothing more than what was on their backs. So, i think at this point what people are hoping for is peace and to be safe and to be secure. Beverly 0chieng is our sub sa ha ran security analyst in nairobi. How reliable the information is that were getting from tigray and what more do we know what defence capabilities does this they later test appears to be that they have been able to make victories in eastern and western to ground and yesterday their voices except they have bombings in the capital and ethiopia has denied this in another statement and said it is making strikes and there have been no civilian casualties but we can see thousands of people have seen the conflict of the kind of stories coming out from un agencies and those arriving in sedan are quite terrifying. Ethiopia seems to be very keen to control the narrative of the contract. It started a new twitter account which issues daily updates and its called state of emergency and its difficult to co operate or verify that information. 0fficials
co operate or verify that information. Officials have made them issue statements and from rhetoric on the potential impact of the crisis both in ethiopia and the region and to issue threats. It does not seem as though there will be anything that focus on the humanitarian aspect of it or into will just cover that humanitarian aspect of it or into willjust cover that up and most of what we are seeing is a strong conflict. Local force, the tplf have how strong are they . The Northern Command which sparked off the conflict except to be one the most well equipped and very little clarity on what but it makes sense because the tp and f have been the governing force for many years. Nearly 27 years. But then the strategy is more of concern. Its creating what seems to be a long, drawn out conflict when the Prime Minister announced the operation he said no he limited the aims but the
tpf was also framing that a region which shows the potential of it brewing into a bigger conflict and trying in many and that leaders are very experienced in welfare when you think about the border while in 1998 to 2000 or even in the 19705 fighting against them and being able to co ordinate that power. So it is a strategic experience. Thi5 hasnt come out of the blue. Tensions have been building for years between the federal government and the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front which runs tigray. That came to a head in september when the government postponed national elections. The tplf defied the ban and held a vote anyway. That was declared illegal. The tplf sees the federal government as illegitimate accu5ing Prime Minister abiy ahmed of trying to extend his time in office a charge mr abiy denies. Heres the analysis of Kalkidan Yibeltal in addis ababa on what support he has. The initial phase he seemed to enjoy it wide popularity but that appeared to have dwindled now and since this conflict broke out he seems to be enjoying some Popular Support at lea5t enjoying some Popular Support at least for example in the capital area today there were caused by his administration to show support for the defence voices and admin forces and there was a lot of clapping and shouting and screaming and singing. People are expressing their support. Last year Prime Minister abiy ahmed was celebrated worldwide when he won the nobel peace prize. When he accepted the award he called war the epitome of hell. The Financial Times tells us how this is playing out now the declaration of hostilities is likely to further undermine, beverly 0chieng is our sub sa ha ran security
analyst in nairobi. What a difference a year makes. That is sent to me true. It seems as though his credentials are severely eroding over the period when he had pendulums its been very strong rhetoric coming from him and right 110w rhetoric coming from him and right now he has projected any calls for talks and many people expect he would have paid the way for talks. He seems like a reform is coming but i suppose many of the changes he was implementing including to the political system in postponing the election, it raised a lot of political tensions and in some ways this conflict was getting into the kind of rhetoric that was brewing over all these months and perhaps a bit of a let down for many and he was going to be changing. Some breaking news to bring you. We have been looking at an announcement from the pentagon but it is announcing a withdrawal of troops from afghanistan. Us forces in afghanistan from around four and a half thousand to two and a half thousand before donald Trump Leaves Office. So, the united statesjust announcing that it will withdraw around 500 troops from iraq and afghanistan according to this copy to leave around two and a half thousand voices. So a major withdrawal of troops in afghanistan about 500 coming back from iraq and 2000 coming back from afghanistan before donald Trump Leaves Office on the 20th of january. We will bring you more on that here on outside sites. The kenyan government says it will make arrests within days after an investigation by bbc africa eye uncovered evidence of child trafficking. The year long investigation
found evidence of illegal child trafficking in street clinics and babies being stolen to order at a major government run hospital. Using undercover investigators to infiltrate one of the networks, a bbc africa eye team witnessed children being stolen and sold on the streets and offered for sale in illegal clinics. Kenyas minister for labour and social protection simon chella gooey said the whole government was shocked by what was uncovered. They stopped all of us right from the top, our president s, and the cabinets and everyone who as a parent or as a child would feel very disturbed with this kind of expose. The minister said immediate action was being taken, including by the police. The police are down investigating this matter and within 24 hours we should be seeing arrests of those who were seen the clip and we are going deeper than the clip. We also want to understand what the children officers were doing and what the administrators and their medical
superintendent of the facility and any other facility we are also testing the security of other facilities like the Maternity Home in nairobi and the Maternity Hospital and all other hospitals. Notjust nairobi but across the country. For more on this story head to the bbc news website. Thats at bbc. Com slash news. And youll find all the details of that year long special investigation by bbc africa eye into kenyan child trafficking rings. The bosesses of twitter and facebook have defended their approach to tackling misinformation during the us election campaign. Jack dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg faced lawmakers in the senate today. Part of the discussion was president Donald Trumps post election tweets and this stand off between
the New York Post and twitter in october over a story that made unverified claims about the president electjoe bidens son hunter. Both facebook and twitter had intervened to limit its spread. Heres the senator lindsey graham. What i want to try to find out is if youre not a newspaper or twitter 01 facebook then maybe you have editorial control over the New York Post . They decided and maybe for a good reason, i dont know, that the New York Post articles about hunter biden needed to be flagged, excluded from distribution or made hard to find. That, to me seems like you are the ultimate editor. Twitters Ceo Jack Dorsey acknowledged that his companys decision to block links to the New York Post article about hunter biden had been wrong. Here he is speaking to the republican senatorjohn cornyn. This was a policy around
distribution of hacked materials, we did not want twitter to be a distribution point for hacked materials. You do realise that by taking down that story you probably gave it to more prominence and more visibility than it ever would have gotten had you left it alone . We realise that and we recognise it as a mistake that we made both in terms of the intention of the policy and also the enforcement action of not allowing people to share it publicly or privately which is why we corrected it within 24 hours. Mr dorsey told the committee the company had labelled 300,000 tweets as misinformation during the campaign. He was also quizzed by senators about the labelling a number of President Trumps tweets with accuracy warnings. Here he is answering a question put by democrats they asked if that went far enough . 0ur our policy is focused on misleading
information and around the election on the civic process to provide greater context and to provide information so that people can make decisions around whats happening with the election and its three phases, if the run up to the election, it election day and also the phase we are in right now, past election. So our policy is in enforcement and we are focused on providing more information. Facebooks chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told the committee the company had conducted the largest Election Integrity effort by any firm in recent times. He was also asked about this group stop the steal which supported President Trumps unfounded claims of voterfraud. By the Time Facebook took it down, it had grown to 350,000 members. Heres what he had to say. 0ne one of ourtop one of our Top Priorities is making sure that people do not give them a platform to organise any violent or
civil unrest. And that was the basis under which we took down that group because there were a number of members who were posting potentially violent or encouraging violent comments that violated our policies. But Mr Zuckerberg defended facebooks action on a post by President Trumps former adviser steve bannon. That post called for top disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci and another Government Official to be beheaded. Twitter banned him, but facebook only froze his page. The content in question did violate our policies and we took it down. Having a content violation does not automatically mean your account gets taken down and the number of strikes varies depending on the type of offence so if people are posting terrorist content or Child Exploitation content then the first time that they do it then we will take down their account. For other things its multiple. James clayton has been following the hearings pressure and scrutiny coming from both sides of the political spectrum. That is right. Republicans we re very spectrum. That is right. Republicans were very much going on phyllis donald trump tweets. Twitter very, very happy to label all lot of the states particularly around voter this information now. President trump has said a lot of things about mass voter fraud. Thats trump has said a lot of things about mass voterfraud. Thats not actually true but twitter exercise that right to enable and the streets and republicans said was censorship. 0n the other end of the spectrum yeah but democrats saying that twitter and facebook are not doing enough to take down things like misinformation and things like hate speech and steve bannon was not banned from facebook after seeing doctor 0uchi should be beheaded. So you have this difficult situation. At one pointjeff dorsett said they are an impossible situation because
one side wants than to censor and the other side does not think they are censoring enough. So a difficult situation for social media companies. Tough questions about the a nswe is companies. Tough questions about the answers they could take and what about they did not do. Remind us of what we have seen in the weeks the weeks since. Remind us what we had seen weeks since. Remind us what we had seen twitter and facebook doing to combat this information. They have been labelling a lot of tweets and posts. Twitter has actually stopped people from retreating some Donald Trumps tweets. 300,000 tweets that twitter had ta ken trumps tweets. 300,000 tweets that twitter had taken down. We learned that today. I not that was set today by republicans was this a grey area about what is and is not misinformation around voter fraud. So for example posts on a you vote by post and he said that was open to voterfraud. By post and he said that was open to voter fraud. Without actually accusing anyone of voter fraud, should not be labelled . Twitter has been labelling some of the streets. Republicans said that went too far. Meanwhile, facebook has had to take down a string of racist and misogynistic posts about the us Vice President elect kamala harris. The posts were removed after the bbc alerted facebook to three groups that regularly hosted such material. James clayton broke the story. You have written an article on the website about it. There misogynistic abuse that she got. Some of it was absolutely terrible. Facebook says it takes down 95 of all hate speech before they are likely to ask but i would discover a few groups that arent particularly friendly to, i have a high risk and some of the abuse was horrendous. That she should be deported because her mother is from india and shes not american because her mother is indian and father is jamaican and sexually explicit stuff and stuff that i cannot describe on televisi