Extreme weather warning the u. N. Says the number of climate related natural disasters has doubled in 20 years and cost the world trillions of dollars. And then school of the bron james and the l. A. Lakers back on top of the boss cable world the lakers have ended their 10 year wait to win the n. B. A. Championship. Hello a divided u. S. Senate is pressing ahead with confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee any kone barretts just 3 weeks from the president ial election so republicans are trying to rapidly confirm her and expand the courts conservative majority the Supreme Court positions are Lifetime Appointments so judges are expected to serve for decades as the 1st hearing gets underway protesters both for and against barretts confirmation have been chanting outside the court in the pouring rain now the seat became vacant of course after the death of liberal Justice Ruth Bader ginsburg her dying wish was for her replacements to be chosen after the president ial election Lindsey Graham is the republican chair of the Senate Judiciary committee and he defended the timing of barretts nomination though the Republican Majority Senate 4 years ago refused to consider Barack Obamas nominee in a similar situation in an Election Year. What will happen is that my democratic colleagues will say this is never been done in their right in this regard nobodys i think theyre being confirmed in Election Year past july the bottom line is Justice Ginsberg when asked about this several years ago said that a present serves 4 years not 3 theres nothing unconstitutional about this process this is a vacancy this tragic loss of a great woman and were going to feel that they could see with another great woman and Dianne Feinstein as the senior most democrat in the Senate Judiciary committee she focused on a macone barretts pos statements and rulings suggesting opposition to the Affordable Care act signed into law by barack obama now the court is set to hear arguments on the constitutionality of the law on november the 10th thats a week after the election the stakes are extraordinarily high for the American People both in the short term and for decades to come most importantly Health Care Coverage for millions of americans is at stake with this nomination so over the course of these hearings my colleagues and i will focus on that subject we will examine the consequence is if and thats a big if republicans succeed in rushing this nomination through the senate before the next president takes office lets get an update from alan fischer his joining us from capitol hill so democrats and republicans making their case as allan just talk us through what weve seen so far what should we be looking out for over the next couple of hours in the next couple of days. Well Lindsey Graham was lamenting the fact that in the past well qualified candidates for the Supreme Court would go through no matter what their Party Affiliations where or where they sat on the political spectrum he said Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed by the full senate by name 36396 votes to 3 and said that even though many republicans realize that her views on some key issues were very much the opposite of that if course referred to the fact that Merrick Garland was nominated by barack obama 4 years ago in the during an Election Year but it was the republicans there and then that said no were not doing this in an Election Year but have pushed through a. Nomination just 16 days since she was formally nominated in that event at on the rose garden of the white house and no it looks as if the vote could well take place before the election 70 thats the plan as far as Lindsey Graham is concerned the democrats well they understand that this vote in the committee could well go along party lines which would be 12 republicans 10 democrats thats if the democrats show up will come in a 2nd but if that is the case it will go through to the full senate no 2 republicans have already said that they wont vote for a nomination in an Election Year and we see the battle lines being drawn as far as the democrats are concerned they understand its unlikely that theyre going to change the opinion of any republicans in the room but what they can do is bring Public Opinion to be the majority of people believe that the Affordable Health care act which protects preexisting conditions should be kept in place the majority also believe that its truly up to the next president to pick who the next Supreme Court justice should be so theyre going to make the case that if you can farm in the Connie Bennett that puts the Affordable Health care act at risk that means preexisting conditions could be at risk and therefore theyre hoping people will call the republican senators and say hold on a 2nd i dont want you casting a vote here if you do that youll lose my vote the. I realize they cant change the view in the room but theyre hoping that Public Opinion side may well convince 2 republican senators to flip if they can do that then they can delay this nomination at least until after the election heres the thing though allan just to pick up on some of what youve been saying democrats have said that they will stay away from the Committee Vote next week so can that then stop the nomination from actually taking place. Interesting point because its also been raised by a couple of people on twitter with me just in the last couple of hours so hear how this works the committee 12 to 10 republicans democrats they can vote and the the the rules of the senate say that there has to be a majority of the senators in the room to vote no senate rules dont always have to be in force but there has to be a majority voting to push it through so 1210 would be enough that means all 12 republican senators have actually got to be in the room when the vote is held and that will be on thursday theres a problem there because 2 of them were reported to have covered mike lee is but in the Senate Chamber in the Committee Room in the morning the couple of others have been appearing remotely they say their intention is definitely to be the when they have the vote thom tillis hes a republican as well he was self isolating he says he too will be in the room and thursday essentially the republicans are issuing a call to arms for all republicans on this committee to be there cast their vote and make sure that there are 12 votes a majority vote which pushes it on to the main senate then the senate will consider it and thats where the public the democrats might start doing things like filibustering issuing points of order trying to delay this as much as possible but the reality is that this nomination is almost certainly going to emerge from committee on thursday and head to the full senate for a vote then we Start Talking about separate tactics ok alan thank you very much for the time being. Russias foreign minister has indicated that turkey will not be involved in peace talks over the disputed region of nagornokarabakh the Foreign Ministers of armenia and russia have been meeting in moscow as a base un has proposed its ally turkey be involved in discussions but russias survey lavrov says there will be no changes to the format for peace talks over the region there was more fighting throughout sunday nights with both sides accusing each other of violating a humanitarian ceasefire. And funerals have been held in the azerbaijani village of some cure for the victims of sundays attacks on ganja at least 9 people were killed and 34. 00 others wounded by shelling carried out in the early hours of the morning hundreds have been killed across the region since fighting flared up at the end of last month buddhist we reached an important agreement on sense today initiated by president putin but we see that this agreement is not being fully complied with and the fighting is continuing we expect that our contacts with you and as a by johnny neighbors including by our defense ministries will ensure full compliance with the agreements that were reached in the trilateral formant. Which since september 27 the full scale aggression against the people of nagornokarabakh has continued meanwhile a military solution is being openly expressed as a solution to the car about conflict as well as the physical extermination of the people of nagornokarabakh the azari armed forces ignored their obligations to not target civilians the absence of military objectives in the area that i was advised on is attacking proves their motives yet again which is equivalent to war crimes Bernard Smith is in goras armenia he explains why armenia as foreign minister is meeting with officials in russia about the conflicts. Hes in moscow for a show jules meeting with a lot of rove and other representatives from the United States and france this is after a meeting last wednesday attended by the azerbaijani foreign minister in geneva so this was shared jule before that the ceasefire came into effect now the armenian Foreign Ministers arab minutes and hes been complaining as he has before of various airy breaches of the ceasefire but lover of the russians foreign minister he has said clearly we spent a lot of time getting this cease fire agreement together but its not being observed he said and military actions continue but as we think our contacts including with the ministries of defense of both sides will allow us to uphold the agreement we have so clearly confident that hes able to exert enough pressure on azerbaijan and armenia to try and fully enforce this cease fire it has been relatively calm in most armenian most villages and towns in the gorno karabakh except for the town of hundreds now we understand that theres been intense fighting going on in have dropped between azerbaijan and armenia and this is because hundreds in northern are gone or karabakh but it is neither side as far as we understand there has about johnnies have not made any major territorial gain after 2 weeks of fighting apart from maybe a couple of small villages had dropped would be a significant significant gain for azerbaijan if it took control of this nagornokarabakh Ethnic Armenian town and sent him cuz who is then gnarly azerbaijan where funerals have been held for the victims of the attacks on the city of ganja. This is a village and its previous name is a lenin village and its close by again jed the reason why im here and the reason why im standing in front of a graveyard is that the witch dims who were killed. After the attack after a missile hit again just at the center yesterday they were buried right behind me a couple almost half an hour ago it was very crowded here people left already. When you look at the civilians of course the atmosphere is not so bright because everybody is full of emotions almost most of the rage on citizens are angry and they are mourning for their people who lost their lives whether they know these people or not for instance those 2 poor people who were very were a couple they saved their children but they couldnt save their lives so emotions are through the pain that they have been suffering not for the last couple of weeks but for all 30 years when you look at diplomacy when you look at whats being told in baku of course there are talks on the way it has been relatively quiet in terms of official statements so far and we are waiting to see whether azerbaijan foreign minister will also be attending a meeting in moscow today there is no official statement for that now but a group of diplomats present that is all Foreign Diplomatic Missions and back you are invited to ganja and mingus having a sense is that was also hit. The other night came to the scene. In the underdogs proceeds of the deputies and they were given information about the situation and some more had on the aljazeera news hour including the chinese city of qingdao was put to the test why all lined 1000000 residents have been given just 5 days to check for covert 19 posts here was accusing tanzanias president of behaving like a dictator and sports news back. In familiar hands where there were roughly on and off the say about his latest grand slam success. But 1st an undercover investigation by aljazeera has exposed high ranking officials in cyprus expressing a willingness to aid convicted criminals obtain a us citizenship in august the Investigative Unit released the cyprus papers which revealed serious flaws in the countrys citizen by Investment Program and now as phil reese reports the investigation leads to the highest offices of the separate states the cyprus Investment Program allows foreigners to buy a european passport for an investment mostly made in property of 2 and a half 1000000. 00 the government insists that applicants need a clean criminal record the holder of a cypriot passport has the right to live and work across the e. U. Our undercover reporters went to cyprus to represent a fictional client who has fled china mr x. Is a wealthy businessman who was sentenced in absentia to 7 years in jail for bribery and Money Laundering and he is seeking a cypriot passport property agents denise and tony kate help those investing in property to get cypriot passports our undercover reporters tell them about how a proposed applicant. Has gone and charged him for robbery and. Where there are problems it costs more money to achieve these things so what we will do is find out who has to be spoken to be paid what states the base thats really what i think the case a part of a network of enable is that include lawyer and race protection is a sound business opportunities. When youre a legal proceeding to go to the beach. Describes a 2 track application system the official route and another for difficult cases that requires more money but they can still get a philosopher to know what insane option. Goes over them you already. See if you want to do that and. Then look at cities in any book in the regulation or even our news and we want. To ask questions asked. Why. How high. The higher limits. Our undercover reporters meet Property Developers and politicians who repeat the same message. Have people take us for a while on. Our undercover reporters are finally invited to discuss mr x. s passport application with the president of the Cypriot Parliament you can tell it. Without permission maybe were here for support. I dont know what he did early closure. Q so theyre going to. Have to prepare its. When confronted with the evidence all of those involved deny any wrongdoing and they claim they were aware from the onset but our undercover reporters represented a criminal after our team left because you said he filed a report about them with cypresses and the Money Laundering unit. Phil reese. Lets now bring in David Harrison he is joining us to negotiate because david we understand now there has been reaction from officials in cyprus to this investigation. Yes in fact we had a press conference given by the president of parliament dimitris so this who features in our investigation he decided to attack the messenger claiming that aljazeera had an interest in doing down cyprus on costing it in a bad light exposing lax regulations and lax laws and he said that he hints that there was another agenda a wider agenda he also said that at the meeting with the on the problem reports on the preston for details of his name and his background and if this doesnt tally with that with the material that we have. He also said it was in his interest to he wants to protect cypresses interests he claimed that the timing of all our report the response documentary was significant which was seen as a veiled reference to a link with turkey when in fact what mr sillars doesnt know is that cyprus wasnt even on our radar when we began this investigation the investigation began in the u. K. And is only when a former British Police officer told us that he had contacts in cyprus you could get an e. U. Passport for a criminal from china that we went to cyprus that was when cyprus came into the equation the other thing that was interesting about mr mr so this is a press conference was that for the 1st time we saw signs of a rift between the people exposed in our investigation the launch she was he attended where you met her on the cover of portos was held at the house of christakis giovanni. An m. P. On the founder of the juve on the Property Development group which has a link to go impossible. Mr. Last why he why he attended the lodge why the undercover reporter was invited to this lunch christakis his house and that is to some of us looked a little uncomfortable. On the defensive and almost snapped and said well you have to give only about us the right said David Harrison thank you very much for that update from nicosia well for more on this investigation you can watch the cyprus papers under cover at 20100 hours g. M. T. Th