this is the wu of life from black politics on the world's richest man it's as if he broke some passage jeff bezos accuses american tabloid the national enquirer of black man he says the paper threat to publish lurid photos of him and his lover if he didn't do as he was told also on the program. fracas disaster strikes one of brazil's most famous football clubs plays tears through a dormant freethinking players rio de janeiro's flamenco at least ten youngsters attacked. france's yellow vests protesters accused riot police of brutality almost

two thousand been injured some of them seriously since the wave of demonstrations began. taking on thailand some military chapter of princess. overturns conventional and announces she will stand for prime minister in the country's first election since i'm going to speak. i'm phil gal welcome to the program imus and boss jeff bezos has accused the national enquirer newspaper of blackmail he says the us scandal sheet threatened to publish intimate photos of him unless he did as he was told the inquirer says it will investigate these claims but there are also political overtones as to bezos owns the washington post and which is often criticized president trump the national enquirer meanwhile is a fervent trump supporter. to prove

a tabloid scandal or a politically motivated attack jeff bezos has accused to publish a link to president donald trump of blackmail in a post published on the website media. last month after the amazon c.e.o. and his wife announced that divorce the national enquirer published intimate messages revealing an extramarital affair eager to know how the paper came to possess these messages has also hired private investigators he suspected it was driven by dirty politics his suspicions grew stronger when he says the national enquirer parent company am i threatened to publish photos of him if you didn't make a public statement saying its previous coverage of him was not politically motivated. well that got my attention but not in the way the. any passionate. could cause me takes a backseat because there's

a much more important matter involved here and from my position i can't stand up to this kind of extortion how many people can. just his ownership of the washington post has made him the enemy of powerful people including the saudis and the us president trump relies on favorable coverage from am i even admitted to withholding damaging information about trump to help him win the twenty sixteen election. it's boss david peca is a close associate of trump. am i says it has acted lawfully in its reporting on bezos but if investigations find otherwise the media company could be in trouble. for mark fisher senior at the washington post has published several books about the ministration and joins us from the u.s. capital welcome to the w. i'm sure people working with your bosses the investigators on this story oh

goodness no. it's maybe hard to imagine but we have very little in the way of cooperation from the owner of the post who is also the owner of amazon and other enterprises but in general he's always been extremely attacking the stick to news coverage of his operations this was an unusual case in which they did want to get their story out and they did want to put it in touch with one of their investigators about how and why the national enquirer went after jeff bezos his love life so what's the post about how the national enquirer got hold of jeff bezos is communications. well there are two conflicting story lines here one is the one from the investigator who says that this was a politically motivated hit job and that the brother of the girlfriend in this case a man that michael sanchez was leading suspect someone who they believe leaked the

intimate texts and information about the relationship to the national enquirer whether he did that for the purpose of personal profit or for because of his connections to some of the important people around president trump is unclear the alternative theory here the one that michael sanchez the purported leaker proposes is that this was a way for businesses security man to essentially cover up for the fact that he had failed in his mission to keep the affair between bezos and lauren sanchez secret ok so somebody finds out about this affair lisa it's a national enquirer the national enquirer if we're to believe the story the jeff bezos tells that and says to him do as we say oh we would leak these these embarrassing revelations so why would they say in that way. why would the national enquirer act in that way the national choir is in

a very precarious position in addition to the fact that they are in a tremendous amount of debt their top two executives that are a publisher and the head of their editorial department have made an agreement with federal prosecutors who are looking into the twenty six thousand presidential campaign and that agreement was that they would not be prosecuted prosecuted inquiries if you could not be prosecuted if they agreed to stop doing the kinds of things they were doing to protect all trump the national choir was the. magazine that had protected trump from allegations by a number of women that they had had sexual relationships with him and what the enquirer did was they would buy the story of those women pay those women a certain fee and then exchange and then the national enquirer would not publish the story but would rather bury it kill it would never see the light of day and that practice known as catch and kill was what got the enquirer's bosses in trouble and they made a deal with the prosecutors that they would cooperate with prosecutors that they

would refrain from that kind of activity now their protection from prosecution is in jeopardy because of their role if any in this to do with jeff bezos and that's why the national enquirer is sort of backing off today and saying well we'll take another look at this we'll see if anything was done wrong so. at least gotten some concession from the national enquirer that they at least need to look at their own ways jeff bezos says in the pace that he wrote for recent still to be better understood the saudi. vacillation seems to have hit a particularly sensitive nerve why do you think that might be a. well the baseless version of this is one that they're putting out there as a sort of sort of circumstantial evidence but there's really no hard evidence for it they. are things is that the national enquirer was helped along the way by the saudi government that the enquirer had been putting out

a magazine that was touting the many splendors of the new saudi regime and that in exchange the saudis may have played a role in helping the national enquirer with its debt but the investigators really showed no evidence for this other than a number of. coincidences of timing and. if this were true it would be highly significant because obviously the president has been sympathetic to the saudis in their explanation of the death of. the washington post global affairs columnist who was killed by the saudis. thank you for joining us a senior editor at the washington post. now to some of the other stories making news around the world and british prime minister teresa mayes holding talks with the irish counter hotly of varadkar in dublin this is may say he is seeking changes to the so-called backstop this is the plan to avoid a return to the hard border between northern ireland and the irish republic is the

main sticking point in i don't see actions. italy has begun to remove a large section of a motorway bridge that collapsed last year the operation in the northern city of general is expected to take about eight hours of the crossing partially collapsed last august during high winds killing forty three people and injuring dozens. hundreds of thousands of livestock the thoughts are have died in heavy rains in northern australia large parts of the outback in the state of queensland worse want a plough plotting to drop fathers to stranded cattle. only ten people have died in a fire at rio football club flamengo in brazil the blaze broke out before dawn on friday club training facility officials say some of the teenagers some of the victims were teenagers from the youth team who was sleeping in the center. friends and family of those killed or injured are in shark some of them are glad to find

their relatives alive while others wait anxiously for news outside the training ground of the flamingo soccer club. the blaze broke out just before dawn and this accommodation block firefighters were called in just after five am local time but for at least ten people help came too late. obviously we're all devastated . this is certainly the biggest tragedy this club has seen in the past one hundred twenty three years at the beach three. flamengo is one of brazil's biggest and best known clubs internationally its most prominent former players include. a big toe as well as eighteen year old finishes junior who played for flamengo before joining spain three on madrid last year. he tweeted just remembering the nights and days i spent at the training grounds sends shivers down my spine i still can't believe it

i pray for all of them may god bless each of their families. the cause of the blaze is being investigated but according to local media the fire started in the air conditioning system in one of the rooms. whatever the cost it brought a sudden end to the victim's dreams of becoming professional footballers. as friends sports journalist andrew downie who's up based in the south welcome andro what more do we know at this stage it appears that the day attended where young players especially confront by the call yet but look when you support the work unit years old age between the ages of fourteen and sixteen the three players who were injured also age forty one of them is in serious condition in hospital right now. about in this training center or one of facilities like a why would people sleeping that. well that's one of the big questions we're trying

to get to the bottom of no it's very common for big clubs like flamenco to have training centers where young kids fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen become there they spend their time in the at the training center and they live there because they often come from from all over for so some of them are only there for a few days to come on trial and they stay in these centers and the problem talk to them what we see today we saw a couple of hours ago which real was the mayor's office they said to me what did know how to permission to build accommodation on the site where the competition actually was and where port and they said that area had been registered as a car park so were there should not be any building there so that's one thing that we're going to have to look into you know all over father explain what the real story behind that is this is a facility that had only recently undergone a multimillion dollar upgrade that try as i said all these clubs across brazil

the how they know how state of the art centers that have you know that will create use more stadiums to your therapy units gymnasiums all that kind of thing and flamingo is one of the biggest clubs in brazil they recently spent twenty three million is about almost five million pounds of u.k. money they spent this money to to expire and then to refurbish the area it seems that this area where the fire took place was in one of the oldest parts of the of the facility and was it was going to be knocked down it was going to be was going to be raised to the ground and so wasn't it wasn't part of this new this new modern area that had been built we'll leave it there thank you for joining us andrew downing in sao paolo and the european union has back to compromise between germany and france of the north stream to gas pipelines which critics say could undermine european security france had threatened to halt the construction of the deal that would say then continue as it made to go say said with russia. ships like these

have already laid six hundred kilometers of the nord stream to gas pipeline a mammoth task and one that's caused consternation at both ends of the line germany's betting on the projects to help it secure its future energy supplies this is what it will eventually look like the pipeline will follow the route of an existing line between russia and germany via the boat exceed it will be controlled by russian state energy firm gas from and it's that level of russian control over a key european supply that's made some of germany's allies uneasy france surprised and disappointed beilin on thursday by signaling it would back tighter e.u. regulation of the project putting its future risk wrangling in brussels appears to frustrate to the kremlin. for sure but the question there's no unanimity of opinion on north stream two in the european union at the moment. and we hope that the nation members of the european union who saw this issue out for

themselves. we still believe that this project is beneficial to both the european gas consumers interests and also to be to the russian federation as the gas supplier. because reportedly. despite france's reservations paris and berlin today reached a compromise that was quickly backed by the european parliament responsibility for enforcing the rules on such projects will fall to the first e.u. member state where a pipeline connects in this case that's germany. well despite that compromise questions remain over how well you have started. getting in a surprise move french president emanuel mccraw house withdrawn from beating with german chancellor going to back a forthcoming munich security conference we asked conference chairman wolfgang ischinger what he made of the notion even if president marco isn't going to speak himself in munich we will have plenty of other senior representatives of the

french government in munich to explain french positions. they will be a huge american delegation congressional delegation there will be a half a dozen german ministers etc etc so i think the purpose which i which is important to me the purpose to demonstrate in munich that the european union is alive and kicking that purpose can still be maintained not. in times where it may appear that the european project is faltering fishing i made a strong plea for european unity for me it's very important that we demonstrate is specially to the anglo-saxon community that. the impression that may be created elsewhere that because of breck's it the european integration project is about to crumble that that's wrong actually popular support for the european union in most

countries is up not down. and beyond europe with the recent standoff between the us and russia if the i.m.f. missile treaty issuing a warning to the new politics of rivalry. we have enough in common between even russia and the united states to try to work together to put cooperation to put integration. above the kind of rivalry which seems to be the motto of twenty nineteen and we will need to talk about that next week and in munich we'll have some pretty tough hard talk i hope in order to clarify what the priorities of responsible leadership need to be in twenty nineteen. france has seen weekly clashes between the so-called

protesters and the police for three months now more than nineteen hundred demonstrators have been injured some of them seriously protesters say the police have been using disproportionate force the government says officers are on protecting themselves to w.'s lisa lewis has more from paris. this is about the only view that vitale gets of the outside world these days she's too weak to walk more than a few meters and has been suffering from almost constant headaches and heavy nose bleeding since the fifth of january that was the day that she was hit by a rubber bullet that fractured her cheek bone in three places. we were running down a side street as thirty riot police were chasing us banging their shields with their batons it was really scary suddenly another group of police blocked our way and started shooting rubber bullets at us. i was hit on the cheek and fell to the ground. then one of those grenades with rubber bullets and tear gas exploded next

to me. i mean i couldn't hear any more i completely lost my bearings and just sat there. says someone helped her to get out of the crowd but what she saw that day keeps her up at night the mere sight of policeman now gives her panic attacks. when i turned around i saw police here protesters with their batons they didn't ask questions they just beat everyone up it reminded me a very dark periods of our history so they seemed crazed it was frightening and it was unrestrained violence. says the. units she's not the only demonstrator to have suffered life changing injuries more than one thousand nine hundred protesters have been voted since the demonstrations began three months ago some people have lost eyes on hands others have been left with mutilated faces or

limbs. human rights groups say the police have been getting more violent the use of rubber bullets and still coasting bore grenades that contain t.n.t. high explosive and deliver a deafening explosion of small rubber balls is making the situation worse. bodies on the o.c.c. french police could very easily keep protesters under control with water cannons and tear gas no one should be enough but it is for british germans and italian police they have to deal with extremely violent demonstrations the sun seems to take for granted the people will suffer reversible injuries inflicted by these. really if you've seen but the police say they need the devices to defend themselves and that one thousand two hundred officers have also been injured in the protests about them over the area and we never use our battens without reason and only in

accordance with our regulations for example if someone is resisting arrest we need rubber bullets to keep protesters at basically if you could without them there would be even more injured the protests are also more violent infiltrated by extremists. and there is no well trained security like union demonstrations going to keep such protesters under control do they have you or i phone look weak. italia rejects these arguments she will sue the french state for damages. it's important for me to take this to the european court of justice i want people to know what happened to us and how many of us have been injured in a sauce maybe the court will order french police to be less violent. even if she wins the case the tally has lost faith in the country once she feels better she's planning on leaving france and the violence she has experienced.

thailand's princess. diana has been criticized by her brother the king after announcing that she would run for prime minister any elections next month the princess who became a comma after marrying an american said she would come paying for a party to the country's ousted prime minister thaksin shinawatra. i did have official from the tie rods the chart party showing off the papers princess has filed to run for prime minister the party is loyal to the country's ousted former prime minister tax in shinawatra the move was a political bombshell even the leader of a rival party praised the princess. what happened this morning has changed. to face off type politics. a new opportunities you give people new possibilities. and the princess has an appeal other political figures. be at my watch and she's not saying that and in times of business what she's done has been successful

without. the hello as well to embrace to. say if she becomes the country's leader now it would be the best thing that's highlands if you want to be think it's about how. princes will retire there has always been something of a rebel she were announced her titles when she married an american commoner and the thai rocks a party is unsympathetic to the monarchy. but just a few hours later her brother king vadra long car declared her candidacy invalid the involvement of a high ranking member of the royal family in politics in whatever way is an act that conflicts with the country's traditions customs and culture and is therefore considered extremely inappropriate one from many ties the king's decree spelled the end of his sister's short lived political ambitions it's unclear whether her candidacy can survive. well journalist andrew marshall has written extensively on

thai politics and the monarchy we asked him what was likely to happen next i did hear in you several days ago that princess privilege of trying to deceive and it seemed like a very interesting development that would really change quite politics now that the party that proposed her it's not clear who they will rather stop you can still be allowed to run the palace has intervened dramatically in thai politics and it's really exciting that's what it is is divided amongst themselves is the king's didn't didn't know his history was clear agendas or knew about it and then shut it down very publicly it's really shouldn't hide the poster in chaos and the tight lipped sort of chaos so it's looking a little. and room. international film festival is into its second day of this year's event has put female directors in the spotlight with seven of the seventeen films in the competition directed by women movie it was kindness of strangers

a tale of homelessness and uncertainty in contemporary america. and nights to remember the film fans with the red carpet as the place to be for the stars. to send off all the attention french oscar winner and had on this year's jury to yet be not. the news director known as sapphic brought in international cast to the red carpet celebrating the world premiere of the movie the kind of strange it's. the ornish efface film focuses on several characters who crossed paths in a restaurant in new york. and they were anyone since for years now. all the characters have suffered life shattering experiences clara escaping from an abusive hosp and mark just left kristen. the movie tells their story as they try to rebuild their

lives possible only with the help of strangers. and i thought it would make sense every day while we were working where the world seemed to be a tough place to be in to make a film that had light and goofy leaves the audience in a sense of. not just hope but also community. the kindness of strangers as long as shellfish see through to movie to run in competition at the bill in fin face to the way she's often known to praise for her keen eye for carrick us. the sixty nine thirty nine it kicks off with an unprecedented line up of female directors you know initially affix shines a light on people at the margins a perfect fit for europe's most politically charged infested the kindness of strangers is a curious makes of drama and comedy humor and sadness which doesn't quite seem to

know which way it wants to go. for a director alone to share fish it is no longer about the kindness of strangers but about winning over the belly knowledge of me. british actor and five time oscar nominee albert finney has died at the age of eighty two in a career spanning five decades he was best known for his nine hundred sixty three starring role of the film tom jones lotsa lay here hated big budget action films including the change bob. through a scuffle. of a secure updates i'll be back in a couple of minutes with the death of a good thing. with

him had to be done did go suckers will die and if i had known that the boat would be small i never would have gone on the trip you know i would not have put myself and my parents in that dangerous part of the game to give a flavor with. that one little thing to give them i had serious problems on

a personal level and i was unable to live there much and get it. you want to know their story in full migrants terrifying and reliable information for margaret's. it's a complex web that weaves together the world's richest man one of the us his most famous tabloids the white house jeff bezos says he's being blackmailed by the national enquirer over leaks about his personal life and suggests that the revelations of politically motivated i don't feel gail in berlin and this is the day. last month i was a boss of the washington post own niche.