this is g.w. news live from berlin tonight libya's capital under siege a military strongman fighters advance on the city of tripoli dozens have been killed the u. when backed government says it is launching a counter offensive as western countries call for a truce also coming up a tit for tat the u.s. brands iran's elite revolutionary guard as terrorists iran says it may declare u.s. troops in the middle east terrorists two and a russian court unexpectedly frees

a prominent film and theatre director he was arrested almost two years ago for embezzlement and put under house arrest we'll tell you what. i'm burnt off it's good to have you with us we begin tonight in libya where the battle for control of the capital tripoli is raging a militias opposed to libya's u.n. backed government are closing in on the capital tripoli they forced the closure of the city's only functioning airport thousands tonight are reportedly fleeing the city now the militias are under the command of military strongmen khalifa tar he backs a rival government in the east of the country and he says he's conducting a war against terrorists but his opponents say he wants to set up a military dictatorship and the u.n. back government in tripoli says its forces are mounting

a counter offensive dozens have died in the fighting so far western countries are calling for a truce and the resumption of peace talks. funerals in the libyan capital tripoli honoring fighters loyal to the un backed government victims of the clashes with the militia forces of the warlord khalifa haftar his troops are closing in on the city. we must take our revenge on this criminal who is killing our children he's coming to invade tripoli. government forces are preparing to defend the capital the number of casualties on both sides is rising steadily the fighting threatens to disrupt oil production and drive more migrants to seek refuge in europe it looks like being a better battle. if. we will protect the capital with our lives we will give our lives for tripoli. but after hours militias are equally determined to

launch a decisive assault on the city it appears the strong man a general in the army of the former dictator muammar gaddafi wants to seize control of the whole country to protect the people he says and now the head of this campaign was specifically launched to defend civilians to defend the libyan people to defend our country's resources and for the dignity of libya. to mammon the international community is calling for a cease fire. i think the first message we need to pass united's. the full implementation of the my italian troops to allow the civilians and the wounded to be evacuated from. the city and to avoid any further military action and for the military escalation and the return to the political negotiations and the political track in tripoli civilians turned out to demonstrate against half the us advance

the u.n. says nearly three thousand to have already fled the fighting has little sign of any letup in the hostilities many more are likely to fall. well i'm joined now by this new political analyst founder and general director of the sadic institute that was the first think tank in libya and this joins us tonight from beirut we appreciate you taking the time to talk with this let's talk about this general. are with people outside of libya looking at the situation what should they see when they see general have to are well this is the a man their claims he has an army but really has a badge that almost gives them all these different militias particularly a set of militias that are inspired sponsored boy. radical shia. clerics that have been given a badge of legitimacy to almost do whatever they want now in the last two years

many of those troops that he commands only because claims a loyal to him have been taken instruction from saudi arabia from egypt from jordan and have conducted walk in the being investigated by the i.c.c. for war crimes in the city but it wasn't that they were deployed to tripoli i'm responsible for extradition killings for mass executions and that is a but it was the and then that we should be kind of careful of using this label of the libyan national army it's a badge that effectively uses the sponsor of the worst and the mostly full of these groups and militias that are really kind of engaged in an ethno sectarian kind of battle for control of an a.b.s. that's a very dangerous are the to think of them as a conventional army but he definitely wants to with on the country to rule under his militia so i think that he has he's selling this as a campaign a campaign to rid the country of terrorists and he's mentioned al qaida and other extremist groups basically trying to get the west to the hear and to listen to what he wants to do it is that not true. it's up to the minute

absolutely true i mean this in its own magazine the big has come out in order to claim that the forces the half there was fighting were already much to the outside of the religion of islam they claim that they were heretics and they wanted to fight the those groups that will claim to be isis and by the. and so they had nothing to do with with isis the only people on earth have been called in those groups of isis and in eastern libya and they are half to himself that he's been selling a war no one in libya is buying apart from the international community that wants to kind of see progress in that and this is the danger is that when you believe that propaganda and you start to fight groups like the terrorists you drawing them from the sky you treat them as if they're captives and effectively radicalize those groups of and more so it's a very very dangerous narrative to buy into what is a can almost become the truth what about his supporters is thinking of egypt and saudi arabia do they see in this warlord the possibility of a return to a libya that was controlled by moammar gadhafi do they want that type of leadership

in dictatorship to be restored. well i think what they want to do is restore it by a proxy now it's not only egypt and saudi arabia it's crucially the u.a.e. that established a drone base in two thousand and sixteen according to the u.n. according to the un's panel of experts and have been droning in the east of the country now it's not only them as well as being french military planners that are really on the ground coordinating these strikes in tripoli and coordinating the strikes and because it and in bed and many of their own officers were killed in two thousand and sixteen in an operation going wrong but also they've been giving diplomatic immunity to have to now this is crucial the u.n. security council has been unable to issue a statement that reprimands penalizes condemns or threatened sanctions against after the french have been trying to distance themselves from this for quite amount of time in the base and what's russia blocking the u.n. council but in fact the european union is also facing the same blockage the g.

seven is also facing the same blockage the p three plus three u.s. u.k. france italy u.a.e. and egypt none of these configurations include russia and they use the exact same language so the only thread that ties them together was the french and the french have been giving assistance they have to let me on the defense minister was and was in russia in eastern libya eleven days ago claiming that he was waiting for after his victories now with the duplicity of the highest order to us assume that they back into or give international support to the u.n. but government in tripoli was giving discrete military and diplomatic support and immunity for half there in eastern libya because until it gets there was was in tripoli last week and was unable to name him they've given the u.n. the hardest job possible on earth because they've been blocking and paralyzing the u.n. for the last eleven days and that is a serious problem that he has to face and because the humanitarian catastrophe that could take place in tripoli is huge and we appreciate your insights tonight unfortunately we're out of time with thanks for coming on the show and the money

political analyst and general director of the subject institute and it's thank you . thank you for having me thank you here's some of the other stories now that are making headlines around the world in sudan state media are reporting that seven people died in anti-government protests over the weekend thousands of protesters have been demonstrating for a third day outside army headquarters in the capital khartoum they want the military to oust president omar al bashir he's been ruling the country for thirty years the turkish capital ankara has sworn in its new mayor opposition candidate months your yob us in recent local elections sprung a surprise to narrowly beat the candidate from prison the heir to once again party at a one party is now appealing against ya buses victory as well as an opposition win is stamboul. turkish president to one has met his russian counterpart vladimir putin in moscow to discuss the syrian conflict as well as turkey's plans to buy

a russian missile system which of a nato partners it was ever wants third visit to russia this year underlying stronger ties between her and moscow. well the award winning russian film and theater director to rio suburban the cough has been released he'd been under house arrest for more than a year and a half so using allegations of embezzlement. supporters say the arrest was politically motivated the director's work angered cultural conservatives he is a supporter of russia's l g b t community and he had publicly criticized russia's twenty fourteen an extension of crimea. thanks to all the people who came up to me and the courage to me by saying don't give up and we are with you and soon a mike davis to our will it was incredibly touching your support is needed but i'll

say it again it's not over i still have to go back to court and prove our innocence if you took those words. and we just heard him very are saying that the case is not over earlier we spoke to our correspondent in moscow when we asked what will happen next what we do know is that this means that city will be able to work that he'll be able to go into the theater and actually direct plays from the theater itself rather than just from his bedroom he was very happy about that decision today we saw him kind of pumping pumping the air with his fist actress a day at the center were saying that they were crying with happiness but we don't know what it means for the case itself he hasn't been acquitted of the charges yet and cases like this one high profile cases in russia are often political what this means there have been positive signs today state t.v. has been reporting about the case which is unusual and the ministry of culture has

come forward and said that they welcome the decision but as we saw today things can change at the drop of the hot. sure in their reporting from moscow where the u.k. is proposing tough new regulations to tackle harmful content online the proposals would require facebook or you tube for example to stop the spread of content that is deemed harmful such as promoting suicide or terrorism or digital reporter federica by geo is here with more on that story good to see if that or you can say what is this u.k. government's proposal all about so the government wants to create an independent watchdog to monitor the work of social media companies and the efforts that they make in trying to tackle the presence of harmful content on their platforms and what they want to dismiss ranges from terrorist related content to child sex abuse fake news hate crime. and they would like this watch dog to write a code of conduct that then companies would have to adhere to but the watchdog

would also have the powers to then implement this and to enforce this and to find companies and potentially also executives and people within these companies and so it's quite a fire reaching. proposal but it's still a proposal and the government has now launched and a consultation a public consultation so people have twelve weeks now to go online and submit their reviews and the government is particularly encouraging companies and organizations affected by this to submit their their comments it sounds like a proposal that could be opened up for a lot of interpretation which could be problematic what prompted the proposal well it has been in the drafting for quite some time and also charities in the u.k. have been urging the government to take similar steps particularly after the case of a fourteen year old who committed suicide in two thousand and seventeen and after her death her parents found that there was

a content inciting suicide on her instagram account but more generally there is a sense that not only in the u.k. that a social media companies are and not doing enough to self regulate and we can also take a listen to what prime minister theresa may had to say about this. social media firms are still not doing enough to protect users from home full content and that's not good enough so today we're putting a legal duty of care on these companies to keep uses safe and if they fail to do so tough punishments will be imposed the era of social media firms regulating themselves is over as quite a statement right there in the u.k. government is not the only one talking about internet regulations is it you know and i'm just just last week straight here passed a very strict new law that was in the wake of the mass shootings in a two mosques in christ church new zealand after which facebook in particular came

under fire for not being fast enough in preventing a video of that of those shootings from circulating so it's an adopted district new law day which could see social media companies being fined up to ten percent of their annual profits if they fail to remove this continent quickly enough and new zealand is also considering new legislation on the other hand so we're seeing more and more governments trying to take matters into their own hands critics however are saying that these regulations if they're rushed too much they could you know they could lead also to unforseen consequences and one of the main risks that they see is that they could undermine freedom of expression online yeah definitely the wild west days of the internet appear to be over that's for sure that we could buy view as always thank you think what effect a reach around the world robots have taken on much of the drudgery of repetitive work researchers say a similar breakthrough lies ahead for tasks like tracking small changes in our help

artificial intelligence is the answer there but the evolving work of machines raises new questions about how intrusive they should be and who collects the data. artificial intelligence offers great potential for work mobility and medicine using thousands of x. ray images researchers at stanford university have trained their own homegrown ai to conduct diagnoses or you have to do is photograph and upload an x. ray and wait a couple of seconds for the result. and this is a possibly cancerous lesion. i can see that right over her. control through even apparently on remarkable data like how a body moves while walking algorithms can use such data to recognize potential signs of conditions like parkinson's signs a doctor could easily miss but caution is advised. much of what we see might be

great but it throws up ethical questions which need to be answered alongside the developments we make we don't want to situation where we're very ethical but fail to progress nor should we just freely develop things and ignore the ethical side. take google's intelligent microphones for example google itself warns in some detail what can be derived from household sounds like the length of time we spend brushing our teeth so whether we argue or if someone in the household is sick who. is to take over the world. direct our thoughts between person and person our communication about official intelligence grants huge power to silicon valley's tech companies germany's justice minister wants data monopolies to be broken up as a sling and must adapt antitrust law to the needs of the modern age for example

facebook's takeover of whatsapp should have been prevented by anti trust law because it was completely clear what it would lead to namely a massive concentration of data being collected. on sent out so there's no avoiding it the ai revolution is coming the question is can ethics keep step with progress. well the united states has formally declared iran's elite revolutionary guard a terrorist organization it's the first time the u.s. has ever labeled part of a foreign government in such strong terms the white house says it is simply acknowledging the reality in the region that iran is a state sponsor of terrorism which relied on the revolutionary guard to export washington's decision has triggered an instant response from iran tehran says it could now declare u.s. forces in the middle east terrorist as well. explaining the new policy u.s.

secretary of state might bump a said the u.s. wanted to exert maximum pressure on iran for forty years the islamic republic's revolutionary guard corps has actively engaged in terrorism and created supported and directed other terrorist groups the r.g.c. masquerade as a legitimate military organization but none of us should be fooled it regularly violates the laws of armed conflict it plans organize and execute terror campaigns all around the world. it was my pompei of their art let's take the story now to our washington bureau chief alexander phenomena she's on the story for us tonight good evening alexandra we know that iran is already heavily sanctioned it's designated a state sponsor of terrorism so what difference is it going to make by labeling the revolutionary guard as a terrorist organization. the trump administration's main goal is to

increase economic and political pressure on tehran and we have to see that today's decision today's decision in this contest context and we also have to remind ourselves how influential iran so the revolutionary guards are as to contraries most powerful security organization with its nearly unchecked political influence and interests in business and real estate and there are areas of the economy so now the us is being able to impose wide ranging sanctions what consequences they are i ask this question you ask a special envoy for iran hope i ask him what we have to expect now let's have a listen we have a we have certain authorities that we now can use to prosecute people who provide material support to the ira g.c. in the qods force it also creates immigration issues for people who if they do that

you can also come to the united states and it also gives us a range of new tools to essentially stigmatize and isolate the i r g c in the codes force and this is important because the irish you see controls possibly more than half of iran's economy and so when you've got european companies or any companies around the world who are doing business in iran it very well could be an ira g.c. front company are those definitely a signal meant for europe there what do you say can this move alexander going to increase the risk of retaliation against u.s. military and intelligence officials in the middle east. it could therefore top pentagon intelligence officials have reportedly opposed that designation which they argue would allow hard liners in iran to justify deadly attacks against americans about took told me that administration is calling this that the

revolutionary guards are posing a great threat to the as troops on the ground and he also told me that if the you as were to guard its foreign policy by threats from tehran they would be playing by their own little rules and that's of course something that is on except for the u.s. administration and at the same time washington still wants the uranium regime to return to the negotiating table and so how is the u.s. . basically how are they going to try to square a circle well they are trying to impose more sanctions to increase economic and political pressure on iran in the hope that that would lead to new negotiations about a new deal that would not only concentrate on the iran's nuclear programs but also in its missile programs its activities in the region however we have to say that in

the moment and the moment it doesn't at the moment it doesn't look like iran would be ready to talk with a writer washington d.c. bureau chief i was under phenomenon the story for us tonight because i was under thank you. well israelis go to the polls tomorrow prime minister benjamin netanyahu he has made a controversial campaign promise he says he will annex jewish settlements in the occupied west bank if he is reelected he is facing a stiff challenge from a former general the centrist but he guns with a tight race ahead our middle east correspondent tanya kramer sent this report on what voters are saying on the eve of the election. benyamin netanyahu slick versus benny gantz blue and white party is resurrection is said to be a tight race with voters remaining split including here in this close restore in jerusalem ilana benyamin hopes to be netanyahu it's every phone calls to prime

minister who form the next government she can see any i'll turn it. on and if. i think b.b. has a great team they're doing fine and have babies elected i will sleep well at night we will move towards a safe future for me for my sons and grandsons it should be limited in chile another four years of be unthinkable for this young student guggenheim voted for netanyahu city could party in the previous elections but this time his vote for the go to the new blue and white party headed by former army chief of staff benny gantz i think the time is coming go to serve his country well i think after time for years the really the time has come to switch parties that have been born white take the premiership and move on to the hopefully better and more secure places. when israelis go to the polls on tuesday they have a wide range of issues to consider and a record number of parties to choose from economy and security are usually the top

priorities for voters but this election is slightly different. in essence these are vital issues for israelis but they're not necessarily the big determinants of votes because we have a situation where the voters focusing primarily on the issue of netanyahu his ten year long governance over israeli society thirteen years in total and the corruption charges against him. despite facing an indictment on a string of corruption charges netanyahu can still count on a strong voter base. he campaigned on social media and by meeting foreign leaders with a clear message he's the only one who can keep israel safe and represent the country's interests abroad. meanwhile benny guns and his team of former army generals have been touring the country with the centrist blue and white party has been ahead of the likud in almost all opinion polls. in

a small community in southern israel who served as military chief under netanyahu appears to voters that only his party can move the country forward but. prime minister netanyahu and his messages of busy defining people and using incitement in order to survive we have busy reinforcing the security of israel and working towards a better future for our children he. posts as predicted guns in netanyahu will compete next to nick but netanyahu might have the upper hand to form a writing coalition with smaller rightwing parties. and the election is tomorrow here's a reminder the top story that we're following for you troops loyal to a rebel libyan general are closing in on the country's capital tripoli dozens of being killed the government says it is launching a counter offensive as western nations call for a truce. you're watching live from berlin next up close a look at how u.s.

president has turned the rules of global free trade upside down i'll be back at the top of the hour with more world news followed by the day of to see the.

tara poker. u.s. president donald trump is ignoring the rules of free trade and setting global markets on edge but are europe in germany doing got much better. who are the winners and losers in a high stakes game. comes up next on w.

o. l me something nice can i ask him to jurors or dealing with i mean i think i killed many civilians i mean gosh coming to clearing my father one thing such as i was a student because i wanted to build a life for myself that these totally a sudden my life became elish kind of sob. providing insights global news that matters d. w. may for minds. look closely. listen carefully to. see the true lives to get to.

discover the world. eleven. subscribe to the documentary on you tube. the world seems a pretty topsy turvy place right now u.s. president donald trump has been doing what he can to turn the long existing system of international trade on its head he is a keen advocate of trade wars and a slap to punitive tariffs on china and germany. says that german cars are exported unfairly to the u.s. and claims that they pose a threat to america's security.