>> this is dw news, life from berlin. u.s. senators react to the fbi report on president trump supreme court nominee. republican say there's nothing to corroborate sexual assault allegations against brett kavanaugh. the top democrat criticize it as the product of an incomplete investigation. it will bring you the latest from washington. also on the program, a range of western countries including the netherlands and the united states accuse russian agents of launching cyberattack's around the world with target said to

include you in capital weapons watchdog. plus cristiano ronaldo is left out of portugal's squad. the team captain will not play in next weeks to international matches amid allegations against him. you will hear from one of the journalists who broke that story. i'm phil gayle. welcome to the program. the u.s. senate is a step closer to confirming president trump's nomination to the supreme court. the fbar report into allegations of sexual assault against judge brett kavanaugh have been shown to senators and private. republican say it contained nothing to substantiate the claims of democrat, criticize it is incomplete and constrained by a white house deterrent to push through the lifetime deter --

appointment of the supreme court justice. >> democrats dianne feinstein said the most notable part of the report was what was not in it. >> the fbi did not interview brett kavanaugh, nor did the fbi interview dr. blasey ford. what we have heard from numerous people over the last few days, seeking to provide information to the fbi, we have seen even more press reports of witnesses who wanted to speak with the fbi, but were not interviewed. >> the absence of witness testimony had a different reason, according to republican and senate majority leader mitch mcconnell. >> as chairman grassley stated this morning, neither the judiciary committee nor the fbi could locate any third parties who can attest to any of these allegations.

no backup from any witnesses, including those specifically named as eyewitnesses by the people who brought the allegations in the first place. >> the white house certainly block access to millions of documents from judge kavanagh's record, i know that, and ensure that 90% of his emails and memos were not available. >> so the fact do not support the allegations levied at judge kavanaugh's character. instead, many of the facts actually support judge kavanaugh's strong, unequivocal denial. reporter: democrat and senate minority leader chuck schumer was equally convinced of the opposite. >> i disagree with senator grassley's statement that there was no hint of misconduct. and third, we are reiterating our call, given how limited this -- these documents were come and

how limited the scope of this investigation was, we are reiterating our call that the documents, with proper reduction, be made public. why shouldn't all of america see the facts? reporter: the report opens the way for a vote on kavanagh's nomination in the full senate, where -- where republicans hold a slim majority. that could now take place as early as saturday. phil: let's get more from our correspondent who has been following events for us. the report is confidential. have you heard much about its contents? [laughter] reporter: no, confidential, as you said. that has to do with privacy laws. there is no way this fbi report can be made public, is our understanding. this is exclusive reading material for 100 senators, that means all the senators in the

senate, plus nine other individuals, for minority staffers from the committee democratic side, and for staffers on the republican side of the committee, plus a clerk. so those 109 people get to see what is in the report, and for everybody else, it's a guessing game. that's what also explains obviously the lines which are now in the trenches which are drawn deeper in the middle of this confirmation of brett kavanaugh, along party lines, republicans versus democrats, democrats versus republicans, and everybody has his own take. phil: but there are some waivers. reporter: there are, or there were. there are, or were, as you want to have it, and those waivers or call. they had names, jeff flake, susan collins, and lisa murkowski. all three gop senators. if you remember, jeff flake was the one who said i want this one week for the fbi to look into

these allegations of sexual assault against brett kavanaugh. he was the one responsible for giving this week to the fbi to look into this, but now it seems he is confident in voting for brett kavanaugh. the same goes for susan collins and for issa murkowski. both have said they find the report, the fbi report, legitimate, and they do not find anything in it which corroborates the allegations against brett kavanaugh. the democrats are seeing this entirely different. phil: so what happens now? reporter: there will be a procedural vote tomorrow, and this procedural vote is necessary to make an up or down, thumbs up, thumbs down vote possible on saturday for the entire senate. now, this is also the opportunity, some left-wing groups and democrats -- if they can manage to sway those three

senators from the gop side that i just mentioned to vote against , despite the fbi report, against the confirmation of brett kavanaugh on saturday in this up-and-down vote, then this all goes nowhere, and brett kavanaugh will not have a job. but expected for now is that those three will vote with the rest of the republicans, and that means a 51-49 majority in the senate, and brett kavanaugh will be a judge on the supreme court. phil: thank you for that from washington. cristiano ronaldo has been left out of his team squad for next week's international matches. this comes against a rape allegation made against him. he vehemently denied the allegation, tweeting that rape is an abominable crime. last friday a german magazine

reported that an american is accusing the nala of raping her in a las vegas hotel in 2009. the 33-year-old also missed a portugal match last month while settling into his new home in italy. one of the journalists who first reported that rape allegation against cristiano ronaldo joins us from hamburg. welcome to dw. how did you find this story? >> we are a team of journalists who we digging through a lot of material in the football league's database. there are millions of documents in the database, and we are trying to find stories that are of public interest and that we can publish about. in the beginning of 2017, found the first traces of this incident and we sat down and all

worked together and gathered as much information as possible. also went outside, went to las vegas, try to talk to anybody that had any knowledge of the situation back then. catherine, for example, refused to talk to us back in. now in the piece we published last week,he speaks t for the rst time. phil: and you discovered a settlement that had been agreed between rinaldo and her. >> yes, it's a settlement agreement at the beginning of 2010. it makes catherine promised that she would never talk about this incident in the public anymore, and rinaldo in turn paid her $375,000, and was promised by s lawyers that she was allowed to write a letter to him, where

she would write about the incident, where she could address him. it's a very emotional, very graphic letter that we reported on last year. she is basically saying that he write her life with what happened back then. the settlement agreement said that this letter has to be read to ronaldo. phil: so what does he say about this? >> christine on a run although denies the allegations of sexual assault. he denies them from the beginning -- cristiano ronaldo denies the allegations. he let us know that he does not want to comment any further, but he strongly denying our story and saying that he did not sexually assault her. he also published a statement on twitter pretty much stating the same thing again, so that's not really breaking news. the strategy of his lawyers has changed, because in 2017, his agency released a statement that

presented some worries, some things that we could prove to be wrong. for example, they said that in our documents we cannot even identify bestie out of an although as the alleged person who allegedly -- we could not identify ronaldo, but we could easily prove the case, as they said. in a statement from this week, his lawyer, a german media law your, said the story is basically to private to become public. he said we infringed on his personal rights, and we totally disagree with this argumentation. we say this is a story of huge public interest, and we will continue to cover it. phil: thank you for joining us this evening. the united states, united kingdom, australia, and the netherlands are all accusing russian agents of involvement in

a series of cyber attacks around the world. the u.s. has now indicted seven russians in connection with the tax on domestic and international targets. dutch officials early today said they had foiled a russian cyber attack against the you in. investigators say for suspects packed the car full of cyber monitoring equipnt and left a trail of other evidence. the chemical weapons watchdog said it has suffered from what it called increased cyber related activity since the beginning of the year. russia denies the allegations, which were announced as nato defense ministers met in brussels. >> the smiles and handshakes on the second day of nato summit of defense ministers were overshadowed by news of a possible cyber attack by russian agents in the netherlands. >> nato allies expressed her solidarity with the decision of

the dutch and british governments to call out russia on its blatant attempt to undermine international law and international institutions. >> dutch authorities announced today they had for the cyberattack on the organization for the prohibition of chemical weapons. the dutch defense ministry said it had expelled for russian nationals after they were caught spying at the chemical weapons watchdog. but the defense ministers had other things to talk about as well. national defense budgets were on the agenda, with the u.s. still pushing for over -- other members to up their military spending. >> is clear we are making progress. this will be the fourth consecutive year of rising defense spending. but we still have a long way to go. >> nato is invested and is keen to show the world what it is doing with that money. send will hold its biggest military maneuvers since the end of the cold war. in norway, close to the russian

border. phil: i ask our correspondent about the timing of these allegations coming on the same day as nato defense ministers were meeting. >> the meeting today at nato headquarters here in brussels was certainly a good opportunity to close ranks with the united states for the nato members in europe, and also to show the united front against a common enemy, namely russia. so the timing is very good for the west to show that russia systematically undermines the western democracy with its attacks, and also international institutions. cyber attacks and cyber defense was already high on the nato agenda before this meeting, and now this is an opportunity to

show that nato is preparing for counterattacks on russia because they do now sees russian attempts as a kind of military question. phil: we heard comments from the nato secretary-general. how have other nato members been reacting? reporter: all nato members have their own allegations. the brits have issued a report in the united states indicted seven other russians in other related cases. also norway, australia, switzerland came forward with their own allegations. this is the attempt to show world -- a worldwide alliance against these alleged russian attacks. and as you mention, russia is denying all of these cases. a russian spokeswoman said to may -- said today it is all fantasy. phil: russia is suffering for sanctions imposed on its actions in ukraine. i wonder where this can go from here. reporter: nato and the united

states are considering a fresh round of sanctions against individuals from the russian military secret service and call for more expulsion of russian diplomats. but the relations between russia and the other countries are so low, you can hardly imagine they would getting lower. if you add tensions between the u.s. and russia in syria and if you add the new law that russian missiles deployed here in europe, you can see there's little chance for any positive development in the future, but the question is, do the russians really care? there are very serious doubts here at nato headquarters. phil: ben rieger, thank you. let's look now at some of the other stories making news around the world. german chancellor angela merkel hosted benjamin netanyahu as

part of a two-day visit. there was disagreement on several issues, including the iran nuclear deal. they agree that iran should be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons. the last privately operated ship dedicated to saving refugees from drowning in the mediterranean was dumped in marseilles. his flack has been revoked, meaning it can no longer legally sale. italy is cracking down on illegal migration. they say the move is putting people's lives at risk. romania is preparing for a referendum on whether to limit the definition of family to heterosexual and married couples. comes after 3 million people signed a petition to manning that the constitution explicitly state that marriage is between a man and a woman.

dozens of e.u. lawmakers oppose this weakens vote. -- weekend's vote. wherever people go, pollution always seems to follow. barely that is just as true in space as he is here on earth. this week, thousands of expert got together in germany to look for solution to the ever-increasing problem of space junk. next the astronautical congress, hosted this year by a german city, covers rockets, tellites, d even space statns. anything that humankind launches into orbit. at the more we shoot into near earth space, the bigger our problem with potentially damaging space junk becomes. it's like a bullet hitting some object. a satellite, for instance. it will damage or sometimes even destroy it. for example if it hits fuel tank or battery and causes an explosion. if an object like that collides with the international space station, it could punch a hole in the hull, causing an ai

leak. our modern societies have come dependent on such satellite systems. that's why experts say we need to act quickly to reduce the risk of damaging this delicate orbiting equipment. what we need is something like a vacuum cleaner, but that would not work in space, of course. it's a real challenge. some objects will reenter the atmosphere and just burn up. that's the low object that's low altitude optics. those in high altitudes will stay in orbit, more or less for -- forever. signed to 70 to act quickly before the space around our planet becomes too crowded for us to use -- scientists say we need to act quickly. phil: it's been a tough day for u.s. tech companies. let's will start with google. u.s. vice president mike prince -- mike pence search google to in development of its dragonfly

app google is reportedly building the apt to comply with censorship requirements in china. he said dragonfly will strengthen china's censorship regime and compromise privacy of customers. the ad would make it easier to attract private internet searches. he said business leaders should think twice before entering the chinese market if it means turning over intellectual property or contributing to beijing's oppression. it also criticized what he said was china's theft of u.s. technology. phil: for more, let's bring in our financial correspondent on wall street. looking at the story, you do have to wonder if it's worth to get in trouble with the white house, how relevant is the chinese market for google? >> it's not the first time that google tried to enter the chinese market with their search engine. they stopped the last effort eight years ago after some

issues. china is the second biggest economy on the planet, and they had the biggest population, so certainly is a very interesting market, but it does come at a price. if google would try to implement super flight in china, it would come with concessions from the chinese government. just recently there have been some reports that it is also quite controversial within google. there have been reports that some employees actually quit because of the controversial approach. it is really difficult to say if it is worse, the price of trying to implement, and stock was down almost 3% in a very shaky environment on thursday. phil: there are also reports suggesting china introduced spying chips on servers at amazon and google today. how did that happen?

reporter: that is a pretty serious accusation in this report that we got from bloomberg today, saying that china implemented by chips in some servers of some big corporations like amazon and apple. the companies themselves are saying they are not aware of any goes malicious chips in their systems, but we did see some reaction here on the market, the company that is supposed to build those by chips, at some point the stock got hammered by more than 2%. but it's difficult to say at this point if those accusations, if this report is actually really true, but it certainly caused quite some turmoil here, especially in the tech industry and wall street. phil: thank you very much. and last but not least, bad

news, facebook's latest hacker scandal could end in a 1.4 billion euro fine. a committee has begun investigations into the data breach and wants to determine if facebook correctly adhere to tougher new security requirements to protect its users. friday, facebook announced that hackers had access to at least 50 million user accounts. if facebook is found not to have fully complied with the new general data protection regulations, it may have to pay up to 4% of its annual income. phil: to brazil, where citizens had to the poll to elect a new government, with the elections coming at a pivotal moment for south america's largest economy. the country only recently pulled out of recession and is still suffering anemic growth, investor mistrust, and a population that has lost faith in both business and the government. and the public debt and

unemployment continuing to rise, it seems brazilians are facing a long, uphill battle. >> surf, sun and beach. that's what most people think of when it comes to brazil. but take a stroll away from the country's famous beaches, and the story for everyday brazilians looks much different. alexander used to work at an international company, but then he lost his job. with help-wanted ads few and far between, he started selling hot meals out of his friend's car. it's involuntary entrepreneurship, common story here. >> the problem of unemployment in the zeal was created by that enormous economic crisis that we are currently experiencing. to survive the crisis, people had to reinvent themselves. that's what i did. i could stay home and look for a job, sending out cvs all the time, but with the job market so tight, it's difficult. so i didn't give up, and decided to do my own ring.

-- my own thing. >> jobs are one of the chief concerns for brazilians. with unemployment hovering between 12% and 14%, around 13 million people spend their days at unemployment offices like this one. whoever comes out on top in this months polling will have their work cut out for them. brazil's public debt has topped half its gdp. worker productivity is at a standstill, and both investors and local officials have lost confidence in the government's ability to pay its debts. phil: it's been a tough year for germany's farmers. a lack of rainfall, combined with extremely dry, sunny weather, has scorched grain and he crops, giving farmers desperate -- leaving farmers definite for government aid. the weather extremes in germany have led to excellent wines.

>> the grapes have roots that reach down 10 meters into the earth. while the summer in germany was dry, the winter before that extremely wet. the grapes were able to access those deep moisture reserves which provided a harvest of exceptional yield and quality. the color is golden yellow, in a few press here on the great, the juice comes out immediately and the great seats are brown -- grape seeds are brown. the dry weather means they will be disease free. the sun drenched grapes take on a rich aroma. the white grapes have very low acidity, which attracts customers. >> we have exceptionally good qualities, as well as large quantities this year. such a constellation is very rare, as provided good

preconditionfor being able to asrt all markets, internationally as well. that wasn't the case in 2017. in 2017, german wine exports were only worth 308 million euros. experts project 2018 will exceed that number by far. phil: that's all for business and for dw news. they are watching. you can always stay up-to-date with business and other headlines on dw.com. see you next time. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

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