>> hello and welcome to life in paris on france 24. here are your headlines. the eu approves half a billion euros in arms to ukraine as pressure cramps up on germany to improve exports to the country. they may go ahead even if the request is denied. -- confirms withdrawing troops from the country. french troops have offered support to the islamic insurgency to the north.

they have asked for clarification. jill biden's personal headache continues after an fbi search of his house turns up more classified documents. the president is cooperative with senior democrats. and says he should be embarrassed with the handling of materials. ♪ >> the eu has agreed to a further half a billion euros of arms to ukraine, taking the total amount spent 23.6 billion euros. the pressure to allow exports is still piling up on the eu's biggest economy, germany. poland announced plans to ask berlin for permission to send its own tanks but it would go ahead even if germany refused as long as otherations das well.

the german governments have resisted, fearful of an escalation from the kremlin critic we have the latest. >> it is continuing to mount pressure on western allies to supply the machinery that kyiv is asking for. monday they would request balance authorization to send german-made battle tanks to aid the efforts. while they need germany's consent to send them to a non-nato country they said ultimately they would make their own decisions. >> we are constantly pressing the government in perlin to make them share -- berlin to make them share their leopards. they have 200 in storage. we ask for permission but this is a secondary thing. even if we do not get the permission, even if germany is not in the coalition, we will hand over our tanks together with others to ukraine. >> germany's foreign minister

has previously stated that if formally asked, it would not stand in the way. she is a green party member in the coalition, pushing for stronger german involvement in ukraine. chancellor olaf scholz has remained vague during criticism for dragging his feet on sending military hardware. this administration says it will not be rushed. >> the german government does not rule out supplying tanks, it just has not decided whether it will do so but maybe to consider many things before you take a reckless step that you basically regret in the end. >> despite germany's reluctance it remains one of the top weapons donors to ukraine. kyiv has been calling for these tanks for months. the leopards are capable of changing the situation on the ground, giving them the push to thwart russia's renewed aggression. >> earlier we spoke to france 24th correspondent in germany, nick spicer. he told us why berlin is

hesitant to send ukraine heavy artillery. >> germany has one of the strictest re-export regimes for its weapons in the world. largelyecause of its world war ii past, the law does not want exports to do anything which would harmrom a relations with countries tha gerny wants t maintain. at it mea conetely is basically if you are a native country and you ask for a re-export license, you are guaranteed to get it, if you are a somewhat dodgy country of let's say, germany has been known to drive its heels, to play the clock and wait for things to kind of go away. what could happen in this particular case is that poland may have already done so but can make a preliminary inquiry which is not a formal request. should they go it alone, than there is the danger that germany would refuse to provide spare parts for these tanks. but poland has over 200 of them, a capable defense industry, capable tank mechanics who can cannibalize the other tanks. it only wants to do this within

a small coaliti. we know finland is ready to send tanks and there are some 2000 leopards tanks of different makes and so on in europe. some it is a situation one could envisage where all the countries that want to send tanks go it alone without germany, helping each other out with spare parts and leaving olaf scholz more isolated than ever. >> diplomatic tensions between sweden and turkey continue to sour. turkish president threatened to put the brakes on sweden's nato membership after a weekend protest in which a koran was burned, sparking backlash. they should not expect turkey's support, which could derail their bid to become the defense alliances latest member as all members must be unanimously approved. next, on monday they confirmed demands that france withdraw all troops in the country.

the news broke on friday evening with state media reporting the decision. france is awaiting clarifications from the transitional president about the decision french troops have been supporting the forces as they face a raging insurgency for the past few years. groups linked to islamic state and al qaeda taking over large areas of territory, displacing millions in the process. we have more. >> an abrupt notice to take boots off soil. on monday, a government official confirmed his government's request for french soldiers to leave the territory within a month. >> we are terminating the agreement which allows french forces to be in bettina vasso. this is not the end of diplomatic relations between us and france. >> it comes a day after a diplomatic letter was obtained by afd asking french troops to

withdraw and the french government confirmed they received the request. they are awaiting clarification on the scope of the demands, but they are committed to the fight against terror. >> france is readjusting in consultation with partners. its mechanism will allow it to remain at the side of the countries engaged in the fight against terrorism. >> 400 special forces are currently stationed at burkina faso and have been for more than a decade in an effort to combat jihadist groups, but their presence has become contested following the country's tutus in 21 and 2022. some citizens are overly hostile towards the french troops. >> their presence has no value, they are making no effort to get us out of this crisis. we need a change. at all levels. given our cries for years,

france has noteacted. i think it is better to be enemies for a while then to be friends who are useless. following in the footsteps of its neighbor mali, which france withdrew from, there are signs that burkina faso is turning towards russia. >> california is reeling from the countries worst mass shootings in history after 72-year-old suspected gunman hugh opened fire at a dance studio, killing 11 people in los angeles. police have no motive for the shooting with media reporting traffic and been a. he gave lessons and met his ex-wife at the venue. they say he wasn't angry, aggressive, distressful person and complains that people at the studio were talking behind his back. >> staying in united states joe biden is facing a political headache days after the fbi search of his home turned up yet

more classified documents. biden voluntarily allowed the search to happen during which items were recovered dating back to his time in the senate and vice presidency. that ordeal has taken up a lot of political air in washington over the last week with some senior democrats saying biden should be quote embarrassed by the saga. joining me now to discuss this is dr. thomas, a political scientist with the university college london center, the u.s. politics. he joins me from connected. thank you for being with us. since the first disclosure, over 10 days ago, this story has ballooned. it started as a small number at his former office and now multiple sets of documents have been found in his residence. how big a political storm could this be for the president? >> well, i think it is already a real mess for this administration and the slow drip of revelations certainly have not helped. they had come out all at once, that would've been one thing but it seems like it's more and more and more and more.

a big part of the problem is the white house public relations response. at best, you can describe it as inadequate. some critics say it has been dismissive. biden himself has not done himself any favors with the comments he has made to date. in a press conference he appeared to discount the seriousness of the charges by saying some of the classified files were locked in his garage next to his corvette. you can imagine how that would have gone down if donald trump had said it, so there is the substance of the case and then there is how the admin's ration is trying to frame the allegations and both in my view have been problematic. >> we know an investigation has been opened, what kind of jeopardy could biden be in here? >> that's a great question. we have seen a special counsel appointed in the biden case, similar to what we saw in the trump case. and so, these cases are essentially running parallel to one another. it is important to note that special counsel's are independent and they are supposed to be apolitical, that it is impossible to think about

the biden case without considering the trump case, because they are happening in can be viewed in a vacuum, think simply because it is so potically charged. biden and trump now are unlikely to face any sort of indictment, so the investigation is one thg and the pitics are one thing, but an indictmt seems pretty unlikely. precisely because i think it would be very hard for the justice department to prosecute one se but not the other without being accused of having to tears of justice or playing favorites. for that reason, i think it is going to end in a deadlock, where neither base re serious legal trouble. the political fallout israel. >> the trump threat, parallels have been drawn between trump's handling and bidens. democrats saying this is different, biden is cooperating

with authorities. nevertheless, is this a political point score if you are a republican? >> i think it is. it is the case that for months, the biden administration was making all sorts of comments abt how they could not believe that trump could be this reckless. joe biden himself made comments to the effect of he could not fathom anyone being so irresponsible. so at this point, now that biden is facing the exact same charges, it is difficult or democrats to defend, because if they do, it is going to look hypocritical. the best they can do is say the infraction here is not as serious as the one facing donald trump. that is probably right. with donald trump, there is not only the allegation of mishandling of documents, but also the allegation of potential destruction -- obstruction of justice p he stonewalled fbi agent's. essentially for months, failing to give over these documents. that is an important

distinction, it is critical not to draw false equivalencies but republicans are going to be able to muddy the water and the fact that the parallels are so similar means that this is a political winner for them. >> lastly, some documents were discovered before the midterms but the public did not find out until days ago. republicans say it was suppressed, biden says he has no regrets over the timeline that is taken place over the last few months. what you make of that? >> it's a good question. because biden has essentially made the case from the outside that he is transparent, i think it's a reasonable question to ask why was it not made transparent before the election? of course, the administration s phaps under no legal obligation to do so and the justice department itself was in the midst of its own review of the documents, so there may be a legitimate reason for that, but just the optics of it do not look good you know, this is an administrationhat keeps saying it is trying to do everything by

the books, aboveboard, in contrast to the previous white house and the fact that they a cing allegations that they may have sue pressed this, i think it could end up being a problem for them. >> thank you for joining us on france 24. >> thank you. >> next venezuela's vice president has said the country's inflation rate has slowed to 234% last year. despite it being a high figure, it is over one third -- 600% seen in 2021. if pressure is piling on nicholas maduro's government however as public sector work is demanding better pay and pension plans. this concerns the lower inflation rates that could be a blip with prices starting to rise once again. some economists warn that the country could be about to enter a time of hyperinflation. >> in august 2020 the port of

beirut was stated by an explosion that killed over 215 people and leveled buildings in the surrounding areas. a judicial investigation into the disaster was launched but after significant political pressure was suspended. now, over a year after it was halted, a judge is reopening the case. pitting political forces and allies against them. we report. >> 13 months after it was suspended due to political pressure, the investigation into the deadly beirut explosion of august 2020 is set to reopen. it was announced on monday that a judge would resume the investigation. he was going to order the rates of five to 10 suspects while charging eight others, including two senior security officials. ever since the investigation was suspended in december 2021, its resumption has been stalled by judicial complaints. lebanon's political factions are called on him to step down,

including the hezbollah. more than 200 people were killed in large tracts of the lebanese capital destroyed in the explosion at beirut court on august 4, 2020. the blast happened when ammonium nitrate fertilizers stored in a warehouse caught on fire. no high-ranking officials have been brought to justice for negligence that caused the explosion. this is something denounced by the relatives of the victims, several of whom were questioned by police after a protest in beirut last week. activists have called on the united nations to investigate the disaster. >> it is time now for a look at the days top business news with brian quinn. good to see you. starting with a wave of layoffs squeaking the tech sector this time? >> spotify is cutting 6% of its workforce. the swedish music streaming giant has roughly 6600 employees, which would mean or hundred staff members losing

their jobs. ceo daniel says the companies operating cost last year grew at double the pace of resin news and says it has invested big to expand its podcast offerings. spotify joints big tech names including amazon, google and microsoft in cutting staff from the pandemic era online business boom. u.s. treasury secretary janet yellen landed in zambia. she is calling a major restructuring of the southern african nations debt. zambia owes more than $17 billion to foreign creditors. meanwhile per capita income is slipping with 60% of zambians living in extreme poverty. yellin was on a three nation tour of africa as the biden administration seeks to revitalize the u.s.'s economic relations on the continent. jenny takes a closer look. >> the united states is all in on africa. u.s. tasury secretary janet yellen's message to the

continent on her 10 day trip to promote deeper economic ties with african nations. on the second leg of her visit, she urged zambia's creditors to restructure the nation's debts after it became the first african country in the endemic era to default on its stance. the country owes $17.3 billion in payments to creditors, including china. in senegal, yellin voiced her concerns about chinese investment in the continent. >> many african countries are plagued by unsustainable debt and that is undeniably a problem. much of it is related to chinese investments in africa. >> for years beijing has been pouring money into african infrastructure projects, becoming its largest trading partner. janet yellen strip comes after last month's african leaders summit where the biden administration invest 55 billion u.s. dollars in economic, health and security aid to the

continent over the next three years. emphasizing the need to defend to the issue of food insecurity made worse by russia's war in ukraine and africa's susceptibility to the climate crisis. last year washington provided approximately $13 billion in emergency aid and fd assistance to the african continent. >> microsoft says it is making a multibillion-dollar multi-year investment into open ai, the artificial intelligence start up the hind new weld based tool chat gpt. it has changed the conversation about ai with the bot able to convincingly write college-level research papers, theater pieces and poetry. microsoft says supercomputers will power open ai's demanding systems with new startups technology to be integrated into microsoft products. checking in on the day's trading action, european indexes marked modest gains on monday. the euro hit a nine-month high

against the dollar as ecb chief christine the guard says rate hikes will continue at a steady pace. here in paris, up around half a percent at the close. wall street surged as the federal reserve will slow its rate hike in pace to a quarter percent at its next meeting. it microsoft shares up around 1% at the close on the news of the opening. finally for business vegetarians in the u.s. may have a new quandary with which to grapple this year. whether or not to eat lab grown meat. the u.s. food and drug administration has approved the country's first cultivated product for human consumption. it's a chicken breast grown from muscle cells in a california laboratory. its maker, upside foods, hopes to have the product in restaurants this year. the fda says it is working with multiple companies on renewing their lab meat products for approval. singapore is the only country to have cultured meat available for

sale. the sector is growing, $2 billion. investments raised so far. the eu is currently working on its own regulatory framework for lab meat products. bring it on, i say. >> i don't think i'm ready to try some. it looks slightly anemic. >> no. thank you for that with the business update. it is time now for truth or fake, our daily fact checking segment with emerald maxwell. you been looking at videos shared online that appeared to show different animals going around in circles. theories about the behavior, what are people saying? >> it is the great sheep street as the people's daily china is calling it. this video has been viewed more than 12 million times since it was originally shared by the people's daily. and it supposedly shows sheep

moving into a circle, supposedly for over 10 days. after this initial video, others started popping up. here we can see fish moving in a similar paern so main circle and here are some caterpillars. tiktok users were speculating that these patterns were down to 5g. that old favorite for conspiracy theorists. or that it was a sign of perhaps the end of the world. so this tiktok video in particular -- no it's not that one. it's this one, this tiktok video wasn't shared alongside hashtags like apocalypse, this blames the harp project which is the high-frequency active oral research program that studies the upper atmosphere but which

conspiracy theorists accuse of being a weather controlling weapon. in this case, releasing vibrations into the earth is what would cause animals to act this way, for example. >> what is true here? the images are incredible but what we know about why animals are behaving like this? >> to try to find out, we spoke to a couple of animal behavioral specialists, researchers, who told us that this pack moving in circles also called circular milling is a relatively common occurrence. here we see ants doing just that. scientists have observed it long before harp or even 5g came along. and it exists in fish, caterpillars and ants among others, although the reasons they do it are not understood and very depend on the species. here we have a researcher who told us ants leave behind a chemical trail.

these mills form when the process derails. let's have a listen to him. >> [speaking foreign language] >> so yes, if that is the case for ants, it is also the case for -- there are different reasons behind other animals such as fish. so they talked us through that. he said that actually, that would be -- here we go, for the fish, it is a sort of coping

mechanism for fish when they are stressed by what they perceive as predators, when the light changes, that can also cause them to swim in these circles. the same goes for reindeer. it is often -- here we go, we can move to -- this is a professor at the university of oslo who told us that this behavior can occur when for example it is hot and there are insects or when humans try to herd them. so this behavior is not unlike some humans who might pace or rock when stressed, for instance. if we go back to the original sheep video, which we have somewhere over here, yes. well, they had not studied thi particular case in china, of course, but they said it look like stereotypical behavior which is observed in many animals in captivity. it serves no obvious purpose but

it helps animals cope with small environments. as a researcher told us, sheep are highly social animals and they tend to copy each other. so this is stereotypical behavior to spread quickly from one to the next. they also said that we can see that all the animals are not turning at the same time, which means there's a whole branch of animal behavior. science is devoted to answering these questions and all of these theories are expand in more detail at scientific journals which can be found by a simple google search. these videos of animals going around in circles are most likely not the end of the world. >> thank you for breaking that down for us. with truth or fake. were going to take a quick break on france when he for but stay tuned, i will be back with more of your world headlines. ♪ >> politicians picking their

constituents. in the united states the process of redistricting favors the party in power. we take you to ohio where republicans use and abuse the system. >> if we saw this in another country, we would understand that this is not democracy but because it is to america we don't see it that way. >> it's called gerrymandering, an abusive practice for some, apolitical practice for others. >> we have had gerrymandering ever since we have had a constitutional republic. it is not confined to one party or the other. >> ohio, democracy in peril, in reporters on france 20 france 24.com. >> revisiting the fight of the president of the association of peruvian women, subjected to forced sterilization in the 90's. >> we have been fighting for more than 25 years and we will

continue until we get the truth, justice and compensation. >> she listens. these are the results of all of the medical exams i have had, because i have not been well since my tubes were tied. >> she supports. >> we need to be respected, because you are not alone. >> and above all, she does not give up. >> now is the time to apologize. >> watch her quest for justice in a be visited on france 24 and 24.com. ♪

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01/23/23 01/23/ [captioning made possible by democracy now!] amy: from new york, this is democracy now! >> o messageor todays quit simple. free julian assange. amy: famed dissident and professor noam chomsky, pentagon papers whistleblower daniel ellsberg, and former british labour leader jeremy corbyn are all calling on president biden