syrian army and its allies liberate the last eisel stronghold in syria bringing the terrorist groups caliphate in the country to an end. i know independence protesters clashed with police at barcelona railway station is part of a general strike the same demonstrators they're blocking roads in protest over the jailing of top politicians. and cia chief mike pump comes under fire for meeting a former intelligence official who says the last year of the democratic party was an inside job rather than a russian directed cyber attack we've spoken to the man behind the.

very good evening to you my name is the thing you're watching r.t. and tonight. the syrian army and its allies including the lebanese militia hezbollah say that they have been liberated the last major eisel stronghold in syria the town of carmel. the town is on the border with iraq and was the terrorists' last major bastion after they were driven from the city of their resort russia's defense ministry recently noted islamic state controlled less than five percent of territory in syria and that was before these last two major victories

and now to max abrams is the assistant professor of public policy at northeastern university good to have you on the line max it can we go this far can we say that this victory really does mean the end of i still in syria. well the way i would put it is there's an end of the caliphate the caliphate has been the main political raids on dextro of the islamic state and i don't think that anyone could possibly say that the caliphate exists in any real fashion so this latest battle really signals very much the end of the caliphate. and therefore the end of the main you know political goal of islamic states but the islamic state itself is not yet. you know this is a group that managed to attract tens of thousands of fighters from scores of

countries all over the world and so the remaining you know isis members simply former isis members in it stronghold of iraq and in theory you know and of course this is an international problem with untold numbers of foreign fighters who have returned home although not as at not quite as many as initially feared and so yeah that's the way i would put it is that the caliphate is just. does that suggest then that these small pockets of the terrorists who remain in some of the villages that it's key to wipe them out and if so how long do you think that could take. yeah i mean i would always recommend if you you could have a clean shot at you know an islamic state fighter in syria are in iraq for i would take it if i mean these guys are terrorists though you're ok with those terrorist

groups that we've ever seen in world history and so we need to pursue them drug i've seen european leaders say essentially the same thing we don't know what these guys were turning home so the fight is still very much we need to keep the pressure off to find them and frankly we may need to expand the targeting to include groups in splinter groups we are the former isis guys are heading to net for example you know some of the groups would be you know differing names. for example in syria oh they harbor meant fim views and i think that they too should be very good salt of the pressure gets to be kept going but we've done a wonderful job of reversing their fortunes especially in their stronghold a sort of want to remain skeptical given what we've seen over the last do you think this is an ideology that if it isn't eliminated and maybe some possible to

eliminate that it could just sit there by this time and then we'll see it growing again in years to come. it depends on what you mean by ideology i mean that disallows fist ideology is very much alive that's an international movement which of course preceded islamic state and looking to new long after islamic state however part of their ideology was also the concrete political aim of a stablish in the caliphate i think that that dream has been set back not be revocable way but i think that that fighters all over the world were really tough to think twice about whether it's a good idea to try to establish a caliphate given the fact that islamic state and get up feeling so badly. for example also believes essentially in a caliphate in an emirate pay their approach has been slow work it spend you know more gradual to try to build up more local support in order to achieve it over time

so i think that that approach will probably gain some resonance as a some extent continues to get. if we look at the syria without the terrorists certainly in significant numbers what would that mean for the country what will it mean terms of the civil war there is it likely to end. i think that that that that region and that country will remain on stable for the perceivable future islamic state is one of many militant groups in that country viewers could just do a google search for it blip for example or any other search engine look at it live and you'll see it's a highly you know radicalized area with h t s b a quite up from relevant rupiah including nusra which which leads it under various aliases sites yeah i mean the government basically sees no possible negotiation with the

a lot this rebels and the same is also true in terms of how the rebels regard you know what they consider to be the regime and given that i think that the civil war will continue but the fact that assad will remain into mascara you know he is going to stay there so that is no longer in doubt where is that wasn't true say a couple years ago so i do think that assad's power the syrian government's power is expanding throughout the country but i don't expect him to have all of the country under wraps because there are still remain you know tens of thousands of full prepared to fight against the syrian there of army and this militia. actually good to speak to appreciate you'll vs max abrams my guest assistant professor of public policy at northeastern university. on to the news the cia director mike compare has come under father meeting

a former intelligence official over the alleged hacking of the democratic party back in two thousand and sixteen the u.s. intelligence community laid the blame for that hack on moscow and with william binney he's a former national security agency official turned whistleblower and then he believes that the alleged attack of the democratic national committee was in fact a link carried out by a d.n.c. employee also co-author de mello to the president on the issue back in july the d.n.c. hat was claimed by an anonymous hacker goose of a two point zero there's been explains the fires were copied too fast for a remote bridge one of the main issues i was there telling him is that i didn't believe the intelligence agencies were telling him or the president the truth so i went through the technical data that we as the veteran intelligence fashionables who have technical experience all of the technical data that we had available and could look at the analyze and from there it was very clear that it was a local download because of the speeds and all i mean we've even tried to transfer

data across the atlantic through the web. and see what speeds we could achieve the most we got was like twelve megabytes per second and you needed at least thirty eight megabytes just to pass the data not counting housekeeping so that meant that the capacity was about one fourth the one eight what would be necessary to transfer that data to somewhere in europe for example and when you spoke about we are now lies the data is that meaning i was reading about an expert forensic kater is the person who was analyzing the data for you well he was looking at the data yes and so were about five or six other people. and i was looking at the output of that trying to assess that. just to verify it and we also tried to test it in the real world not in the speculative world trying to do the transfer to make it something that would be compatible with that download rate and we could not achieve that either so this. the challenge on this was because i read that one of the members of you're kind of team that was working on this novel they disagreed with you but they

weren't so convinced and i mean convinced that this was definitely the case that this had to be a download is it's not possible to transfer that speed the best we got was from a data center in new jersey to a data center in the u.k. and the best was twelve megabytes per circuit that's what i said was one fourth the one eight the necessary capacity to transfer that data at the rate it was download so it had to be done locally there was no substantive evidence anywhere. they could produce factual evidence that we could look at and analyze find but so far they produced absolutely nothing but in two thousand and thirteen william binney was a welcome guest on american news channels when he exposed privacy violations in the n.s.a. spying program back then c.n.n. described him as a whistleblower with a dramatic story but now the network seems to have changed its tune describing it instead as a conspiracy theory william binney himself says that the channel uses labels instead of actual evidence. they have

a problem of course because they've been asserting this kind of. speculation of the gender driven stuff for over a year now and it would be kind of difficult to go back off that so but i mean to me it basically shows the shallow weakness of the argument when you have to throw labels at people instead of dealing with any factual evidence in fact the f.b.i. knows a lot more about this than are telling anybody so it is n.s.a. but they're not saying it either so and they're not telling that this is information i'm getting from other sources i don't have it substantiated but they need to come forward and say exactly what they've got so far they've not done that . dependence protesters have clashed with police at the railway station in barcelona of just trying to move the activists away after they blocked again transfer station. i

was placed a currently massively outnumbered by the protesters have been chanting pro independence slogans the standoff itself comes after a general strike that brought much of the region to a halt activists blocked crucial transport networks in major cities and a protest over the jailing of regional leaders dritte accuses those leaders of rebellion insufficient and today an old as the region's declaration of independence but if i. was doing that strike roads and trains were blocked by protesters these now pictures from sharon are this is where protesters cut off the regional route that connects thing to france and if you're on a train station you'll see in a moment hundreds of demonstrators breaking through a police cordon. ah. ah yes i guess.

a quick recap for you now of what's happened in catalonia over the past month or so on october first the region held an independence referendum which was marred by a violent police crackdown an overwhelming majority voted to break away from spain independence that was the on october twenty seventh later that day madrid stripped the region know of self rule in order to snap elections and then last week eight former catalan ministers were jailed on charges of sedition and rebellion. and meantime the spanish foreign minister has said that madrid is ready to amend the constitution in the interests of catalonia you have created a committee in the parliament to explore the possibility of them in the course of two sions to be able to sort of accommodate better you know the escalations of some

of the catalan people i think we are reviewing we you know we acknowledge that there is a political situation that deserves to be looked at. catalan spokes person from the european partnership for independence told us that madrid will not bring peace to the region just say if you think there are aggressive wars by attacks on institutions and obviously if. you just don't know how you are exerting or since it's an outrage it's very critical for him for that for the spanish to stay to preach to make believe that they are the ones reagan peace when they are the ones bringing the bar and i know who far away in an illegitimate way the pats are an institution that spans just a little do for no reason so national trait is that they are signs that

they be fair and i'm promoting sound so many nations under universal rights in that fund i legitimately i mean damn dance my league out. they tow is increasing the number of its military headquarters in europe this is for the first time since the cold war so that the alliance can move troops quicker across the continent all amid growing tensions with russia. the other petition of the nato command structure will further strengthen our ability to reinforce our lives quickly effectively. but military will be that this is not only about new homes it is also about ability to move forces on the quitman quickly with the right transport means the right infrastructure all the idea is to create this europe wide zone where it's easy to move forces and equipment around nato commanders want to

get rid of a lot of the red tape in europe in order for them to take things like tanks and military hardware and personnel and move them transport them from one country to another across the continent at speed and even though the chief of the military alliance insists that they're not targeting any specific country nato. turns on the senses the text of against any specific nation in recent years one of its top priorities has been containing russia we have seen the much more assertive russia we have seen the russia which has over many years invested heavily in their military capabilities modernize them into a good bit is now as part of this announced revamp they're also plans to help protect sea lines of communication for the military alliance which in the event of war would be a vital supply route to europe now all this talk of preparedness for

a potential war with russia is pretty reminiscent of the sort of rhetoric we heard all those years ago during the cold war the kremlin has accused nato of pursuing an aggressive strategy on its borders that threatens to destabilize eastern europe with nato his latest move to expand its military capabilities on the continent this cycle of military saber rattling. yes to only be asking why us. tonight is so is the north korea the been at it again trading insults pyongyang has called trump the lunatic old man before adding that washington is not fit to act as a judge of human rights that after president trump why north korea is being a how but nobody deserves this during his trip to solve part of a tour of asia and as usual tom didn't miss a chance to stick it to north korea on twitter he released the warning video and it was accompanied by

a rather dramatic soundtrack the response of the story corps basically the core of. our response. our duty to run this danger to get. us. out. you. are with. us. are secret. president obama is now in china for the next much anticipated leg of his trip and that visits already proved fruitful routes in reported that the u.s. and china have signed some twenty trade deals worth nine billion dollars the chinese side has dubbed them just a warm up for a bigger ceremony on thursday now r.t. samir khan takes a look back at term point she's previous meeting. donald trump arrives in china on its five nation asia tour it's now the chinese president's turn to roll out the red

carpet just six months ago the chinese leader came to washington and the two hit it off bonding over chocolate cake but trump couldn't help but be a bit theatrical during the dinner topping the magnificent dessert with a show of washington's military might we had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you've ever seen and president she was enjoying it so what happens is i said we've just launched fifty nine missiles heading to iraq and what were you headed to syria yes heading toward syria trump loves his weapons so much he thinks they're the solution to every problem and when the threat is as serious as north korea all the other countries in the region must be armed to the teeth and prepared to respond well that's the idea he's been trying to sell on his asia trip so far in both japan and south korea prime minister the band is going to be purchasing massive amounts of military equipment as he should south korea will be ordering billions of dollars of that equipment we make the best military equipment by far we

make the greatest military equipment in the world the f. thirty five fighter which is the greatest in the world the greatest in the world missiles of many different kinds whether it's planes whether it's missiles we make the best the greatest military equipment by far in the world be purchasing it from the united states. thank you very much. now trump is counting on the chinese president to back him up as he puts pressure on pyongyang president where we will leave tomorrow china has been very helpful we'll find out how helpful so on but he really has been very very helpful well it's often said that diplomacy is merely seduction in another guys so the question is will trump's efforts to seduce the chinese lead. carry over and will he be able to strike a sweet deal for the u.s. . r t washington d.c.

. top heavyweight boxer has become the latest russian to be cleared of unproven doping allegations by will go from bodies i discussed the story earlier with artesian on cultural. safley that has been going through something similar to what other russian athletes have been gone through the last years and that's of course related to doping now this particular war in that example that kid was accused of taking steroids about a year ago and following that it was swift trial or rather no trial at all and then and even a quicker punishment and he was banned for life and that decision one was based soley on one laboratory that was in los angeles california meanwhile european independent labs in switzerland showed his results proved negative of steroid use so the story is quite interesting and there's

a lot to be said about it but speaking about that particular lab the. there was a complaint launched against him by the russian company also by some other clients as well and consequently that was suspended from work for some time so you can see because of that decision of one lab unchecked and athlete lost an entire year of his career but thankfully right now all of the governing box americanization is like w.b.c. w b o. and all of them have accepted back into their ranks and he will be back in the ring in december yes they've started a remarkable turnaround very embarrassing i would say for the for the books and also to many thanks to my culture. meanwhile russia's investigative committee has rejected claims that the country had been running an elaborate state sponsored doping program and said the world anti-doping agency had provided no proof to back

the findings of a report by canadian lawyer richard mclaren with more about his aunties guess the. well they carried out an extensive in-depth investigation involving more than seven hundred athletes their coaches various medical personnel and they question them about the allegations in the mclaren report and a number of them they rejected firstly they rejected the claim that some of the samples was switched and this claim was made in the mclaren report it said it said that some of them are normal or some of the samples indicating that perhaps they were mixed with salt and distilled water in order to hide banned chemical substances in these samples while the investigators stage their own experiments and they found that depending on how intensely an athlete trained what he had drunk his unique physiological exchange process as well many samples could be found as

anomalous the second claim that they rejected was that the urine sample bottles themselves were tampered with were opened them manufactured by a swiss company and they're made to be incredibly difficult to open if not impossible to open and close without leaving any sort of mark and back in march there was an experiment that investigation which found that these a urine bottles can't be opened without damaging the integrity of the bottles themselves or even destroying them so that claim doesn't fly either the other claim that they rejected was that there was a state sponsored massive national doping program in russia investigators say the evidence that they have is that there is no evidence the mclaren report hasn't offered any of them mass stooping to stem but the investigators did say that they don't deny that there may have been individual cases of athletes using banned

substances but those seven hundred questioned many of them said that. they did indeed buy performance enhancing drugs which they believed to be legal from grigori he's the former head of the russian anti doping agency on whose testimony much of the mclaren report was was made and here's what they had to say after that's what caught our doping while taking the drugs bought from roche and give it said the tests would always been negative if we used these drugs later took them off me and never gave them back my athletes was disqualified for two years even though we deny using prohibited drugs later i remembered i bought some drugs from rob chink of during the testing period now i suspect the drugs he sold me were banned. of allegedly claimed the athletes that these were illegal substances but after doping test they were marked as positives nevertheless grigori watching of himself

investigators claim they have this phone call on record on tape he called the current head of the russian anti-doping agency and offered money a bribe in return for a database of all russian athletes doping results. it was concluded that flushing calf who is now in the u.s. and works with professor mclaren telephoned a former sad i had and asked her to sell him the database of russian athletes test results the former senator had told russian investigators about this and now the committee has records of their conversations earlier this month of course two russian athletes skiers both were banned for life from competing in the olympics due to positive results in doping tests but the questions being asked here now is that if the investigation is still ongoing why are athletes already being banned for life. marty spoken exclusively to russia sports minister that's pavel khaled

coffer on the country's cooperation with the international olympic committee and water as well as if russia will take part in the upcoming winter olympics in south korea. there's even a couple of the announcement made today by russia's investigative body is very important i think what they should take into consideration the conclusions reached by russia's investigative body i very much hope there will be cooperation between these entities but with the aim to determine the truth if the area you see does decide on making sanctions against russia in the week to games such as not allowing the russian national anthem to play or barring delegates or feet from the opening ceremony would you consider that as being an acceptable humiliation for russia and would you then consider what we call the games that are when you know i don't like the word boycott there were boycotts in the one nine hundred eighty s. and had a very adverse effect on sport this is an impossible scenario now our team is

calmly preparing for the games we are staying in constant contact with the i.o.c. on many points we do disagree but so i still hope that the final decision will be in the name of sport i've said many times that athletes that violate doping rules should be punished but clean athletes shouldn't have to bear responsibility for those breaching the rules our goal is to make sure clean athletes get the rights to compete i think the international sports organizations have the same goal while making such decisions we must think about every individual athlete involved. great to have you with us this evening here on r.t. international thanks for chatting it up to stick around about the very latest news headlines at the top of the hour. and then again. and your girl are nine.

and. before. you just remove one of the names for it. is. mostly older and don't always reverdy people on the outskirts of jerusalem. the neighborhood is nearly out world version in a. little city play over the exploding very. vocal zealots of

such. a concept of burning trash and war is not new it is all this war itself the difference here was that this war was lasting for a decade and included tens of thousands of troops and personnel to support the invasion of iraq and the war in afghanistan. where did they bring their trash in these huge open air heads. they burned everything creating this black plume of smoke that had been just bursting are settling over is small the word of five cities. and you had people living in barracks right next to this clune people working right next to it and now working with it with no protection whatsoever. or receiving more blast to the fire and we're going to have to make it instigate this way this can.