lebanese prime minister saad hariri finally arrives home following his surprise resignation in riyadh over two weeks ago. president vladimir putin and donald trump have held a telephone conversation the topics discussed include syria iran and north korea. google openly val's to do you rank r.t. and sputnik making it harder for them to reach wide audiences that is despite the tech giant previously admitting it found no violations when it investigated artie's popularity on you tube. broadcasting live direct from our studios in moscow this is our international

thomas certainly glad to have you with us now the lebanese prime minister saad hariri has arrived at the airport in beirut this is the first time he has been in the country since he resigned in a speech given in saudi arabia on november the fourth he will reportedly make his way to the presidential palace to deliver his official resignation as prime minister to the lebanese president artie's maria has details on the story for us. this is a long awaited to return lebanon's prime minister saad hariri has returned to beirut after he spent more than two weeks outside the country i have to say that these were really hard and turbulent twenty days for lebanon it started as a normal official visit to saudi arabia but already next day mr hariri an expectedly announced about his resignation in a televised address while speaking from the saudi arabian capital he then explained that the major reason behind this to station is the influence and the attempts by

military and political forces backed by iran to meddle into the policy politics here in lebanon and throughout the region mr hariri also mentioned that he fears for his life and worries about t.'s family's safety it immediately sparked speculation that mr hariri was held in saudi arabia against his will and that he was poorest to resign that was the opinion shared by many politicians i have to say including here in lebanon including the country's president he did not accept this so-called remote resignation mr hariri in several days left saudi arabia going to france france's president. rita rated many times that he considers mr hariri prime minister of lebanon and this is exactly the status he's accepting and inviting mr harry. to france in after france mr hariri

went to high road many there were some stops in between and now he's back to lebanon he is expecting to take part in the independence day celebrations that are going to take place here in beirut but of course everybody's waiting for explanations over he's resignation and he has promised that he will give more details and he will clarify everything while he is back home so let's let's wait and see what how it will be progress aine. meanwhile the lebanese army says it is prepared to countenance any possible act of israeli aggression that is according to an official statement by the army chief it comes as arab nations led by saudi arabia moved to crack down on lebanon's hezbollah militia and he's a sourly picks up the story for us this announcement by joseph he's the head of the

lebanese military telling the army to be in full readiness along the border with israel saying that israel daily commits violations of lebanon's sovereignty and so the country must be ready to face any aggression from the southern neighbor and of course it all comes in the background of these increasing tensions in the region we've seen the head of the israeli defense force the chief of staff gul eyes and caught saying very openly actually that he's ready to have complete cooperation with the saudi arabia and to share intelligence with them on what they both see as their common foe iran and by extension iran's allies in the region groups like hezbollah course we've seen all of this coming in the wake of the arab league meeting over the weekend convened by saudi arabia to condemn iran and of course again there are allies like hezbollah like the who sees and other groups which are

fighting in resisting against saudi arabia in yemen as well so all of that coming together in that sense that meeting didn't go exactly to plan there were several arab countries which didn't vote for saudis motion poll country quite tense actually that's the atmosphere here as they all wait to see what will happen not just in the domestic politics of lebanon but also regionally the. russian president vladimir putin has spoken over the phone with donald trump the conversation lasted almost an hour or he's only trying to report on what was discussed. after quite a few reports some of them came from d.c. from across the atlantic some of them were from tsotsi we finally got the confirmation from kremlin which makes it official president putin and president trump have been on the phone the kremlin says that the two leaders were quite poppy about how it went although we don't find out that much from the statement on mr

putin's website but here's a couple of things they did bring up north korea syria also iran and mr putin told his american counterpart that russia still the nuclear deal to hold and absolutely no surprise syria and every time i talk about some sort of communication between the presidents of america and russia i always mention these names but let me tell you why syria is most important at this point on monday a lot of our putin welcomed the syrian president bashar al assad here and tsotsi it was a surprise trip he doesn't leave the country that often and mr putin and mr assad agreed that the anti-terrorist mission in the middle east country was nearing the end after all indeed islamic state only controls a few villages and the country they've almost been completely thrown out but it

still leaves damascus and the opposition at war the civil war in syria is still ongoing as sad though told putin that he is ready for reforms and compromises and mr putin must have tried to send this message across and make it more convincing during that phone call also mr putin and mr trump have previously said many times that they want the deescalation zones in syria to work so the two presidents could have talked about further. steps in that anyway as you can see there is loads going on and there was a chance that we will find out more very very soon tsotsi is hosting the. iran turkey summit on wednesday the three countries as you may remember are behind the syria peace talks and asked enough and we are expecting

a lot of our putin to speak here in sochi just after the talks conclude the white house has also issued an official statement on the call saying both presidents stressed the importance of ensuring a stable and unified syria free of terrorists. the executive chairman of google's parent company alphabet has vowed to deal rank r t and the news agencies put nick in order to make it harder for the outlets to reach wider audiences his comments came at a security forum in canada when asked about r t's use of google's and send service . i had a subscription for google alerts in germany being rich and getting them every day out of ten results between five and ten every day when sputnik news which is some russian german program no outlet and when i clicked on them and if they wanted to rise to it since this is really necessary to moment to rise russian propaganda outlets would google its and so we're well aware of this one and we're working on

detecting this kind of scenario you're describing and again do you ranking the ranking those kinds of sites it's basically put net are the two and there's a whole bunch of coverage about what we're doing there but we're well aware of it we're trying to engineer the system to prevent it we don't want to ban the sites eric schmidt who you just heard there has long time ties with the leadership of the democratic party which lost last year's presidential election in the u.s. he was reportedly a donor and and informal adviser to the obama campaign later becoming and visor to the obama administration according to documents revealed by wiki leaks schmidt also donated to the clinton foundation and it is believed that he was the tech mastermind behind the campaign of defeated presidential candidate hillary clinton he has not confirmed any of these allegations so artie's editor in chief has slammed the remarks made by schmidt saying google's own congressional report found

no evidence the channel had violated or manipulated its policies now under pressure from u.s. authorities google launched an investigation into alleged russian meddling but it found no evidence r t had manipulated you tube in any way to achieve its status as the most viewed news network now despite that google dropped us from its you tube prime ad list in the u.s. without any notice or explanation it only explained later at a congressional hearing where the firm was grilled on why it had not carried out the movie before. mr sal gado why did gould google get preferred status to russia today a russian propaganda arm on you tube. there was a period of time where russia today qualified really because of algorithms to participate in a an advertising program by didn't you revert artie's preferred status after the

i.c.a. came out in january two thousand and seventeen it took you to september of two thousand and seventeen to do it the removal of r t from the program was actually a result of the as as i understand it is a reason result of some of the drop in viewership not as a result of any action otherwise so there was there was nothing about r.t.e. or its content that. meant that it stayed interstate out ok meanwhile eric schmidt's the remarks have been contradicted by a google representative who said no concrete plans to d. rank russian and media including r t were in place. that switching gears now the palestinian national authority is freezing ties with the u.s. after it refused to renew the license of the palestine liberation organization's office in washington the palestinian presidential spokesman slammed the us

a decision this us measure is unprecedented in the history of u.s. palestinian relations it could have serious consequences it's going to serve as a blow to peacemaking efforts and as a reward to israel the palestine liberation organization was founded in one thousand nine hundred eighty four since then it has been recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the people of palestine by some hundred states and also enjoys observer status at the un we spoke to dimitri de lonny a fatah revolutionary council member who says the u.s. is backing israel actions against palestine by not renewing the license. that is further assurance to the state of israel that the state of israel can continue to violate human rights laws the international laws. and get away with it and on top of that get even more support the united states is giving a green light to the state of israel to keep on committing the atrocities and the

war crimes that it's been committing since the first day of occupation that was supposed to be ending after all zero agreement in five years and that did not happen and one of the reason why didn't happen because the united states policies have been inconsistent with its own set of expressed believes about equality and human rights u.s. secretary of state is facing allegations he violated a u.s. law against countries using child soldiers that story and much more after a short break you're watching are to international. troops seemed wrong. but all wrong just don't call. me. yet to shape out this day comes to kentucky and in gainesville equals betrayal.

when something find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground. the fancy democrats may have a problem after chasing the fake russian hoax and they're not therefore they don't have the resources to go field new candidates that might have a chance of twenty so if they were to drop the russia gate and focus on just finding candidates running they might have a chance but at this rate they don't have a chance which means that they probably won't have a chance at twenty. three .

and welcome back you are watching aren't international live from moscow now a group of u.s. state department officials has accused the u.s. secretary of state rex tillerson of breaching a u.s. law on child soldiers a confidential memo alleges tillerson violated the act in june when he removed iraq afghanistan and me in march from the list of countries that enroll child soldiers in their armies the decision was taken despite the state department acknowledging those countries as users of the children in their armed forces according to reuters the taking of the country's off the list allows the u.s. to provide them with military assistance or to correspond more. every year the u.s. state department publishes a list of countries that have violated their rules around child soldiers they're considered child soldier offenders well in twenty seventeen iraq man maher and afghanistan were removed from that list now we know according to a report from reuters that there were twelve different state department officials

who signed a letter protesting that decision by rex tillerson so today at the u.s. state department spokesperson was pressed on why this decision was made why is it that these three countries were removed from the list what changed their designation this is what happened when pressed on the issue but human rights report issued a few different. traffic we. do . we treat shooters. institution to. create ability in this regard there are countries that use lots and lots of children there are countries where maybe one source might say that they heard a child had been a border guard i'm just making that up we can't back up that information if it is a report that only lists you know one or two. their belief was on the secretary's

to part to not put those types of countries on this list. so the question that's a fair question now at this point reports indicate that iraq still uses children and its popular mobilization forces furthermore man mars has laws on the books still that allow for the recruitment of children human rights watch spoke up about the changing of the designations voicing strong objections to this decision that was made by rex tillerson but at the moment it appears to be the fact that these three countries have been removed from the u.s. state department's child soldiers offenders list and the reasons for that decision is really not clear as you just heard as the spokesperson for the u.s. state department was pressed on the issue and couldn't quite explain why this decision had been made. or let's go back to a story that we covered earlier in the hour with google and their attempts to limit

our t. and sputniks reach across the world through their google searches by do you ranking us we can cross live to dave perkins who is a radio talk show host and political commentator dave thanks for being with us. here on our international so the google giant here they say that they're not looking to ban our t. but doesn't the ranking our stories essentially have that same effect. yeah i had the same impression when i read the story join the d. ranking and censorship or just the ones a question of degree and one's out right but the result is the same in both as far as i'm concerned philosophically and i don't think it's a good idea i don't think google for one thing should be acting as a government agency and doing governments bidding and i also would like to add the perspective that i think is lacking from this discussion and that is the presidency of donald trump a lot of people don't understand the battle that is being fought in america

regarding coming up with a rational reason why hillary clinton lost the election and coming up with something to hang around donald trump's neck for endless investigations for the next few years this is as far as i'm concerned there's no real evidence that russia tampered with the election and there's very little concern in my book that russia's trying to propagandize and cause trouble in america and meddle any more than any people normally meddle with any other people and geopolitics right is pretty much normal behavior but i'm seeing a consistent stringing out and emphasizing of the story of russia as an excuse for hillary losing an excuse for donald trump presidency not being legitimate and the more this story hits the air the mariah days of it hit the air the better off the left will be here and the more damage will do to trump's numbers google is an agency of the left they were all set up to continue with hillary as they had been going to private meetings at the white house with obama for eight years they're not fans of trump and they are part of the left wing establishment here that wants to

do harm to him and make sure he doesn't win reelection and perhaps come up with a reason to impeach him so i'm seeing this through the lens of american politics which i think the rest of the world isn't quite fully aware of. talk to you touched on something just a second ago about you know why is it google acting as an agent of the us government. what about the timing i mean why are we seeing these tech giants taking action against our now of all times. there you go this is about american politics this is an a long term plan to implicate russia for the purpose of doing damage to donald trump to knock down his poll numbers and this is just another leaf of the book or another page that they're turning to get into the never ending story of how good people and smart people and the top people in america have to do something and be grownups and deal with the terrible enemy in russia to make sure that russia doesn't harm us because trump is friendly with russia right russia help to get

trump elected it's the construction of an underlying story the foundation for all these different stories about russia and this is just rolling out another page in that manual people really need to see this through the lens of american politics to fully understand why all this fuss about russia which i don't think has done anything different or reach any different levels from time immemorial from going back decades in the cold war i don't think russia is the problem that the left in america wants to suddenly present them to be remembered just five years ago hillary had the reset button and it was republicans who considered russia an adversary and the democrats want to be friends with them now russia is a friend of trump and we have to deal with the terrible evil of russia and it all comes down to trying to make trump look bad i'm afraid russia is getting thrown under the bus in the process certainly seems that way on many different fronts it's really interesting to hear the radio talk show host and political commentator i'm sure we could discuss those for hours on end and thanks for being with us we're out

thanks a lot sean all right. well it has been an unsettling started to the week in germany after talks on forming a coalition government collapsed chancellor angela merkel sought advice from the country's president but they appear not to see eye to eye merkel has declared she is ready to head back to the polls if necessary while the president has urged political parties to recommit to hammering out a coalition. if it isn't but time zone parties elected to the bundestag have a shared to serve their country i expect from all parties a willingness to make possible the formation of a government in the foreseeable future if you elections come i should see that's not something i'm afraid of during the election campaign i thought for a four year mandate my point of view is that new elections would be the better path with merkel now struggling to find a way out artie's better all over breaks down the recent development for. the day after the bundestag election in september angola merkel said that she was confident

that by christmas she would have a ruling coalition government in place or fast forward through weeks of torture a sit times negotiations with the green party and the pro-business free democrats while the wheels of that coalition health fell off well and truly with christie and lynn of the free democrats delivering the killer blow the other one is that we will not abandon our voters for a policy with which we are not convinced it is better not to govern than to govern badly ingrained differences between the parties on key issues such as climate change refugees and the budget saw the so-called jamaica coalition break down.

just hours after coalition talks with the free democrats in the greens collapsed under merkel was turned down by another coalition suitor this time the social democrats martin schultz saying they would be no return to a grand coalition if you. on september the twenty fourth the grand coalition lost fourteen percent so it's clear we were shown the red card in view of the election results we are not available to join a grand coalition with that off the table one other option available to angola merkel would be to rule over a minority government most likely with the green party. but a minority government would be unstable at best and would certainly require horse trading on gargantuan proportions with the other four parties in parliament if the

government was to well pass anything more than just time in the chamber it's also worth noting that this would be a first in modern german history and wouldn't exactly fit the profile of the german voters who do love stabilises so where does this leave us the other option would be we go back to the polls for fresh elections. so back to the polls we go well step forward german president frank vaulted steinmeyer it's predominantly a ceremonial role but when it comes to installing a government that's where the german presidency has executive power it will be up to mr steinmeier whether he decides that he accepts anglo merkel as the head of a minority government or whether he dissolves parliament triggering elections and for the long serving leader mrs merkel that could well prove to be

a storm she doesn't whether it's keep that's really fun for somebody has got to be responsible for that the federal chancellor created this situation she's been in power for what feels like a hundred years and now she should be asking herself maybe i have something to do with this situation. mrs merkel has failed it's time for her now to take a step back. that night the end of the merkel era began europe's biggest economy is heading into uncharted territory with current polling suggesting that a new ballot wouldn't return any results too different from what we had in september it does seem that there is no immediate solution to the current instability germany is facing and of course the implications that has for the why do european union peter all of a. if it doesn't for me and thirty three minutes on the back of that look at your news your watch march international stimulus.

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they call me a useful idiot i mean you called me a useful idiot a useful idiot useful idiots go expressing my opinions on t.v. there are still sins of us doing it behind his record is the same strategy we attack persons instead of talking about what's next why stop will feel banned me from getting this close to the white house i'm with a group code pink why not ban the color pink one hour stretch beyond the right i should be sent to the town of london because i want to try to break me although we'll put up with a long time of this sort of nonsense you don't scare me and i'll continue to voice my opinion i'll continue to speak out in good company i'm in good company you're going to be you want to do this because we'll free thinkers. welcome to the wonderful world of blood donation i come here every three weeks to get my transfusion to be specific i receive immunoglobulin that my body gets and

some bodies that it cannot produce itself around the world giving blood is seen as a symbol of generosity no one does this because it helps people it's just that one of the side effects is that i did this before i was more burned put the money on your car immediately you don't have all plasma based drugs today come from a private company and are produced from paid plans from a small company you know a motor car and. one of the risks of pay donation in it then is prove that the frequency of pathologies is much higher in paid donations. if i was my. moves over two years ago he will go in the money using the drug and who runs the blood business.

hello and welcome to cross talk we're all things are considered i'm peter lavelle the political crisis inflicted upon lebanon by saudi arabia appears to receded at least for now is this a sign of things to come as a saudi royal family changes so to saudi arabia and the region is it time to buckle up and brace for impact. across talking saudi arabia and the region i'm joined by my guest. and washington he's a saudi commentator in beirut we have charmaine now on the she is a journalist as well.