in the stories that shaped the way of islamic state on the verge of total collapse in syria russia and its regional allies lay out plans for establishing a lasting peace in the country. uncertain times for germany and chancellor merkel his coalition talks break down leaving question marks over her future as a leader. and we also visit russia's most of the tories prison to bring you a rare what life is like for the country's most dangerous criminals. hello good evening you're watching the weekly here in our international look back at what's been happening over the last seven days. now with islamic state all but

wiped out in syria the prospect of a lasting peace in the country is now finally on the horizon russia is attempting to help secure a political solution to the almost seven year conflict in this week held talks with other key regional players in a prank reports it looks like tsotsi is shaping out as the new platform for dialogue on syria the resort has become the venue for the first major round of talks on the syrian crisis the syrian president bashar assad was here on monday. at this stage especially after victories against terrorism we are of course interested in advancing the political process then mr putin had a long phone conversation with donald trump. putin gave donald trump

a full update on the talks with syrian president bashar assad mr putin also told mr trump about the upcoming summit with the presidents of iran and turkey. it was these three countries that were behind the so-called astronaut talks in the first place and with the terrorists now almost gone this format could prove to be more crucial than ever. launch scale military action against terrorist groups in syria are coming to an end i'd like to note that thanks to the efforts of russia iran and turkey we have managed to prevent it is the dissolution of syria stop it from being captured by international terrorists and avoid a humanitarian catastrophe we heard the leaders confirm their assessment the syrian conflict has entered a new stage the era of active fighting is over and time has come for

a new settlement opportunities the trilateral meeting today has not most important is the final stage in putting an end to the bloodshed in syria we have achieved success thanks to the union of duran turkey and russia after roughly one and a half hours of talks we finally heard about the number one decision for the new stage the creation of the syrian national dialogue congress it will be an unprecedented platform for inclusive of all syria talks and all kinds of political ethnic religious groups are expected to be involved in the leaders say that it should pave the way for a new constitution in syria and new elections it's this kind of communication somehow involving different sides like washington moscow damascus and tehran that is giving us a reason to say that things may be looking promising here in

a prank reporting that will politics professor side mohammad marandi told us the talks were a positive development but difficulties still lie ahead. fastener fox as well as her and far from sochi. push to follow the process a great deal for the force things have shifted in change of enormously on the ground and hopefully these talks will help pave the way for. the the conflict to come to an end but i think that it looks good on paper but it damn sure it's going to be very complicated in the weeks and months ahead there's a lot to do and it's not clear if the americans and their allies are going to help this process move forward or whether they are going to improve and competed. now there has been a moratorium on the death penalty in russia over twenty years in the country's most dangerous criminals and i stand ins to full life in prison well this week artie's

murder gaz d f was given any can access to the high security facility known as the black dolfin arguably russia's toughest jail. in these provincial town at the edge of siberia is a prison but it's no ordinary prison the mere sight of the statue has broken the. butcher's the black goal for russia's highest security prison it is here that some of the country's worst maniacs serial killers terrorists and even cannibals i held in this cell a man who raped forty four miners and killed five children aged seven to eleven some of the people in this prison will never be allowed out so we dread for the things that they've done and then the man in a drunken killing frenzy killed six of his friends in this cell

a murderer killed eleven people. seven hundred inmates sentenced to life between them they've killed almost four thousand people everything is procedural everything intended to minimize risk from sleeping schedules to how inmates are in school that bend to the waist and blindfolded so they can't memorize the prisons layout. it may seem excessive humiliating even but do not forget what these people did to be here to that end every cell door has a description of the inmates crimes any sympathy the guards might feel disappears immediately. when you ask me if i do it again i've thought about it and it would have been better if i died with them eagle was just over twenty when he

and his father took on a rival gang after killing that enemies they attempted to get rid of witnesses ordinary civilians in a restaurant seven dead eight injured both he and his father and castrated here. when he fell ill they transferred me to help him for a while the most important thing is to avoid becoming him pitted it is so easy to turn into an animal here but staying human that's harder some say a life sentence is worse than the death penalty. and i've been here for seventeen years and i've never heard anyone say they don't regret it or that q. more. i regret it everything is lost the years go by your health worsens everything passes by the years show you that you were wrong totally wrong you can't do that. dimitri saluted his family his father his mother and his brother he was twenty now he's forty five. years we watch t.v.

we see people who have committed two or three murders get sentenced to seventeen or nineteen years that isn't so terrible yes we are guilty before the law yes we are guilty before the public but if they're left out after twenty years why are there fraid of letting us out the difference is that life sentences are mostly reserved for crimes of such brutality that they escape reason for individuals deemed a permanent danger to society one inmate released early from the black dolphin committed the murder on the very train that was taking him home. most will never see release. inmates can pick where to work in the wood shop. or on the suing machines they earn money with which they can buy extra food personal items make calls and pay compensation to their victims they even have

visits four times a year if that. if you take the period when we came into solvent and compare it to know the conditions are entirely different prisoners now have special terminals where they could review their cases complain about abuse or apply for work they have a library a small church which was built and painted by the inmates themselves they can also take walks sort of. the exercise yard isn't anything to write home about but every prisoner has the right to spend an hour and out of here every day walking around exercising war just sitting still so long as they know why being watched guards check on everyone every fifteen minutes in cell cameras and monitor twenty four seven and there's three doors to every

cell it's easy to see why no one has ever escaped from the black dolphin and for most of the uni sure way out is in a coffin for i guess the of r.t. from solar let's russia. uncertainty hangs over germany's political future at the moment after talks to form a three party coalition government collapsed on monday these are all over now examines what caused the negotiations to fail and what options remain the chancellor merkel. the day after the bundestag election in september angela 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

of the free democrats delivering the killer blow we have 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 in grange 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 and the greens collapsed

under merkel was turned down by another coalition suitor this time the social democrats martin schultz saying there would be no return to a grand coalition if. 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 without off the table one other option available to angela 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. that could well prove to be a storm she doesn't whether. it'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 one 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 at 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 r.t. berlin well after it was announced the talks had failed for german president called on all parties to work towards producing a stable government this is the moment when all those involved should pause and reconsider their stance in all the parties voted into the parliament a committed to the common good they're serving our land expect from everyone a willingness to talk in order to facilitate the formation of a government in the near future at it. and anglo merkel here has already indicated her readiness to renew the so-called grand coalition with the social democrats the system that's governed germany for the past four years the chancellor says the alliance had proved to be very effective and the social democrats with martin schultz at the helm seem to have softened their position to they had previously refused to deal with merkel again we are some members of germany's political parties about the recent twists and turns in the bundestag. my party has fraud from

the beginning said. that we are guided by principles we have been elected because we. did to modernize the country we entered into these negotiations with good faith and things went well in the first phase of the coalition talks we then ran into difficulties and the main obstacle was caused by the greens my party i think would be willing to resume talks if there is a meaningful outcome well this is very surprising to me so far she has always clung to power and i thought she would have sought another negotiate a solution to this is surprised but everybody is putting this to f.t.p. but in the end to to make a coalition agree the f.t.p. the c.s.u. the c.d.u. was a very very unlikely construct a very strange construct that of course cannot work and we can see that the country

is it from turmoil here that lead to the unprecedented situation we don't know if there's going to be new elections but if there are going to be new elections i've been pretty certain the f.t.p. and probably also the i.f.b. the opposition party that came into the parliament with thirteen point six percent of the votes will gain because this. is quite a silent significant part of the population that wants a change in the immigration policy so i would be surprised if we had fresh elections but apparently stated that we are going to have. you watching weekly here and i think still ahead here this hour good parent company has been busy making changes to jenkins especially when it comes to russian media saying why after the break.

make this manufacture consensus instead of public wealth. when the ruling class is project themselves. with the famous merry go round be the one percent. we can all middle of the room. the real news is. the world. and the culture is good out of the big picture but it's. a real business which we need to maintain we need to but it's not the fact of the prospects that the more we go forth with the dross with the automotive g.p.s. driven track across other machines will have less and less people so the fact that we easily get this feel business just shows how the rest of the waters get rid of

this bit. with the ego. welcome back the way he now did emerge on monday that google's parent companies working on the ranking stories from r.t. on the sputnik news agency in web searches the move would make articles harder to find alphabet boss eric schmidt's comments came at a security forum in canada when he was asked about artie's use of google's ad sense to this i had a subscription for google alerts in german language and getting them every day out of ten results between five and ten every day we have sputnik news which is a russian german topic of an outlet and when i clicked on them they will monitor rise to that sense is it really necessary to monitor rise russian.

so we're well aware of this one. we're working on detecting this kind of scenario you're describing and again during the ranking most kinds of sites it's basically r.t. and spread over to 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 be on the sites but eric schmidt who you you heard there has a long time relationship with the leadership of the democratic party in the u.s. he was reportedly a donor to to barack obama's campaign and the way to becoming an advisor to his administration he's also believed to be at the tech mastermind behind hillary clinton's presidential campaign although he's never confirmed that himself well under pressure from the u.s. it authorities google recently launched an investigation into alleged russian meddling but its own report to congress says it found no evidence that r.t. had violated its policies or mean to do you tube in any way to get its status as

the most viewed news network that last month google dropped our channel from its you tube prime ad list in the u.s. without notice or explanation and it later cited a drop in viewership as the reason despite the fact that r.t. is one of the most watched t.v. networks on the platform. 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 or is a result of some of the drop in viewership there was nothing about r t or its content that. mentally stayed in or stayed out. remarks have been contradicted to by google representative who said the company doesn't change its algorithms to re rank individual sites media consultant lee

wallace is certain that google's actions against r.t. are politically motivated i do think it censorship you don't have to like the stories that russia today covers you don't have to want to read the material coming from sputnik but i really do not believe it is in any way except the ball that a bunch of politically correct. democratic party supporting people certainly in silicon valley should decide what i should or should not read i think it's the height of arrogance to morrow the same sort of pressure made it may make them decide to attack the daily mail here in here in britain another political viewpoint they might not like i think that i am quite capable of watching r.t. reading sputnik and deciding what i do or do not want to take from it what i do or do not believe i think this is extremely said mr as i say. in other news this

week the international criminal court is seeking a formal investigation into alleged war crimes in afghanistan but as artie's america found that putting together a case against one of the suspects the u.s. military may prove to be difficult. there is a reasonable basis to believe walk why arms crimes against humanity have been committed in connection with the conflict in afghanistan the main focus of the i.c.c. is cases the taliban the afghan government and the u.s. military as for the last of these the prosecutor's office has revealed dozens of instances of torture and ill treatment allegedly carried out by u.s. forces members of u.s. armed forces appeared to have subjected at least sixty one detained persons to torture cruel treatment outrages upon personal dignity one site notorious for abuse in afghanistan is the cia salt pit prison described by the media as a sadistic dungeon with barbaric conditions where torture reigns with little

oversight the cia actually referred to it as enhanced interrogation techniques which included sleep deprivation isolation cold showers and rough treatment.

so what are the chances the i.c.c. will eventually bring the u.s. military u.s. officials or the cia to justice actually zero the i.c.c. was created in one nine hundred ninety eight by the rome statute with the us among signatories but in two thousand and two a year after the us invaded afghanistan the bush administration with the true from the treaty i signed the letter that removed america's signature from the rome statute but the scribe did in my book is my happiest moment of government service in my life i think the court is fundamentally illegitimate so no matter what comes out of the i.c.c. is prob the international criminal court just doesn't have the jurisdiction to bring those responsible to justice in fact the law goes so far as to say that the u.s. would use military action to forcibly take americans who were arrested out of the hague if they were arrested by the i.c.c.

so i think we can certainly predict that any real imprisonment or any remediation against americans for crimes against humanity or war crimes is probably unlikely but i still think the process of going through an indictment of attempting to try americans for these types of crimes is a great advance. smeary com with report thanks watching the weekly programs continue after.

eighteen years ago i traveled across the united states exploring america's deadly love affair with a gun if a bad guy tried to get to one of my family members he would have better a lot better and i think it's fair and hurting when i buy my babies says my book was published in the year two thousand more than hoffa million americans have been killed by falls of the us how to thought to me as i did this is a middle school we go through drills and we put ourselves some real scenarios it was interesting to see who actually got hit by the gun i just saw i did to return to the subject to track down each gun owner who i'd met and photographed those years ago i don't know this but we are not.

long. hello and welcome to all the party that's diseases it's very common condition among the source for each country's but its effects on the body of the economy as well as the potential cure aap always country specific what would it take for russia both economically and politically to win itself all of the hydrocarbon the windfall to discuss that i'm now joined by anthony marsh chung director of the economic policy

program at the carnegie moscow center midsomer of china's great to talk to you big fan of yours for a long time and if you now it's generally believed that the mission of an addiction is the first step towards coming clean i mean that sounds russia's excessive reliance on hydrocarbons has long been recognized but i wonder if it has been recognized as something unequivocal about something that needs to be broken where. well i wouldn't completely of the alcoholism and the had been some initial resources in the service of course is a disease which is imposed by the be here of the second one is a structural problem russia cannot get rid of the hydrocarbons and until european union stops to buy a cup. and because of the enormous overwhelming amounts of cash coming from the hydrocarbons so hard to fight for the diversification of the participants are they to nomics the route me curious decisions of abandoning the the better

a source of marginal good into the water but from what i understand does it is not just excessive reliance on oil and gas it's more about. high appreciation of the currency that makes other sectors either less competitive or less attractive for foreign investors and in that sense i wonder if you believe in the euro from the very skeptical and critical of the russian government if you believe that the russian authorities. had enough instruments prior to two thousand and fourteen to encourage other sectors and to. off sad at the facts of that very sharp robel appreciation well i would leave the two to the kind of surprise and even would not talk about course a professional talks can also can be controlled by other factors and russia is the ribs on pour the pure duchesses of. the moment or the oil price

exclusively with her for it to be because of the policies or other factors something water can buy but but but still doesn't affect the economy that much and as we saw in the in the ruble depreciation after of the prices fall russia coots us the foreign currency and could try and be the ground of this free fall. and that was partially of this from what i understand because russia actually did try to. counterbalance as dependency on oil and gas by sort of. stashing the wind fall income away in various funds it would see that as if you look at the resource which was your token for the reserves the reserves didn't follow subs substantial now we we still increase or is that. it was merely because russian government stayed away of the problem the they were out of the good the the all prices for the the ruble price fell the.