in the stories that shaped the week with 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. unsettling times for germany and chancellor merkel as coalition talks break down leaving question marks over her future is later and we visit russia's most notorious prison to bring you a rare look at what life is like for the country's most dangerous criminals.

but i welcome good evening to watch and weekly here on r.t. international where it's our look back at the biggest stories over the last seven. but this time mixtape all but wiped out in syria the prospects of a lasting peace in the countries and i finally on the horizon russia is attempting to help secure a political solution to the almost seven year conflict and this week held talks with other key regional players. reports it looks like tsotsi is shaping out as the new platform for dialogue on syria the resort house becomes a 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.

blatt of our 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 actions 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 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 rand 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 was a prank of reporting more politics professor side mohammad marandi told us the talks were a positive development but difficulties still lie ahead. fastener fox as well as the current path of sochi. pushed the part of the process a great deal forward of course 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 i'm 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 of the americans and their allies are going to help this process move forward or whether they are going to improve 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 was sentenced to full life in prison this week r.t. is not against the air was given unique access to the high security facility known as the black dolphin 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 most soulless butchers the black hole thing 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 gods might feel disappears immediately. who is missing his men to whom you ask me if i do it again i thought

about it and it would have been better for died with them eagle was just over twenty when he and his father took on a rival gang after killing their enemies they attempted to get rid of witnesses ordinary civilians in a restaurant seven dead in. 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 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 they'd kill more. and i regret it everything is lost the years go by your health worsens everything passes by they are show you that you were wrong totally wrong you can't do that. to me treat saluted his family his father his mother and his brother

he was twenty now he's forty five. 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 i think that. if you take the period when we came into solving. 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 everyone prisoner has the right to spend an hour and a half here every day walking around exercising war just sitting still so long as they don't mind being watched the 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 it all over examines what caused the negotiations to fail what options remain the chancellor merkel. 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 available 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 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 you were 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 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. 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 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 the german president did call on all parties to work towards producing a stable government. this is the moment when all those involved should pause and reconsider this all the parties voted into the parliament committed to the common good they are serving our land expect from everyone your willingness to talk in order to facilitate the formation of a government in the near future at it and angle merkel 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 has proved to be very effective and the social democrats with martin shorts at the helm seem to have softened their position 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 met it to modernize the country we entered into these negotiations with good faith and things went well in the first phase of the coalition talks with 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 so this is a surprise 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 and that this is indeed 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'm pretty certain of the f.t.p. and probably also the ifi 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 is once 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 them. here watching the weekly still ahead humanitarian disaster is gaining momentum in yemen ankara feted by society pluck got the details and a couple of. everybody

from stephen. task hollywood guy yell suspect every proud american first of all i'm just george washington and r.v.'s to suggest this is my buddy max famous financial guru and well just a little bit different i'm not a good one i know no one knows up with all the drama happening in our country i'm shooting the road have some fun meet every day americans come home and hopefully start to bridge the gap this is the great american pill which. i says was it to. americans by the israelis i'm fortunate to be biased by none show support of some. sort of contraries in the region

for making unsafe cool. welcome back the weekly now planes carrying vital supplies of food and medicine started to arrive in the yemeni capital of sana'a on saturday it does come after the saudi led coalition aids its blockade of the country where twenty million people are reportedly in desperate need of humanitarian assistance before riyadh took the decision though to allow help through thousands of people had been rallying in the yemeni port city of her data they were accusing saudi arabia and its allies of genocide riyadh has been involved in yemen's civil war since twenty fifty supporting the acid present against the who through rebel has frequently been accused of war crimes and exacerbating the country's humanitarian crisis or the

coalition increase the pressure further when it closed all see and land routes in early november after a missile was fired toward saudi territory but facing harsh criticism from rights organizations one week later it agreed to ease the restrictions and although some aid is now getting through the u.n. does still say more needs to be done to avert a humanitarian disaster when the red cross is now warning that a million people or risk of a new cholera outbreak in three yemeni cities the blockade means that clean water cannot be pumped to the people there. my look. at it.

this is. actually i'm here since already one year and i can tell you i could see the situation deteriorates every day more and more the public health system is almost collapsing the water and sewage system is to having the same thing people are not getting the most basic things like having bread or having cooking gas to make something to eat and to put on the table . the two years and a half almost of this conflict is really bringing a lot on yemenis and the civilian population on the day today we did speak to the u.n. undersecretary general for humanitarian assistance and he told us that yemen's ongoing crisis could spark the worst famine the world to seen in decades effects of the

blockade has been to make it much more difficult from the aid operation at the moment where feeding seven million people every month through the u.n. and our partners in yemen we are providing water services for four million people and we are we made very good progress through the world health organization here and children's fund the red cross and others in bringing this terrible cholera epidemic under control but the point is until the food and the fuel and the medicines get back in there we won't be able to sustain those operations in the way we have to do and we have had you know sensible pragmatic discussions about that we are expecting to send to mission. to saudi arabia to look at the detail the arrangements for getting aid in most successfully once we operation up and running again in the way it needs to be both into port and into the day to ports and salif port. now google has been caught secretly collecting like ation data from

android phone uses even after they had to for the relevant settings and had no sim card in the devices i did they do it's called expects now your cell phone will often ask you annoying questions like would you like to share your geo location data well if you answer the question no you would assume that your geo data is safe and well it turns out you're wrong cell phones operating on android are sharing information with google even if you take the sim card out the android phone will start gathering the addresses of any nearby cell phone towers i'm standing not far from one right now. if you have a single cell tower then that will only tell you something about a radius around which the phone is somewhere but if you have let's say three hours that all have different distance locations then you can try and get

a late pretty cold clue to where the actual phone is google admits that they've been keeping track of mobile phone i.d.'s and their location for over a year now but they insist their intentions are good. in january of this year we began looking into using satellite as an additional signal to further improve the speed and performance of message delivery google claims that it hasn't done anything particular with the data and now it's going to turn it off i don't find out entirely credible because some engineer or group of engineers had to spend time putting together this capability and they had to do it for. because someone told them to do it now google assures us that we have nothing to worry about but they never store or share our data with anyone well we've heard that song and dance before does the n.s.a. collect any type of data. on millions or hundreds of millions of americans. no sir. it does not. not wittingly google says that

android phones will stop tracking the locations of users without their consent by the end of november that sounds like good news unlike the fact that they have been doing it without consent for many months caleb mop and r.t. washington d c. a children's picture book dealing with the issue of transgenderism has been published in sweden the story features a man who dresses as a woman and his horse he wants to be a dog we've got reaction to the publication which some have branded dangerous propaganda. when your an adult when you're over eighteen you're in told to do what you want in the privacy of your own home and i don't think anyone would disagree with that but propagandizing this kind of thing to children who can damage them in their natural development as boys and girls and this is a time when children really need to be in their identity is who they are and this

is just something that's far too much too young is going to confuse people it is part of the natural spectrum of life for all and what species human and non-human this book is not about promoting or encouraging transgenderism it's about trying to affirm young people who don't feel they fit neatly into the male female roles and trying to tackle buoying and prejudice you know children are imaginative they play they pretend to be all kinds of things they pretend to be footballers they pretend to be aliens spacemen unicorns they may be pretend to be men and women as well but you have to separate imagination and play from objective scientific facts no one's going to change their mind just because they read a book it's something that comes from within and no amount of propaganda or proselytizing can make someone transgender i think our starting point has to be the

welfare of the child and my concern is that we know in countries all across the world. pupils who don't fit the gender stereotypes who are trans or gender variant they suffer teasing namecalling threats and bullying and that is truly shameful in britain it's in the last two years it's grown sixfold the number of children who have this gender confusion and it's because they're being exposed to these materials if they weren't they would just naturally go on their own way being boys and girls yes there are differences in people who are boys and differences in girls and their temperaments and their behavior and their likes and dislikes but that doesn't mean that they're going to be transgender it doesn't mean that the old idea of separating sex from gender is a new social construct. if you watch the weekly you're not a fancy company tonight we'll be back with more just over half an.

hour. 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 thousands of us doing it behind his record is the same strategy we attack persons instead of talking about what's next why stop 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 i should be sent to the town because i want to try to break me on the wheel but what a long time that this will come since 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 real friends think. the village of collect she has been nicknamed sleepy hollow because for some unknown reason its local residents have formed victim to sleep but to make. this move. over the course has been committed to

a group if she would use a future i would rather hear isha. who did similar but can have some that's. sort of going to also go on was the question or story for peaceful people or it's a super thin you've got to go there more deeply the shipment of sweet. smell. grimy grass from where did you do what we were doing. this with. me. right here in there did you have both girls there off the. first. 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 luck with that better and i think it's fair and hurting when i buy my babies since my book was published in the year two thousand more than half a million americans have been killed by firearms in the us and we had a 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. thank.