in the stories that shaped the week with islamic state on the verge of total collapse in syria russia and its regional allies had 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 as leader. we gain access to russia's most notorious prison and bring you a look at the grueling regimes of its life long. live from moscow with the main stories from the past seven days welcome to the

weekly an r t international o'neill with the 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 long conflict this week held talks with other key regional players it breaks down how things currently stand it looks like tsotsi is shaping out as the new platform for dialogue on syria the resort has become the venue. at this stage especially after victories against terrorism we are of course 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 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 iran's 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 ankara that is giving us a reason to say that things may be looking promising here. where politics professors syud mohammad marandi told us the talks were a positive development but difficult they still lie. dostana fox as well of

the current path from sochi. pushed the power of 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 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 that the americans and their allies are going to help this process move forward or whether they are going to improve and competed. for over twenty years there's been a moratorium on the death penalty in russia the country's most dangerous criminals are sentence instead to full life terms in prison and this week artie's murat gets the of was given unique access to the high security facility known as the block dolphin arguably russia's toughest you'll. 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 mooched butchers the black hole 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 schooled 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 their 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 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. dimitri slaughtered 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've 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 said 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. ation to the victims they even have visits four times a year i think 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 school 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 room prisoner has the right to spend an hour enough here every day walking around exercising or just sitting still so long as they don't mind being watched god's check on everyone every fifteen minutes in cell cameras a monitored 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 shore way out is in a coffin for i guess the of see from solar let's russia.

certainty hung's over germany's political and what options remain for and the pro-business free democrats while the wheels of that coalition blow the event. it is better not to govern in grange differences between these and the budget so all the so-called jamaica coalition breakdown. which. 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 schulze 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 stabile it he so where does this leave us the other option would

be we go back to the polls for fresh elections. it's 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 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 then 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 or after it was a nine to the talks had failed the 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 in the parliament are 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 that. i'm going to markell 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 sees the alliance has proved very effective and the social democrats with martin schultz at the helm seem to have softened their position to be had previously refused to deal with merkel again. i would be surprised if we had fresh elections but apparently stated that we are going to have them both fall she have always clung to power and i thought she would have sought another negotiated solution for everybody it's just the f.t.p. but in the end the jamaica coalition agree the f.t.p. the c.s.u. the c.d.o. was a very very unlikely construct a very strange construct cannot work and we can see that the country is in some

turmoil shouldn't that situation it's going to be new elections i'm pretty certain the f.t.p. and probably also the i will gain because this is a significant part of the population that's once a change in the immigration policies saudi arabia may have eased its blockade on yemen but riyadh and its allies are still being accused of genocide we look into those claims after the. favorite buddy i'm stephen both. suspects ever proud american first of all i'm just george bush and are the two sides to this is my buddy max famous financial guru just a little bit different i'm just going to find your windows up with all the drama happening in our country i'm shooting the good have fun every day americans.

look to the store to bridge the gap this is the great american people which. i says was it to. americans by the israelis unfortunately by financial support of some. control contrie in there. for making unsafe you delete it. planes carrying vital supplies of food and medicine started arriving in the yemeni capital sun on sunday it comes after the saudi led coalition eased its blockade of

the country where twenty million people are reportedly in desperate need of humanitarian assistance before riyadh took the decision to allow help through thousands of people have been running in the yemeni port city of who they were accusing saudi arabia and its allies of genocide riyadh has been involved in yemen civil war since twenty fifty supporting the us the president against the rebels it's house frequently being accused of war crimes exacerbating the country's humanitarian crisis. the coalition increase the pressure further when it closed all earth's sea 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. still say that more needs to be done to avert

a humanitarian disaster the red cross is now warning that a million people are at risk of a new caller i'd break in three yemeni cities the blockade means that clean water cannot be pumped to the people there. but. that's. 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 spoke to the u.n. undersecretary general for humanitarian assistance he told us that yemen's only going crisis could spark the worst farm in the world has seen in decades be effective 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 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 been doing we have had you know sensible pragmatic discussions about that we are expecting to to send. missions to the arabia to look at the detail the arrangements for getting aid in more successful ones we operate in up and running again in the way it needs to be both interest in our airport and into her data port and to leave port. a whole number of suicides among french police officers this year has intensified concern about the stress caused by overwork and the threat of terrorism charlotte dubinsky has been to meet an officer who's made not one but two attempts to take her own life or her lee not turn real name is an officer with more than two decades of experience having joined the police at nineteen she was very

motivated and excited about the job but geez later the pressure of her work drove her to two suicide attempts the latest just seven months ago our ministration is taking decisions on the people's anger is tending against us we are suffering from the image our government created for us today many people are calling for policeman to be killed. the most important mission of the french police is that we were not given the tools to fight with terrorism someplace men received new weapons some received training but not all of us the measures that they have introduced were miniscule. or highly tells me the suicides amongst police she'd by no means been to put it as isolated cases. they always say that these are the past and we will stop saying that please some of the hits traumatised by the way they decide to commit suicide more easily than madness why no it's because they

have weapons on them how many of them hang themselves throw themselves into trains take pills. i realized telephone will often ask you annoying well if you answer the question no wrong cell phones operating on an android are sharing information with google even if you take masses at any nearby cell phone towers i'm standing not far from our ben that will only tell you something about a race the phone is somewhere but if you have what say three towers 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 a 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 cell id codes 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 a reason 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. 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 a good new is unlike the fact that they have been doing it without consent for many months caleb mop and r.t. washington d.c. well that's it for me for no but why not leave your thoughts on any of the day on week's big stories on our website and also the r t twitter page news stories there are by the minute see you in thirty of those.

apply to many flips over the years so i know the game and so i got. the ball isn't only about what happens on the pitch for the final school it's about the passion from the families it's the age of the superman to kill you know their own lives and spending to do the twenty million why. it's an experience like nothing else not to because i want to show what i think what i know about the beautiful guy great so well with. the base it's going to.

years ago i traveled across the united states exploring america's deadly love affair with the gun bad guy trying to get to one of my family members he would have better a lot better and i think they are inheriting one of my my babies since my book was published in the year two thousand more than half a million americans have been killed by the forums in the us and we had a thought to me as i did this 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. and i decided 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. going. to get their degree which will get them that dream job young americans no

longer hesitate to put their health at stake is the first day of term on the columbia campus one of the most prestigious universities in the world more than eighty nobel prize winners have either studied to. justice and many other ivy league american schools some students take drugs to boost their academic results thanks to fit to mean divots if they could study through the night without showing any signs of tightness you to my friend say that. breaking you could be and there are. two. in the india thanks to an exam she took under the and without speaking to her. why not to counter drugs can.