along the syrian turkish border in fact america continues its actions to establish control of a parts of serious territory close to border in the meantime the u.s. scares the kurds away from the dialogue with damascus washington is encouraging separate assessments among the kurds yeah there's been plenty of reaction coming from europe too on the latest development in northern syria germany's foreign minister has said any military confrontation could potentially carry huge risks and france has called for an emergency un security council session. author abdel bari atwan told us he believes the us has made a mistake by trying to break up syria and create a kurdish state. i think be aware miscalculating there and when they are going to choose either he or the kurds they made their grave mistake when the side the two actually side with the kurds against them all be three general

powell's big and that is that and this weekend in syria the will for partition of syria and. occur this see without coordination with russia with syria with iran and with and now i believe that. a very very clear cut message that you know the americans are actually out of the liable. and they cannot actually count than them. the rallies against the military operation have been held in turkey as well in a number of other european countries as you can see there police in istanbul reportedly used force to disperse a demonstration earlier detaining and least a dozen people we are keeping a watch on the situation along the turkish syrian border and the and all states before them.

three days into a u.s. government shutdown and the senate has voted to clear the puck for funding u.s. institutions until the eighth of february with the details what it all means kaleb open is a new york joins us live now on the program hi there yeah the update the eighth of february if it just covers the funding for another couple of weeks is it just a temporary solution or does something more permanent look to be in place finally here while people are holding their breath we now have the u.s. senate voting eighty one to eighteen for this resolution that would just simply extend the funding for another two weeks so we could be back in this situation once again people are waiting for the house of representatives to see what happens now at the moment the statue of liberty here in new york even though it's a federal property remains open with the new york state actually paying the bills

in order to keep this big symbol of the united states and this kind of iconic monument in the usa open furthermore our we've heard from the white house that cabinet members from the trauma administration actually delayed their trip to the davao economic forum now to give you more of an idea of what exactly is happening and what it means for the u.s. federal government to be shut down i want to take a listen to this upcoming clip. america knows this is the trump shutdown my favorite still sure shot down so i took that nice little ring to it doesn't it senate democrats shut down this government a big fat failure yes.

thanks. unfortunately we cannot see your call today because congressional democrats are holding government funding to an honorably need immigration to each of the third direction the government shutdown. now as you just heard there has no been no shortage of people in congress blaming each other the democrats blaming the republicans the republicans blaming the democrats for the shutdown now there has been an international reaction to the shutdown as well chinese state media ran an interesting article over looking and

describing the process of the u.s. federal government being shut down and saying that it was indicated of what they call the spirit of non-cooperation in washington d.c. very interesting article now of the article went on to talk about how the shutdown is essentially a slap in the face to donald trump and that pointed out that donald trump is basically undone many of the major policies of his predecessor barack obama now the article in the chinese state media goes on to talk about how in the developed world the u.s. political system is kind of held up as an icon is almost the perfect system the perfect political model but it seems to indicate that it's this system in the u.s. isn't exactly capable of delivering swift results and getting things done and the chinese state media referred to the government shutdown saying that it showed that what we have here in the united states is essentially a chaotic political system very international interesting international reaction to

the government shutdown so people are watching and waiting to see what happens next hoping that we will at least get a two week a reprieve to the shutdown of the u.s. federal government ok thanks very much caleb open line from new york. guards on europe's largest prison north of paris barricades some block the entrance to the facility in protest over working conditions and it comes part of a nationwide strike triggered by a series of attacks on prison stuff across the country the latest incident was on sunday when two guards were assaulted by an inmate the union say used up the demonstrations will continue until the government takes steps to. protect personnel working. some of the protests over the past week have led to violent clashes with police. going back to the u.s. no where america's national security agency has the power to identify people by the

sound of their voice the n.s.a. is thought to be using technology much more advanced than say a couple or almost all uses amounts according to a report based on documents leaked by the agency's former contractor edward snowden picking up the story. of my voice there isn't much and my identity can tell i'm female and before my accident we're going to i'm american i love. the n.s.a. however could do a lot more easily using my voice to identify who i am what language i'm speaking my gender and my dialect according to classified documents from the snowden archive the n.s.a. has been developing technology to identify a speaker using just their voice for years when sigint transcribers worked the same targets for a long time they sometimes can identify a certain individual in recorded conversations just by the sound of his voice and by his unique way of speaking this process was traditionally known as voice identification now rapidly improving technology is available that can do the same

job but mathematically the technology works by analyzing your voice is unique features to create an individual voice print and once the n.s.a. has that a single speaker can be almost instantaneously pinpointed even among massive databases now in two thousand and sixteen alone the n.s.a. courted more than one hundred fifty one million records of american phone calls and that was after their bulk collection abilities were limited by congress so there's no telling how many voice print they could have at their disposal and theoretically a person could be instantly located and tracked down as long as a microphone is somewhere nearby and as edward snowden pointed out there's almost no escaping mikes these days i think they need. he would argue the police. chase terrorists paedophiles who we don't talk about so i just told he surveillance what we're talking about is everybody everything piece of data by everybody being collected and scanned by software they he looks devious and he

could stop talking to people involved in very lucrative things like demonstration straw eeks even you know people who vote for the wrong way this was the american government is considered another fear is that speaker recognition could end up discouraging people from speaking out it has the potential to unmask anonymous sources or tracking journalists or whistleblowers and according to the intercept this technology isn't only in american hands either it looks like interpol the european union and china have their own version as well among others so you can run but you definitely cannot hide well from collecting information to losing it the u.s. federal court has revealed the n.s.a. deleted crucial data connected to illegal wiretapping carried out by the george w. bush administration the agency responded saying the data was removed to simply free up space on its hard drives the presidential surveillance program they to most

criteria that were broadly used to delete dates of a certain type in response to mission requirements to free up space and improve performance of the backup system of a dating question most controversially collected in the aftermath of the nine eleven terror attacks it was initially ordered by the court to be preserved for further examination but has not been a raise that long but the backup tapes the information was deemed important to a number of pending lawsuits a former n.s.a. director and whistleblower we spoke to say this sort of data tends to disappear far too often. but it's a way of covering your backside so that when the investigation started in the get that they they just can't let that data be exposed that's all it's just more evidence of their criminal activity the department of defense inspector general did the same thing with material against whistleblowers even when the whistleblowers were in a court under to under criminal and his age in a criminal trial they destroyed evidence and it was only because it was exculpatory and they didn't want that out so now this is all deliberate even when they lie in

front of congress though or to the people the united states or even to the president or any of the cabinet it doesn't seem to matter there's no accountability here to be intelligence community is so much power i mean even senator schumer told the president trump that he shouldn't be attacking the intelligence community because they've got six ways to sunday to get back at you and these are the ways they do it. back in europe germany strollin our coalition talks could be on the verge of a breakthrough the social democrats leader martin shultz has persuaded his party members to vote in favor of reestablishing the ground coalition government with chancellor angela merkel's party however this could save the anti migrant i'm turning to for germany party become the main opposition force in the country as peter all of and i break start. all this was the result that martin schultz wanted it was the result he campaigned for both it was

a visibly very worried martin childes waiting for those results that came in he gave a speech just before the ballots were cast he said that there were only two options it was either go into coalition with angela merkel's conservative bloc or they'd have to be another election and he was very clear on which one he prefer you don't you know you everyone should realize the question is coalition talks for you elections my take on this is very clear i don't think you elections are the right way for us but what would a coalition do for the bundestag how would the book to stagg look if a new grand coalition can be formed well what it would do is it would mean that the social democrats were no longer the largest opposition party that would go to the new kids on the block of turner to germany they would be the largest opposition party they would also get all of the or perks and traditions that come along with

that including being the chair of the bundestag budget committee all new ground for the right leaning and t. establishment party a party in fact in which martin schultz and many other senior members of the social democrats have decried as racist before the election in september and said that they shouldn't be taking up seats within the bundestag well in an attempt to try and hang on to power for himself he may well catapult them up into the position of being germany's largest opposition. while the push for a second grand coalition has had a paul arising effect on s.p.d. members other parties on the left are also warning the social democrats that they are jeopardizing their future. as of yet. there is no more appropriate term than political suicide to describe this because if the s.p.d. really carries on like all the things they were punished for in the last election then i don't know what will be left of them in two or four years' time and that's

the vicious circle with them trapped in for so many years now and that we should break it with. another coalition with another four years of government government. bring us to this point i think that the people of the body of thinking long term that the party will be destroyed by the grand coalition martin daughter a hamburger m.p. from the dealing party believes the social democrats have been drifting away from their quirky news that is a long term process which is followed by this decision when we see the social democrats just since ten or fifteen years big gave up the original position they gave up to be a party which really has a decisive politics for peace a decisive politics for. the interest of the workers for the interests of the majority of the population is just. this process.

turning to the u.k. where the head of the army has outlined the main threats facing britain and russia turns out to be top of the pile general certain carter wants money to be allocated to bridge the gap between british and russian capabilities. the arch exponent of this is russia i believe it represents the most complex and capable state based threat to our country since the end of the cold war they represent a clear and present danger they are not thousands of miles away they are now on europe store. i believe our ability to preempt will respond to these threats will be eroded if we don't match up to them now we cannot afford to sit back. here the words of the general ortiz poly boy who has been listening to that has

more now on the pali hum indeed did the general justify his plea for more funds here well look normally military chiefs asking for more money for more equipment is pretty standard practice normally it's retired generals in this case it was somewhat unusual because it was the acting head of the army nick carter he's basically risking annoying his paymasters by coming out with this plea for more money but the purpose of the speech was to secure more funding for the military warning of the dangers of under-investment at a time when when there's this threat of russia or as they say he spoke of the dangers of failing to keep up with russia's defense spending and also what he called russia's unorthodox and hybrid warfare one thing that was certainly on orthodoxy in that speech was the part with the or dio clip the russian audiotape take a listen. now through that indication of the scale of the modernization is clear

from a three minute video clip i'm now going to show you this was run on russian t.v. a couple of years ago you don't need to understand the russian just simply listen to the tone of the commentary. so this audience recording from the ministry of defense about investment in russian weapons but certainly in our news room and it may not be a good indicator because after all we are on t.v. but it caused a few people to scratch their heads. and obviously the clip is in russian what informational value it could have for the people that is not clear and it felt as though it may have been sort of playing on this stereotype of russians being aggressive and hell bent on world domination nick costa isn't the first person to talk about the threat of russia recently to resume a used a very big sort of foreign policy speech the mansion house speech late last year to set out what a threat russia red and in december you had another big sort of military chief here

in the u.k. defense the head of u.k. defense stuff talking about the threat to russia cutting vital undeceive cables as sort of a way of encouraging investment but none of this seems to be affecting the people who are holding the puss strings because downing street didn't have much of a response to this speech the spokesperson today from downing street said that the u.k.'s defense budget is the highest in europe on the issues outlined by cars already being addressed so varying degrees of consent from the ministry of defense and from downing street who decide how much money is meant to be spent now it's also worth pointing out that when they're not all skiing from money members of the british military tend to be a little bit more blog say about the whole russia thing last summer then defense secretary michael fallon joked that moscow is probably jealous of britain's new

steady state of the art and craft carrier because that as well because russia's is so lapper dated that was a joke by michael fall and then defense secretary and also you've got boris johnson and rex tillerson meeting for talks today in london they're discussing iran north korea and syria they haven't mentioned russia. live from british capital this summer our. thank you. to something a little different during the hucks hold shores isn't exactly everybody's idea of fun is that the though one russian cosmonaut might beg to differ the following are pictures sent from the international space station showing him hovering around on a vacuum cleaner.

if you ever wondered what cosmonauts and astronauts to on their downtime there you go using to use direct from your with r.t. international more program started in just a moment i'll be back with the latest update in thirty. i'm after towns and we're going underground just twenty four hours before the global political elite to mix with actors and musicians in this risking result to davos for the annual world economic forum coming up in the show with sales to the

world's most repressive regimes increasing by nearly half of the break we speak to british conservative m.p. and member of the u.k. committee for arms export control pauline lay firm about billions of pounds of taxpayer money subsidizing the selling of killing machines and. we speak to the father of a sixteen year old palestinian schoolgirl. jailed for actions after u.k. backed israeli soldiers gunned down her relatives protesting illegal occupation in palestine while the grandson of a signatory to israel's independence israeli special forces. tells us what al-timimi means to the struggle and why don't we told un aid money could ignite the entire middle east this is all going on today is going underground but first while the great and the good of neoliberalism like cabinet is justin trudeau and france's emanuel not growing as well as critics like u.k. shadow chancellor john mcdonnell prepared to at ten the world economic forum in switzerland britain's entire nuclear program today is scheduled to be in trouble

because of strike action while firefighters strike at sellafield site of the worst of a nuclear incident in british history is. important is clear just how many people could be killed by an uncontrolled fire and what's at stake at sellafield on the irish sea in the northwest of england silos big enough to hold six double decker buses filled to the brim with some of the most dangerous radioactive waste in the world and there's a lot of it there are twenty two silos like this in this entire building housing and to. move radioactivity released by the chernobyl disaster it took fifty years before the state mandated b.b.c. could reveal the truth about how successive british governments covered up the circumstances surrounding a fire at windscale as sellafield was called before its p.r. name change the fire in one hundred fifty seven could according to the b.b.c. have irrevocably altered the u.k. u.s.

special relationship let alone killed a lot of people prime minister harold macmillan president eisenhower to sign an agreement that would change britain's relationship with america forever. just days before the fire had broken out at windscale the country's fast you can react. on. britain was on the brink of an unprecedented disaster but could drop as he continues today about sellafield as well as an ongoing terrorism threat this was in just the past few months army bomb disposal experts are being called to sellafield to detonate potentially flammable chemicals discovered in britain's largest nuclear sites well it's outside the mark the birth of britain's weapons of mass destruction program now located on the river clyde in scotland britain is of course exploiting weapons all around the world some believe the brics it may lead to a spiraling of u.k. weapons dealing so we caught up with

a member of britain's arms export control panel outside parliament story in people in letham is also on the u.k. international development select committee bawling thanks so much regularly on going underground. so long here in the green outside parliament so what do you say to people who are warning the british public that post bricks it is dealing is going to twenty eight percent two point one billion pounds whether licenses agreed to june twenty sixth seen any connections you are having to do deals with with a repressive autocracy is because we need the deals because we're leaving europe no there's nothing to say we have to do a deal we give licenses to allow companies to export and they're very stringent they regulate it so there's no reason at all why this anything to do with sit or post brett sit referendum or any faith symposium it's nothing to do with it is about people wanting to sell arms and then it's about the licenses that we agree

but of course i mean you're repeating what theresa may says repeatedly in parliament which is question about licensing to saudi arabia currently involved in one of the worst humanitarian crises. well yes after i was a district we've we're training pilots to be because what we do is we see what they are wanting and then we issue the license and we look very carefully about what they're going to be used so although you say it's a very repressive regime it is changing you know if you don't think saudi arabia is a repressive regime it has been i think it's changing because they are now allowing women to draw if they are changing the role of women in society they wanting women to get elected into parliament it is moving forward to a democratic society which it never has been so it has been repressive i agree but i think there are some issues forward people in public squares amputates people's

lives but you cannot change a definite change. we will help change saudi arabia no i don't think that will. make any difference to saudi arabia have to change saudi arabia we can't change it we can't interfere in the democratic changes which are coming as it wasn't only arms acts will convince. you don't think that we are enabling saudi violence in the middle east you know. i've only been to one that was to elect the chairman so i haven't exactly very safe. because i only joined just before christmas when we had a vote to elect the chairman so we have yet. there was a meeting this week or last week which i was unable to attend but the next few meetings will be quite critical and we will be looking out our policies in the country as to what we're going to do so then we can look quite seriously about who

is getting what and why but you've seen the pictures from i mean you had andrew mitchell former vice chair of the visit. we've had unicef on talking about tens of millions of people threatened british bombs being dropped is a british planes being warplanes dropping the bombs and these are british trained pilots ordering the bombs that are blowing up and killing or wounding thousands of civilians there are many i mean many thousands of people who've been killed it's completely wrong but you have to look at the morning to picture of forces going on out there and i didn't think. they would want able to drop in which case what you're saying the logical conclusion of that is let's stop all arms trading and let's not have no weapons of any so anywhere in the world will know i'm talking about here but the logical conclusion of that is we shouldn't be selling any arms

to anybody and we shouldn't even be having arms ourselves that's the logical conclusion of what you're saying but it seems that a huge proportion of the biggest deals are with saudi arabia. well they may be the biggest deals they're not with the united states in a special relationship they are with or talkers well undemocratic countries of course the united states has its own arms manufacturers so we don't need to sell to them but where we have the traditional relationship we have been selling arms to all sorts of different countries and saudi arabia is one of them it's only worth around point two seven percent of our g.d.p. anyway selling killing machine stone democratic only george is a population that touches a large chunk really if we take that out completely there will be many many people unemployed they'll be an awful lot of people with no job so they'll be claiming benefits can't justify the killing or want to know. and i'm not trying i'm not

justifying that what i'm saying is that what we need to do is look very carefully before we allow any licenses now been involved with that after yet but we will be so you're going to be and then i will scrutinize the decision making and i will make my views know if i feel that it's wrong i will say said but what if you are threatened by these countries because tony blair from asli said security cooperation was threatened saudi arabia was basically saying if you don't sell us these killing machines we won't warn you of us about terrorism that's a very long time ago tony blair's not been there for many many years and regimes are changing and even saudi arabia is changing to become more democratic but it is bombing him it is bombing him in a moment but we have to look at everything in the round and i haven't and nobody on the committee. because we've only just been reformed after the election last year

it's taken a long time to do it so we will be looking very serious the decisions being made what about the fact that if a country can't afford the weapons were. i think the taxpayers to subsidize so there's up to fifty percent loans to that country said that they can buy oh well we do we give loans to all sorts of things and only international development we give loans and we give ground so i don't think the problem subsidizing much needed infrastructure or whatever in britain as it is subsidizing foreign countries while we're up we've got the biggest infrastructure in terms of roads and rail program going on that's ever been so we're not doing that we are spending millions and millions mostly millions on a road infrastructure and it's continuing more than we've ever had before and rail infrastructure is going through the roof another crisis far from yemen is of course me and.