russia propane have gone missing one of the agencies peter struck he oversaw the investigation into alleged russian interference now he was also part of robert muller steam that was looking into suppose the pollution between trump and the problem prior to that the clinton e-mail investigation which went nowhere and then there's lisa page a lawyer for the department of justice who also worked for robert muller the couple came into prominence back in december when their private text conversations were released to congress girls hillary should win. i know. and maybe your man just the way you are because your man to protect the country from that manifest. thanks it's absolutely true that with her it's very fortunate and of course i'll try and approach it that way. these text messages prove that both struck and page were biased in favor of hillary and the messages even hint at some nefarious political activity so when they wanted to dig deeper it turned out the rest of their conversation had disappeared the f.b.i.

ascribed the data loss to misconfiguration issues related to rollouts provisioning and so for upgrades that conflicted with the f.b.i.'s collection capabilities but let's look at the time frame these text messages december fourteenth twenty sixteen roommates seventeen twenty seventy and when did miller's investigation into question well you can start oh look may seventeenth twenty seventeen surprisingly convenient the timing is just too coincidental seems that they were trying to plant the evidence somehow as an insurance policy thinking that trump had no way of getting elected and then when he did scrambling in order to try to stop the election or to create the necessity of an impeachment of trump they were conspiring inside the f.b.i. to figure out how to catch trump on some sort of you know criminal activity having a russian connection russian money laundering being involved with putin in the in

the russian trump collusion of which they provided zero evidence and the f.b.i. is not the only organization either where crucial data for legal proceedings has inadvertently gone missing the national security agency says it has by mistake deleted information it had pledged to keep the data was related to the presidential surveillance program or p.s.p. which included warrantless wiretapping during george w. bush's time in office the b.s.p. internets count and matched criteria that were broadly used to delete that of a certain type in response to mission requirements to free up space and improve performance of the backup system the n.s.a. has no reason to believe at this time that the continent data was specifically targeted for deletion. now one of the largest consulting firms in the world ernst and young has been accused of multiple illegal dealings a former employee who says he was fired for revealing the allegations disclosed

that the accounting giant is involved in bribery money laundering and also the cover up of illicit gold purchases from conflict zones with more details his you go to down off. the story hidden in the court papers filed by this auditor against his ex bosses could be one of the grandest smuggling scams greed money laundering and back door dealings measured in billions of dollars. is accusing one of the world's biggest auditing firms of covering up the tracks over dubai precious metals megacorp act one. ernst and young for an audit inspectors come to dubai and the first thing they see is a pile of moroccan gold buyers casually bundled up on a desk stacks of gold at a gold refinery could be business as usual except these buyers are literally painted silver in order to sneak them into dubai four to five tons of gold gold

bars coated silver smuggled old to more cool arriving in dubai he declared as gold when the team found the discussed it with with colucci the admitted this is the way of doing business with the with these moroccan suppliers inspectors do some more digging and what they reveal brings us to act two some of the precious metal in colossus coffers could be blood gold shuffling through papers auditor's discover the refinery was more than happy to shake hands with small mining operations in sudan and the democratic republic of congo apparently colossi asked for no licenses offering cash in hand in exchange for gold proceeds from search sales and conflict torn countries are known to directly fuel gang wars which are responsible for hundreds of civilian deaths soldiers naam group leaders see in control of the gold mines as a way to money guns and power for forty two of the ruthlessly often targeting civilians in the process so ernst and young employees com three. that's when we get

to act three apparently the company deals in cash almost as much as in conventional bank transfers. that's billions of dollars going into a legal black hole impossible to trace so the auditor's diligently record every failure of the dubai giant but there's no pat on the back for them from the boss we requested a meeting with the babies to get it or when they realized that we're not going to alter our findings or change them they went ahead. changed it on good lines in such a way that our findings and all for their conclusions will not be made public ernst and young have denied allegations they were in cahoots with the group the dubai refinery is still in business saying there's been no material impact on their ability to operate or trade i'm just rehired the man who led the team and expose

the alleged wrongdoings says the audit ing giant branded him a troublemaker and sacked him so is blowing the whistle a noble thing or just a falls there and in this saga it's left up to the court. and of r.t. . now with turkey's military campaign against the kurds well underway in northern syria the conflict seems to have spilled over into germany because a mass fight did break out between almost two hundred people at a turkish airlines desk at hanover airport a large pro kurdish protest was taking place against turkey's actions in syria when our video news agency rapley caught the moment it turned violent. i thought i. thought i r. r r. thank you thank you i think. thank

you thank you thank you. for be honest latest military operation against kurdish groups in syria last week claiming the kurdish forces there are terrorists brought here in hand i've read resulted in police reports of using pepper spray to separate the two groups of people the authorities will say the polling twenty vehicles of the same. britain's military chief has highlighted the country's biggest threat or tell you he valleys in case you can't guess just off the block it's. good. to. put themselves on the line to get accepted or rejected.

so when one of the first. somehow wanted. to try to be close it's like before you know more than people that. i'm interested in the waters . for shit. the way. it.

again now russia has been described as the biggest state based threat to the u.k. since the cold war chief of the general staff nick carter wants more funding to bridge the gap between british and russian capabilities with the details his party boy. 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 i believe. to preempt or respond to these threats will be eroded if we don't match up to them and we cannot afford to sit back.

on military chiefs asking for more money for new equipment is pretty standard practice but only it's retired generals this time around you had the acting head of the army nick carter risking annoying his paymasters really by saying that he needs more money for the military but the purpose of the speech was just that he was warning of the dangers of under-investment in the u.k.'s defense forces and he spoke of the dangers of failing to keep up with the level of russia's military spending and also with what he called russia's unorthodox and hybrid warfare and one thing that was certainly unorthodox in his speech was this audiotape take a listen. if it indication of the scale of the station is clear from a three minute video clip i'm not 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 good uses the mood music going to the label use did you get the cue to go to his leaves live you can do some of them it was playing on stereotypes of what sort of russian sounds like the rough. the language and his perception that russia may be aggressive and hell bent on world domination carter was the first person to talk about the threat coming from russia to resume a spoke about the same thing in a big foreign policy the beach late last year is also worth pointing out that when there nor asking for more money used military chiefs are somewhat long as they hold russia saying it's a very different tone last some other than defense secretary michael fallon that russia has probably about britain's new state of the art aircraft carrier because russia's is so dated and you've also got boris johnson the u.k.'s foreign

secretary meeting with his u.s. counterpart here in the u.k. rex tillerson talking about iran north korea and syria they haven't mentioned russia being on the agenda. there were security analysts. say there is some merit in what the general has said. there is something of course to what the general actually says and that is that first of all. the british state of the british military in terms of the number of its personnel the number the amount of its equipment inequality that quitman is at a pitifully low level and so therefore you have to have some sympathy perhaps for this man if you forgive me if i'm wrong but it's about money it's not just russia of course we're talking about north korea or iran or the other bogeyman that are used for the us not withstanding that i mean it's very interesting that we hear that the russia threat today is actually not thousands of miles away but on the

doorstep of europe actually the reason for that is because russia has moved its because nato of course has moved much much closer over the last twenty years towards the borders of russia so it's a slightly ironic thing to say i think. finally this area does turn out that a north korean pop star he was thought to have been executed is now going to lead her country's delegation at the upcoming winter olympics although it's not the first time there has been some confusion over the well being of high profile figures from that part of the world.

to. sleep. lizzie it's. so that. things are looking so far today here and. we'll be here at the top of the hour to keep you updated throughout the hour. level walk selling you on the idea that dropping bombs brings police to the

chickenhawk forcing you to fight the battles that are going. to stop for the tell you that somebody gossip the public by itself in the form of. often as i was telling you are not cool enough to buy their product. all the hawks that we along with our audience loves watching. troops seem wrong. but old rules just don't hold. any old belief yet to shape our disdain because the educated and engagement equals betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart. just to look for common ground.

when the make this manufacture consent to public wells. when the ruling class is protect themselves. with the famous merry go round the certainty that one percent. we can all middle of the room sick. the real news room.

this is boom bust broadcasting around the world from washington d.c. i'm part shelton. coming up will take stock of equities get it sorry probably too soon we move fast around here we'll take stock of equities and after a listen of stocks whooshed to do an analysis of some key companies and analyze their performance plus holland cook of the big picture tells us why baby boomers might be the most money consequential generation out there and we go to miami for the north american bit point compered and then talk to jeffrey tucker of the american institute for economic research who is there for the concert. but first

let's get to a couple of stories topping today's business and financial headlines net neutrality the principle that internet providers like comcast and others and local internet and television service providers must treat all data on the internet the same and not discriminate or levy divergent fees by user content website platform or the app use that service providers business not discriminate that principle was overturned by the f.c.c. the federal communications commission on a three to two party line vote in december well now democrat senators say they hold more than fifty sen votes in an attempt to challenge the repeal of net neutrality that means they have picked up at least one possibly a few republican votes this news represents a small glimmer of hope about the future fate of net neutrality and the fairness principle of access to well knowledge without net neutrality we have a century created a closed and captive media caste system where knowledge is basically being outright

rationed according to a pew research study last year those who live in rural areas are about twice as likely not to even use the internet as urban or suburban americans which have more choices for news and information and faster connection speeds the debate about the debate will continue and we'll see if those more than fifty plus senators might get a vote to overturn the recent f.c.c. net neutrality pullback. the news this morning is that i.b.m. international business sheens has reported higher revenue numbers for the first time in nearly two years and expects continued growth this year on the other side of the spectrum amex american express saw the first quarterly loss since get this nineteen ninety two amex c.e.o. kenneth chenault all says it was do like other companies we've discussed in recent recent days on this program due to the tax bill passed at the end of last year.

well other stocks are making major moves this year let's bring in the ever vessel the list of the stocks you usually tells us about retail numbers but she looks at stocks every day so it's great to have you with us on this comment on this topic you want to comment on the i.b.m. and the amex numbers look at the same part good to see you and yes well i have a scary interesting because the stock has not made brand new all time high since two thousand and thirteen and here we are in two thousand and eighteen so to have an earnings miss like this as far as the stocks reaction like you said they had some good news in the report but their reaction was negative because the night before the earnings the stock was around one sixty nine and that gap down in the morning and the korean market at around one sixty four and fell on the day so i just think that investors didn't see what they wanted to see with i.b.m. and it's really been lagging and it's had a hard time competing with the likes of microsoft which has been performing

extremely well in this bullish market and how about apple stock you know they made that major announcement yesterday that they they had a pullback and they were going to supposedly create all these jobs in the u.s. although some of those they were to create anymore their stock is near an all time high these days isn't it. yes actually i want hit over one hundred eighty which is big news for the stock we're really getting closer and closer to that two hundred level which is i think what investors are looking for awful has earnings out february first so that's going to be a that's the biggest actually earnings night of the c.s. and google amazon and apple all report february first after the bell so that's going to be a big night and investors are waiting for that but i'll tell you it i generate tank fortune came out and apple was announced at the top of their list for the world's most admired companies so apple is still up there and you mentioned about them creating these jobs the big news today was that there repatriating two hundred

fifty billion dollars of their overseas assets into the u.s. because of this new tax reform and that it's huge not only is it huge for apple in the growth they're going to see and the u.s. with that money coming back it's also huge because the government is going to get some of that money taxed over thirty billion dollars and that's all going to go into the u.s. treasury now in fairness i mean their business they're not philanthropist there dude making this move because you know the corporate tax rate was thirty eight percent it went down to twenty one but that repatriation fee is only fifteen point five percent so while they are going to pay all this money as you say melissa they're actually saving fifty billion buckaroos so it's also a big money decision for them now we talk about but what about google and alphabet for example how are they doing they were killers last year they still going strong . google still stronger than ever again made new highs with the market in the last

calendar year as many times almost as a market but i will tell you the biggest strongest stock on the market is still the beast of amazon it seems like that is headed right to fifteen hundred if it has a good quarterly earnings by anybody you know said head over thirteen hundred one over thirteen twenty five i think there is huge expectations for that whole sector attack of this year of two thousand and eighteen that a big year in two thousand and seventeen is a lot of expectations out for that sector to continue their growth this year particularly with the savings again with tax reform all these corporations are going to benefit from that and amazon just continues to expand and expand and expand although you mentioned about apple being a company for profit which of course they are they still did not have to bring all that money back to the usa because we're going to be taxed on it which if they keep it outside of the u.s. they would be taxed on it so they still did not have to make a move like that it's probably my you know inquisitive and doubting former regulator mind at work melissa i just i see all these companies and we need them

and they provide the economic engine to our democracy but when they make claims like we saw you know with with wal-mart that they're going to raise prices and then they're going to under their breath we're closing sixty sam stores i just get worried apple is already going to spend several weeks ago sixteen billion dollars in the u.s. in a single year so for them to say they're going to spend thirty billion over five years you know that doesn't really start my engine a whole lot but there are good company that make a great product you know and so finally before we go i want to get your take on gee i mean they're talking about a break up that would be incredible what your thoughts on that and on the g.e. stock. well that's like going from apples to oranges talking about amazon and g.e. amazon is one of the strongest stocks in the market and gene is one of the weakest a well known stocks in the market right now and it's unfortunate the last time we're talking about a brand new all time highs the g. sol brand new all time highs was back in two thousand so eighteen years ago the

stock sixteen dollars it does report january twenty fourth so that will be an important day for the stock however as they haven't really performed in this bullish market they would have to literally got up to the thirty six dollars level stop or up sixteen so it would be a tremendous speak for them to get back up enough trend g.e. is in a down trend and to me it's really not a buy till it hits up over thirty six bucks a share right now and i mean that seems unlikely could it happen yes but i think it would more likely if it had even a good earnings rally so a little bit and then take its time moving back up they had had the new c.e.o. came aboard in august of two thousand and seventeen and you really got to give the guy a chance to see what he can do here he hasn't even been at the home for a year so we'll see what he can do i mean he's going to try to turn the company around. super that is so fun to do a little round robin we want to do that again we love you on real to retail numbers that we love you on stocks most armor founder of stocks whooshed thanks as always

thanks for having me. holland cook host of the big picture here r.t. america did a really interesting show on friday and i've asked him to give us the cliff notes version for you all who who missed it hala you make the point that nobody is getting any younger and that's one reason why the book baby boomers may be actually creating a lot of economic ingenuity in our in our economy explain all that part every day in the u.s. a ten thousand people turned sixty five and in the next two decades another sixty five million americans hit the big seven zero we baby boomers born one thousand nine hundred sixty one nine hundred sixty four were the biggest generation in history until those millennial scame along yet we outnumbered boomers remain the most consequential generation july one twenty sixteen something began and

it will never end that day the oldest baby boomers turn seventy and a half the age at which by law they are required to begin withdrawing money from ira accounts this dough squirreled away for decades and earning interest is now flooding the retail economy. although we do occasionally ask a teenager for a tech assist boomers are tech savvy one reason young people are fleeing facebook for other social media platforms is that their parents and grandparents are there eighty three percent of boomers conduct online research before making major offline purchases which busts another myth that as we get older we're so set in our ways and so brand loyal that we don't consider new products bony boomers are lifelong experimenters to our parents' horror way back when baby boomers are health conscious they purchase seventy seven percent of all prescription drugs and sixty

one percent of over the counter drugs already expecting to live longer than any previous generation they spent on teeth whitening and cosmetic surgery and the golden years are now baby boomers control eighty percent of all leisure travel spending they've got the time and they've got the money there were forty million grandparents in the usa in one thousand nine hundred eighty there will be eighty million and twenty twenty and you know they dote on those grandkids so while millennia old media buyers on madison avenue figure twenty five to fifty four is a demographic sweet spot the numbers say they're ending to a low that super excellence is why when you to come and tell our viewers thank you so much and if people want to catch the full monty version of the big picture we're going to get it you can see this most recent episode and all the shows we've done at you tube dot com slash the big picture our t.

watch any time anywhere on any device thank you hala appreciate you being here that part. time now for a quick break but stick around because when we return manila chan talks china and economic numbers plus why have a little bit of a dicey debate about regulating digital currencies stay to. exist says holland kentucky. overboard this move them places you can walk very fine easily. a co money since he was almost no coal mines left. the jobs are gone all the coal mines just said. that it was a laugh to see these people a survivor was disappearing before their eyes. i remember thinking when i

was younger that if anything ever happened to the coal mines here that it would become a ghost town but i never thought in a million years i would see that and it's happened it's happened. work a bit coy find me here ary eric out there pick on the one nine hundred talk to brock harrison said this was their year twenty seven say to go to all kinds of crazy eyes and yeah it sure did alex very thing a bit of a fall back. applied for many flips over the years so i know the guy even so i doubt it's. football isn't only about what happens on the pitch for the funnel school it's about the passion from the families it's the age of the super money joe killian a loan has been spending two hundred twenty million and one player.