why that would be they haven't communicated that this is just the latest episode in the ongoing spat between the trumpet ministration and the intelligence agencies showing that there is a high level of division and insecurity in washington d.c. . former u.s. presidential candidate hillary clinton has attended a graduation ceremony at yale university and she followed tradition by wearing an unconventional. a russian. i. mean if you can draw i know. i was on the way to winning. combination. over twenty eight and russian wiki leaks i inherited nothing from the democratic party. i

mean it was bankrupt it was on the verge of in there is still a very large proportion of the population that is uneasy with positions of leadership. this just shows how frail hillary is i think she gave a speech to the democratic women leadership convention i think a couple of days ago in washington and more or less admitted she just can't let it go and i think i think it's worrying because the u.s. needs a strong opposition right now and hillary clinton really isn't it over and over again we saw these kind of killing. and then putting out. just now i mean over and over again she shows that she's not fit she has a very polarizing effect on american politics the democratic party sold in america and without having somebody some giant figurehead i don't think will really see any

great change right now and i think it's likely that trump will will forge ahead in the next election. italy's new populist euro skeptic alliance has met the country's president proposing a political novice just said picante as prime minister before the meeting the leaders of the two parties in the coalition stressed that in their new government italy must come first. learning. liquidity only to you to learn even going to promote your new cause a. president is expected to decide on tuesday whether he accepts contests. from former rivals the. five star movement and right wing northern illegal came together in a populist alliance unprecedented for your party told to basically the story of yes it is up but. it's been two and

a half months around about since those elections took place in italy and it's taken all this time for the two parties that's leg and the five star movement from the left and the right of the spectrum to come together to form what they would like to do which is to create a coalition government with the leaders of those parties have been meeting with the italian president today putting forward this name of the person that they would like to be the next talent prime minister well his name is just picante he was put forward as a candidate by five star movement and the league who both said that they wanted him to be the next italian prime minister what do we know about him well not very much we know that he's a professor of law and he's also the author of the five star movement justice program during the election but he is the man that will now lead italy possibly over the next few years where the two parties a five star movement and leg came together despite many differences during the

italian at elections to form what they want to see as being a coalition government a government for change is how they've described it in their manifesto some almost sixty pages long which they approved on friday well what do we know what's in that manifesto well first of all many things that perhaps other countries in the european union may not like too much including. the idea that they would like to scrap the sanctions against russia they also want a flat tax in italy they want to curb migration and perhaps most controversially they want to renegotiate some of the. policies the e.u. commitments they've already been warned by a german minister and the french finance minister that they need to keep those e.u. commitments but these are two parties who have never shied away of saying exactly what they think to the e.u. . the choice to tell him people have made is

a step towards freedom for the whole of europe away from constraints and insecurity we want to rebuild europe based on people not bureaucracy we want to be listened to otherwise all these sectors and industries that are suffering from injustice because of european treaties and directives will have to be reimbursed well some say the reason that they won that election they've been able to join to form this coalition ideology is because they were both euro skeptic parties and that seems to have gone down well with the italian electorate and they still popular recent polls showing that they are getting still sixty percent support from the italian population you must do something about immigration because it's a mess and like the color plan of course you want lower taxes especially for businesses so it's illegal to be harsh on immigration we need to solve this problem but with a more moderate approach i'm worried about how five star and league are going to

make good on these promises it will be difficult because the powers the strong will now the new italian prime minister has been approved these two parties will now set to form that government but the manifesto that they've prepared this change of this government for change still needs to be approved by a tally in new makers when the i's are dotted and the t.'s are crossed and the dust all settles on that it will mean that italy will be the only country in western europe with the euro skeptic governing coalition at its helm. the area around the syrian capital damascus has reportedly been liberated from islamic state with the terror group being pushed out of its last remaining enclave there on that story after a short break you are watching our international. politicians

to do something to. put themselves on the line to get accepted or rejected. so when you want to express injury. or somehow want to be. what's it like to be close as it was before three in the morning can people get. interested always in the waters in the. first six.

welcome back this is our national now the syrian army has reportedly driven islamic state out of its final enclave near damascus development means that all areas around the syrian capital are now back under government control so television footage from the country shows the army celebrating its victory and firing rounds in the air after retaking. district and. palestinian refugee camp the area has seen intense fighting between the islamist and sure surgeon sanda government forces in recent weeks local journalist muhammad ali brings us this report from the newly liberated suburb of damascus. the syrian army has taken full control of has a squad area and yet

a move refugee camp in southern damascus following through should spicing would isolate serous also known as that it. was you know. securing president assad and that you had moved refugee camp means that demo is now a terrorist free city for the first time with its countryside since seven years securing them would save the capital damascus from deadly mortar attacks that were previously launched from those areas on residential government orders the mosque asc syrian army to continue its future operations across the country the syrian army command issued a statement saying that the syrian army is currently much more stronger and much more determined to continue its military operations and. every inch of syrian soil

after terrorist groups through the damascus that it's going to be signed is a terrorist the area your music is unique i think and it's expected that you are will be heading to work either the north. or the south and. the official inquiry into the grunfeld tower fire has begun in london with seventy two seconds of silence to mark each victim of last june's tragedy the two week hearings will give relatives a chance to speak about the victims not everyone has managed to make it to the inquiry as artie's. explains why the focus of the inquiry is on what caused the spread the fire that took place almost a year ago and the lives of seventy two people and one of the most moving at counts that we heard from the public testimonies that were taking place today was that of a man who lived on the twenty first floor at red bell tower and at the time of the

blaze his wife was seven months pregnant take a listen to his heart wrenching account of what happened so i called my son. hoping. it's true. we should pray. for any kind of miracle. that you just. because. she's made of the hardest that. it will for sure occurred. some of the relatives of the victims of this fire haven't been given visas to come here in time for the beginning of what's taking place one moroccan man named

lucy who lost his sister in the fire he applied for a visa to come to the inquiry in december but he said he was crushed after having to wait for months for it to be processed and now the home office have said that the visa had been issued on wednesday and that all these are applications are looked in on a case by case basis so he is finally getting his visa but by the time they hear arrives it'll be at least three days in to the inquiry and the opposition labor party says that's not good enough and that the government is continuing to fail the victims of the grand tragedy the gradual family has had to look beyond even to get a partial panel although tourism a said she would leave no stone unturned in this inquiry she also promised victims would not suffer irrespective of their immigration status but is now fully in the family and wants more so the scandal

surrounding the fire hasn't died down a hole and the burns house shell of the building is still standing in the middle of the bar of kensington and chelsea it's become a bit of a symbol of government bailey isn't a housing inequality and social injustice and. there are still questions surrounding ultimate me someone needs to go to prison but the inquiry on start those questions it's going to take a while of public inquiry by then. this is no exception. washington is ramping up the pressure on crisis stricken venezuela and has slapped fresh sanctions on the caracas government the punitive measure comes in response to social president nicolas maduro disputed reelection on sunday and the new restrictions of banned u.s. companies and a citizens from purchasing debts owed to the venezuelan government they will now

also become more difficult for caracas to order to raise money. sixty percent of the vote on sunday but two of the most popular opposition leaders were not allowed to take part and there were reports of voting irregularities the u.s. vice president called the election a sham the latest sanctions bolster others that america introduced on friday against top members of venezuela's ruling socialist party across government for its part says washington tried to sabotage the vote and is. a campaign of imperialist aggression. the gates of hell that's how locals describe this huge molten cavern in turkmenistan central asia filled with flaming natural gas it is now been burning day and night for more than forty years our video agency ruptly a drone.

and that does it for me i will be back in about thirty four minutes the full look at your news you are watching r.t. international.

we are now experiencing the end of a thirty year bull market in bonds which means are entering a period of rising interest rates and so the urgency to get deals done before that any cost is applied toward financing whatsoever needs to happen quickly so i predict in the next twenty four months you're going to see the biggest wave of mergers and acquisitions ever in history by a factor of ten as just thirty or forty percent of everything that's traded out there gets gobbled up and taken private. seventy four design submissions. seventy thousand filings. to join judges. and eight hundred sixty nonstop days a book. a russian w.b. a champion of it.

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i can't decide kinetically modify do business in the system heads in the food industry and the nine hundred ninety s. . guidance on taking that and night and what does not have to do. was just. the shadows from ocilla. life is a chemical widely used to kill leaks. plus it was widely believed there was like a beer in the street. they say in the runs are first possible temptations. that can occur future scientists proof that g.m.

products really float on the human race to sign a surface to wells free of g.m.'s in crisis eight would be even be able to see as we passed the points of never send. hello and welcome to crossfire where all things considered i'm peter lavelle the transatlantic alliance system has weathered a number of storms during its seventy year history we are told this is because of sustained american leadership but can this same alliance system survive the storm named trump.

crosstalk in the transatlantic alliance system i'm joined by my guest mark sloboda he's an international affairs and security analyst we also have dmitri bobbitt he's a political analyst with sputnik international and we have alex christopher or he is the director and writer for the duran dot com all right gentlemen crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate mark let me go to you first here. i'm the oldest on the program right here and i have a good memory of the transatlantic alliance system that had its ups and downs but this is turning into a sustained one we're looking at security we're looking at international agreements or rand comes into play we're looking at energy and we're looking at india minimal talk about italy a little bit later in the program there is a swell grassroots well of populism problem. here is that i mean there seems to be a cascade effect there's a lot of elements in play right now and i'm taking it seriously yeah i mean this is a serious incident and certainly if you went simply by the headlines in the

press on both sides of the atlantic talking about the of the west and the breaking up of the transatlantic alliance deutsche welle saying can it have the transatlantic alliance survive trump but i'm fortunate we have all been here before you know during the eight law in the bush years books were being written comparing the u.s. to mars and the e.u. to venus and talking about their. francis and we had a similar break up with reagan when there was all just there was a coalition quote unquote of the willing when it came to the invasion of iraq i mean there was but they did pull it off and that's something that i'm willing to call it out of the germany so you know at the time and actually sided with putin you know we remember we did as well but we're going to go to the russian angle on this here go ahead i mean it was venus who froze the ball for example it was the french president who decided that you know he had some very reliable information on

. president sarkozy. reliable information from not only be that you know go. global this. was someone who just went to leave it talked to a few insurgents and said that we need to save these muscles he said going to ward off much of the soviet troops in one thousand nine hundred so basically i think that moment of talk about a rift in the transatlantic alliance you know there is not such a big disagreement over iraq but like a new thought that it did instruct them well i'm going to even though you know i think there is i mean we go to alex here because i mean the threat of sanctions against european companies here i mean not only is there a looming trade war and we can talk about the specifics of that but now you know basically going up in threatening the european companies there and the europeans

have reacted with a blocking measure i mean this is different gentlemen this is very different than we've had in the past go ahead alex you know this is very different because i think we're seeing the neo liberal honeymoon is definitely over and i was eight years with obama where you had obama and cameron and merkel and all these people with this new rat pack of buddies that were you know running the world you know doing whatever they wanted to do and you're seeing that come to a very decisive end when. trump and trump is very much like it or not trump is keeping many of his campaign promises specially in the foreign policy area and most notably moving the u.s. embassy to jerusalem of course pulling out of the iran nuclear deal so i think that you're starting to see europe react to what is essentially the neo liberal community and the liberal policy come to an end and that's that's due to the trump effect you know alex this thing with you i agree he's keeping his campaign promises and he doesn't care about the consequences marc talk about that because you said

when we have we're going back to the iraq war there were of france and germany were hesitant agreed with the russians and now we see agreement with russia even more so is this a diplomatic opening for russia because i mean merkel is going to sochi twice recently just just like there in the bush years of russia will of course make take any opportunity to find room between europe and the united states that has always been its policy and understands that it's room for maneuver is that it can make this crack wide in is extremely limited well i think we have the iran and the iran deal and we have an energy rich is very important to the german and europe and this is the biggest news in the last week is that trump is waging an economic trade war on the world at this point they're launching a war of tariffs against china they've launched tariffs on steel and other things

against south korea their ally in the pacific they've dropped out of the trans-pacific partnership something that i actually agree with but they've they've put new sanctions sanctions after sanctions after sanctions on russia they've renewed saying sions on iran and promise to go further north korea syria now they're threatening sanctions in two ways against europe and the first way is over the iraq right which is. the e.u. is bringing up a one nine hundred ninety six blocking statute to vainly trying to combat and the other way is they're attempting to now dictate the e.u. energy policy and energy security saying if germany completes the nord stream to pipeline with russia that it will it will possibly and that sanctions the same sanctions against russia against e.u. completely let's remind our audience of the rational because trump wants to do but the europeans are but i of american energy cannot be i mean if you you know most of

america first think a little bit of sanity seeming to them an offer they cannot refuse but you can. look i think it's another case of chickens coming home to roost at this program we discussed several times that this campaign against his election anyone before his election it reminded us of that campaign say against the vilify dictators so-called dictators in ukraine in syria in iraq then it was used against trump against the american president in the same way that war sanctions which the united states has been waging against russia against other countries now it is turning against europe you know something that the you never expect that to happen they thought it would be used against other people now it's used against them so that's a very interesting moment. brings up a really good point because what is happening here is that the european union is essentially left itself defenseless it really has very few options because it never

expected there would be this kind of breach that would face them go ahead alex yeah and i think he's right because let's face it the e.u. paint itself into its into into a corner into its own little box and let's not also forget you have a lot of dynamics outside of trump that are that are leading to a lot of chaos within the e.u. and nato you have turkey which is which is very iffy on its alliance with nato and the west now you have an e.u. which is very divided internally from north to south and eastern europe to western europe so you have. a lot of dynamics which are causing a lot of chaos for the for the leaders in brussels and trump is going to play on that and i think also russia will play on that it's very interesting because there is very little unity right now within the european union and russia has always complained that it doesn't know who to speak to and in your opinion because they're not unified well we have it in spades now i think the e.u. will wait donald trump out be that two years four years eight years and i think we've seen this before but i'm far more worried about the internal. stresses within

the european union the election of a joint far right far left government in italy noises of dissent in hungary and paul if you really think the europeans can wait that long it seems to me it seems to me that the mid-term elections in november in the united states will send an indication of what the european they mean wait a few months by don't think they can wait years see you blocking statute his interest it's a nineteen ninety six provision med to be used to protect european companies from that u.s. blockade on cuba so what it's going to do is it's going to ban e.u. companies supposedly from recognize from obeying the rule though it's impossible to judge or and force and it bans european courts from recognizing decisions against companies because of these sanctions and it will open up the european investment bank but german officials have already admitted they can't protect european companies this is an outdated measure they don't know how to

update it the russian duma is actually dealing with a nearly identical provision to forbid russian companies from recognizing sanctions against russia and they're not having much loss with that either but these are the european companies that already announced that they're pulling out of iran toto all the french energy giant mayor tankers the danish shipping giant alliance the german insurance company danieli the italian steel manuf. china and russia are jumping to a very bad because that is exactly what i was watching just that period and scoop up they're going to dinner before the break there are plenty of players to fill the breach here for me this is why sanctions or. sections are a blunt weapon yes it will not achieve policy objectives go ahead and basically it's one there and you know these sanctions are a bomb around. with mark that one thousand nine hundred six measure is old date that precisely because the e.u.

achieved its aim everything is now digitalized you could not escape control there is no will bend can secret the e.u. officials have recognized that three months ago that you cannot keep your information your bank information secret it's on the record in the united states and in the west globally i'm afraid that you sanctions are going to make a masochist out of me i love the sanction russia some more six months or more but even such an issue some more sanctions tell it will go to chile going to go there we're going to go to the break here but this is really gets down to it's law it's law fair it's law fair now everyone is that involved in law for the americans perfected it now everyone's going to play the same game go ahead yeah i mean it's interesting to see that you know practically speaking of companies do business with iran they make it punished by the us if they don't do business with iran we going to get punished.