u.s. national security and intelligence chiefs to double down on trying to tackle alleged foreign interference jitters grow over the upcoming midterm elections. jordan are being required to hand over biometric data in order to gain access to aid and food journalists from the redfish group investigate. ethical concerns around the practice fundamental principle but we go by is informed consent. that the letter. of the. nato develops a game to teach players how to spot fake news but critics say it's simply a propaganda tool. and a german sportswear giant adidas says it will no longer work with the iranian

football federation just a month after arrival mikey did the same. for broadcasting live. this is r t international thomas certainly glad to have you with . us security and intelligence chiefs have put on a united front at the white house for reasserting their suspicions that russia is currently meddling in the upcoming midterm elections are just killed as more. one by one the various security chiefs took to the podium at the white house we heard from general paul neka son of the u.s. cyber command christopher ray the head of the f.b.i. dan coats the director of national intelligence as well as kirsten nielsen who is the secretary of homeland security now one by one they spoke with they all kind of seem to repeat the same kind of message this is the security chiefs making their

allegations our democracy itself is in the crosshairs paid by russia to try to weaken and divide united states this threat is not going away to prevent foreign interference in our elections to prevent a russian and other foreign influence and the russians try to hack into and steal information candidates and government officials alike cyber attacks against voting infrastructure along with computer intrusions malicious cyber actors targeting elected officials that goes beyond the elections that goes to russia's intent to undermine our democratic values we've heard the head of the n.s.a. come out and say that the u.s. government is prepared to engage in special operations to counter russian influence in the upcoming elections now dan coats the director of national intelligence he was pressed to give specifics related to allegations regarding hacking and and

other specific allegations about somehow russia possibly influencing the election this is how he responded you give us a very sense of who's decision these are newly released senators have said that they've been targeted hacking by people person in government. numbers of the senate members of the house is a democratic or republican campaign. but we follow procedure this pedigree that. some time ago in terms of when we. receive this type of information it is processed . through the leadership of the respective house or chamber the senate chamber and then disseminated down to the individual member who was who was targeted so we have taken that actions that is in place but i'm not in a position right now to release these things these allegations that we recently heard are not that different than what we've really heard many times since the

twenty sixteen presidential election especially in the last few months rush is accused of somehow influencing the minds of american people via social media however as these allegations are being leveled not a lot of evidence is really being presented to back them up independent journalist joe lowery believes american politicians are using the russian threat to distract from domestic issues. this is new rhetoric and actually it doesn't seem to be based in reality i have to say they're going to blame russia for whatever happens in the november elections whatever goes wrong whatever problems we have it's russia's fault there are no racial divisions there's no way in quality having come there are no problems in this country except the ones that are made by russia this is ridiculous what's going on here they have to use something to deflect criticism from their own. rulers their own rules ship this is absolutely getting out of control right now i have not seen it like this before and it's getting more and more dangerous when you think of the relations between two superpowers they don't

want better relations with russia they want to push this line and they yes there's a war between trump and his intelligence several u.s. senators have introduced a new anti russia sanctions bill among other provisions of the bill requires a two thirds vote in the u.s. senate to leave nato and requires the secretary of state to assess whether russia is a state sponsor of terrorism also calls for creating a new fusion center which will seek to respond to hybrid threats which seem to come only from russia this according to authors of the bill political commentator lou rockwell told us that the objective is to forge a united front against moscow they want to get everybody on board and you saw that they had all the heads of all the various agencies and they want to get every interest group they have the you know the military and the entire military industrial complex the security complex all they are waving the bloody shirt they produced zero evidence and. that's you know that's been true all along about the

so-called russian interference russian collusion all that stuff they want to get everybody together they want to scare the american people. russia's alleged interference in american politics was also discussed by the us senate intelligence committee on wednesday it met for a hearing on the changing nature of online influence by campaigns by foreign powers and one issue of particular concern seemed to be the spread of means on social media that allegedly can be traced back to moscow we asked the russian foreign minister for his thoughts. move when you look it's just hilarious when i hear that funny pictures can undermine american democracy i think that it's just paranoia that goes off the scale it's not respectable for american lawmakers to make a sensation out of nothing when all the ones who invented social media and went all the ones who insisted on making social media open to everybody so those who are sitting there and d.c. talking russian meddling over and over are certain that the russians are carrying

on with their attempts to undermine u.s. democracy and they're saying now they have a new target the midterm elections in america in twenty and we're also hearing that moscow is not only using the traditional ways through facebook or twitter but also all kinds of other platforms the likes of reddit or pinterest where they post more and more russian made names. and cyber attacks for me are made a core part of moscow's personal content it's created tested and posted on pop up such as you tube reddit and wrist it's pushed to twitter and facebook with their standing audiences in the hundreds of millions and it's targeted at the most receptive this is a problem of the entire information ecosystem this is cross-platform reddit came from hundreds of ira created accounts tumblr did it. a lot of pride related content less news more this isn't just

a couple of platforms this is music apps this is video games this is me is if it's much broader than twitter and google more conclusions from the experts they are saying that russia is inspiring controversy across the u.s. on various issues like immigration gun control democrats versus republicans to cut the long story short every issue that the americans have divisions about what's really lacking at these hearings though is as. as usual i should say solid evidence that there is a system that it is controlled and backed by the russian government and that the scale of it is large enough to really take this mean meddling menace seriously. you know get help learning how to navigate through online fake news from an unlikely source nato has launched a facebook game to teach people how to sort fact from fiction r.t. . tried her hand. welcome to nato's new online weapon against

misinformation it's the news here oh i promised myself to report only the truth join me on my quest to filter the news some of the headlines about the game might imply that it's developers have a bone to pick with russia but on closer inspection it seems it doesn't have that much russian fake news to decipher you might have thought that nato is lot fear based strategic communication center of excellence could dig up something better especially given the lengths it went to last year trying to prove that russian t.v. comedy was really an undercover propaganda machine and of course there is nato's deep seated suspicion of all things russian we don't accept cyber. we will not counter. we more. so we have to be able to counter this information with tracts but to me those new virtual reality world

passions seem slightly more subdued you enter a rather suspiciously empty and slow paced news room where you are the news editor in charge of deciding which reports are real and which are not by clicking on a folder with news stories in it company wide repetitive elevator music. it's not yet clear how successful the game is and fighting fake news since you have to collect enough likes to be considered a viral success and so far it's had mixed reviews getting an a for effort from some users but dismissed as a propaganda tool by others well you need to enjoy the game is a facebook account and sign off your facebook info to the alliance in the process and spicy chicken out r.t. london. turns are being raised over the use of iris scanning technology as a means of unlocking aid for refugees in jordan it is feared that should their biometric data get into the wrong hands the refugees may find themselves targets of

foreign government and intelligence agencies the redfish group went on to investigate. it's really. using a password and using a body part is extremely invasive in two thousand and thirteen the un announced its partnership with british jordanian iris my emetics company i restored they began rolling out and i respect ignition and payment system that meant refugees could withdraw money and shop with the blink of an eye refugees jordan's two biggest camps. have to biometrically register their irises in order to receive eight fundamental principle that we go by is informed consent. for iris guard to deal meant access to millions of refugees huge market to try lots

technology and while it gives the technology to the u.s. for free iris garri make a cool one percent from every transaction made via its ip system which could explain why bankers goldman sachs recently invested an undisclosed sum in iris card companies like goldman sachs making on the slow deals with iris guard who are in charge of both the refugees transaction iris guard was called founded by one of jordan's wealthiest families including actually with a master. on their advisory board you've got none other than ex national security advisor to george w. bush. former head of m i six richard dear love both of whom are advocates of the war in iraq what i think of what it's like they are guinea pigs. this is. the fact that the boys are kind of relation with people from. this

team that took part in the war and is more than a. speaker. i had a heated exchange about this with the c.e.o. of iris guard with dealing with a highly secure technologies we would be idiots if we do not ask people who are professionals in their field are there professionals i don't want to warn you you are asking me about a political question from town some understandable fuck we are not involved in any political statements we are not making any statements for you to use these are great to do you suffer because we are a month political company we have it working large and political i understand but they are not nonpolitical do you understand you do understand that they understand security or you can be my that basically the creators of the software and hardware iris guard are the only ones who know how it works and we just have to take their word for. it the collection of iris scans and biometric data isn't new

but using refugees that have no real choice but to hand over their information in exchange for receiving aid on this scale is unprecedented and as yet there remain many unanswered questions is the text safe is it secure who has access to it and who benefit could it be that's what started as a forced experiment on refugees injured dainian camps could soon be coming to an or a.t.m. near you. the u.n. refugee agency is senior field corner in amman says he is confident the refugees are data is secure and that the biometric system ensures aid goes to the intended recipients he added that only the un agency are as the second half of the encryption key in needed to view an individual's data now we asked the iris guard

advisory board to comment on the findings of the redfish report but they have yet to get back to us goldman sachs told us it had nothing to at. so bob was incumbent president emerson. has one monday's election in more or less for after a break this is. see it is like the easy pen things and you can take your panics out your body and the body continues on it's just an appendage. so this is what people don't understand is that the u.k. leaving the e.u. the e.u. continues on great but if you take the appendix out of the bodies it's going to wither and travel and die because it has no body to exist anymore and this is what's happening in the u.k. and it's going to be a lot of fun to watch because there's been living beyond their means for somebody

years and now it's all coming all. of the people in you know. we were in number one. all day experience is that all of this. massive in growth that's. not that's not. a welcome back this is a routine international now zimbabwe's electoral commission has announced the country's incumbent to president emerson has emerged victorious in monday's

election it was the first vote held by the country since the ousting of longtime former president robert mugabe now the streets of the capital harare were quiet to add to the time of the announcement however the city did see violent protests earlier with demonstrators alleging a rigged vote on wednesday the military moved in and used gunfire to disperse the opposition protests resulting in six people being killed while one in six out of ten provinces with four provinces going to his main rival nelson chamisa dominated . urban areas with carrying the vote in other countries. the. tragedy has struck in the yemeni city of who data where the saudi led coalition has conducted airstrikes resulting in civilian casualties not a bit of a warning. the images you're about to see are quite graphic now yemeni officials say twenty eight people were killed and around seventy injured however a local t.v. station has reported that fifty two are dead one hundred of the airstrikes hit an

area near the city's main public hospital who were those who were severely wounded civilians and were hospitalized. in riyadh has repeatedly been accused of war crimes but denies deliberately targeting noncombatants pollution has been at war with the rebels known as the three since march two thousand and fifteen yemen is now in the world's worst humanitarian crisis with more than twenty two million people in dire need. despite years of civilian suffering u.s. ambassador to the u.n. nikki haley seems to think that the catastrophe well it only began yesterday. we had that a saudi led coalition had airstrikes today against a fish market and a hospital in who data that may have caused dozens of casualties we've hit a new day now in yemen and we've had a new sense of urgency and u.n. and that if this is what started to happen civilians are at risk infrastructure is

at risk former pentagon official michael maloof thinks washington should have recognized the material situation in yemen long ago. for nikki haley it just occurred today which is unfortunate because the united states is actually supplying a lot of the logistics and the the intelligence for the saudis and you don't hear too much criticism he should have been out there months ago condemning what the the the humanitarian catastrophe that's occurring in yemen i assure you just you just cannot be nice about this any longer or or just overlook it because it's gone on for too long and too many people have been have been killed and you wonder and you have to ask yourself the question what's the point. lengthy litigation and a seemingly unilateral decision by the u.s. justice department blueprints for three d. printer pull guns made briefly available on the web and in the short time they were online it's thought the files were downloaded thousands of times on wednesday

a texas based gun rights group published blueprints for three guns openly online but eight states went to court and seattle judge then ordered the plans to be taken down the battle is not over though with the man behind the blueprints comparing his mission to anti-establishment activism like we keep things. you could cause digital radicals we believe that the internet perfectly preserved the second and helped to be its expansion what is we can weeks for guns this was our idea a kind of see you know like our immediate purpose like wow could we be wiki leaks for guns what would that look like we found a three d. printer we said what if you could three d. printing and then share a file on the internet that would be like wiki leaks. all right cody wilson who you just saw there his quest started back in two thousand and thirteen when he first developed a weapon that could be printed at home until recently the federal government especially the state department made sure those blueprints didn't make it into the

web and but earlier this year the justice department cited to drop litigation against three d. gun plans from being posted online putting it at odds with the state department the reason that the state department got involved are only aqua t. in the us is because of our role in controlling foreign access to u.s. defense technology in simpler words the state department wants to prevent the wrong people from acquiring weapons overseas legal analyst and commentator lionel told us that he is not surprised by the apparent lack of cohesion between various branches of the u.s. government we have right now a department of justice and its subsidiary the f.b.i. that is acting completely independent of the president and is in a parallel universe there are what is referred to often times some may say too much is this thing called the deep state i'm not suggesting that's here but this

dissociation this this gets soit connection between the president or the department of justice is is typical. sportswear giants seem to be losing their appetite for the iranian market with germany's adidas now saying it will no longer work with the country's football federation the decisions thought to stem from the u.s. sanctions against tehran are to donald quarter comments on when sports meets politics. one by one business giants are cutting ties with iran and the latest is german sportswear company us the company said it's no longer going to do business with the iranian national football team and that didn't exactly go down well with tehran. given the improper indyk or a step taken by added s.a.g. with regards the sacred name of deer around on its website it is necessary to take prompt punitive measures against such conduct the violates human rights and signed a contract with an alternative prior to the start of the asian football

confederation asian cup we took to the streets of tehran to find out what iranians think about us as decision. slogan is nothing is impossible what they did is prove that they contradict their own slogan i believe what they did belittle the football federation first of all i believe there is no need for us to introduce politics into sport it is a nasty thing to do there is no sense in a country like the us or any other country trying to enforce this so quite the contrary it is they who should worry that they have lost their way to good market we asked us to comment on the reasons for the decision but they declined to give any details the company's move comes hot on the heels of nike's decision not to sell football boots to the iranian world cup team but the iranians played admirably at the world cup and its supporters took to ridiculing nike's model.

unlike with nike his motives for leaving the iranian national team without any gear were quite clear they just couldn't do it and they fell in line with u.s. sanctions without much of a fight. u.s. sanctions mean that as a u.s. company knight cannot supply shoes to players in the iranian national team at this time sanctions applicable to nyc have been in place for many years and are enforceable by along with the us threatening further sanctions even more american and european companies appear unwilling to deal with iran and that's despite the fact that since the trump administration sanctions announcement e.u. officials pledge to support and protect european business it's true that. as the

european commission we have the juicy to protect european companies so we know me to act. we are determined to fight so that the decisions taken by the united states have no repercussions for the french businesses that invest and have invested in iran top e.u. officials even wrote a letter pleading with the u.s. to exclude european companies from the penalties in the state department's response it's our way or the highway we are asking every nation every nation who is sick and tired of islamic republics destructive behavior to join our pressure campaign this is especially those who are allies in the middle east and europe easy for him to say especially when many are saying the e.u. will bear the economic brunt of cutting off ties with iran but for now it remains to be seen whether impossible is truly nothing for the bloc. journalists in belgium have a tax of the government there after discovering that they will have to pay fifty euros for security vetting if they want to cover the next e.u.

leaders some it first became aware of the new law after the european council issued accreditation guidance for the event both of the belgian and european journalist associations as well as the european commission have said that the measure undermines media freedom. today european commission as much like the belgian law that entered into force on the first of june the commission will not introduce such a fee. and the belgian foreign ministry says it will assess the effectiveness of the measure and adjusted in the future of necessary we spoke to the general secretary of the european federation of journalists about the controversy he says it should be the state paying for security at summits not those attending you believe that belgian is not respect the. international standard most nexus to information that's just information fundamental rights in europe and this decision against its rights we are not against you know

that. you don't do to your state to ensure. security and journalists you're also going to feed from that security what we don't understand is why should we pay for it us as journalists. now estimated thirty five thousand people marched through jerusalem on thursday in the city's largest ever annual pride parade participants chanted slogans and carried rainbow colored banners at an event that also took on a political dimension due to good netanyahu government's refusal to extend its surrogacy rights to gay men for two thousand police officers who were there to provide security for those following two kilometer round freight is often a source of tension in the historically conservative city was met with anti l.g.b. to protests in which four people were arrested on two thousand and fifteen and ended in tragedy after an ultra-orthodox jewish man stabbed six people killing

a teenage girl. but doesn't for me and thirty two minutes i'll be back with more news though so stay with us this is our teenage national. i've. been with a post. like this before. last time we chased. each one of them carrying twenty kilos of drugs. first offense. is the

main thing. they have this is the this is for me. it was. i don't know. i want to bring you right. now more. join me every thursday on the alex simon shore and i'll be speaking to us from the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you then.

i. i. this is a poem by broadcasting around the world i'm partial to thanks for being on board coming up fred hofmann the author of the farmhouse who stopped being food joins us to talk about the impact of trade tariffs on livestock and b. and the resultant impact on prices we all play plus artes alex mohai will bitch joins us from toronto to talk about the u.s. treasuries plan to deal with offshore tax havens and the earnings that are still overseas plus our he's daniel hearkens reports from london on broadband in the united kingdom and the e.u. but first we focus on an issue that is impacting many portions of the planet all around the world the summer of twenty eight team is setting heat records and moving markets around the world electricity demand is spiking in affected areas because.