a french opposition leader reacts furiously to finding his name on a list of suspicious twitter accounts forcing him to declare he is a russian vault. so ahead this hour the now the lunch reels from the shock suicide of an immigration party politician who claimed she'd been raped by a muslim gang last year. a disturbing video from yemen leaves humanitarian groups on the public with this week's sunday coalition strike on a school bus in yemen the raid claimed the lives of twenty nine children dozens more bridge.

just gone ten am in los angeles ten pm in karate and eight in the evening right here in moscow this friday august the tenth welcome to r.t. international our top story french opposition leader and former presidential candidate. as i really get back at suggestions that he is part of a russian online dissin from ation campaign hey stupid spook i'm not a russian it's just me who tweets against you. although not directly accused of being a russian bolt mellen show has appeared in a list of a con showing increased twitter traffic in the wake of the assault scandal surrounding president former bodyguard the inference being moscow's pulling the strings also on the list is are porous correspondent charlotte dubinsky who gave us more details earlier. well a huge outcry here in france so many people on twitter who thought that they had

been labeled russian boats that's because they were named in a twitter list which looked at the number of people who had tweeted about the but now a skate scandal here in france some of them even decided to use it as a badge of honor and actually added they. bought their russian numbers to their twitter accounts now this came out after the banana scandal which was a former security aide to president mike brown who was filmed actually assaulting protesters doing it may day now because of that many people were tweeting about it and an engineer based in belgium this information lab actually decided to analyze the people who were tweeting about that well they published a list of the accounts that it tweeted the most about this particular scandal and the mainstream media here in france immediately decided that the frenzy around that

scandal had been caused by not just any boats but russian boats not so those says e.u. distant from asian law which says that the study wasn't even about russian boats we did not modify the conclusions of our study a lot of media reported that we studied and identified that there had been russian meddling that the russian state orchestrated interference in the banal a scandal we never said this the fact that. the government spokesperson immediately exploded this for political ends created this sort of hype there was never the object of our study well the engineer even had to step in releasing a press release to say that the mainstream media here in france had completely misinterpreted their report and it was not about the supposed russian boats of which thousands of people appeared on a list now these. lists they released included thousands upon thousands of people

from france who had been tweeting about the banality. and they were around four million tweets what it showed is that only a tiny fraction around six hundred fifty account were from people which they described as being in the russian spy own sphere that is basically journalists like myself who work right see my colleagues and people who kept retreating to our t.v. content in the past never did it say that we were all russian boats but of course the mainstream media felt that somebody had to be to blame for this scandal which president himself described as being a tool a storm in a teacup and what's the point in letting the truth get in the way of telling a good story. to another headline stories this hour there is shock across the dutch political spectrum the suicide of a consular in the hague just before her death valley delay claimed she'd been kidnapped and raped by

a group of muslims and accuse the former party colleague of orchestrating it you're sure europe correspondent peter all over. tributes and messages of condolence to the family of former dutch party for freedom council of illy dale have been flooding in from across the political divide in the netherlands the fifty three year old former representative in the hague took her own life on wednesday after publishing a video on social media in which she claimed to have been the victim of a kidnap and rape back in twenty seventeen ordered by a political opponent. chris craft was. in the video misdeal claims she was attacked by what she calls a muslim gang on the orders of a former political colleague who had since converted to islam the deceased claimed a former party for freedom member who quote hated her intensely in

a statement to r.t. the dutch police said that although they had spoken to ms deal no formal complaint was made nor were there satish and details given to warrant starting an investigation the mayor of the hague expressed her sorrow at miss deals death saying her passing touched her very much and that the city had lost a committed and passionate councillor dutch prime minister mark said he was shocked and expressed his sympathy towards her family party the party for freedom leader get villages said he was lost for words at the death of a colleague he called warm and always particularly willing to help young people in politics. peter all over there we have sent a request for an interview with mr lay's former colleague who she accused of organizing a sexual assault yet he hasn't got back to us. u.s. senators are accusing their government of contributing to the deadly saudi led

coalition strike that hit a school bus in yemen on thursday the red cross say twenty nine children were killed thirty others injured all under the age of fifteen the u.s. state department is calling on the coalition to investigate but also underlined that saudi arabia is a key regional partner of washington's we call on the saudi led coalition to conduct a thorough and transparent investigation into the incident you also supply the tremendous amount of weaponry then the data for targeting to this so that. sorry no lie wrong is that wrong sorry these ladies every hear a laughing. and that i would refer you to the department of defense that is involved in that but you know as you know saudi arabia is an important strategic partner in the region to the united states. well video of the aftermath of the attack shows the extent of the children's injuries please be warned what we're

about to show is upsetting to watch the strike occurred in the north of a country which is under the control of the rebels saudi arabia launched intervention against them in twenty fifty the latest u.n. day to seize the majority of people killed in the conflict died as a result of coalition airstrikes over ten fellows and council t s in an official statement the saudis defended the attack accusing the rebels of using children as human shields. the targeting today is a legitimate military action conducted in conformity with the international humanitarian law to target the militants responsible for planning and targeting civilians which resulted in killing and injuring them. just some background to this the united states is by some distance the largest supplier of weaponry to the saudis and it also provides targeting assistance for strikes on military drills

last year saudi arabia spent seven hundred fifty million dollars on training by american specialists which it claimed was implemented to reduce civilian casualties the u.k. is the second largest arms supplier to the saudis and arms trade activists some walton thinks washington and london should be shouldering more responsibility. what's happened is a massacre and it can never be legitimate to kill children it's that simple questions must be asked we've seen over the course of this war on cells from washington and london to saudi arabia go up and up and up when i talk to people in yemen they are absolutely livid so angry with our governments for arming. arming saudi arabia and for providing the planes the bombs the missiles military training and diplomatic cover for the bombardment which they are living under yes

it killed children but it happened in a civilian marketplace as well which is another big question why were they targeting a civilian marketplace the weapons that we are selling to saudi arabia are bombing schools they're bombing hospitals you know we're seeing the world's largest ever cholera outbreak in yemen and that cholera outbreak is happening because the sewage the sanitation systems have been systematically targeted by british and american bombs and planes dropped by saudi arabia u.a.e. so we really have to ask yourself some questions and start putting pressure to stop this war on saudi arabia. u.s. democrats are seeking a new tool to counter a fake news online they want facebook to share data on its users so that big can be fed what they say are factually accurate alternatives party chiefs at the d.n.c. have frequently accused moscow of deploying online dissin for mation to try and

influence voters in the twenty sixteen presidential election. takes a look at what's in the plan. not as great as we want who might you hear that from a teacher or. your gym coach boss or a senior technology officer for the democrats. talking about how well the likes of facebook are cooperating with their party as if catering to the d.n.c. was on the network's mission statement what would make mr krikorian happier we would love to do is give every campaign something like a weather report to tell every campaign what is being said on social media in the morning and how they can combat it i'll explain the dems won facebook to look for people who've been fed fakes or propaganda the network should then share that audience with the d.n.c. so that they could feed them what's accurate i.e.

the right thing. the democrats are hungry for facebook data this could have been a great moment to remind you of the cambridge analytical data gate to one person if you joined the asp i would not just see your facebook profile i would see all of the facebook profiles of everybody that you're friends with and people had no idea that it was being taken in this way you know that was one massive gate but i'll remind you of something else the a bomb it seemed had a solution in place a facebook application more than one million obama backers who signed up for the app gave the campaign permission to look at their facebook friends lists in an instant the campaign had to wait see the hidden young vote just a little democrat trick to get hold of some user data for political gain before the two thousand and twelve vote you never heard about it because pretty much no one cared those were the days no hash tag collusion media fallout news anchors didn't go on about

a twenty four seven and some people in charge at facebook were just real fans of mr obama facebook was surprised to enable to psych out the whole social graph but they didn't stop us once they realized that was what we were doing they allowed us to do things they wouldn't have allowed someone else to do because they were on our site should we assume that dems are still on facebook's friend list in. no they've been told to sort the russian fakes out and so have the has been taken measures they've just gotten rid of pages followed by hundreds of thousands of people because they're linked to russia i mean facebook's not so sure about that bit we're still individually early stages of our investigation and don't have all the facts including human be behind this but remember for the democrats it's not as great as we want and so i'd love to know what type of audiences were these hundreds of thousands of people because we want to talk to them or work with them come on it's

just a bit of audience data. the latest poll is to me in protest over occupied territory in the gal's the israel border is gaining momentum this friday palestinian health officials claim a part of medicare has been shot dead by the israeli defense forces at least eighty four other people have been injured the ongoing great march of return protests began on the thirtieth of mort more than one hundred fifty civilians have been killed since that date according to the palestinian health ministry you know a fragile cease fire has been reached between israel and militants from hamas which controls girls a following two days of heavy fire. the brink of a new economic war russian prime minister dmitri medvedev heard this scribed america is the solution to further tighten sanctions on russia there in response to

accusations over the poisoning of former russian double agent circus cripple and his daughter in britain back in march. yes there was a possibility that the but if it comes to banning banking activities or certain currency use we will be able to call it a declaration of economic war and this will require a reaction by implementing economic political or if necessary any other measures. the new sanctions will come into the first will limit investment on exports especially on a number of national security goods saying touring the energy and tech sectors the second wave is expected to be much harsher and i said well had diplomatic relations as well as banking and imports and seti takes a look now at how far the new penalties might go. when it comes to global disagreement sanctions that the u.s. weapon of choice as russia's number two at the u.n. put it let us welcome the united sanctions of america well russia is being on the

receiving end of plenty of them they stem from allegations of election meddling military aggression human rights abuses all cyber crimes take your pick and the latest well that's of the souls reports innings washington says it has determined that russia used a military nerve agent to attack form a double agent say basic of paul and his daughter where are you getting the conclusion that pressure is behind the screen poisoning i will leave it to others to characterize the current state of our understanding of the screen but others haven't given any evidence either just various grades of highly likely it's highly likely that russia was responsible the two poles russia culpable culpable culpable culpable for the attempted murder and there's been uncertainty from specialists investigating the case. as another says the p.c. w.'s report i did to find the country. of origin of the agent used

in this attack and we continue to see a sort of a series of corporate baggers here of insinuation that russia is involved which basically is a mood music which is feeding the population in the west with the idea yes it is the russians despite the evidence just a constant constant stream of these. people just accept oh yes it must be the russians therefore that's ok we have asked him point more sanctions it's time that we get all the evidence but my suspicion is that as i'm going to happen although that seems a village still interest to washington which has found moscow guilty slapped it with new sanctions and strangely given its ninety days to prove it wasn't involved or it will ratchet up the penalties to a whole new level with even talk of branding russia a state sponsor of terrorism regardless of trump. wanting russia as a partner in his fight against terror and the torso doesn't seem to matter that the us itself has a long history of consorting with groups branded as terrorists for instance

america's support for the girl in movement which techie label to terror groups organizing and attempted. sooner or later the united states will make a choice either to. either the coupe blood in. country of democracy. or how about the american officials here they are a extremist group then wish i had been a coke who bombs the headquarters of be a ceramic republic party there is a viable opposition to the rule of the. position is centered in this room. and let's not forget how america stood alongside the afghan wish i had been in its battle against the soviet union only to say that group later form into al-qaeda the people we are fighting today we funded twenty years ago. does america dealing

with a spot in groups amount to sponsoring terrorism while the state department has a good answer for that i will leave it to others to characterize the current state of our understanding. no it's not just russia on the receiving end of washington's economic buck close on friday donald trump announced that the us is doubling taurus all its nato ally turkey i have just authorized a doubling of tariffs on steel and on the menu with respect to turkey as their currency the turkish lira slides roughly downward against our very strong dollar many move now be twenty percent and still fifty percent our relations with turkey are not good at this time. well the move sent turkey's currency the lira into a nosedive while president earlier one has already said his country will not be drawn into an economic war. change the euros the dollars and the

gold that you are keeping beneath your pillows into live at our banks this is a domestic a national struggle. you're not a good day for the lira it's valuation has dropped to its worst level to twenty fourteen it's now in fact worth half of what it was in twenty seventeen the move follows two turkish ministers being singled out for sanctions last week while i urge people to convert any u.s. dollars to local currency ok let's get into this further because joining us live on the program is steve keen steve's a professor of economics at london's kingston university welcome to the program how sustainable is it for america to continue on this economic campaign with sanctions because there are a lot of bottles on many fronts here. well this is a fairly trivial won though and i think it's got nothing to do with. with the trade situation between the chip countries because when you look at how much of chickies

explodes are actually on steel and aluminum it's less than five percent of their exploits they import just about as much in the same category as they exploit and america is one of this small trending and so i think it's really got to do with with the religious battle that's going on between two very similar analogies trump another good and which trump wants american pasta released from jail who was one of the pastas good and claims was involved in the kill against him so this is i think this is a peripheral battle but of course it's destroying the leer at the same time yet we will just get into what's happening in turkey in a moment but just focusing for a few moments on america how do you how will the sanctions impact on the dollar if at all we did see a little bit earlier that doug jones take a dip but is the market just reacting to trump's tweet is that is the doll ok i think that will unfortunate although you know. because the american economy is in a mini boom right now it's partly caused by the trends policies as well because as

insane as they might appear not to rule any individual elements of them especially a massive fiscal bush the economy. and in some ways even the chair of the going to force american corporations to invest in the wise they haven't done on the pasta while the fed reserve is still hasn't yet unwound quantitative easing which to which slowly you can very effectively did bush to american the american economy as well so the american economy can cope with this quite comfortably thanks very much unfortunately yeah if they had diplomatic relations there for between turkey the u.s. don't settle soon how do you think stave it could get for unclear from an economic perspective here. well i think if you could actually be false to the fulfillments for on balance because the main danger it has is running a huge current account deficit as well as having a large level of credit driven demand domestically now both us can draw very rapidly in a model so not so much of your happens in turkey that matters of what happens in

europe because a lot of those loans be nice to borrow is buy buy french in particular looks at french and italian banks now some of those going bankrupt then the real pressure on donald trump to stop this could come from europe and not from turkey like it just expanding in your opinion what kind of measures do you think countries can take to make themselves perhaps less dependent on the u.s. dollar. well i think the moves that are being made by china to try to make their own indians were as a currency a part of it but i would really like to see the countries emerging countries of the world in particular you not around the idea of doing what kinds want to do right back at bretton woods in the first place and that's not allowing national currency to be the reserve currency for the planet to make up on which the kinds called the bankroll and run that out of the international monetary fund in proportion to the saws of domestic economies we would not have anything like the kyle us that we have today nor will the power of the united states financial sector these kinds of ideas

are being followed it just finally do you think when you look at foreign policy here for washington in particular that economic measures such as sanctions and targets they're simply par for the course here they're a new instrument of thought power struggle. yeah and because it's so you got a new president he was actually locks causing chaos in lax making people upset because then guess what they talk about him and that's the most important thing to donald trump so really caught up in a much more political than we are economic was rotting and of course as i said it comes back to the to that has been good and this is really about getting him frayed and trump blustering is going to work fine most of it is about the economic impact upon america have to be used to if you should use trivial on and i mean exports appreciate your take this hour steve kane professor of economics at kingston university. all right time now for our

third and final report in our series looking at the fate of children of fighters from russian medina cuts of a trouble to talk to people desperate for news of family members who pledged allegiance to the terror group. it's early morning but the office of those human rights group and brosnan is packed with women all desperate to find out any news about their loved ones many have come here from other regions of russia's north caucasus and almost all cases their relatives left russia to join i.c.l. in syria often taking their young children with them these women are united in their quest to have one simple question answered other family members still alive there are over six hundred women and children reported missing at this human rights office and these are just some of the photos that their family members have left in

a bid to locate them now ad free picture has the name date of some general information on the back this is a four year old so my this child left russia when he was less than a year but there are so many more of them. he said doesn't miss a single meeting held at the office she says she has already accepted that she will never see her only son again but she just hopes that her grandchildren are still alive she brought pictures of her son's wife mariam one taken before she went to syria and another when she was over there with her son has never even seen her grandchildren and pass on both of them were born in syria and communication was lost long ago so much so that she doesn't even know the name of her granddaughter.

so we all hope that it will be ok that somehow it will all be ok i just feel so sorry for the children it's so difficult when you don't know where exactly your children are and heard anything from my daughter in law in the last eight months and then i cry and i will turn thinks is this year it is so difficult i don't think i can last much longer. that ina tries to spend almost all her free time at this office coming here after work she listens to the women's stories fills out forms and registers the newcomers her own personal tragedy brought her here to this place three years ago her brother left home and never returned his phone was last tracked in turkey but not a trace since almost three years of silence said. it is very difficult for me now it was so close since we were kids always together went to school together to university together work together he was always around i

guess after he left i feel like part of me as i don't leave a normal life now i just exist. was arena still believes that one day she will see her brother a life she has dedicated her life to helping others find their families. twenty one russian women are currently in prison there are all of them were sentenced to life behind bars but they're there in prison with their children so now we're trying to bring back these children it is going to be such a joy just one child for to us if i help these children maybe this might somehow help me bring my brother back home. for her search has come to its conclusion but there was a no for

a retail ending she found out that her older sister aida is among a group of russian women convicted and sentenced to life in prison in iraq for joining and supporting i so she is in jail with her twelve year old daughter so while god knows she will probably never see her sister again she is doing everything possible to. get her a nice back home and give her the childhood she's so clearly lost sass that she still canned food come to terms with her sister's decision. i don't think she was looking for a better life there we were building a house together our brothers gave us the land we had so many plans we planted trees there we wanted to do so much we had so much planned for the future and suddenly this happened. all these stories a tragically familiar had us that out of a who leads the search for missing people says that the real number of families

a fact it is catastrophic she says their database comprises over two thousand people will say that i feel irritated when i help people say you're saving terrorists i'm deeply disturbed by that was what is this child's fault what's the fault of these children only the fact that their parents took them and they became victims of this war when you start to deal with this problem you understand that these are human lives we're talking about and they are our citizens it's easy to just ignore these people there are only two official employees working at this office the others are volunteers to help when there is time as there is not enough manpower to deal with the vast amount of people affected and every second counts we can't afford to lose time every minute cost the lives of one or two children says afterwards began to really.