this hour's headlines story french opposition leader reacts furiously to finding his name on a list of suspicious twitter accounts forcing him to dig there he is not a russian vault. reels from the shock suicide of an immigration party politician who claimed she'd been raped by a muslim gang last your. disturbing video from yemen leaves humanitarian group public with this week's saudi coalition air strike on a school bus in yemen the raid claimed the lives of twenty children dozens more seriously injured.

just after ten pm this friday night here in moscow welcome to our to international you know me our top story french opposition leader and former presidential candidate mellon chal has really hit back at suggestions that he is part of a russian online dissin from nation 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 bought melon scholem has appeared in a list of a concho and increased twitter traffic in the wake of the assault scandal surrounding president former bodyguard the inference being moscow is pulling the strings also in that list as are part of correspondent charlotte she's got more details. well a huge outcry here in france so many people on twitter who thought that they had

been labeled as russian that's because they were named in a twitter list which looked at the number of people who had tweeted about the but now less gate 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 twitter account 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 may day now because of that many people which waiting 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 votes but russian votes not so those says e.u. just in the mation law which says that the study wasn't even about russian votes 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 or scandal we never said this the fact that. the government spokesperson immediately excluded 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 but of which thousands of people appeared on a list now these. the list 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 eight cans were from people which they described as being in the russian pilot sphere that is basically journalists like myself who work for our t.v. my colleagues and people who have perhaps retreated to our content in the past never did it say that we were at school 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. incidentally the belgium based n.g.o.s which conducted the research points so i thought it gets financing from twitter last autumn you may remember that the social network stopped r.t. from placing adverts on the site twitter then diverted the revenue to groups which

research the sites used during elections the extent of malicious content twitter has also decided to take the one point nine million dollars we are projected to have global advertising and donate those funds to support external research into the use of twitter in civic engagement and elections ok moving on now there is shock across the dutch political spectrum the suicide of a consular in the hague just before her death valley dili claimed she'd been kidnapped and raped by a group of muslims and accuse the former party colleague of orchestrating it with more on the story their share europe correspondent peter off. 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. was thousand. kroner crustal to it was. in the video mystical 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 and 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. u.s. senators are accusing their a government of computing 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 on the line that saudi arabia is a key regional partner of washington. video

of the aftermath of the attack shows the extent of the children's injuries please be warned that what we're about to show on this in fact is it is upsetting to watch the strike occurred in the north of the country which is under the control of the rebel side eurabia launched an intervention against them in twenty fifteen the latest u.n. day to say the majority of people killed in the conflict died as a result of coalition earth strikes over ten fellows and casualties 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. well the united states is by

far the largest supplier of weaponry to the saudis and it also provides targeting assistance for riyadh's or strikes on military drills last year study arabia spent seven hundred fifteen million dollars on training by american separatists which it claimed was implemented to reduce civilian casualties the u.k. is the second largest arms supplier to the saudi's arms trade activists 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 up and up when i talk to people in yemen they are absolutely livid yes so angry with our governments for arming.

arming saudi arabia 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. here returning to our top story now french opposition leader and former presidential candidate mel and sean as angrily

hit back at suggestions that he is part of a russian online dissing information campaign although not directly accused of being a russian bought million dollars appeared in a list of a kind showing increased twitter traffic in the wake of the assault scandal surrounding president micron's former bodyguard the inference being moscow is pulling the strings ok let's get live reaction to this no word reveal a independent journalist look welcome to the program so this stems from twitter financing a series of reports research essentially is there any practical use for them to do this or is it simply the company rushing to respond to complaints against it. i think that rushing through to try to satisfy the politicians on both side of the atlantic's of the atlantic sorry. doesn't like these problems neither does facebook

or google when they have problems you've seen that the loss of google in the stock exchange for example they see this as a problem they have to deal with it but for them freedom liberty on twitter is for twitter the best thing for their uses so they had to they were under pressure from the european union in this case state they had to do something and they dedicated hundred twenty five thousand euro to the. countermeasures let's say to challenge the russian disinformation that's the terms used by the european commission when they have created this east. task force you know to fight against russian disinformation r.t. for example yet there's been such a backlash against this why do you think the research got people so wind up so angry if the experts underlined their aim was not to root out so-called russian bots. well this little n.-g. o.

is very interesting and i suppose journalist real journalists will look into its links with the european commission the european union and especially a s for the people it's maybe not not clear for people what it is but it is the diplomatic service of europe in two thousand and eleven the european to decided to create s. high commissioner for the moment it's missis for that he cannot get any in within diplomatic department which is very serious and respectable that is there are people or unit called e.u. forces this in full i'm sure these people have links with the end shield there they have links also with george soros they have links with all their finances to support them in their fight in that challenge of the russian disinformation and it's you could call it the embryo of the propaganda machine of the european union

and i'm sure many people many national politicians when they hear about this story are really furious that's the reason behind this is just what's happening in front over two hundred thousand twitter accounts in the country are listed concerned are you that there are political a legion says are being amplified to the wider world by being on the list. her there that's an embryo again of the list of bad guys for mark or so it is not really it it's like a sort of badge of honor for many people to be on that list of course for money and lockdowns national rally or form a long shot of extreme right or extreme left it's good to be on that list but of course it's not very reassuring for the future that my corps and the people in power in our have this list and congratulate each other above us transparency

that is broad by this little n.g.o.s by the way that they have changed their story several times and the number of tweets that they're referred to is much lower than they initially stated so it is it is disturbing it is really disturbing for democracy lucrative a independent journalist thanks for coming on the program and giving us your thoughts from. us democrats serve fake news in their sites they want facebook to share data on its users so that they can be fed what they say are factually accurate alternatives party chiefs of the d.n.c. have frequently accused moscow of deploying online dissin from ation to try and influence voters in the twenty sixteen presidential election it takes a look at what's in the plan. it's ok not as great as we want who might you hear that from a teacher checking your rest say 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 the 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 analytic data gate if 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 a bomb about because you 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 the. 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

side should we assume the dems are still on facebook's friend list you know they've been told to sort the russian fakes out and so have we 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 in the very early stages of our investigation and don't have all the facts including him maybe behind this but remember for the democrats it's ok 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. monitoring who or what people follow online has had some serious repercussions for one american student during

a college interview the seventeen year old wasn't asked about his educational success or his background but why he follows alex jones on twitter a controversial show host recently by several social networks the students' lawyer gave more details to our tease me harvey do you represented a college student who wasn't admitted to university because they followed alex jones on twitter is that true and if so can you tell us more about that. sure i'm happy to explain exactly what happened what was going on was it during the interview process the application was question about the fact that he was following mr jones on twitter and the fact that he was looking his stuff up and that was something that was a challenge during the during the actual interview process and subsequently the parents of the student reached out to me and then i reached out to the the mission's director of the university and made sure that the situation was resolved

in the student satisfaction so the problem here was that the fact that the interviewer was actually questioning why this young person was following mr jones in the other types of internet activities that he was partaking in just to explain alex jones is the mom behind the alternative news channel in four wars he was suspended this week by several social media platforms they say it's because quote he spread hate speech glorify violence broadly share against people need to know how social networks use their information. i'm a big fan of increasing people's personal privacy and i'm a big fan of not only personal privacy but freedom of speech and the problem here is the fact that a lot of people just don't understand how invasive their companies are and how invasive a lot of pride institutions are using their technology trying to get out exactly what your rate is what your religion is what your political viewpoints are and

they're taking this information and they're using it against you so that's why i think people need to better understand these issues and defend themselves against them and they only way they can do that is they become more educated about what is actually happening in the world today well a few days on since in four wars was bombed by several platforms including facebook the world's biggest social network briefly blocked another controversial media outlets from venice whale a statement from venezuela analysis claims they are being targeted on thursday morning off facebook pages arbitrarily and published by facebook with no warning or explanation apart from a standard message informing us that we had allegedly violated the company's terms and conditions there is the international context in which facebook appears to be targeting independent or leftwing sites in the wake of russia gate or venezuela analysis is

a left leaning english language news website which began in two thousand and three its stated aim is to counter mainstream coverage and as a kin to the politics of the late president hugo chavez the website states it's non-governmental and relies on readers' donations but we have asked facebook to clarify why it took down the page but we're still waiting to hear back one of the co-founders of venice will analysis told us why he thinks his page was. our best guess is that perhaps are a number of people complained to facebook claiming that it was perhaps misrepresenting what we were doing in other words claiming that we were government to our sponsor inside or something like that and how to magically take down. that's what i've been told. when there is a sufficient number of complaints and of course when we appeal to a reviewer i know number of friends who's had individual posts blocked and they never receive any explanation so i doubt that we're going to get any and it's just

calls attention to the fact of just how i'm accountable facebook is to the public although it's become the largest platform for news and information in the world one should err on the side of. free speech in other words to allow even odious side i think such as it were to continue because we cannot trust facebook to make these kinds of judgments. in a phone call with the u.s. secretary of state mike pump ale russia's foreign minister has said moscow strongly rejects america's new round of sanctions earlier the russian prime minister also said they amounted to a new economic war 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 also some

currency use we will be able to call it a declaration of economic war and this will require a reaction by implementing economic politically or if necessary any other measures . so we know the new sanctions will come into the first will limit investment on exports especially on a number of national security goods including the energy the tech sectors and the second way is expected to be much harsher as i will have diplomatic relations as well as banking and imports and takes a look now at how far the new penalties may 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's 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 we're poisonings washington says it has determined that russia used a military nerve agent to attack form a double agent sic a scot paul and his daughter where are you getting the conclusion that for she's 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 we do hold russia culpable culpable culpable culpable for the attempted murder and this being uncertainty from specialists investigating the case. as analysis of the p.c. w.'s repeat what 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 baggage here of insinuation that russia is involved which

basically is a music which isn't 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 did get all the evidence but my suspicion is that as the going to happen all the way that seems of little interest to washington which is 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 that regardless of trump. wanting russia as a partner in his fight against terror and the torso doesn't seem to matter that the u.s. 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 k o u. sooner or later the united states will make

a choice either turkey or good either the coup blooded terrorists or turkey a country of democracy. or how about the american officials here they are a in extremist group then wish i had been a coke the headquarters of the islamic republic party there is a viable opposition to the rule of the. now an opposition 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 to form into al-qaeda the people we are fighting today we funded twenty years ago. america dealing with these five and 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 own standing well it's not just russia on the receiving end of washington's

economic bush earlier on friday donald trump on the us is doubling tire of sell 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 and the mini move now be twenty percent and still fifty percent our relations with turkey are not good at this time yeah the move sent the lira turkey's currency into a nosedive while president to one house already said his country will not be drawn into an economic conflict. change the euros the dollars and the gold you are keeping beneath your pillows into lira banks this is a domestic and national struggle. when brass tax the turkish lira is now worth almost half of what it was in twenty seventeen the move follows two turkish

ministers being singled out for sanctions last week while i encourage people to convert any us dollars to local currency earlier we spoke to dr hay cohen turkey expert a tell of university he thinks that most turkish people will be keen to hold on to those dollars the spider to once plead to do the opposite. only in two weeks the turkish lira most experienced the devaluation that came to the level of forty percent or more so i don't know if many people even if they really like the president can survive this new friend many people are selling their turkish euros in order to buy u.s. dollars in order to maximize the interests and to have profits of course in the social media we have also seen propaganda videos. president had once said and many people even burned. dollar bank. so we can not

talk about a uniform. form from turkey if if i'm not mistaken the bank sector and the construction sector will be affected from this immediately many people may lose their jobs. ok turning your attention to the middle east where the latest round of palestinian protests over occupied territory in the israel border has reportedly seen two protesters killed at least eighty four other people have been injured the i.d.f. have said the time fired shells at a hamas position after palestinians threw explosive devices on forces stationed near the border it's not immediately clear whether the protests at the border clued in a fragile ceasefire following two days of heavy fire between hamas militants and israel the only going great march of return protests began on the thirty.