stealing could be turkey the country's lira shed a quarter of its value against the dollar in just one week after trump's tweet about doubling existing tariffs investors are running away screaming inflation surging and turkey's leadership is bracing for an all out trade war the reason for such a calamity against an old nato friend was ankara's refusal to release an american pastor accused of both terrorism and espionage it's punishment time for a rebellious ally that tariffs that are in place on steel would not be removed with the release of castor brunson and president heard a wand lashed out in defiance calling the u.s. move an attempt to force turkey to surrender and make them a slave to the greenback but turkey's just one example of how the trumpet administration treats longtime allies in fact many of america's friends have already been forced into the fray in a war of tariffs and sanctions canada had heavy steel and aluminum tariffs imposed

earlier this year and trump perhaps thought the stars and stripes needed some protection from its northern neighbor who didn't take too kindly to it that it's kind of insult to move forward with retaliatory measures on july first applying equivalent tariffs as if that wasn't bad enough the us president went and slapped tariffs on europe today i'm defending america's national security. by placing tariffs on foreign imports of steel and aluminum brussels tried to hit back with restrictions of its own tried to appeal to the transatlantic solidarity special relations bonds of friendship but to no avail and it begs the question with such a long list of enemies the us is currently fighting from iran to north korea russia china why kick your allies we have to worry talks about putting america first

requires its allies also it would have america first to the head of their own interests and this is beginning i think decouple some of the load of america most obviously he's really trying to assert american leadership and perhaps we've tended to think of american aggressiveness in recent years has been probably the military involvement in place like afghanistan iraq and so on but in a way trump perhaps is less inclined to want to use military power but he wants to show that america's two house particular financial who get money in the world competitors like beijing and moscow attempting to pack as much heat as the u.s. these days sanctioning and scaring everyone in view may be the only way for the u.s. to impose its will on friend and foe alike donald quarter r.t. . now with eleven school shootings already this year the u.s. is planning to spend almost two million dollars and training people to respond to emergency situations with more his kind of more pay. the u.s.

department of homeland security has just approved a grant to create a trauma training program for high schools around the country essentially one point eight million dollars is being offered for those who could create a long term self-sustaining mechanism for the safety of high school students teenagers are being taught how to treat gunshot wounds and deal with dangerous situations in ohio tactical grade pepper spray is being placed around the schools now when a canister is removed alarm will sound alerting the authorities here's how one politician described the pepper spray system. this will stop anyone in their tracks . in north dakota the police are asking that high powered rifles be stored on school grounds meanwhile texas is jumping on the bandwagon of giving teachers guns we need our teachers to be armed we you know when you have

when you're facing someone who's an active shooter the best way to take that shooter down that is with a gun but even better than that is four or five guns to one there's even talk of firearm training for preschool children it's something that we should think about america about putting guns in the hands of law abiding citizens whether they actually be talented children or how to train for a school or a three year old cannot defend itself from and so rifle by throwing a hello kitty pencil pasted it our founding fathers did not put an age limit on the second amendment this year the back to school sales aren't just pencils and notebooks parents are stocking up on body armor.

in a matter of seconds. when you can lock a door with this it can get shot out you can't get around it how about arming school teachers know all right how about bulletproof backpacks. for mail i think yes that is positive that teachers should be weapons for protection for the students but i don't think it's a good idea at all i think we need to disarm everybody not our more people and if we disarmed people we wouldn't need bulletproof backpacks and what about a nationwide training program for high schoolers to deal with like gunshot wounds trauma training thing that's a fish an american seem to pretty clearly agree that school shootings are a big problem but do you stop them with more guns or less that's where americans

just can't seem to agree caleb mop and artsy new york. times the company so you don't forget we'll have plenty more stories for you to our website you can find that at r.t. dot com i'm back with more news in the headlines in half an. welcome

to worlds apart sending humans into space has long required a national and even international effort to provide all the necessary financing and technology but space access recent successes in hauling freight into orbit claim to challenge these paradigms against privatized space services make space exploration cheaper and easier well to discuss that i'm now joined by geoffrey hoffman an american astronaut and currently a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the massachusetts institute of technology and dr hoffman it's so great to talk to you thank you very much for your time. pleasure to be here now the world is still massmart eyes by space-x.

recent falcon have a launch it was certainly very spectacular i've heard some people compare it to the launch of sputnik or the landing on the moon i want it all as an engineer do you think that was really such a major technological breakthrough a major milestone in the history of space exploration. no i mean it is evolutionary but what space x. as a whole is trying to accomplish i do think is revolutionary. the idea of strapping together three first stages to make a more powerful rocket is not new the the u.s. has the delta heavy rocket which has been flying for many years now. so that technology is not revolutionary however what space x. has accomplished is to make it

a lot more affordable. the rough cost of the delta heavy. it's hard to know exactly but it's in the order of two hundred fifty million dollars the falcon nine the falcon heavy can carry. twice the payload of the delta heavy for about one hundred million dollars and so it really is changing the paradigm of how much it costs to get into space and and that's the revolutionary aspect i think of what space x. is doing but dr hoffman i wonder if it's perhaps too early to say that because i think the same arguments were made about the shuttle program that it's to be usable that it's going to be so much cheaper than let's say the soviet comparison but dan i got from your own lecture is that shuttles turned out to be much more expansive because all the ground operations and how they were service perhaps not very

efficiently i understand that this is a house basics market it's technology at this point of time but can we really rely on those figures to be proven in time well. you're absolutely correct that people are waiting to see can space x. maintain the very aggressive launch scheduled that they have and reuse a lot of these first stage rockets which they've been recovering because that's what the price reduction depends on in in large part so yeah it's still early days what i can say though is what happened with the shuttle it was a very complex vehicle amuse very capable it was the most versatile spacecraft probably that we'll ever see but it took a tremendous amount of care and maintenance there were thousands of people involved

in every shuttle launch and that's where the money goes for people salaries and what space x. has tried to do is to simplify everything to make it possible to turn around a launch to reduce the first stages without thousands and thousands of people so far they've been successful but as you say it's early days and we have to see can they maintain the pace and do it. while they keep. you know hopefully a perfect roy ability record now elin mask is known to be very good at marketing this is how he sells his very expensive car speech i would argue are not very practical a driving but a very good for boosting your self-esteem i wonder if he's also trying to sell not so much the product but the imagined experience associated with it because when you think about all of the footage and video that god from doc launch

a it's more about projecting it certain ideas certain dream rather than marketing the the actual capacity that he wants to bring to the market no i wouldn't agree with that i mean anybody in the space business was concerned about is the rocket going to work. you know if it. was really important to be able to show that they could launch recover the boosters and get the payload into orbit. the fact that instead of just using a bunch of lead weights as because you know you have to hear it wasn't carrying any real payload for money i mean no nobody was launching a satellite on this but you still have to carry a payload with the equivalent mass of a large satellite and so the fact that he decided to launch his red tesla with

a you know a a mannequin astronaut in it that that was obviously marketing and very clever and and the general public got a real thrill out of it and you know the idea of cia one of the things that i hope comes out of of a lot of what's happening in the private space market these days because we have to remember space x. is not the only one it's an extraordinary time that we're living in we we have a generation of billionaires who are space nuts they have a vision you listen to bigelow to to musk to be zos their vision is that someday many many people human beings are going to be living off the surface of the earth and i think that's really what's what's ultimately motivating him there there's easier ways to make money than than developing a rocket company but he but he has a vision they're not the only people who have vision and i think. just because

they're billionaires i don't see why that a vision has to be given so much attention compared to for example your own vision because you you have been into space five times you completed four spacewalks you you know how to. fix the hubble telescope and yet what people would remember after this launch is an empty tassel a card with a dummy auster not rather than for example you or somebody else who's doing every you work there in space don't you think that people perhaps need to appreciate not how glamorous this space is but talib eris it is you're misinterpreting the purpose of the falcon heavy launch was not to put a tesla into orbit the purpose was to demonstrate that this new configuration which is the first time that space x. has ever tried this and they want to be able to use this to launch heavy satellites

when you're when you have a new rocket you have to demonstrate that it works. that was the critical part of the launch and it was totally successful you know he decided to make it a little sexier by putting his red tesla as the payload but that was not the purpose of the launch now when somebody wants to put a really heavy satellite into orbit they can have certain confidence that the falcon heavy configuration has demonstrated that it it can work successfully and hopefully that means that he'll be able to launch heavy payloads both for private companies and for the government because this is important for nasa and this is a lot of heavy payloads and if you can launch it for a third of the price of what.