accused of playing a scandal the new york times journalist who revealed this information twenty seventeen. times to fend off criticism over a republican smear operation. reportedly seen entering a city in northern syria kurdish held territory as a high level delegation. coordinate with russia to syria. to take aim at a journalist to film the protests and. we reflect back over the weeks of demonstrations in the plus for the new series.

out of the book because. we are approaching. midnight here in moscow in frankfurt international riviera around the world first in the headlines that the u.s. state of alabama is open investigation into election meddling through the twenty seventeen senate race the new york times journalist who first revealed an anti republican this information campaign sat in on a meeting between those behind the operation so he's now being accused of downplaying the scandal on another person being highlighted in this probe is the co-founder of linked in reid hoffman who allegedly donated millions of dollars to the smear campaign aimed at making a thousand fake russian bots on social media reportedly to discredit a republican candidate. pics of the story so it's official now that

earlier this week came out the apology from the sponsor of project berman that's how they call it americans not the russians have at least in one case been behind setting up an army of pseudo russian bots for dirty election tricks or the scheme to come to light it took more than a year while now buzz feed has revealed war details that could make this story much more serious scott shane the author of the new york times piece that shed light on what the democrats were at an alabama last year it turns out spoke at an off the record event of that very same group behind project birmingham none of that was mentioned in his article though mr shane explained he thought that wasn't necessary i don't think there's any kind of disclosure that's relevant but i'm happy to be

corrected if you've been to meet with intelligence or defense officials i've been off the record meeting it's always a tradeoff as to what the ground rules of whether you get something useful for your readers and in this case i did get something useful well what's even more important is the question why the event the new york times journalists took part in happened back in september however the article only came out ten days ago there will be people wondering why it took mr shane three months to write about this clause buzz feed is now citing a report with assessments and conclusions of how well project birmingham worked and if you compare the language of that report with the language and the n.y.t. article you'll find many differences the journalist calls the operation a secret experiment however and the cited report is referred to as. an operation

to influence the outcome of the alabama sen race as to how much influence the project had on the actual election tallies the journalists wrote that probably it was too small to have a significant effect however the report says that it enormously affected the turnout our producers have reached out to both the new york times and scott shane himself however they haven't gotten back to us yet. top diplomats and high ranking military officials from turkey have agreed to coordinate with russia on the syria crisis of the holding talks here in moscow which finished this morning it comes after the situation in syria escalated following donald trump surprise decision to pull u.s. troops out of the country with all the meeting riff and. despite the meeting taking place in snow in moscow that is now as you can see totally into new year holiday season very serious topics on the agenda series fate and russia turkey carbonated

work on the ground now off to u.s. and nouns joe it is expected to take up to one hundred days but certainly change in the situation already now specially in the area east of the euphrates river this is where the american military have been present once they're out this territory that is now officially under the control of the kurdish forces may become especially vulnerable and that's especially after cherokee say it's he's getting ready for a military assault against kurds in syria's north korea that and kara's sees as terrorists so the russian and turkish delegations that included intelligence chiefs defense ministers and top diplomats met in moscow to discuss how to avoid any military confrontation on the ground in that area what should be done to boost

joint work to return the refugees back to syria or displaced people back to their homes in syria's north speaking to media following the meeting russia's foreign minister sergey lavrov has specifically mentioned the work being done regarding syrian constitutional committee that plays a very important role in a political solution to syria's crisis from let's take a listen. during the talks we specifically mentioned that russia and turkey with the participation of iranian colleagues did everything promise to create a syrian constitutional committee this is being done by all states as mediators between the syrian government and opposition and we hope that those including our western partners he called gastown a group to finish his work as soon possible as. would not interfere in his continued work oh no there was a feeling that based sides both russia and turkey are rather optimistic on how

things develop on the ground and they have expressed their hatred and believe that the new year will bring more positive changes to syria and maybe a long awaited peace will finally return to this war torn country. in the reporting the main time turkish armored vehicles have reportedly been seen entering the northern city of to rubble this turkey's been boosting its military presence on both sides of its border with syria since donald trump and now it's the troop withdrawal job losses about forty kilometers or so from the city of man page where the syrian army says it's now in control they were deployed there after an appeal from civilians and kurdish fighters who fear a turkish offensive he goes down off next as well he explains the crucial role the kurds play in all of this they call themselves freedom fighters turkey calls them terrorists the us use them as their proxy army well after this used to there will be a strong deliberate and orderly withdrawal of u.s.

forces from syria very deliberate very orderly turkey has already begun massing its forces on the front line and the kurds know all too world the consequences of that they've been there with afrin back in january the turks launched operation olive branch against the minorities northern most territories there were reports the syrian army could have intervened but in the end the kurds put on a brave face and decided to go it alone and efren fell and quickly for the turkish army the operation was hardly more challenging than a drill. the turks almost move deeper to another major kurdish stronghold of man bitch their u.s. generals literally had to put their bodies between the two to prevent bloodshed now

the u.s. is abandoning syria and the kurds while erdogan has been making it clear that a kurdish held man bitch just won't stand with them these terrorists have to go to the east of the euphrates if they do not leave we will send them that was postponed eventually but not indefinitely unless the kurds leave man bitch who in we are already against syria is the vision because our entire aim is to make terrorist organizations leave the area or if the terrorists leave then there is no work left for us anyway the american withdrawal has left the kurds with a limited number of options really so they've turned to damascus asking to shield them we invited the syrian government which we belong to to send its armed forces to take over these positions and protect man beach and the feet of turkish threats . and on saturday in response to the request of the population of man beach the syrian government and its armed forces announce it is sending in troops to man

bridge and so there they are the government forces have entered the kurdish kingdom for the first time in years. after weeks of turmoil and violent protests in france the anti-government yellow verse movement says it isn't finished and that they're simply taking a break for the holiday. what everyone needs to understand is that we've decided that we wants to talk the movement it's not all there will be a small break over the holidays and in january it will start all over again so we are showing that we are here we are showing that we are not at all we have not quite the same scale as before but some yellow vests are out in paris for a seventh weekend in a row this saturday there are a number of scuffles with police the rest were made on thursday city officials said that the new year's eve celebrations on the shelves leisurely will go ahead despite protests being planned the action started in november when thousands of people gathered to demonstrate against a fuel price hike. such

as protests but journalist two being caught up in the police is crowd control techniques one got a little too close for thought his comfort and the flash ball device aimed at him in the northwestern city roo are the pictures coming up police and demonstrators faced off with each other at one point as officers moved in to disperse protesters journalists simon levey was pushed away by the riot police and that handheld non-lethal weapon was pointed out in protest as a false move venting their anger to it's a media outlet for the coverage of the yellow best one suburb on the outskirts of the capital protesters burned cars in front of people are pretty hands h.q. while some yellow vests could be heard praising the work of other journalists.

i. i protesters gathered outside a french media building seems they were praising r.t. us to shining a spotlight on the protests one yellow vest protest to join our colleagues at r.t. france to tell us more. of it. the movement is not over there's no risk of that we will motivate more people to join us to continue our struggle and restore order in this oligarchy which must fall because it is no longer possible to tolerate this government. we will try to make the police's job more complex we won't make their work any easier because they don't make it easy for others they remove our masks protective glasses and clubs we are really being attacked during these demonstrations we are confronted by armed and well equipped people that while we have nothing unfortunately the media belongs to the oligarchy

almost all the media except yours it turns out that the media are inevitably dependent we would like to receive real time mainly so that we can organize and give answers through the media proportionate to the media attack that the state puts out towards ours today the yellow verse movement does not have a unified structure we have a horizontal structure and each acts as it sees fit everyone can do what he or she wants no one gives orders this is the true power. to. the top of illustration as proposed changes to the freedom of information act which could make it harder for the public to access records from the department of the interior activists a voice their outrage over the move. this is a war on transparency this is a calculated attempt to shield the interior department from scrutiny to shield it from watchdogs and to shield it from accountability the u.s. government says the changes are needed to handle unprecedented surge in freedom of

information requests and to improve customer service if approved the new rules would allow the interior department to reject what it considers reasonably burdensome requests and impose limits on the number of requests any one person could make or just days little thinks about this investigative journalist and founding editor of the online newspaper this can't be happening dot net but looks like it is a they're the department of the interior claiming these changes are needed to best serve customers if you buy that. now that's a real bad joke hit the vets serve customers you hire staff and you make sure that they acted on the law freedom of information law in a timely manner you're supposed to get response within i think ten days for a urgent request for information as a reporter for example and very few agencies do that it was bad enough into the obama administration and the bush administrations before they both attacked it but

trump has taken it a whole new level and they're actually instructing. the interior department people in some agent of some parts of the agency to diminish the responses they give under the freedom of information act even when the requests are completely legitimate and this is not a in additional security agency either i was going to say particularly strongly are of environmental activists they say the department of interior is trying to protect oil turn to gas companies drilling on public land and shield them from scrutiny do you share that concern on oh yeah i do i mean i've seen this in other agencies where they're not announcing that they're making it hard they simply do make it hard i just did a cover story for the nation that took me four months and part of the reason it took so long is that the pentagon was giving no information out i filed a freedom of information request and went thirty days without

a response at all when i complained they said that they would step on it i still it's now been six months and i've got no answer from them and it was not about anything classified it was just for a report that had been censored improperly and i was asking to have an uncensored yeah how do we know how they're going to calculate when it jumps to burden when someone is applying mation too much are they going to make public the scale that they use or not you think. of course not they're just going to say that's the that's the reason it's what it's going to do is force people to have to go to court to get action and freedom of information request which is totally antithetical to open government and to what the. end of the freedom of information act was designed to do it was supposed to coming after the nixon administration it had been set up so that you could write and get information and not have to go to court and

to get anything other than classified information that would take longer because you had to challenge the classification but these are not classified things that people are looking for there they're open government things that should be freely available and quickly available whatever the real reason behind this this attempt to restrict access to information is not great for the trumpet ministration how they're going to. show this one off into the in a positive light well they're trying and it's a complete joke i mean if they say it's to be more efficient and to respond better to quote customers meaning citizens. they're doing the opposite so i think it reflects. basically the fact that they're trying to run a secret government dave lindorff investigative journalism finding it's sort of the only newspapers coming happening don't net festive greetings to you thanks for

coming on and sharing your thoughts on this story with us thanks for having us yes no it said want to see exactly eighty minutes past midnight mosco time still to come they sow coverage of islamic state killings causes outrage in sweden awful pictures those two girls in that pup all of you is ignoring other issues over this is up for debate in fact when we come back.

you know crazy things going up a lot of people you know. twitter rising and occasionally somebody pops up or something really really. welcome to the crystal ball edition of crosstalk what can we expect in the new year we have a great lineup of guests telling us. again before the break of sweetness come into fierce criticism over its coverage of the murder of those two scandinavian girls by fighters in morocco viewers say the

channel does played. one norwegian and one danish girl were brutally killed while hiking in the atlas mountains the video of the death spread online saw the s.p.t. channel slammed for not mentioning that one of the girls was beheaded or that islamic state had claimed to be behind it the broadcast it did warn people against sharing the video for legal reasons. i have now seen this very strange report and you lower the has been created to protect the rape victims from having video of the crime spread is now being applied to the beheading of the denish and the region girls in morocco i myself would never watch such a video let alone share it now we're more upset about the proliferation of crime instead of beheadings to sum up s vitis coverage of the muslim terrorist attack in morocco and dieth warriors one you'll be sent to prison if you spread the beheading film to deice worries have returned home to sweden three they died of knife wounds

sort of for the murder in morocco has nothing to do with islam r.t.r. says what is broadcast for us fifty to comment on the situation we're still waiting to hear back from him in time. mohammed a congi and political and social common to morrow and so are both invited into the studio they're jealous we have that this is some of their views on the story. yeah i think this is tricky because it brings into question. ideas around editorial impartiality bias do national broadcasters like s.p.t. and others have a responsibility to report carefully on such issues and so we've got three main issues the first is under article ten of the european convention on human rights the second issue we have is about editorial freedoms for broadcasters to report responsibly and lastly why on earth would we show such brutal horrific killings because it's exactly what terrorists and exactly what the far right who want to

demonize muslims foreigners americans migrants that's exactly what they want to do we cannot play into their hands. come from a difference review point in the sharing of something that is quite that horrific is certainly not something you'd want to see thrust upon you without any sort of warning but also the mainstream media doesn't cover these things in more graphic detail means that the content stays online and organizations like i.i.s. can close a narrative around these these images and this these images have gone viral internationally and the commentary around it is now being effectively hold by the far right and some of the more extremist elements rather than the mainstream media being able to pull out pull them out conversation so that it could be properly discussed if these type of images were to be shown they would radicalize the far

right white supremacist which is burgeoning across europe it would also radicalize islamist inspired now but let's remember these are not muslims this has nothing to do with islam the same twisted ideology is used by the likes of the terrorist is used by the likes of the right wing anti muslim islamophobia lobby to peddle the idea that somehow muslims are the edwards side. other that they need to be held back at the borders we cannot let them in they can integrate. french politicians are demanding explanations from president mccraw and they want to know why a discreet former advisor still as diplomatic immunity and apparently represents from subproducts alexander but now were reportedly used to diplomatic passports you're in business trips after his dismissal the former presidential security advisor was fired at the summer after video emerged showing him viciously beating a protester or the preliminary investigations be launched in paris french politician saying people with this status can't travel without the knowledge of the foreign ministry. when you want to visit a country with

a diplomatic passport you need to send a verbal note your ministry of foreign affairs informs the embassy when you're arriving to facilitate the visa process if the ministry is not able to provide us with a verbal no then the must have been an intervention from outside maybe from a higher government or body which allowed mr bernard law to make visits to the country via standard diplomatic procedures if person a call in the thought it may seem you couldn't get any worse off the weeks of violent protests engulfing france think again now he's disgraced former bodyguard alexander another is back for a second bite of the cherry it's emerged he may have been using diplomatic posts boards obtained during his time working from that call one of which is said to have been issued in mcallen's trusted confidant only weeks after being filmed beating up a protest was.

was the french foreign ministry says it's just for their return and says they should only be used for official for it any use of these passports since then would have been despite the commitments made by the person in question it's alleged he used in doing a trip to africa including a visit to chaired where he said to have met the country's president that meeting came just weeks before korn made an official trip to chant and was forced to red faced to give an explanation this person was a no win official or an official intermediary on the foreign minister the diplomatic advisor to the president and his africa advisor representing the head of state in africa president macron wants to to him. i live with the use of

intermediaries especially in africa though the former aide maintains he never represented himself as anything but a private investor corns office has formally rubik been allah. with regard to current personal it to the dismay ask you to ensure the conducted with strict respect for the confidentiality and ethical responsibilities of your time in this office. despite neely's a trying to distance itself even further from bella opposition politicians i'm now questioning whether matt corn still has twice to his former confidant this is have reason as this could potentially short circuit french diplomacy and examine the knowledge could be a danger for the republicans because this man is clearly different from the of the image of someone who was sanctioned after what happened in may and who up to this action has received two diplomatic passports when you have a diplomatic passport means that you go to speak for the country so of course on

this one like why you see meeting you know people official people you know in africa if this person is no one you know according to a two to the government if it's not a diplomat if it's not a friend if it's not an advisor then what he is and who he is i mean otherwise you know why he had those passport back and who gave him this passport back so obviously there's a connection like somehow somewhere with one person or different people maybe the president's else i don't know but if what has been revealed you know for the past few hours about his few trips in africa if this is true then it's very concerning and the saudis are up so far always so much more not you know common our social media variously here in moscow this early sunday morning it's kind of you know in all said all the press from a unless the team if you celebrated the first image is right.

to make this manufacture consent to public wealth. when the ruling classes protect themselves. the financial merry go round certainly the one bus at. the time to ignore middle of the room signals. really. really more real news is really. what politicians do. put themselves on the line they get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president or injury. or something want to. have to go right

to be cross as a white woman for three of them or can people get. interested always in the waters of college. this shouldn't. surprise. you. most are the boom boom. boom. boom boom. was a little low. for most of the film. but i got somebody. who knows that book my name is all coming i'm

a travel photographer and i went to kenya today i'm both out of the national parks but to meet the must i it's an amazing people who have managed to preserve their authenticity and find ways to interact with the outside world to. be surprisingly many must i speak good english and have internet access so finding them in arranging to meet was a breeze. what happened. yet was.