the week's top stories from just a small experiment the democratic party group explain away alleged interference in an alabama state election and investigations being launched over the group that faked more than a thousand russian social media bots to allegedly discredit a republican candidate. fury in france yellow vest protesters have been out on the streets for a seventh consecutive weekend in running battles with police. and the freedom of information act that helped expose high level corruption and wrongdoing in the united states comes under pressure the authorities won't have the right to reject

requests that they think the burden. that it's two o'clock in the afternoon on sunday here in moscow that means we're bringing you the biggest stories as covered right here over the past seven days here on r.t. international we start in the united states where a scandal surrounding alleged meddling in an alabama state election campaign continues to unfold what's been called small experiments by a pro democrat cyber group that fake russian bots is now suspected to be a planned effort to influence the vote and as the state's attorney general launches a probe into the case. trying to investigate. americans not the russians have at least set up one army of pseudo russian bots to sway opinion and boost election turnout it's the big story this december and as more and more details come out as the new year gets closer those involved are having to do more explaining.

scott shane start of the domino effect by writing about the whole false like scheme in the new york times a week later another outlet reveals his scoop was from way back in september when he was invited to speak at an off the record event for the group behind the bots project but the journalist didn't see a thing about that in his article i don't think there's any kind of disclosure that's relevant so i'm happy to be corrected it's always a tradeoff as to what the ground rules of whether you get something useful for your readers journalists also eventually got hold of a report assessing how well the scheme worked and it the experts don't call it an experiment like scott shane did the journalists also wrote that the whole thing was likely too small to have a significant effect on the race compare that to these words enormous effect on the

turnout that's the phrasing from the report. the venture cost one hundred thousand bucks pennies compared to the money usually splashed out on campaigns but that doesn't take responsibility of the man who stumped up the bill reid hoffman billionaire co-founder of linked in and big democrat donor he ended up having to admit he had no idea where his cash was flowing i find the tactics that have been recently reported highly disturbing for that reason i'm embarrassed by my free there to track the organization i did support more diligently as it made its own decisions to perhaps fund projects that i would reject and so there you have it we have an apology. the head of the firm behind the technical side of the op jonathan morgan is another person still under pressure he came up with a blog post where among other things he wrote this this seemed to us to be the work

of internet trolls not russian activity just to remind you this came from the man who during the actual alabama senate race yelled on twitter the russians were busted russian trolls trying by hamilton sixty eight and taking an interest in the alabama senate race what's a surprise this tiny detail aside jonathan morgan keeps defending their false flag experiment after all they've said it it's in the name of democracy now it's up to the probe to judge if these people cross the line in their noble endeavor and in any case america's definitely learned the masterminds of meddling could very well be home grown. a lot of requested clarification from the new york times we'll keep you posted on that meanwhile former u.s. congressman michael flanagan expressed doubts that the case would have any real consequences now it's water under the bridge there's no chance that the election

can be invalidated less of course they can demonstrate that the sitting senator of self participated in some sort of illegal activity or subterfuge which i doubt that can be done or or is even done it was even done on his part the first tenet of democratic politics is they will accuse you of what they are do or do them selves in an effort to to distract in an effort to confuse those who might be honestly reporting it if they're saying it they're doing it and i'd like to have mr moeller look into this and and come after this in the same way. across the atlantic then in yellow vest protesters have been out on the streets of france for a seventh weekend in a row more than twelve thousand people join the anti-government demonstration. i. was. i. was. just like you.

i. think. well there are lots of dangers from these l b d forty's or more commonly known as flash for weapons now they use to north's things such as tear gas grenades sound grenades and even these rubber bullets and those can all do significant damage if they hit people in those protests people with broken bones fractured teeth bruising internal injuries we even saw a number of crew being injured over the last few weeks a boy. some of the items that are being shot out of those flash balls but the injuries can be even more serious and nuts and for some people they compete in life changing oh yeah mike you were going to. do it.

why would the french government want to pull states of still all these flash rules they can as they say launch things such as this the rubber bullets well that's largely due to the protests that we've seen in france over the last few weeks the country has been in goal five is void in the process for some people describing them as being the worst roy it's in half a century and they've actually been some specifically into the injuries caused as a result of rubber bullets with many civil liberties groups just saying that they shouldn't be used now a group of u.s. academics published a study in december of last year saying that fifteen percent of people who were injured by rubber bullets specifically actually ended up with permanent injuries with the majority of people losing their sight they said three percent of those injured specifically by rubber bullets she went on to lose their lives so the

question is why is the french government still deciding to go with using the flash tools which have been proven in some cases to deadly and still wanting to spend more than two million euros on its version of protecting the state. dozens of protesters were arrested in paris but city officials say the new year celebrations will go ahead despite the unrest movement started and november against a real price hike and continued after the government made concessions the demonstrators claim no ready to take on the authorities. organize all sorts in this way we use coded messages we're now trying to make the police job more complex room make their work easier. they do not make it easier for us they remove sports active glasses gloves we're really been attacked during these demonstrations all the protection that we have they want us to withstand the flash

ball make it and so they ordered more i do not remember how much four hundred fifty or two hundred yes fourteen hundred flash balls that is will it really make it to withstand super people but we're not tedious and therefore to certain moments we must organize selves selves differently. i'll stay with france where judges have called off a decade long probe into the deadly attack on the former rwandan president plane which ultimately led to genocide in one thousand nine hundred four investigations been a stumbling block between the two countries it was looking into several rwandan officials close to the current president in connection with the death of the country's former leader the decision comes after reports that france also rejected the bed by human rights groups to reopen a separate probe into whether the french military shed any of the blame for the deaths of hundreds of people that they promised to protect.

today we're being asked to leave with the people who killed our families where it's all there sorry they won't do it again some people believe that i'm not one of them . but the fighting was triggered by the downing of a plane carrying the french backed president in one thousand nine hundred ninety four hutu extremists blamed the rebels and the rebels denied involvement for the past twenty years paris has pursued those responsible for the assassination but not anymore the inquiry. has reportedly been dropped over insufficient evidence. we have to interpret this decision by friend judges as a form of resignation faced with a political context which prosecutors did not know how to fight over the years

france suggested the tutsi rebels headed by the current president paul kagame they were behind the attack they even charged seven people close to the leader for pul could guard me the physical elimination of rwanda's then president was seen as the only means to achieve his political ends a total victory and this at the price of the massacre of the cities from the so-called interior the rwandan government flatly denied the allegations and cut diplomatic ties with france fast forward and roll want to has some nice words for the french i think the president. has. put it takes. different people. i think. has an open mind to. how times have changed the world bank considers rwanda to be more business friendly than much of the developed world

and france seems to have an interest macron even back to rwanda's pick for the head of francophonie a group of french speaking countries. if there were to be an african candidate to head the francophonie that would make a lot of sense i think that the rwandan foreign minister has all the expertise for that role sure france and rwanda have had their differences and twenty five years since the genocide justice has never been fully served but for the present it looks like that doesn't have to stand in the way of a little money making what we should look at it but if he does not know africa or its history he was a teenager during the tragic events in rwanda in one thousand nine hundred four he aligned with sarkozy's stones to befriend kagame is rwanda and their soccer. he is michael's advisor that. the trumpet ministration is proposing changes to the u.s. freedom of information act which could make it harder for the public to access sensitive records out of the public domain activists or voice their outrage of 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 an 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 unreasonably burdensome applications and impose limits on the number of any one person can make . last year more than eight hundred thousand requests were filed five agencies received the bulk of them including the departments of defense and justice while homeland security received almost four hundred thousand request officials expect those numbers to increase next year there are some disclosures brought to light with the help of the x. in twenty sixteen request revealed that an american supply was substituting wood pulp for parmesan cheese in its products hillary clinton's government related

e-mails that she'd kept on her private account were made available information requests also uncovered cia director gina hospital's links to the waterboarding of terror suspects investigative journalist dave lindorff says the plans go against the spirit of the act. but 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 it pathetically to open government and to what the foyer. of the freedom of information act was designed to do it had been set up so that you could write and get information and not have to go to court so you get anything other than classified information these are not classified things that people are looking for there they're open government things that should be freely available and quickly available if they say it's to be more efficient and to respond better to quote customers meaning citizens it's a complete joke they're doing the opposite it reflects. basically the fact that

they're trying to run a secret government. britain's sunday times newspaper last week named and shamed stuff for the russian funded sputnik news agency in the u.k. it cited a leading member of the scottish parliament who accused the organization of being a kremlin stooge the paper published the names of eight sputnik employees along with their photos the journalists named in the article were left stunned by the exposure. and initially it was it was a bit of a shock on the other hand it's kind of hardly surprising given the ante russian sentiment there is you know travel in all your key newspapers just a bit it's yes not nice to see your picture up there with your name except under the headline of being part of a train when stooge but as i say you know it's very much part of what's going on just saying you key the sunday times has been so thorough in its reporting of the threat of so-called russian descent from ation that its latest story about the

russian funded radio station sputnik which has a bureau in edinburgh carries the photographs of the journalists that work there labels them kremlin stooges and quotes a politician who suggests that their assets should be frozen i would good for school harassment i think putting the pictures of photographs of people who work on a newspaper like that i think is tantamount to almost it might put those people's lives in danger i'm a member of the national news journalists and are we write into my unit in the new year to ask what do you need is planning to do about these journalists working for russian media organizations here in the u.k. have had to develop a thick skin over the past few years as tensions between london and moscow have heightened articles calling for outlets like r.t. and sputnik to be banned have become a regular occurrence but recently the big papers have gone a step further and they started singling out the journalists working for russian

media outlets this is the london bureau chief for russia's channel one more series of last month he did some filming outside the gates of a british military base first story about the british army's cyber warfare unit aimed at fighting so-called russian propaganda he didn't break any laws gave his press credentials to all the security guards he met and left several weeks later the u.k.'s daily mail newspaper printed. his personal details and accused him of being a spy the story was reprinted by a plethora of papers it ratcheted up so much that the u.k.'s defense secretary issued a statement for citizens to stay vigilant and. we sent an inquiry to the defense ministry there's a form on their website but we didn't get any response filming near the base is not a legal it's a public area public land you don't need permission to film there you need permission to get inside talk to the stuff we didn't record our interaction with

the security personnel we didn't try to penetrate the base the b.b.c. correspondent did the exact same thing as us it was broadcast and no one thinks of punishing him there's nothing illegal and you don't even have to work for the russian media to find yourself in hot water just expressing views that the mainstream is enough to be labelled a kremlin stooge putin's poor or useful idiot in the information war nowadays you have extreme language and if you find someone with an opinion which you object to and you don't agree with you then abuse them or her by causing by causing them a stooge or to use the famous explosion about lenin there were useful idiots the sputnik story isn't the first time the sunday times has used the naming and shaming tactic back in october the paper to came at the tongue in cheek i see why in my you tube channel which is funded like r.t.

by russian taxpayers and fronted by yours truly the paper didn't shy away from printing my photograph and labelled the project the blue peter of russian propaganda the times didn't request a comment from r.t. or myself it seems that naming and shaming doesn't carry a right of reply. disgraced german journalist has been making the wrong kind of headlines once again and it's among our stories still ahead after the break. 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 they think. i've

been saying the numbers mean something they matter the u.s. has over one trillion dollars in debt more than ten white collar crime stamped each day. eighty five percent of global wealth you long for the rich eight point six percent market saw thirty percent rise last year some with four hundred to five hundred three per circuit first second and bitcoin rose to twenty thousand dollars . china is building a two point one billion dollar a i industrial park but don't let the numbers overwhelm. the only numbers you need to remember is one one doesn't show you can't afford to miss the one and only.

tell it again on wednesday russia successfully tested a new hypersonic strategic missile named alan gold president putin called it a big event for the armed forces and the country as a whole the missile flew six thousand one hundred kilometers across the country striking a test target in russia's far east. the. who. the missile can fly at twenty seven times the speed of sound and weighs more than forty tons it's capable of carrying nuclear weapons other gods unique because of its range and ability to withstand temperatures of up to two thousand degrees celcius the test launch provoked strong reaction worldwide with the media playing on fears around the development of such missiles the us government claims there are

no countermeasures to hypersonic weapons president putin says the russian just needs to guarantee its own security. shows the u.s. is now leaving the i.n.f. treaty was going to happen it's hard to imagine what is the rockets are located in europe what should we do of course we will have to ensure our security with concrete steps let's not say later that we are trying to get an advantage we're not trying to get some advantage with it but merely to seek your balance to ensure our security investigative journalist rick sterling how these new weapons might affect the balance of power. it's in the interests of the russian people the american people in the whole world to not see an increase in a new arms race the danger here is that the u.s. military establishment is going to react to this by saying well we need to poorer ever more money into developing our own hypersonic missile systems and we have

a new new escalated arms race of course right now the united states is spending seven hundred billion dollars a year on its military which is more than the next nine countries combined so we know who is leading the way in the in the military arms race but i think russia i would assume they're hoping that this can be a reality check and bring and promote more negotiations and less military development. as grace german journalist class reality has broke his silence on thursday denying through his lawyer fresh accusations of appropriating rita's donation money some of the cash collected was allegedly destined for fictitious characters and his fake articles he'd only been fired by germany's dispy go news magazine after it was discovered he'd been fabricating stories for he is lotus was even awarded cnn's journalist of the year title in twenty fourteen for his work however that didn't save the magazine from criticism the u.s.

ambassador to germany accused of being slanted against america. these. u.s. policies and certain segments of the american people it's clear that we with institutional bias the american bias of the magazine has exploded since the election of prison trump. reacted to the ambassador's accusations with an apology to all americans who may have been insulted by its articles however just because it takes issue with some of washington's policies it doesn't mean any anti u.s. bias and if president trump's words are anything to go by he's been plagued by fake news all year long. the media you are fake the level of dishonesty is out of it for me. i realized how nasty the bush is and how fake the press can be very fake does sometimes famous catchphrase fake news has dominated the headlines ever since he first uttered it why does it

drive his detractors so crazy well some would argue that it's true false information and deceptive reporting seems to be everywhere let's review some of the fake news of twenty eighteen. well one of the most outrageous examples was the cover of time magazine it depicted a sobbing toddler representing donald trump's policy of separating immigrant children from their parents however it turns out that the girl in the photograph was not separated from her mother. my daughter was not separated from her mother but yeah she's the face of this immigration problem and she has helped to create awareness. but let's go through some other examples now folks had a good laugh when it was revealed that the washington post had actually cited the satirical publication known as click call when reporting on the fact that british people were trying to make the song american idiot by green day go through the

charts when donald trump was visiting the country and in other instances we've seen journalists just straight up. making things up. for example a reporter for the web zene known as mike claimed that maria who to know who's just pled guilty to charges of being an unregistered lobbyist for russia was in a meeting at the oval office i thought this was a photo show but it's not this is my review. of the in the russian spy in the oval office with trump turned out that she was wrong the person in the photograph was actually a national security council staffer but in the journalist defense they both do have red hair and we all know that all of us gingers look the same. how about a paper on canine rape culture in dog parks or a feminist rewrite of hitler's my struggle it turns out that this year fake news was used to make a political point people were submitting fake research in order to expose what they

believed was a bias in academia some of the fake research got through. closely . or. both. and one trend we saw throughout the year was fact checkers retracting their fact checks what could be more embarrassing those who claim they are stopping the spreading misinformation actually spreading misinformation themselves and admitting to it based on what we've seen throughout the year it seems pretty clear that fake news will be well alive in twenty nineteen. r.t. new york that's the week for this hour thanks for watching i'll be back with more.

tell you. what i mean. i mean. really i look to going to the movie can see as you know if you buy if. you're in the government in libya. i'm with you more with the baby one with a number almost nothing to do with money both of them in the film while. i was at

defense. join me every thursday on the alex salmond's show and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics sports listeners i'm show business i'll see you then.

hello and welcome to pull it apart it's hard to find a more drab and yet more romantic period in the history of the soviet union then in the nineteen eighties life if people knew it was falling apart then the yet there was also a growing hope that something new and exciting would rise in its place that sense of cognitive and emotional dissonance was perfectly captured by the on the ground music of that time produced by young nonconformist musicians in what was down to the city of leningrad what was it like to leave and make music in period of hopeful despair well to discuss that i'm now joined by john a stingray an american musician and an avid chronicler of the leningrad rock scene john it's so good to talk to you thank you very much for your time thank you for inviting me now you have a very interesting a very unusual and i think is a somewhat through mantic story you came to the soviet union for just one the week you called but is going to one of our biggest rock stars on his land line and he

just showed the around.