at least four countries claim a former u.s. marine who's been charged with espionage is their citizen but this media speculation claims the man's being used as a bargaining chip by russia. he faces up to twenty years time to be swapped for the. allegation was revenge in some way by the russians. the french government hardens its stance against the movement claiming it is trying to bring about. popularity rating its record lows. we can call a national emergency because of the security of our country absolutely you know we can do it i haven't done it i may do it i may do it but we could call a national emergency and build it very quickly. and another round of talks to end

the almost two weeks u.s. government shutdown shows no sign of progress with president trump saying that he might declare a national emergency to build a border war without congressional approval. thanks for joining us this is r.t. international. the u.s. u.k. canada and island of all said that a former u.s. marine charged with espionage is their citizen the man detained in the russian capital last week is already at the center of much media speculation earlier my colleague andrew farmer discussed the story with our correspondents in moscow and london. what more do we know then about this case andrew haven't we lately rather gotten used to hearing about russian spies being caught in america i can

definitely come up with a few such stories from the past few years this case though is exactly the opposite an american national a former u.s. marine paul wieland was caught in moscow he was arrested in one of the city's most posh hotels but back when the news broke who would have thought that diplomats from a total of four countries would end up going he's our guy so now we have the u.s. the u.k. canada and the latest country to make such a statement was our island however if we go back to canada poll brother couldn't even confirm whether he still had a canadian passport or not which very strange but that's the way it is right now he's now in detention in moscow having been charged with espionage although his brother says that the only reason he went to russia was to attend a friend's wedding party the us ambassador had been given permission to see the

suspect then so he did mr whelan's lawyer is seeking bail for his client for now we aren't really aware of any other details but journalists all around the world are talking about it and speculation is rife he faces up to twenty years in a russian jail deal of masks plenty of time to be small to dispose of. what's most likely as we'll as a pawn in russia just play to get back one of its spies after maria patino here in the united states the re of boots do you believe the arrest of your brother was retaliation and was revenge in some way by the russians. as you've heard many are linking this case to the case of variability no who was arrested in the u.s. in july she eventually pleaded guilty to conspiring against the u.s.

with a russian government official and at least another person without notifying the u.s. attorney general but the fact is that the charges that have been brought against paul whelan and maria butanol are completely different now to london to interview with and see the children are our correspondent there nasty we're hearing that paul whelan also is a british citizen must be in the reaction then in the u.k. it was actually the american embassy in moscow that had contacted their british counterparts to inform them of this arrest and this case we know that so far the foreign office has their spokesperson has said that quote staff have requested consular access to a british man detained in russia also the u.k. foreign secretary jeremy hunt has said that the u.k. is not liking the idea of individuals being used for political chess games our position is very very clear individuals should not be used as pawns of diplomatic

leverage we need to see what those charges are against him to understand whether there is a case or not we're not ruling out any series at all at this stage as to why this might have happened this case of paul whelan comes on the heels of the biggest scandals in twenty eighteen between russia and the u.k. involving a double agent being poisoned in solsbury in the u.k. back in march leading to diplomatic expulsions leading to one of the biggest droughts between the u.k. and russia and russia in recent years so whether or not this one is again going to add more fuel to the fire and exactly how much this scandal blows up of course remains to be seen in the days to come. a french government spokesperson has accused the l a verse movement of trying to stage a coup the comment signals a toughening stance from the authorities following weeks of violent protest so the dubious skipping of the story. well not a great start to the year for president machen with the latest polling showing that

seventy five percent of french people responded that disapprove of the president that's despite the concessions he's tried giving the yellow vests movement over the last few weeks and that comes as his cabinet met for the first time on friday since the start of the yellow vest movement something on their plate to discuss and afterwards the presidential spokesperson discussed at the l a best movement describing them as agitators who wanted to overthrow the government. says the announcements of the manual macro the yellow vests have become a movement of agitators who want insurrection and to overthrow the government moreover those who call for debate don't want to participate in the great national debate well that's not something the other best movement has long said many times when i was speaking to people out in the streets though that is one of their aims that they want to change the political system here in france and that one way of

doing that could be to overthrow the government those protests now have been engulfed in france since november seventeenth and some cities have seen the worst pointing in the whole of a century as a result of that and it looks like this movement is set to continue into two thousand and nineteen with the so-called act eight planned for saturday with a number of demonstrations already been notified to say that they will take place and many more expected to be notified at the very last minute on saturday now it also comes as an open letter was penned to president signed from angry france criticizing the president saying that he just hadn't listened to the movement let's have a look at an excerpt from that letter bridge will turn into hatred if you and your companions keep seeing people as rubble consider them and. i think they mean nothing and it's not just the yellow vests or the causing my colon

a headache it's also been announced this head of communications is to step down from his post now this is for him he's credited as being the person who shaped the presidential campaign that man who went on to win in style back in two thousand and seventeen and he's been a long term confidant of the president around him for about two years he's not the only person from the backroom staff has quit and of course on top of that we've seen a number of resignations from the cabinet team including the interior minister back in october that was you and also the interior minister nicholas. resigned as well as some of the other cabinet members in the room in two thousand and eighteen so while president might call mike to be hoping to sway some of that just called in two thousand and eighty under the carpet it looks like two thousand and nineteen

move this. another round of budget talks between congressional democrats and the white house seemed to have led nowhere but as a partial u.s. government shutdown is close to entering a third week president trump says it's possible he could call a national emergency to build the border war with mexico if democrats refused to agree on funding. have you considered using emergency powers to grant yourself authorities to build this wall without congressional approval and secondly i have to go you have yes i have and i can do it if i want so you don't need congressional approval to build know we can use them absolutely we can call a national emergency because of the security of our country absolutely you know we can do it i haven't done it i may do it i may do it. well house democrats have put forward legislation they say would end the stalemate but it doesn't include funding for the border wall prompting president trying to promise that he will veto the bill has more on the political gridlock. thing has concluded trump met with

congressional representatives now trump said he felt the meeting was productive but the representative seemed to have the other idea now trump did indicate after the meeting when he spoke that he would actually consider calling the national emergency in order to construct or is it all so that he could do so without the approval of congress also summarized the meeting it's pretty clear that the members of congress and the president had a very different assessment of how the meeting went let's take a listen we had a very very productive meeting lengthy and sometimes contentious it's very hard to see how progress will be made unless they open up the government we recognize in the democratic side that we really cannot resolve this until we open up government he said he'd keep the government closed for a very long period of time months or even years trump also said that in the meeting nancy pelosi the house speaker of representatives the speaker of representatives

the speaker of the house of representatives that she told donald trump that she had no interest in impeachment they were not looking for impeachment that's the quote now there has been a call to get the ball rolling and kind of jump start impeachment proceedings against from some democrats one democrat in the house of representatives actually use some rather colorful language to make this call police don't end up beating don't because we're going to go in there we're going to some of them. while trump said that he was told by nancy pelosi that quote we're not looking for impeachment in the meeting that just happened nancy pelosi has elsewhere said that she would be open to the impeachment of us president trump this is nancy pelosi speaking on another occasion we shouldn't be impeaching for a political reason and we should avoid it pietschmann political reasons so the us federal government has been shut down for fourteen days at this point talk of impeachment is taking place on the democratic side on the republican. side trump is

doubling down and saying he does want his wall saying that he could perhaps declare a national emergency in order to build it without congressional approval so it's quite quite a day quite a moment as as usual with a new year and a new congress at this point once again we are facing gridlock with capitol hill divided and no clear consensus in american politics. speaking out to political analyst and radio host dave perkins dave great to speak to you once again. interesting circumstance is this president obama he was asked about it but he was like yeah i've thought about this i could declare a national emergency to get the wall that he still fighting for would not be pretty extreme no to declare a national emergency. i don't know it depends on your definition of emergency i just read a story in the internet news today that hasn't made national headlines yet about an illegal alien and his greencard equipped companion running drugs across the

southern border using two people from alabama as mules or grandmother and her granddaughter and something happened in which they lost trust in the grandmother so they murdered her in front of their granddaughter and then beheaded the granddaughter because she witnessed a murder and this is the kind of thing that happens more and more you hear about a lot of it but you don't hear about a lot of it it's a tremendous amount of crime and risk and danger for the united states not to mention the more fundamental political aspects that every country every country of consequence demands the right to do and have and that is knowledge of who is there and why and who should be there and who shouldn't and control of ingress and egress it is fundamental to being a nation that such things be controlled and it's astonishing to me that an entire political party and political side in america is agitating so much not to control those things it's as if they're pursuing an agenda of chaos and destruction and eventual loss of nationhood it's really nothing less than that and it's quite

appalling to me that the democrats are fundamentally opposed to this. they knew staking or is there a difficulty distinguishing the difference between immigration and illegal immigration because the democrats totally opposed to this why. yeah because they want to and i'm going to say something is happening in america a lot of people don't see it i'm going to say it anyway the democrats are attempting to import a dependent lower class voter base the process that they're going through is long and slow and has many steps so a lot of people don't see this but they're already getting driver's licenses into the hands of a lot of illegal immigrants in different states and a lot of them are already voting and what they want is to have enough people here who have allegiance only to them because they come from countries that don't have a history of constitutional liberty and restraint of government and they don't know anything about those things they assume government is always authoritarian and they turn to government for dinner and they want those people here and voting democrat

they'll never vote republican they're not subject to having their minds changed because they weren't raised unschooled in america and that is what their long term plan is to get tens of millions of voters here so that republicans never win another national election so when you have that in mind as a democrat goal you see they want to maintain the structure of america but they want to salt the field so republicans and people on the right can't. store election is thinking too much about this obsession with the wall and the public because you've got it's a shutdown is appalling but you know it's not pleasant for the public we all suffering in some way and then to threaten for this to go on for possibly is that all of the rubbish piling up around the waist well chuck schumer said donald trump threatened years that doesn't mean donald trump actually said that and the thing i want to address your concern for the people eighty four percent or more maybe eighty five percent of government spending continues on automation when the u.s.

government is shut down in other words almost all its obligations are met almost nobody is suffering and the employees that get sent home i'd like to ask them why they think they should have special protection against the free market i could lose my job any time i can get a. i'd often get fired anyone in america is always at risk of losing their job why should government employees be above that why should they have special protection for themselves against a government shutdown which is the political version of the market activity it's the give and take of politics at work in d.c. i don't see why anyone who is suffering as you say shouldn't be exposed to that suffering from time to time as a part of the free market of american action i've got to speak to appreciate you. ok more news coming your way after this short break.

the country has gone into a nihilistic fever. thank god it hit the road and get out to traveling across america to find what makes america the charlatan is the genius of this place especially american hero this is it we've come a point much elements done something we always are on the margins something. called culture. we're starting west with. will begin to headed east into the swamp we're going into the belly of the beast i think i want to leave now doesn't get any more of them it may be completely different but it is just. join me every thursday

on the alex simon sure and i'll be speaking to guests of the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you then. welcome back the first funeral is underway for the victims of the deadly building explosion in the russian city of miami to the search and rescue operation came to an end thursday after the last body was recovered from the site in total the tragedy claimed thirty nine lives we managed to speak to one of the survivors of the explosion he shared the story of his escape exclusively with wanting. to see a super we would. not by a loud noise indeed first couldn't work out what had happened so i told my family

to get dressed and grab the documents i went to open the door that was confronted by nothing just this drawn from point smoke and fire. and there were four of us and we also met our neighbors everyone was in total shock and we managed to escape by climbing from our balcony to that of another flags. when we got out onto the street all the emergency services had already arrived it took them about fifteen minutes to get there they were already helping people. so i'm introducing them to me and my wife are holding up the most important thing is that we've survived our children were traumatised they will need counselling i'm

very grateful to the people of my tweets of course for their support and for the emergency service. investigation is under way in germany into a massive cyber attack that led to the personal data of hundreds of german politicians and media figures being leaked online for the probe is in its early stages some german media outlets claim to know who's to blame it's all about as a story but german press are running hard with this story on the data of hundreds of politicians it includes members of the cabinet here in germany chancellor angela merkel herself. the president of germany frank fall to steinmeyer among many many others but it's not just politicians that have been the victim of they said this data breach also comedian younes bottom and and rapper teddy also caught up in the snout because if there is talk of hacking and. data breaches the knives immediately come out for russia and that is what's happened in

a lot of the articles we've seen here so far what we do know about the data that had been hacked into is that it's being called normal highly sensitive data it includes things from the politicians this is like job applications party memos and lists of party members now a spokesperson for the german government said an investigation is underway into this hack. the federal government is taking this very seriously the only thing we can say about the hack attack now is that we're working on that the thirty's are working very hard to understand what happened looks like this has to be handled with great care biggest fake information can be propagated however the government can say that now sensitive political data was published so far no official claims that russia was behind this and no evidence presented to that end but this isn't the first time that we've see a big media campaign in germany pointing the finger of blame at russia when it comes to online shenanigans before the twenty seventeen elections the papers were

rife with how well the russians going to interfere with our elections post the twenty seventeen elections there was a lot more navel gazing article saying why didn't russia try and hack or interfere in these elections as we heard from the spokesman person from the government there this investigation ongoing will be looking into this as it develops. political analyst i could harm a belief that the main beneficiary of the scandal is in moscow. russell seems to be the lone where really doesn't make any sense when we start this and it's just not what we were really going to hurt and secondly russia i cannot imagine of any reason russia or any russia could get a lot though this standoff over. a little bit into another direction where you are that worse or not especially when you consider that is has started immediately so there must be high interest that you have

a bunch of people who want to get rid of the freedom of. germany granted by the bill of rights and you need some sort of stand or do. you lost or permanent serviceable vision of the internet if this were. not a leak of our. own it would be the true overblown right sure of any somebody from the air in other ways it would be useful for the same group uses for their purposes . pirates attacked a container ship off the coast of burnin on tuesday night twenty six crew members were on board including twenty russian citizens for ukrainians and two georgians six people have been kidnapped there are many eighteen people on board are unharmed ripple say up to nine pirates armed with guns and knives stormed the ship they robbed the crew and left after a couple of hours russian consular staff in burning and now working to establish

the nationality of those taken hostage and to secure their release. the u.k. army is appealing to snowflakes and selfie addict in its latest attempt to swell its ranks but just how many would be willing to swap screen time for the frontline is a quick look at the army's t.v. ad. manuals useless. the idea behind your army needs campaign is that every weakness can be turned to a positive for example a snowflake's compassion could be useful binge gamers drive could make all the difference phones on base would have a great focus off a millennial it's all about their self belief this is the u.k. defense ministry explained its motive the new campaign is the third execution of

the this is belonging series showing how the army finds potential beyond gens ed and millennial stereotypes and identifying the essential skills needed in new army recruits such as compassion self belief and focus we hit the streets of london to find out what people there think of the army's new recruitment effort. but i think the appeal to younger generation feel they're all offensive just like to people feel like a different message the really bad connotation to put in the military in a bit of a strange light this would be quite rude doesn't make any sense but it's really it's really good for you because a difference on these it doesn't actually mean anything to do self believe other though it's appealing to the same still to people it's the people who might always a film about the army been for them. i think staying with us here in an international one commish sethi will bring it today at the top of the hour.

seemed wrong all wrong just don't call. me. yet to stamp out he's going to come after paul and it against me equals betrayal. when something find themselves worlds apart. just to look for common ground. desperate for a single purpose. they have a superman. they start training very young. eight months of intensive school. reps. and they save lives.

donald trump says syria was lost long ago this as his public feuds with military experts are getting louder and meaner what's going on what does it mean for u.s. engagement overseas that's the subject on this edition of politic. politicking on larry king on wednesday in a lengthy question and answer session with reporters following a meeting with his cabinet. declared that syria was lost long ago and went on to give his assessment of the country and the ongoing civil war there as death. and sand. this against the backdrop of a growing war with american military generals one star and what's the potential fallout of this war of words with military experts for us to gauge moods overseas

let's talk with someone who knows a lot about u.s. foreign policy in the west battle against islamic extremists former u.s. representative chris shays from connecticut serves senior member of the finance and homeland security committees was chairman of the government oversights national security committee with jurisdiction over both the defense department and the state department he's a good friend he joins us from washington all right what's your reaction to the commander in chief's description of syria as sand and death well it is said in death that part of the problem is though when he said i'm taking the troops out he said we've already won so it's just hard to know you know what he says and when he says it and what it means but the bottom line is we can go back a long ways and we can go back to even my vote going into iraq and we opened the

door to iran and we didn't find weapons of mass destruction so there's a lot of history here but the thing i would like for my president is i would like my president to teach listen learn help and teach and explain and then create a good dialogue about you know really where are we in syria bashir is there russia is there they weren't before i says potentially could be reborn. and so the bottom line for me is the president said what he said but taking our troops out of syria in the ways doing it i think is misguided but if you lost a family member in syria and someone described it as sand and beth. what we're fighting for. well you know it's a good question. as to what we are fighting for i think what we were fighting for was to try to bring some stability to that region i think we were trying to push

iran back. and there was purpose to it we didn't want isis to grow and have a base. and so. you know it takes your breath away to think that we've had soldiers who've lost their lives men and women in afghanistan iraq and syria and there has to be purpose to it and if there isn't we should leave them first and said we defeated i this isis and now he says we almost eradicated isis what's your take on isis well i says this in syria isis and part of iraq still isis is an idea ideology that will grow they continue to recruit but we contained them the the horrible thing is that when we let them get in the mosul and other areas they captured a great deal of currency and dollars.