the political crisis in venezuela divides global opinion with some of the country's opposition leader and others warning against foreign meddling and the potential for civil war. proma duro and anti-government demonstrations of it up to the cross of this whether with opposition supporters of police clashing. another new scotland's form of first minister alex salmond denies any wrongdoing to be charged with attempted. a microsoft includes

a fake news detector in its latest browser in the form of an amp of the ranks sites for trustworthiness although they're all fears of a bias. it's one am here in the russian capital thanks for joining us this is r.t. international. a split is emerging between will powers over just how to tackle the crisis in venezuela after the opposition leader one goh i don't declared himself interim leader president of venezuela nicolas maduro is refusing to leave the post . reports on the global reaction. as an opposition figure he's part of the national assembly and in front of a crowd of his supporters he recently took an oath and declared himself to be the interim president of venezuela saying that nicolas maduro the elected president who was just recently re inaugurated. that is not legitimate now he's gotten support

from brazil argentina and sheila and all of them basically following the lead of u.s. president donald trump trump declared that one way to was indeed the interim president of venezuela even though no election took place in order to get him that title now more recently in the aftermath of trump's recognition of wedo we heard some rather fiery words from u.s. secretary of state mike pompei oh the time for debate is done. the regime of former president nicolas maduro is illegitimate. his regime is morally bankrupt. it's economically incompetent but it is profoundly corrupt. it is democratic to the core. i repeat the regime of former president nicolas maduro is illegitimate now these statements from u.s. leaders often will invoke the economic situation in venezuela blame the government for that situation however many critics of u.s.

foreign policy of looked around and said that this this position of the united states of recognizing guede zero as the leader has only further cemented divisions and caused further polarization in venezuela a country that's already suffering under u.s. sanctions now at this point trump has actually not ruled out the use of military force against venezuela. without considering anything but all options are on the day because that would be your theory which is all options always all options at this point there are a number of countries that do recognize nicolas maduro as the venezuelan president cuba bolivia and mexico have all recognized and continued to recognize monroe as the elected leader furthermore russia has also been very clear that it recognizes and maintains relations with the leadership of venezuela and with nicolas maduro and china has also been very outspoken in backing nicolas maduro. knows maintains

the principle of noninterference in the internal affairs of other countries the next turn the intervention in venezuelan domestic the public in venezuela has been somewhat divided we've seen protests taking place across the country we've seen a huge number of people coming out to support the government we've also seen opposition protests that have been largely people denouncing the government there have been clashes in the street but one force in venezuela that's rather pivotal in situations like this is the military and the venezuelan military is very adamant that it stands behind me in vero. the military educated and disciplined and trained to the highest values of the cool inspired by the values of independence peace and common good proclaimed loyalty an absolute subordination to nicolas maduro the constitutional president of the bolivarian republic of venezuela i feel my commander in chief you can count on supporting your daily efforts to achieve stability and strengthen our beloved were found with two people claiming to be the

president of venezuela the situation could escalate very rapidly many are observing the situation and are very afraid but if you look at how the international community has lined up deeper divisions in venezuela and you know possible escalation perhaps to the point of civil war that would not only have implications in venezuela but could have very global implications as well. let's go live to caracas now and i can speak to a local journalist from the race of a goat. is the latest information you've got there on the scene how is the political standoff in venezuela. hello well after a very calm year which was last year we started to see the new protests new sports of protests here in caracas from monday when a group of military to headquarter and took some arms after that they were detained

and so on populations started to back in them and supported them that led to a situation of violence to come into very honest pecked at levels in caracas that change was rising and rising and rising until yesterday where the demonstration in favor of one why does to some violent turn out after the rally let's just let's see some images of these protests going on in the last few days in venezuela.

what's really interesting about these protests is before those protests were due to political affairs but this time to protest has more to do with social demands such as food medicine and even quality of life after what happened yesterday and the speech if one why go and of course all the international statements and the statement from president nickel. last mature and the division that that situation here is bringing into ben as well are we are very out to look for more protest going on this week and in the coming days so we will need to pay a lot of attention of what the actions of the opposition are going to be and what actions the government are going to take and of course we need to look out on the community and the international community because that will lead or set the mood of the coming days in caracas. us a local journalist think caracas nerissa gold

reporting for as many thanks notice. in the meantime the french president among micron has followed washington's lead in supporting the venezuelan opposition leader. after the illegal election of nicolas maduro in my twenty team europe supports the restoration of democracy and i salute the courage of the hundreds of thousands something new zealots marching for their freedom. you know i mean i side with the millions of frenchmen who are complaining about a president who is harming the french people i condemn any acts of hooliganism and violence without exceptions.

for me this remarks or a certain question is do they help people do they contribute to the wellbeing of the telling people what should be the preoccupation of the italian government and. do they change anything in the french political situation i don't believe so either so i think these are useless remarks and i want to say more about them as of course the on friendly. please call diplomacy because once have a good image approach even though in france he's seen in a bad light in his popularity has fallen the other was protest he wants to ties in the most here against demonstrators. sort of a double standard he supports such movements which we are not being taken into consideration i don't know why the wrong of others to make such comments although if he's not listening to the last of the same time. the difference speaks of it in

the uk receive but they don't look or see as here is a plutocracy the democracy there are. independent journalists and political. robert harness believes that the el of us movement would be quick to praise micron's words it is the most absurd statement when for the last ten weeks we've had people rioting all over the place in france it's a very strange thing to say i don't think it will go down very well at the political class i don't think they would think it was a very clever thing to upset bearing in mind as we have both said as france has a serious problem with public order itself i'm sure he would be violently criticised it for us i see people would be very angry and he's been bitterly criticized already by the spaniards who say there was no need to talk like that what would he say if the russians back there that in the yellow jackets and said they recognized one of them as the president of france i mean it's ludicrous you just can't believe that these people are unable to look in the mirror and see how

ludicrous their statements are. scotland's former first minister alex salmond has been charged with attempted rape and sexual assault he's now been released on bail following his appearance in court in edinburgh artie's politico has the details. look alex salmond attended court in edinburgh with his lawyer where there was by all accounts a rather short hearing it was also closed hearing so there was no public that no journalists there either but afterwards the court published the charges that alex salmond is facing there are fourteen of them altogether there are two charges of attempted rape two charges of indecent assault nine charges of sexual assault and one charge of breaching the peace now when he emerged from court alex summoned was quiet he didn't talk to any of the press there but when he was going in he gave

a short statement to the cameras take a listen to what alex salmond had to say yesterday with my list of. attorney the police station in central scotland. i was a leash on condition though you came to the court today to face the charges against me i never sent for any criminality whatsoever but i refute absolutely these are allegations of criminality and i will decide myself to the utmost in court. i don't see. the court system of scotland so that he is strenuously denying the allegations and he also mentioned that the case is now live and according to scottish law there are rather strict reporting restrictions when a legal case is ongoing so people can say things that might influence the

proceedings and the headline this story rather is getting a lot of headlines nevertheless because alex salmond is a huge political figure here in the u.k. he's the former first minister of scotland he was the figurehead of the scottish independence campaign he also hosts a show on r.t. . and alex salmond recently won a civil court case against his own former scottish government after it mishandled allegations of sexual misconduct against alex salmond from back when he was still first minister. if the allegations came to light last year but they related back to two thousand and thirteen and just like he said there throughout that legal process ever since these allegations came up alex salmond has always very many denied all of the allegations and any accusations of criminality against him.

french t.v. shows teaching children how to spot the photos of news outlets are telling the truth a recent episode was about russia's president vladimir putin this very channel on the show takes a look. well this is billed as being in educational game a show for children around the ages of eleven to fifteen the idea is they go on the show and they participate in things like quizzes about topics of the day and they're also asked to hunt for clues and then to try and piece those clues together to find the result of a question and it's broadcast on france for that's a channel here in the country and it's called escape news now its most recent program centered on russia particularly the russian president vladimir putin and ourselves here at r.t. offering what appeared to be a fairly one sided opinion of the two topics now close to the start of the program

a young boy who says he's of ukrainian heritage is asked to describe who he thinks vladimir putin is and what he's like this is what he said so when the. words in the report involves grew close enough pretty soon the door to the with their low suv aldrin above them on the front of the. well throughout the program putin is regularly described as being all thora tarion somebody who likes to oppress the opposition parties in russia somebody who likes to control the press in his country somebody who likes to control his own image well what evidence is given of that well there are a lot of pictures of me putin in different guises from writing with a need to also horse back to fishing to appearing in military vehicles the evidence of course to show that vladimir putin is somebody who likes

to control his image and there is only one image that's being broadcast then the program goes on to target us here at r.t. suggesting that the channel is nothing more than propaganda the evidence of that. well r.t. it says is funded by the russian state no secret there but pretty rich from a program that's being broadcast on a channel in france that's also being funded by the french state well it's pretty difficult to be a journalist here in france so let's talk about that since president matt gone has been elected r.t. journalists have been regularly denied access to events and even during the presidential elections before he was elected r.t. journalists should have been accredited for offense we're told when they arrived that they simply couldn't go in now arts he has gone to the program escape

news we've asked them for comment on their program and whether they feel that it was one sided that it was biased in its views and altie has also gone to press freedom groups and human rights groups to ask them what they think of this program and to question whether a program like this is actually putting across a one sided view of the french state and essentially is brainwashing france's next generation. and we heard from the general secretary of the european federation of journalists ricardo good here is he believes that facts are being increasingly sidelined in modern reporting now i believe that in the recent years more and more journalists are basing their reporting on opinions i think it's really important for the list sometimes we should deliver opinions of course but it's really important to base our reporting on facts. and maybe

that's a worrying trend in european and not only european journalism saw. i would call any professional journalists to. you know to be really cautious. when reporting on international policy. sensitive issues. the first mission of a journalist of course is to base the story on facts. or as a correspondent mentioned a few moments ago r.t. did request comment from various press agencies and human rights organizations amnesty international responded with an endorsement of the television shows principles and content but writer publisher emerick montvale believes the show is not in tune with local attitudes especially when it's about children and mr international should investigate on this case maybe it's the typical case of war

propaganda we all always knew in history and especially atrocious. but it doesn't represent french people at all and for i must i must come first from . as a father my son who is five years old and he was a learning. russian songs for instance. and for the better it's good news but. what the government is making and you know it's an art horowitz . it's terrible today and you were liberalism once a war against multiple russia like all the freshest although imperialist they indoctrinate children and dirty tricks we took to the streets of paris to find out what the people there had to say semitone leaks or inch and i'm astonished that they teach our country that other countries apart here we talk about manipulations by the media on the internet we would be better explain to our kids not to trust

what is on the internet or to trust any verified information the same should be done to adults as well but this is false i don't believe the world is black or white it is more difficult than this it is important to build awareness and to develop critical thinking not to tell them what's good or bad it's point them to decide this in the prospects are so i don't think it is good to tell case other countries are bad it is up to kids to shape their own opinion that yes it is a politicize ation of children so we should not influence children or we should give them basic education but not to turn feelings them about other countries they don't know because. microsoft introduced a new browser extension which tells you whether a new source can be trusted but the system called news guard has already been questioned by journalists explains proceed with caution just a regular sign of a blind corner an overhead crane area wild animals crossing and news

you should be careful with while reading. proceed with caution this website general it fails to maintain basic standards of accuracy and to count ability there you have it we've already told you about news guard an online tool masterminded by folks like the former head of the cia that flags good news websites as green and those it sees as dodgy ones as read it's been up to you if you want to install the plug in or not unless you are a user of the microsoft edge web browser from now on the features built into the app at least you can switch it off after launch in the u.s. news current will expand to serve the billions of people globally who get news online so perhaps a little contract with microsoft could be one of the first steps of that expansion readers of any of that red colored carousel caution please by the way this is what we've heard from one of you case most read outlands rated one out of five for

credibility. we have in the very recently become the last a nice constant and are in discussions with them to have disagree just me raney's classification resolved as soon as possible with these guys most or all the criteria is fine grain like you're good to go oh bus speeds there in the green zone to cause perhaps it never spins out anything unconfirmed or unreliable even the teen green bench in the u.k. has realized something sprog badly wrong here but once i remind you who's behind news guard things will start to make sense i mean do you really expect the brainchild of a board of advisors that's comprised of all kinds of former american security and foreign affairs officials to flag weiqi leaks anything but read anyway nothing to worry about since the golden or sorry green standards of journalism are sacred for

these people i'm not against propaganda every country does it and they have to do it to their own population and i don't necessarily think it's that awful i'm speaking of standards in the count ability one of news guards investors has chosen not to do anything about its contract with saudi arabia they don't have a problem taking care of saudi officials p.r. even after the shameless murder of journalist jamal khashoggi anyway microsoft ok with these people being in charge of which color goes where as long as the tech giants get to avoid more awkward questions like why aren't you dealing with all that fake news they can blame us and we're happy to be blamed unlike the platforms were happy to be accountable everyone chooses their own way to proceed with caution . political commentator writes is for the new york observer them very walker says

that the mikes of two could be exploited. well i think we all have a battle to prevent fake news i mean you look through the newspapers talking about bragg states in the past couple of weeks and it's obscene crazy some of the things they've come out with so i think we all have a duty to try and prevent that fake news from getting out there but look you know there is also an issue with it being used against minority outlets i think it's important for every customer to read the terms and conditions of any of these if these systems to understand where they're happy with them what may be so what may be acceptable from one person's point of view is or the acceptable from another and i think this is an issue that we need to address. russian athletes to suing the author of a twenty sixteen report on alleged state sponsored doping months after the swiss supreme court cleared them of using performance enhancing drugs my colleague andrew farmer discussed the story with artie's alexia. so many of us remember the so-called mclaren report orchestrated and investigated by mr mclaren from canada

the lead investigator of the world anti-doping agency essentially that report put rush into wilderness accused russia of state sponsored doping system and a lot of athletes were barred from twenty sixteen games in rio and twenty nine mph . because of that report now this report had some inconsistency is in it but secondly the twenty eight athletes which were later. you know reinstated all the doping allegations although they were named on that report they were cleared of those doping allegations among all these athletes on the report there were five members of the russian rowing team which were barred from the twenty sixteen games in rio now the federation of rowing of russia officially filed a lawsuit against richard mcclaren they actually brought the documents to his door and posted a video online that is something that the canadian legislation entails the people

to do the lawsuit itself was filed back in july but now they had to bring it in in person which they did so now we expect the lawsuit to proceed in the next thirty days richard mcclary has thirty days to respond to this lawsuit just to remind i mentioned the twenty eight athletes who were cleared of these doping allegations despite being named on the report back in the days we spoke to them that was last year and they had this to say about the about this event. is a little noise with the most news. things produces you. can't believe. has contributed . to your.

it is to get used to. try. to warn you absolute joy. to be in the middle. of the opinion leadership in your work the she'll be with you as she starts. to do that. now as an aside to this we have the world anti-doping agency de way and just recently it decided not to further suspend the russian anti-doping agency over a long saga about access to the moscow that decision didn't go down too well with everybody they did it yes and the usual suspects have been criticizing that

decision indeed some members of the media were saying that russia should be banned again that it should be allowed back into sport and you know it begs for a question like you guys want clean sport in russia but at the same time you don't want the agency which is supposed to clean up the sport too to operate which is which is weird but there was there's one person who went even further now we're talking about linda hello and she is the minister of children and equality in norway now you may ask yourself what the children and equality have to do with doping she also happens to be the vice president of the world anti-doping agency and the only person on the board of water to vote against a restart is reinstated back in september and this week as well now she said that russia needs to compensate all the expenses that water has suffered over the months investigating russia's laborde stories and trying to see whether a side is worthy of reinstatement russia must be for those who city shinn their. involved in the cheated and why did it oh this is no sister these night and day

instead of trying to protect clean athletes that is despite russia has been paying around a million dollars annually to the white house budget that is despite russia's spate fifteen million dollars fine to the international olympic committee based on the mclaren report based on the state sponsored system doping allegations she wants more money for despite all that she's not saying a concrete figure but the norwegian press is speculating that could be tens of millions of dollars but as far as i understand miss helen has not yet filed an official lawsuit and will see whether she does we spoke exclusively with the former president of the russian rowing federation venue min boot who is leading the group of athletes in the lawsuit. it hurts to person of those athletes who spent much more years working hard preparing for. we treat each other that's why i want to defend the. process will not be quick we gave the lawsuit documents to mclaren he

now has thirty days to assess the situation in your own then we along with canadian lawyers who examined all of the documents this process could take over a year. next thing with r.t. international the c.v. mccully commission set the bring the right up to date in half an hour.