i am. i am. we start with breaking news this hour representative for the taliban claims that the united states has promised to withdraw its troops from afghanistan by the end of april. great nations do not fly.

from troop drawdowns to bolstering border security on applauding the venezuelan opposition u.s. president delivers a wide ranging state of the union speech to congress. and as facebook turns fifteen it's found the defense of the social media arguing has helped to connect and empower people across the world. three o'clock here in moscow and you're watching also international line from last year with me to you two to welcome to the program a delegation of the taliban is in moscow for a two day peace talks claiming the u.s. has vowed to withdraw hoff its troops from afghanistan by may. live to

marry a financial he's got all the details of the current student. maria taliban representatives are here in the russian capital what do we know about the talks so far. so first of all we have to talk about the taliban talks with america in january and they had intensive maintains with the u.s. special representative for afghanistan reconsolidation mr howard and we heard following that event from mr howell is that there was a draft framework agreement on withdrawal of american troops from this country and we also heard for american president on trump about the readiness of america to pull out its military from this country but deadline was never mentioned and of course the question the big question was are we talking about days here all months or years or decades and finally on wednesday we heard from the deputy had of the taliban political brunch in doha that's the end of april is the time when we can see we should see at least top of american troops with joan from afghanistan let's

take a listen. the u.s. is vote to walk home from its military contingent would leave ghana stop starting from early february to be completed by. two comedians will be established both will define the schedule for the withdrawal of the remaining troops. i think we i need to explain a little bit what is the taliban it is the organization that is banned in russia is terrorist group by many other countries as well it is seen as a terrorist organization but this is the forests that no one can ignore right now because they are so influential according to various sources they are controlling right now more land on the ground than the official government so no one can ignore them everybody should concede to them and for a long time their main condition for peace and you can understand that they are a vital part of any peace efforts in afghanistan has always been and remains today

complete withdrawal of all foreign troops from the territory of afghanistan and today we also heard from the representative of the taliban movement who is in moscow for peace. talks that it was also agreed upon with america so america will eventually pull out all of its military contingent in afghanistan let's take a listen. you. agreed. in two points one is all. forces. from. what we heard and you've just explained as well that they want all of the troops to leave the country what does this mean for the negotiating process if the american troops. numbers are hall of yeah we have to say that could be

a very positive step towards peace in afghanistan because this is what the taliban movement once and they are the force of can change the situation on the ground and this is why it is very important and and the event that is right now happening in moscow this peace conference interrupt and dollars i can say it is a unique event it is also a very important part of peace after it has brought absolutely different mostly opposition but equally influential prominent afghan forces here with one aim to discuss the ways to bring the long awaited peace to afghanistan and of course as i mentioned the taliban is the key representative but apart from them they were other high profile figures like former president of afghanistan former foreign minister former interior minister and for the first time this is why we say a historic event they said together and they got to know each other what do they

want and how to achieve that interesting that. the official kabul is not attending the peace conference that is because the taliban does not want. this they'd reject the idea of getting the official government in kabul involved in any peace and since everybody should listen to what the taliban won they were not invited so right now it's like this but everybody say and all those we have been able to speak to at this conference say that the talks are progressing well and sooner or later the government will join these afeard but i have to say that there are some people who did not share this optimism for example yesterday i have been able to speak to a member of parliament and they had of human rights human rights and civil rights commission at the parliament and she has told me that the reserve bost part of afghan society she calls it a progressive advanced young. part of the society of ghana stan

does not want to go back to the taliban rule because this is quite a conservative and at the end of the day controversial force so this is what's going on right now in afghanistan but experts anyway say that since these talks are happening and the meetings with the u.s. as well this is a breakthrough moment of of this is a moment for afghanistan and they say that it is closer to peace than any time before. but it has been a war torn country for a long long time thank you maria. thank you. u.s. president has delivered his annual and highly anticipated state of the union address to a deeply divided congress spoke at length about critical domestic and foreign policy concerns as well as the perceived successes of his administration here are some of the highlights of the speech. i loudly pledged

a new approach. great nations do not fight endless wars. thank you with the venezuelan people their noble quest for freedom. and we condemn the brutality of the more duro regime the united states is developing a state of the art missile defense system under my administration we will never apologize for advancing america's interests chairman kim and i will meet again on feb twenty seventh and twenty eighth in vietnam it is time to give our brave warriors in syria a warm welcome home while the president was making his address protesters rallied near tremont tower in new york to denounce the us leader they criticized his

administration's divisive policies and mocked travis campaign slogans. officers had a lot in america was joined by a panel of experts to discuss the address and its implications and you can find the full version on top of the did attempt to reach across party lines more sort of thing we've heard from any speech in the past where he really did reach out to democrats try to find middle ground solutions on the issues he laid out the two points where he's going to stay to the right but he also came back to the middle terms of foreign policy area he talked about food which wars everything that he talked about even though it was to show a very strong united states. what he's pursuing in these other countries may actually have the effect of prolonging a war we're also looking at him and talking about this in iran these are very scary times he may have with invincible military but we're so over overly committed now

that if we go that route we could go any one of those routes we could we could get bogged down in another vietnam in many locations throughout the world for sure what we have in a speech like this is putting old neo con wine into a new america first rhetorical bottle and it's sad because i think he wants to get out of afghanistan he wants to get out of syria i think the one bright spot is probably korea but there are people of his administration who would like to take that one as well we spend ten times as much as the russians three times as much for the chinese not enough money isn't our problem here is because the strategy is all wrong i think he knows that but if you look around that big room in there those are the very people who will not let him do what i think he wants to do including also the people he's appointed to his administration i was really excited that he started out with criminal justice reform some of the changes that he may with a second chance were good for all americans but after that you can pretty much for the entire rest of the speech away because he went back to his partisan bias ways

particularly when talking about the wall so much division and what do you think is the rhetoric is uncalled for and it overshadows the good that he does do because we're so caught up to do good in the next thing you know tim is like he's tweeting and has disavowed everything positive you say it's not you know what he's going to . talk about talk about actually there was a moment so i felt like i was watching mom and dad look over their group and while we didn't see mike pence face them very often we did see nancy pelosi is in it sometimes you could tell she was kind of like looking at her children go ok you better behave no no not now and i have to say across the board i am actually surprised pleasantly surprised at how civil because we do know that there were people that were quite upset with the president and the congress i do want to go around go quick and say. what do you think is going to happen tomorrow like with everything else of president trump you can say one thing but it comes next i actually got to say we're going to get more information via twitter from trump you know he's going to react to that response and he's not going to like it ok tomorrow called civil war resume similar to what we were doing

a lukewarm civil war resumes. i'm going to say i hope we have bipartisan change and we can actually work across party lines the civil war going to. be good and i hope for the best but i think as my my colleagues say it's going to be back to business as usual mode on and we're probably going to see what we have to do which is compare rethink that he said to what obama did just like the employment growth and women which started under obama and india i hope that he continues this talent of choosing unity choosing greatness and choosing victory over vengeance if he keeps this up i think we'll have a much more unified country. as facebook turns fifteen its founder has published an impassioned defense of the social media platform claims his side has been a force for good and has helped revolutionize the ways in which people communicate comes of the company faces increasing scrutiny of the highways handling uses personal information. as more. this has been an intense year.

yeah mark wouldn't say that for nothing last year transferred face for data to green cambridge and living in violation of fair use for its data policy personal data mined from nearly eighty seven million facebook users the largest security breach in the company's history this is this is a challenge for more cloud companies and that was a big mistake and i'm really sorry that this happened i'm sorry you think having to do so much damage control must have definitely taken its toll on facebook but apart from their fiftieth anniversary mark zuckerberg and co have another great reason to throw a big party not only they didn't lose money actually they've set a record in profit for the final three months of twenty teeing it almost reached seven billion bucks privacy issues illegal datta harvesting and not doing enough

about what the russians were up to all attempts to bring the tech giant to account made people on capitol hill realize the many many times that marks our cover has had to apologize and the takeaway for me from that is that we can't rely on self-regulation that facebook is not going to regulate itself and that we have to pass some laws well for now realizing and saying that way too often hasn't led to much action is facebook really being regulated the answer is no and with all that big money could they care less well to keep enjoying that comfort at least for now they once hired some very smart and influential people like joe kaplan as the president said in his remarks president the president the president laid out in his speech yes here's george w. bush and here's mr kaplan he used to have an important job in the second bush

administration and here you can see what he's up to now being called facebook's policy boss who else would be behind shoulder at all these troublesome government hearings. now that is him again alongside the ride jordan the tech giants director of public policy guess what she worked for the white house administration to anything from the democrat era. there you have it . and he was once in charge of writing what president obama says here they are an american century welcoming. of everybody. who was spiers to do something oh that was emotional well nowadays his dealing with economic and social impact issues at facebook and that's just a few search career twist examples it helps to know people i mean

even better if the people you know no more right people. and he's a new york times opinion piece has claimed controversially that corruption is hardwired into russian society and in its very nature corruption is in russia's d.n.a. sharing is not the russian way. the piece is accompanied by a menacing photo of putin and the profession was thrown in for dramatic effect to including those meaning lies and disinformation one however has been mistranslated as it means compromising material and not compromised the article in some of its more spirits claims was met with harsh criticism from a number of journalists and readers of the publication imagine a new york times op ed casual stating corruption is in the jewish d.n.a. but as long as we're talking about russians these kind of groups xenophobia is

totally fine corruption is in russia's d.n.a. this is racism masquerading as analysis it also undermines the author's argument because if true who can blame scary photo by the way. this photo and the article are reminiscent of the hearst papers in a phobic and hysterical war fever drummed up to so papers before the spanish-american war it is designed to build up hatred and not knowledge and it's not the first time that russia's critics have made reference to genetics either a former u.s. national intelligence director once said the russians are genetically driven to co-opt and manipulate legal and me down this lionel told us he thinks that the new york times piece is outrageous i don't even know the adjectives though the words shocking disgusting deplorable racist let me make this very very clear if you had replaced the term russian with any other ethnicity nationality a group of people there would have been. just

a cavalcade an avalanche of attacks you would have been indicted for that bah rush. that goes about today that so k. i never thought i could say this we always say well this hits a new low lower journalistic. a new cows i'm with this has no depth this is the black hole of journalism this is so much so so consumed so the gravity is so intense that light the scape truth can't escape i mean this is for lab or gas tank a group renowned for fighting human rights around the world is having the spotlight shown on how it treats its own staff and it doesn't make contributing as a hottie reports right after this break.

join me every thursday on the alex simon show and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you then. i've been saying the numbers mean some things matter u.s. has over one trillion dollars in debt more than terms like calling time champion each day. eighty five percent of global wealth you longed to be ultra rich eight point six percent market saw thirty percent minus minus two years some with four hundred to five hundred three per circuit for sure and bitcoin rose to twenty thousand dollars. china is building two point one billion dollars a i industrial but don't let the numbers overwhelm. the only numbers you need remembering the one you showed you know for two minutes the one and only.

welcome back to the program a leading global human rights group is facing accusations by its own stoffel bullying discrimination and the abuse of power. as one of the world's oldest humanitarian groups but is facing a bar of criticism after a view of its workplace practices live correspondent. with all the details on this to see if what exactly did the review find about what goes on behind the walls. well in india as you said amnesty international this a world renowned human rights group is now in the headlines following these

shocking revelations that are being described as a quote talk sic work culture that was found by an independent review carried out by the cantera group consultancy that found that things such as bullying public humiliation nepotism discrimination and overwork were according to the us to that report widespread in this human rights organization and they said that interviews were carried out with as many as seventy percent of staff and found that the state of affairs was in a state of emergency as they put it this is what some of the employees had to say during this review it has to do with the atmosphere and working culture in the organization that is very isolating i have never before worked in the place where everyone works so alone it's because of a system where everyone they scared stressed and overworked and thus can only focus

on their own survival there was a real culture of bullying right up until i left several years ago particularly of middle managers. well this review also revealed what they described as a culture of martyrdom because of this human rights group world renowned status and reputation that is now going to put its credibility in question. any organization that touts protecting human rights as its mission but is itself mired in a conflict will an adversary an adversarial culture will lose credibility as organizational rifts and evidence of nepotism and hypocrisy become public knowledge they will be used by the government and other opponents of amnesties work to undercut or dismiss amnesties advocacy around the world fundamentally jeopardizing the organization's mission. well this latest report also found that as many as over

fifty percent of employers employees felt that they were undervalued and as many as thirty nine had actually developed a mental or physical health problem as a result of working out they were going on which are quite hard to believe figures and we've seen some reaction from amnesty international day of course said that there are as they put it troubling conclusions while reading this report and that they will work on some kind of reforms in the organization but it has to be said that all of this comes following two suicides that took place back in twenty teen within six weeks of each other of people who had worked in the city international and that had prompted the series of reviews and this one being the latest to reveal some of those details ok thanks artie's on the scene. reporting from london for those revelations thank you. performance on a piece currently showing at

a gallery in washington d.c. has provoked an angry reaction from president from family who've labeled it as sexist is called ivanka vacuuming and runs for two hours every evening at the flashpoint gallery the piece features a model dressed up to look like if i could try pushing a vacuum cleaner back and forth across a pink carpet nearby is a pile of bread crumbs visitors are invited to throw them on to the carpet so the ivanka double can clean them up. the left has no respect for women unbelievable not only is this disgraceful and humiliating towards of onka but this is humiliating to the woman that has been hired to impersonate onka what kind of society have we become. no

seriously this is. yet another example of progressive privilege art exhibit invites people to throw trash vacuum anouvong could trump lookalike before trump stepped into the role of the white house she developed a brand as a business woman and working mother she's responded to the op to exhibit by saying that while some women prefer to knock each other down she believes they should be supporting each other the gallery for its paws the pieces a visual celebration of the contemporary feminine icon and encourages people to question their relationship with it we're joined by two commentators to discuss how appropriate the performances. i think a lot of americans see this as very very political i mean it they're entitled to their opinion and i think everybody needs a voice. but the one good thing i have to say is i think our stimulates conversation and it stimulates to it stimulates debate what i find interesting is that the artist made this very ambiguous seems that they're trying to arrange meant

center and has gone overboard and certainly if they had done this with michelle obama i'd like to see our communities and the left's reaction to them putting michelle obama for example with a vacuum cleaner in her hand vacuuming crumbs i don't think it would have gone over quite as well with the regressive left but they love you were used to the hypocrisy on that side of the aisle so anyone i would say who want to cut evocate down is doing it most likely because they're jealous and i can see why because they've been incredibly successful talented table competent american woman i mean i think it's acceptable because first of all evolve and anybody in the trumpet is ministration is a public persona so i think once you once you have that sort of platform and you are a public persona and you actually are also a government official anything anything goes i mean you know anybody can. you know say whatever they want to about you and i think art is a really good way to. sort of to stimuli that idea is

a so i think everybody sort of fair game in this here is a situation where you know to me that piece looks like. she's like this one nine hundred fifty s. housewife with no voice no will i think a vodka has done a masterful job of complimenting her father's very pro woman administration again lending women opportunities they've never had in the history of the world not just the history of america but in the history of the world more women today are successful more women today are employed more women today own companies under the trumpet ministration because of the regulations. on news this hour i'll be back around thirty minutes time with more but make sure you stay with us now for watching the orks which is up next here on national.

as a presidential candidate donald trump lambasted america's endless and wasteful wars but as president he was surrounded himself with a division who have made defending and advancing american empire a full time career why did trump cave and what could be the consequences for him and his presence. and goodwill those who moved before. much of those who heard the preview of the movie. would go. with. the show didn't look beautiful but we did some good dinner. good. move most of those those who did you feel

good girls. don't go to school so look but do you assume you believe kissel your story should go. starts to get the two leaders out of it with the littlest they see the fit is it's. just not as tense to speak english to. stop to think that it can be introduced to. those who have to choose to post listening to snippets and with a new look because that is the cause of the saying this approach to them should as they should shouldn't be you should cook dinner for the one who's doing does the.

greetings and salutations so arc watchers what exactly is our state of the union here in the good old united states of america i'm guessing by now you've probably heard about a million and one polish perfect responses to that queery not only from our great brand name in chief president donald trump but for most of congress as well regardless of their red or blue gang affiliations the state of the state is great the economy is growing we've got the lowest unemployment rates of decades our military is strong brave just a powerful our enemies have been driven before us and quiver with fear at the very mention of the red white and blue but if it weren't for the republicans blah blah

blah our border the dumb.