i am. this is all breaking news this hour taliban representative claims that the united states has promised to withdraw all hoffa's troops from afghanistan by the end of april. great nations do not fight endless wars.

from troop drawdowns to bolstering border security and applauding the venezuelan opposition the us president delivers a wide ranging state of the union speech to congress. and his facebook turns fifteen is found a defense of the social media platform has helped to connect and empower people across the world. it's four o'clock here in moscow watching all to international live from a studio with mean a day or two to welcome to the program a delegation of the taleban is in moscow with a two day peace talks claiming the u.s. has vowed to withdraw hoffa's troops from afghanistan by may and we'll cross live in the studio is maria. to tell us more maria taliban represents is here in the

russian capital how are the talks progressing well first of all we have to say that the taliban movement has come here to moscow after they had intensive talks with the american side but to clear away the u.s. special representative for afghanistan reconciliation mr heller's out and we heard following these meetings from mr howard's out that there was a draft framework agreed on very droll from afghanistan we also heard from american president on trump that america is ready to pull out its troops from this country but the deadline was never mentioned so it was a big question whether we're talking about days or months or years or decades it was very important to know finally on wednesday we heard from the deputy head of the political branch of the taliban movement based in doha is that the end of april is the time when we should see at least half of america's intelligent out of ghana's from let's take a listen. the u.s.

is vow to walk us through its military contingent would leave ghana stop starting from early february to be completed by. two committees will be established both will define the schedule for the withdrawal of the remaining troops. well it is very important to mention who is the taliban right now it is they're going to station banned in russia as a terrorist group and by many other countries including the u.s. and american and european states it is viewed as a terrorist organization but the reality is the following the taliban is very powerful incredibly influential on the ground and they are according to various sources controlling more land in afghanistan than the official government so of course this is a forest everybody should consider and no one can ignore and they are a vital part of any peace efforts i include in this peace conference including talks with the u.s. side and their main condition has always been. and remains

a complete withdrawal of all foreign troops from the territory of their country and we also heard today from the taliban movement a representative who is in moscow to take part in peace talks that it was also agreed upon with the american side let's take a listen. we met with the american delegation. previews weeks here with ugly each other in two points one is all. foreign forces were withdrawing from afghanistan. well these told come just ten days after the negotiations between the us and the taliban is there a connection here why is the talks in moscow here in moscow so important i think say that the peace conference in moscow has become possible just because the

taliban before that had successful talks with the u.s. side speaking about what is going on right now here in the russian capital many believe this is a historic event into afghan dialogue for peace has brought many different influential opposition forces with one common goal to discuss ways to bring the long awaited peace to war torn afghanistan why is this so important because these are those who can practically change really change things on the ground this is why it matters the keeper of participant is of course the taliban we have already mentioned how incredibly powerful they are but among those taking part are roles high profile figures former politicians very experienced people like the president of former president of afghanistan former interior minister foreign minister one of the current presidential candidates and many others and for the first time they set together and they discuss what they could do practically on the ground to achieve

their common goal peace in afghanistan interesting though is that and this is one of the biggest concerns that the official government in kabul is excluded from these talks they're not attending because the taliban does not recognize them as a legal power or they reject the idea of that. even though even they blame them for aggression against of going to stand for troops on the ground and as a result of violence in afghanistan so libya want to see with them they don't want to discuss with them anything so now they are being excluded and maybe this is a concern but anyway it's happening and. many say it is a breakthrough by itself well it certainly is a breakthrough isn't it because the willingness of fact that you've got so many important players who can make changes. coming together into one place is a huge step in the right direction they seem to have had

a positive impact these talks on the afghan conflict yes it is a positive tendency but there is a skepticism as well because not everybody shares this optimism about these peaceful africa because it is clear that after everything is over the taleban one. probably will play a very important role in the future politically maybe even in the country and i spoken to the member of parliament afghanistan parliament. these peace conference they had of human rights commission and she has told me that there is a vast part of. the society progressive dynamic part she believes that is not ready to go back to when the tally burnet was ruling the country because this is quite conservative for us there this is an islamic for us so at the end of the they believe it could be quite controversial so they don't want to go

back this is one of the concerns and another concern is of course the security situation on the ground the talks i go in with the u.s. forest now this peace conference in moscow but we see some bargains continuing in the taliban continue their attacks on the country's army so people are still dying there so. i mean the p's is still not there the situation is still dramatic but please something is going on so we have to wait and see i suppose that you know there's going to have to be compromises from all parties and then eventually they will have to talk to the government in kabul little. to no one day they will and we can only people fingers crossed that that happens and it is a step in the right direction thank you. larry a philosopher thank you. leading global human rights group is facing accusations by its own stuff of bullying discrimination and the abuse of power m a c international is one of the world's oldest humanitarian groups but it's facing a barrage of criticism after

a review of its workplace practices across live to our correspondent in london on the situation now for more details on this this is what exactly did the review find about what goes on behind these walls. well the dear oh we're facing a situation where this world renowned human rights organization amnesty international is in the headlines for all the wrong reasons following revelations about a quote talk sing work culture in this organization that was discovered by an independent review carried out by the cantera group consultancy that found that things like bullying public humiliation nepotism discrimination over work are widespread at amnesty international this was discovered following interviews and discussions with as many as seventy percent of staff and the situation has been described as

quote a state of emergency or. it has to do with the atmosphere and working culture in the organization that is very isolating i've never before worked in the place where everyone works so well 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 found also what it described to be as a martyrdom culture because of this reputation and status that amnesty international has throughout the world and according to this review the credibility of this organization could now come under question. any organization that touts protecting human rights as its mission but is itself mired in a conflictual 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. and there was some numbers that were provided it was said that as many as over fifty percent of employees feel like they're not valued and as many as thirty nine percent have developed health and or mental issues as a result of the work that they do and in terms of the reaction we've seen from amnesty we know that they have found these conclusions troubling and have said that they will try to carry out some kind of reforms and all of this of course gets revealed following two suicides of employees of amnesty international that took police back in twenty thousand within six weeks of each other that prompted

a series of reviews including this latest one really surprising discontent and then an organization with such a reputation artie's out a situation i thank you very much for telling us the details. the 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 a. great nation do not try and loose wars. we shared with the venezuelan people their noble quest for freedom and we condemn the brutality of the more durable regime the united states is

developing a state of the missile defense system. under my administration we will never apologize for advancing america's interests chairman kim and i will meet again on february 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 trying tower in new york to denounce the u.s. leader they criticized his administration's divisive policies and mocked trump's campaign slogans. our sister channel r.t. america was joined by a panel of experts to discuss the address and its implications and you can find the full version on our you tube channel he did attempt to reach across party lines more sort of that we've heard from any speech in the past where he really did reach out to democrats tried to find middle ground solutions on the issues he laid out the points where he's going to stay to the right but he also came back to the

middle terms of foreign policy. he talked about food 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 iraq these are very scary times he may have to get an invincible military but we're so over overly committed now that if we go that route 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 what do you say 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 and so 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 his face that very often we did see nancy pelosi is in it sometimes you could tell she was kind of like looking at her children ok you better

behave no no not now and i would 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 are we 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 ok tomorrow called civil war resume what we were doing a lukewarm civil war resumes. i'm going to hope we have bipartisan change and we can go to work. and i hope for the best but i think as my my colleagues say it's going to be back to business as usual. but we're probably going to see what we are trying to do which is compare everything 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 that science been a force for good and has helped to revolutionize the ways in which people communicate because the company faces increasing scrutiny over how it's handling uses personal information in. your. yeah mark wouldn't say that for nothing last year transferred face for data to 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 our 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 to day care less well to keep enjoying that comfort at least for now it 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 sucks shoulder at all these troublesome government hearings. now that is him again alongside the riaa 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. 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 face book and that's just a few such career twist examples it helps to know people i mean even better if the people you know no more right people. still to come this hour a danish national has been given a six year sentence for his affiliation to have found in russia story and after the plane.

join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to us from the world of politics sports business i'm showbusiness i'll see you then. as a presidential candidate donald trump lambasted america's endless and wasteful wars but as president he has 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 president. welcome back to the program and recent new york times has claimed controversially that corruption is hard wired into russian society and in its very nature. corruption is in russia's d.n.a. sharing is not the russian wait. the piece is accompanied by a menacing photo of la to me a putin number of russian was thrown in for dramatic effect too including those meeting lies and disinformation one however has been mistranslated as it means compromising material and not compromise the article and 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 jews' d.n.a. but as long as we're talking about russians these kind of groups you know phobia is totally fine corruption is in russia's d.n.a. this is racism masquerading as analysis it's also undermines the author's argument because if true who can blame the lord you scary photo by the way this photo in the article are reminiscent of the hearst papers in a phobic and hysterical war fever drummed up to sell 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 media analysts lionel told us the things that the new york times piece is outrageous i don't even know the adjectives 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 group of people there would have been. just a cavalcade an avalanche of attack you would have been indicted for that by. rush back. that goes without jay that so kay i never thought i could say this we always say well this hits a new low lower journalistic. dear a new chasm of the 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 kitty scape truth can't escape i mean this is for lab or gas tank. the russian court has sentenced a danish national tennis christianson to six years in prison for his affiliation to

the jehovah's witnesses the religious group was banned in russia and twenty seventeen since being treated as an extremist organization the danish foreign minister has expressed his concern. deeply concerned by the sentencing of dennis christensen again calling on russia to respect freedom of religion the danish will continue to follow closely and assisted in its christians should he decide to appeal. correspondents across this for. who we are talking about and why exactly is he ended up behind bars. when the dear this forty six year old jehovah's witness dennis christensen was arrested back in may two thousand and seventeen in the russian city of aureole and it was just a month after the russian law determined this u.s. based jehovah's witness religion to be an extremist organization now the new law was tied to a number of incidences in which the religion's followers for beta blood transfusions

to their children ultimately leading to the death of several terminally ill children so the supreme court ordered the group to disband and the confiscation of its property although christensen continued to use it to raise funds and to distribute literature so he was therefore the first to be arrested under this new law and today his. six year sentence makes the first convince the first conviction under the law as well and many western human rights organizations have already called for christensen's release. the verdict against dennis christensen is a disgrace it's shocking that in post soviet russia or thirties or putting people through their ordeal of a criminal investigation and prison for nothing more than a peacefully practice in their face his case is emblematic of the grave human rights violations including the rights to freedom of expression peaceful assembly and religion in the country. now we've yet to hear many reactions from russian

officials as the whole ordeal is generally less talked about in russia but the kremlin spokes person dmitri peskov said that there clearly were reasons for the arrest although he was unaware of the details now back in december russian president vladimir putin said that legitimate religious organizations should not be labeled extremist groups and that the matter needs to be looked into further so we'll bring you the details as this developing story further continues. quarter there thanks dan. now a performance on pace car and shang at a gallery in washington d.c. has provided tonight great reaction from president trump's family who have labeled this as sexist it's called vacuuming and runs for two hours every evening at the flashpoint gallery the piece features a model dressed up to look like a drunk a tramp pushing a vacuum cleaner back and forth across a pink carpet nearby is a pile of bread crumbs and visitors are invited to throw them into the cockpit so

the can clean them up. the left has no respect for women unbelievable not only is this disgraceful and humiliating towards the banca 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 look like. before ivanka trump stepped into her role at the one time she developed her brand as a business woman and working mother she has responded to the art exhibit by saying that while some women prefer to knock each other down she believes they should be supporting each other the gallery for his part says the piece is a visual celebration of

a contemporary feminine icon and encourages people to question their relationship with her we were joined by two commentators to discuss how appropriate the performances. i think a lot of americans see this as very very political i mean that 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 the art 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 it is an

incredibly successful talent to take a bull competent american woman i mean i think it's acceptable because first of all evolve and anybody in the trumpet 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 chew and i think art is a really good way. you know sort of to stimulate ideas 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 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.