collapse in fact we're showing you video of that actually happening a little earlier this evening the fire is engulf the entire building these are live pictures for you according to a cathedral spokesperson the entire frame of the got fixed our building is burning this is the same right now no reports of injuries thank goodness emanuel micron's french president. already called off his business that was planned for today and has arrived at the scene. ok let's go to central paris now not far away from the place itself our correspondent charlotte do this. is right in the middle of the action you can see lots of people have gathered around because everybody subtle is a bit like a moth to a flame people want to see what's going on and it's not on the people's hearts shola know you've had a chance to speak to a few people as well. yes that's right huge crowds here just to witness what's happening april fifteenth two thousand and nineteen will go

down as a very tragic day for parisians and for people across the world who visited not to dump twelve million people every year come to visit this site it is an iconic building the most visited site in paris and it still looks like it's going up in flames it's been more than an hour now that that fire has been ravaging the inside of this building a fantastic example of french architecture that was undergoing restoration after appeal by the french catholic church last year for people to try and donate money to stop it from crumbling some eight hundred and fifty years old and as you can probably see from those images despite all the attempts of the firefighters who are poor ring water in trying to dampen it down that cathedral is still a light we can see the plumes of smoke still coming out in fact as it's getting to . now it's easy to see the fire flames licking away on the inside and as you

mentioned there neal we understand that the spire in the middle of the cathedral has come down and i've heard reports that the entire roof of this iconic building has also collapse as those flames look like they have to store at the center of this church a church that stands at the center of paris for many people in fact it was built to show that paris was not just the political and the economic seat of france but also the cultural seat and it's been there for around eight hundred fifty years with millions of people visiting millions of people having memories of coming to see this whether that's because they were fans of victor hugo's had read about not saddam from there or they just wanted to come and hear those bells climbing themselves this is a building that is a must see if you visit paris and i think that's why the crowds have come here tonight to watch happening some people are tourists some people are locals i was

speaking to one man just ten minutes ago who's a local who is just describing some of the damage that he saw that roof looking like it was collapsing in and saying you know this is the cultural essence of france for him and this was incredibly tragic in fact when we were racing to get here to see what was happening when we heard news of this fire not true dharm i just heard people stopping their tracks in the street and say nor nor they couldn't believe the billowing smoke that was coming out of the fires that were licking away at this cathedral licking your way at those iconic bell towers at the front of this cathedral which stands some sixty nine meters high quick fact about. when it was actually constructed it was the tallest building in paris and in fact it was the tallest building in paris for a very long time right the way until the eiffel tower was finished. construction of

course another iconic building but people sad just can't even put into words what this means for them one person was saying to me you know when we students we came out to university and we passed this building every day it's the cultural essence of france it's the heart of paris how can it go up in flames present meconis he said has visited the site to see what's happening and to take stock of the damage but of course we don't know how much damage has been caused this fire has been raging for more than an hour it looks like it's completely ruined the interior of the cathedral not just causing probably millions if not billions of euros worth of damage but also. decades and centuries of history here in paris and french history indeed so for many people this is a hard day hard thing to watch even for myself it's with

a heavy heart that i'm reporting on such a story here in paris. and just to add to what you're saying we're getting reports now that the fire spreads to one of the iconic rectangular towers would be showing live pictures that orange glow still quite visible the firefighters we see the water but the flames still. rising up very high you can see live pictures looking at this from another round it's clear that the emergency teams of got there is very very full we've had reports of the entire structure is a blaze it is of course a huge building mounted on cathedral but the fire it's making very short work of a construction that took best part of one hundred years to perfect and it's taking a matter of well it's been over two hours now and the fire is bringing it down literally minutes. firefighters continue their work but the war the

war on silver lining so far no reports of any injuries. no suggestion of any fatalities at this point but charlotte was saying it may only be a man made construction but it's touched a lot of people hearts but anyone who's been there will understand this was a construction of great beauty it's one of those things that i think that shows you what mankind can do for goods when it uses the talents constructively magnificent beauty eight hundred fifty years old and it could be approved. by people regardless of your religion or ethnicity or wherever you come from in the world and you still on the line with us a scribe another moment with just touching upon it charlotte it is only a manmade structure but it is a it shows what what good mankind can do when it puts its efforts in the right direction i think that's why a lot of people including the commission president is saying this is

a tragedy. indeed and people here are echoing that thought this is sad this is a tragedy some people saying you know it's incomprehensible that this building could go up in flames it's like a ripping out the heart of paris and like you say here yes it's just a building but it's also not just a building this is something that is seen in contain the history of france and if you've been to north i know you have it's not just about going inside it and getting a sense of the power structure like this was built in the eleven hundreds but it's also about sitting outside in looking up at the detail so much incredible detail went into this church the man hours so you have not just built it but the people who chipped away at the stone to make the same. once the girls on the outside i

mean it truly is a traumatic building one that has i don't think has ever been surpassed anywhere else in the world and for me it's so sad to see something so beautiful so iconic and something that so much work and patience and love and craft went into just in over an hour going up in flames and looking like it will have been burnt to a point that people who didn't get to see not before today will never get to experience that true beauty of this structure. took a long time around one hundred years. of live several generations of mankind but it's being brought to heel by the forces of nature many thanks to all the dubious skill correspondent live in paris. ok this is the scene now live from paris you can't quite see i think the full force of the flames from

this angle but they are considerable several jets of water addressing it this shows a little bit more clearly a blaze that's been running amuck now for over two hours and we understand the entire structure of not a dam cathedral has been touched by this fire reports that the roof collapsed we have seen for certain video footage of the iconic spire did stand two thousand four hundred feet high. this is what happened to it within the last hour a little earlier this evening the flames to for the force of nature too strong. the efforts of man toppled by nature down it went it is iconic and that's why people are feeling this so much i think. the structure of great beauty that could be appreciated by anybody from anywhere in the world and that is why it is the most visited tourist attraction in france not adjourn cathedral twelve million people

a year go there to see it. they're not going to have the chance the day after this disaster tragedy as it's been described by many people and it will be bringing a lot of people together in france i'm sure a country that's seen a lot of division recently this will be bringing them together fortunately in the sense of loss. ok let's move on to some of our day's other top stories wiki leaks co-founder julian assange is now in prison had a hearing next month on a possible extradition to the united states the lawmakers have spoken to the media outside the jail they've been churchill's to meter sunshine london's ecuadorian embassy until last week's arrest parties and isha sesay reports. i'm outside belmarsh prison where chilliness son is being held in custody it's a category a prison in south east london now earlier today members of the german bund the

stark and the european parliament's were in front of the prison holding a press conference protesting against a scientist arrest they believe it sets a dangerous precedent worldwide search and less. john and this is a whistleblower and he needs international protection and not a criminal criminalization we we say he gave the truth he delivered to provide that. truth to the public about the war crimes you rock and afghanistan and therefore he should be awarded more criminal like he has said most of this into the night. his accusers by you know he came to prison for all their lives and this is not fair because he only did the now's the cases that corruption cases the right information to society to people in the wall now the spanish m.e.p.a.

and a memorandum of the times talking to a lawyer where she received an official invitation from the ecuadorian embassy to visit a songe on monday however this was of course not possible over the weekend we had there were many supporters head right outside belmarsh prison carrying banners with the phrase don't shoot the messenger and said it's too early in the sanchez erasto we've seen an outcry from an international audience regarding the central extradition to the united states if anything though this is made people more aware about the revelations of wiki leaks and about questioning people and political power but the people i spoke to earlier the chairman m.p.'s and the spanish i mean well they believe some kind of this information campaign is starting against the songe and they're very concerned about the potential extradition haring to be held on may the second. ok let's go to the debate is heating up there is to whether we keep leaks co-founder julian assange is

a criminal journalist america correspondent don cohen. an exchange or other and so if you want to start with some politicians let's find out first time for them good to have you all done take us through what happened. with the house foreign affairs committee tweeted democrat eliot engel statement in support of joining us launches prosecutions saying he is in fact a tool of lattimer putin and the russia. intelligence service now there's never been any evidence that proves let alone suggest a connection between weiqi leaks and the russian state or russian intelligence furthermore we can leak has actually published embarrassing information not only about the united states and its allies but also about russia that we could expire if spies files series revealed more than two hundred documents about russian surveillance contractors so i responded with a tweet saying angle statement is an endorsement of president trump's attack on

press freedom and i called it absolutely reprehensible now the house foreign affairs committee came back at me tweeting quote the first amendment protects free expression even for russian propaganda outlets like the one you work for it doesn't protect criminals who weaponized stolen information and i thought this was revealing for a number of reasons a son just charged with allegedly helping chelsea manning logon to a department of defense computer under an alternate identity computer that manning already had access to not weaponize ing stolen information and that's a reference to publishing stolen or perhaps a leaked e-mails from the hillary clinton campaign that proved that the democratic primary was rigged in favor of hillary clinton and against bernie sanders but it also shows what many have argued that this charge is a thin veil for in the words of

a guardian op ed to punish those who expose and various things secrets about its actions about the united states action on top of that assad has not yet been extradited if he even will let alone tried in the united states and there are two amendments in the u.s. constitution to talk about due process and there was a concept called innocent until proven guilty so the house foreign affairs committee has declared a sunday is guilty for a crime. he's not even being tried for so this i think many would argue that this really review was the true nature of his prosecution and we've seen many american politicians celebrating his arrest senator joe manchin even went as far as saying he's our property the property of united states though a few like democratic presidential candidates tulsi gabbert have come out in his defense. the american civil liberties union they've also criticize

arrest but they have been in the minority. it's a fascinating story appreciate you bringing us all the information danko in r.t. america correspondent on the line with. killers get back to our breaking news story the huge fire the single. cathedral in paris person to money market has now arrived at the scene here earlier today declared it a tragedy french media quoting the fire brigade say the fire is potentially linked to renovation work and you can see some of the scaffolding which is part of that renovation work which has been taking place on the cathedral at a cost of several million dollars getting reports now from a sputnik correspondent that the left power of not a damn cathedral is on fire it's a vast structure but the fire continues to spread despite the best efforts of the the emergency services you can see they've had those jets of water trained on to

that particular section of the fire now for over an hour. not too much impact being made. right french person who is at the scene of the fire at the moment he said into meetings with paris police no don't get the latest information on where they stand in tackling this blaze but in all honesty from the pictures that we've been seeing it doesn't look pretty good been great. now for a couple of hours this blaze no one as we understand has been able to get inside the building from the firefighters department. and the damage that's been done. to understand it is very considerable there have been attempts we've heard from the service is to try and get inside to try and rescue some of those invaluable works of art the religious icons. people are trying to preserve some of those value pieces of history but unfortunately they weren't able to say many clued in this

this was the spire going down over an hour ago as you can see it was still daylight there the fire's been raging for a couple of hours at least now aspire. which many people recognized across the skyline of paris when they were trying to make their way to not to down there have spotted the spire and headed for it is just over two thousand four hundred feet grazed to the ground by the natural forces. in stop of all fire that's been blazing away now in central paris. and it's brought about emotions of loss from so many people in paris not just not just the people who've gone to see it the tourists but a lot of the local people. it's not too little to say i think from people our correspondent speaking to said that they you know they have very strong feelings it's a sense of loss for them it's adored by many people this structure is great natural beauty or its heritage history being an iconic structure that is not just the

centerpiece of the catholic church in france but it's something that was admired. from people right across the world many of them millions flocking twelve million a year to go and appreciate its beauty. ok back to our other stories today julian a science is not getting much support from the big it was was hailed as a hero but media outlets now appear largely to be turning on him even painting him as a villain to correspond right because the it takes a look at what is behind the fall from grace. you want to see just how radically the media you turned on a songe from champion of the press to a leper an outcast all you need to do is watch saturday night live it's comedy but

boy does it hit home. thanks to wiki leaks you can see how corrupt governments operate in the shadows and then lie to those who elect them thanks to facebook you can finally figure out which sex and the city character you are i've attacked the u.s. military. because i'm an actual james bond supervillain and i'm one step away from destroying the god. because reality is entirely less funny what i songes faced a tidal wave of smear really ugly stuff a little over a decade ago the us military declared war on wiki leaks drop a plan which was actually need a plan to discredit it and terrorize whistleblowers and it looks like they're winning. wiki leaks uses trust as a center of gravity by showing insiders leakers and whistleblowers who pass information to wiki leaks personnel or who post information to the websites that

they will remain anonymous the identification exposure terminations employment criminal prosecution legal action against current or former insider is leakers or whistleblowers could potentially damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others from considering similar actions from using the wiki leaks website back then at the turn of the decade as sanj was a hero of the pundits cheered his leaks exposing bush era war crimes exposing the elites corporations politicians how they loved him for it was outstanding journalism their words he was given on or off the on or including the economists new media award back then we could leaks was news wiki leaks is an online news organization that specializes in publishing documents alleging government and corporate misconduct we invited judy in

a song editor in chief of wiki leaks in pity. how times have changed what was news in two thousand and ten is enemy propaganda now journalistic hero or enemy agent asks the same economist neither reads the subtitle just a useful idiot who the economist awarded for his stellar journalism or take time magazine who gave their front cover to a songe in two thousand and ten now they run virtual hit pieces quoting and headlining anyone that doesn't like a songe it seems be it hillary clinton or a judge that met him once and labeled him a narcissist gets much dirtier uglier out. outlets that have historically supported and cheered america's wars such as the atlantic put out feces packed hate mails or the equivalent of musingly enough the hack behind this

story first calls out assad just permissibility with facts and almost immediately after says this artist angle on his question more and indeed one might inquire how it came to pass that the spin off of a kremlin propaganda organ and now registered foreign agent in the united states first arrived on the scene i stand ready to answer your inquiry unlike other networks and publications who all learned at the same time that might be leaving the embassy we could leaks told everyone unlike them we took it seriously we went and documented what happened this is called journalism journalism like what i did when he exposed various war crimes he's a publisher news he's a journalist he. and the material that he leaked we know from the pedestrian

mails from the war logs is real and credible and was published by mainstream organizations once it was released by wiki leaks the very news organizations that over many days over several decades of which the documents that wiki leaks provided are almost instantaneously once those documents route turned on assigned him so that rate prodding from the national security state so of course there was an effort to discredit weekly weeks and to carry out of very sustained and unfortunately quite effective. character assassination of the shah assigned to isolate him and demonize him in the eyes of. at the end of the day come on we all know the exact moment these people turned against their former hero.

maybe you're kind of picking up where julian a songe was before he went bad because we used to like you know we used to really be doing a good service and then something happened i guess his hatred for hillary clinton maybe is would turn him basically into someone who was a russian. aid really yes yes of course as he did hillary never did anything wrong she was perfect wasn't she. thinking of hillary clinton she says a songe should answer for what he has done but newly released f.b.i. documents obtained by the conservative activist group judicial watch suggest she and her team also have things to answer for but what still excites over four hundred pages of f.b.i. documents revealing evidence of an operation to one compromising e-mail sent by clinton it also says that the u.s. intelligence community has concerns over classified information in some of the messages. has been taken

a closer look. e-mails the reason why you freddy krueger is dressed up as an i.t. guy in hillary clinton's nightmare as the f.b.i. found almost fifteen thousand unreleased e-mails in its yearlong investigation of her private server the head of the f.b.i. called you out for careless handling of classified documents said she believed the seaver confidential in some documents actually stood for the order of paragraphs some three years on when everyone thought it was all over and gone new f.b.i. documents reveal more juicy details like what happened to our half of the e-mails that were raised clean by the clinton team we're not talking just a few dozen or hundred or even a thousand e-mails here we're talking some thirty thousand all. live it according to clinton she did provide a detailed and meticulous explanation of how she picked which emails stored top

state secrets except clinton did none of that instead she felt like joking about it to do with the service well like the cloth or something that well no. i don't know how it works digitally at all ha it's because you know wipe has two meanings delete or cleaning of that wine stain from last week and it's funny because it's cold ever but ok now that you're all done laughing hundreds of newly revealed f.b.i. documents shed light on how that server was wiped a company called plot river networks did all the dirty works and these conversations between two of its employees leave no questions as to why they think they did it it's all part of the hill recover our poor peroration i'll have to tell you about it of the party. thanks for the heads up but even with only half of the

emails available the new have be i papers reveal that from the get go key people i had no doubt the server compromised classified material i have personally reviewed hundreds of documents in the h. or c. collection i can now say without reservation that there are literally hundreds of classified emails in this collection maybe more when this collection is released in its entirety the potential damage to the foreign relations of the united states could be significant one of the reviewers of the clinton servant then intelligence community inspector general charles mccullough testified in the senate that documents beyond top secret were stored on the unauthorized server here is what happened next. it was personal blowback to me to my family to my office i was told by members of congress be careful you're losing your credibility are people out to get shoe there was an effort on the certainly on the part of the campaign to mislead people into thinking that there was nothing to see here. the

clinton campaign released a statement in two thousand and fifteen claiming that none of the e-mails had been classified at the time and were only assigned levels of secrecy as a result of the investigation yet the f.b.i. knew everything from the panic selling setting in over the secrecy of the information handled by this to the clean up crew admitting a cover up but eventually james komi sided with clinton although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case although the department of justice makes final decisions on matters like this we are expressing to justice our view that no charges are appropriate in this case well this is been the problem all along i mean we had james komi who was practically a criminal accomplice in helping hillary evade prosecution or conviction or even

charges for what she did and this is this is not even a minute factor this is the main factors that the f.b.i. is no longer an objective and i guess you could say ethical law enforcement agency . which is not international who just joined us this is the scene in central paris some breaking news story a huge fire is engulfed the iconic not saddam cathedral that in the french capital present drawn as a band of his plans for the day and he's rushed to the scene he's now arrived along with his prime minister edward philippe he said earlier in a tweet that this was a national tragedy french media quoting the fiber.