our hope is that we can get a change in the regime in caracas as soon as possible so they can return and help rebuild their country with. the u.s. backs the venezuelan self-proclaimed interim president as he calls for a military uprising the government says it's putting down a. russian national jailed in the united states for working as an unregistered foreign agent has been fielding reporters' questions explained how she was briefly quizzed by the military that she coped with solitary confinement. prestigious cambridge university launches an investigation into profits it may have made from the slave trade during the colonial era.

there it's nice here now may the first. continues from the international first for you we've been tracking what's been happening in venezuela over the past few hours the self-proclaimed interim leader there has called for a military uprising in the country describing it as the final phase and now top officials in the united states say he has their full support. i monitoring the situation in venezuela very closely the united states stands with the people of venezuela and their freedom as. well america will stand with you until freedom and democracy is taught by. today interim president who i'm going to do announce thoughts of a person. the government foolish supports the venezuelan people who in their quest

for freedom and democracy democracy cannot be defeated but almost immediately after . clashes broke out on a guarded bridge near the capital caracas gunshots were fired and take us deployed as protesters threw blocks of the authorities. has been following the unrest for us . here. when. people. today brave soldiers brave patriots brave people who are following all constitutional and the call today the armed forces are standing behind the people and the constitution.

or. a local health service has now put the number of injured at fifty from today's rallies in venezuela i talked to our senior correspondent i guess they have on the latest developments in the country. i dare say there will be casualties there we don't have any concrete figures yet we had. the opposition backers of one why do the self-proclaimed president of israel. shooting at security forces we saw security forces prove mcdougall military members police driving vehicles into protesters threw things and things a very ugly and it seems both sides are culpable here you know no innocents but things have calmed down a little bit after the opposition tried to storm a military base they were beaten back we shouldn't machete wielding opposition

demonstrators charged down the fence we saw. army soldiers shooting in the air thousands of promo doodle demonstrators showing their loyalty to the government showing their backing to the current government of venezuela for a bigger effect for more military units to defect to join his cause unfortunately for him we haven't heard of any other units any of the troops. joining his cause the minister of defense of venezuela has said that the army remains loyal to. and that these defectors will be arrested. stand firm in defense of the constitutional order and peace of the republic assisted by the law reason and history always never traitor. speaking he

was from a group whose good meetings were was international well and international reaction has been pouring in led by the united states which reacted literally within an hour of. those call for an uprising saying that they fully back him on the other hand we've had mexico for example staying out of it none of their business we've had turkey the president of turkey at the un coming out very strongly condemning foreign meddling intervention and that israel is saying that it's the venezuelan people that bus the side who leads them the united states who has threatened venezuela threatened with. military action presumably john bolton said that if that is really the forty's use force to crack down on these demonstrators he reminded them that the united states still you know has all its options on the table so the military one as well is also ironically enough called for other

countries to stop interfering in lots happening in that is we need menace will ruled by the people of venezuela not by extra little forces now very strange coming from the united states government which is the first to recognize one why do as the president of venezuela he sanctioned it is frozen billions upon billions of venezuelan government money to sanction state companies that has left the government and the able to pay to pay people to provide assistance to provide medical care and it has promised to keep ramping up that pressure until they get what they want which is from a due to leave and. become the official president of venezuela so you know mixed messages certainly from the united states. ok well new this hour

protesters have surrounded the venezuelan embassy in washington d.c. blaming the united states for the ongoing crisis in venezuela that the embassy staff left the building last week of the u.s. imposed deadline passed and activists say that they've located the embassy to prevent a new probe why dosed off from entering we can talk now to ariel gold who is from the women's lead. group code pink he's the national coordinator of one of the activists at the embassy welcome to the program can you tell us what's going on at the embassy now who's in control of the building well. make your government the legitimate government of venezuela remains in control of the building thanks to our group we're calling ourselves the embassy protection collective and the legitimate government of venezuela has given us keys to the building in permission to be here in order to protect it so we are here twenty four seven living in here sleeping here working here from the day during the day we serve

around food to around one hundred people up to one hundred people twice a day in order to maintain our presence here in the building as a interim protective president intil bait billet government to venezuela can find another protector for this building or intil the truck ministration stops trying to orchestrate this could do so what happened today is why joe must have put out a call to his supporters to try to plan to take over this building at the same time that he tried to. clarence is that he that he tried to put out of college venezuela for the military that he will see you follow him and overthrow the government well oh attempts failed ariel i mean you know i want to ask you because i know it's quite a complicated situation yes an embassy is sovereign territory but as far as the u.s. is concerned is the rightful leader of venezuela so how does it play out in terms

of how long you've got in the building as to whether security forces can get you out of there or is that even allowed what's the state of that embassy in that compound. well first of all i just want to say that quite joe is president of venezuela like nancy pelosi is president of the us. you know and i would love to have anybody other than trump the president of the u.s. but that's just plain old not reality reality is that material is the president of venezuela also we've been here in this building it was building belongs to the venezuelan government. legally it is illegal for the secret service for the u.s. police to enter this building as an embassy under the vienna convention it is would be illegal for them to enter we are lawfully here in this building both. gas of the venezuelan government and as tenants of the building show that

doesn't mean of course of course it doesn't mean that the. trumpet ministration won't send the secret service in that they couldn't barge through the doors or the windows and come in with guns blazing but we're here for the duration and we're here for as long as that takes and what we've seen so far being in this building including what happened today is that when people show up and say i want to encourage anybody in the d.c. area or they can come to d.c. who's watching this to come over here and join us because we've seen that when we have more people here that. the government doesn't feel that it's advantageous for them to try to on lawfully remove us and if that happens even if they don't go into the compound if they try other methods to try and force you out security forces where you are what will be your response. well we have lawyers working on this and we know that we're here legally and we are prepared to put our

bodies on the law and we are prepared to face a rabs in order to hold this building and you know i really want to emphasize that this isn't about whether anybody anybody in this building and there's actually yes that german news on major oil in this building but this isn't about that this isn't about anybody's opinion or material not about trump's opinion not about my opinion of material this is about the u.s. government this is about saying no to us imperialism saying no to us intervention in the affairs of other countries saying that the u.s. has no right to overthrow the government of another country we've seen it before and we are not going to tolerate it again but critics might say the you know just trying to campaign against what the u.s. government may or may not be doing in venezuela they are actively taking one side in this. we are taking the side of democracy and the side of international law the un has said clearly that material is the president of venezuela and you know i.

in the us is a party to the un and we appreciate an international body what we do know is that six million people voted for mr el it was not a full you know as many as much of a turnout this would be ideal if any democracy but zero people voted for the president so we're this is this is actually really not about choosing sides for me it's not about choosing sides for me the citizens so i'm actually fairly you know it's not about supporting the euro or not supporting this is about responsibility of what my government the united states government does in my name whether my government unlawfully overthrows the government of another people ok for now. from coping can cite the venezuelan embassy in washington thanks very much for your time thanks so much for having me. next.

russian national jailed in the united states for working as a man registered foreign agents has been offering reporters question by phone. i did not expect to the sentence to be this harsh for not registering as a foreign agent i got the same sentence as the person who sold secret information to the chinese government it was the same sentence eighteen months i think it's absurd he was maria's first aberrate interview since her arrest in july last year she was uncertain question via telephone from a detention facility in the us where she is now being held uncertain the question was handed to her in advance by different news outlets including r t the first one was the most over this one why at all maria pleaded guilty instead of insisting on

her being innocent and as you remember last friday she was sentenced to eighteen months in jail for failing to register as a foreign agent often she had pleaded guilty in december and she explained today that it was a commonsense choice between two evils since i accepted the deal while the maximum sentence would have been five years otherwise it could have been as much as fifteen so i think any sensible person would have done the same thing but there was also a question about the connection between murder. and mohler teen this is a group of special investigators investigating russia's alleged meddling in the us elections of two thousand and sixteen of the name of the team was mentioned by the federal judge who sentenced maria to eighteen months in jail and the question was how was the ria connected to their investigation. and here's her.

people from the miller's team talk to me for five minutes total and as everyone knows i was not mentioned in this report in any way there is no relation between my case and this report the whole questioning took five minutes total the closer folders and never called back and never came back there were several questions about the challenges maria has been facing in a prison emotional intellectual physical psychological and that she had tried and actually had managed to invest the time and attention facilities to educate her spending time had the libraries reading and learning but she said that the main goal was to keep her safe and to save her mind. i made every minute count so i had this little sheet of paper with my schedule so i pulled might socks on it this is the only way not to go crazy is to get busy i

exercise for an hour and a half pull ups and whatever you could do in a small so reading of course. marie you're already served nine months out of her eighteen month sentence and there was a question about what she's going to do you watch when she's finally freed and she said she hopes that once she is released she will be immediately deported to russia and she's right now thinking about a teacher career. on route and his father was listening to the q one i showed some force on his daughter's case with this is an extract from an interview. loss for us for a family and i have no doubt for her colleagues and friends too it's hard to come to terms with this prison sentence which in our opinion is unjust considering the conditions she's been kept in for the past nine months she's already injured nuff

she did not commit such a serious crime to justify that. britain's ancient and venerable cambridge university has launched a two year inquiry into how the eight hundred ten year old institution benefited from slavery during the colonial era it is only right that cambridge should look into its own exposure to the prophets of curse the way but during the colonial period we cannot change the past but lawsuit who seeks to hide from it ok but university isn't the only institution looking into its imperial past other prestigious universities in britain and the united states have done the same in recent years facing up to their past and the potential gains that they made can produce rival oxford faced a long dispute over a controversial statue of a nineteenth century colonialist but claimed it would have faced severe financial cuts had it removed the monument university of east london try to set up a one hundred million pound fun for reparations over slavery saying the money should be put aside to support ethnic minority students over in the u.s.

harvard has removed master from its academic titles and georgetown students voted in favor of reparations for the descendants of nearly three hundred slaves sold by the university in the nineteenth century we heard polarizing opinions on whether paying out reparations now turns for past wrongs. these decisions are very much long overdue and one would have thought that a country such as britain coming to terms with his colonial past would have made this these sorts of efforts much earlier but nevertheless i do applaud. cambridge. go for taking this initiative and i think other institutions like the british museum the british library all of the colonial there are. in britain as a consequence of colonial plunder should now be in an act of reparation return today countries of origins look no one can argue that slavery was

a good thing it was an horrendous thing. course we should learn and teach our kids and educate ourselves indeed about the horrors of slavery let's just remind ourselves though there we were the first to abolish it i don't think there's any nation in the world that has an idea being enslaved or being involved in the slavery trade including the continent of course of africa itself but i think this idea of paying reparations is ludicrous please spare me the horse a shirt this wasn't me or my generation or did it did this we do need education people need to be aware of it but who would you give the money to africans living in this country africans in africa we're talking about four hundred years of slavery we're talking about people robbed of their religion their language their culture and their familial resources taken up dropped in another island surrender

treated what he was horrendous for hundred for four hundred years he saw western interest and he saw president in history is impressive in modern times so if you see that europeans were involved so president was arnold's nations like ghana of already sell their. peroration schemes gambia the same way sierra leone all of those of had reparation an apology schemes for last twenty five thirty years so britain is really just catching up i understand what slavery was and it was horrendous what i'm saying is we're now yes lot but yeah make sure we educate make sure nothing like that can ever happen again but for you to come up with a scale of slavery or often could slavery was bad that bridge slavery it's kind of stupid it's silly cambridge university the asli looking into their history and if they want to necessarily having gone and not being very polite or making yourself look absolutely silly cambridge university should be congratulated for looking back

at what they do but there's no need for the whole says sure there's no need for us to be paying money to some black people which black people would be would it be. supporters of us presidential hopeful bernie sanders have launched an online campaign for him to be the democratic nominee in the twenty twenty election they warn that otherwise they'll vote for donald trump instead his artie's kellerman. on the surface donald trump and bernie sanders seem like chalk and cheese polar opposites although trump has got to be defeated donald trump is a puff a logical lawyer really embarrassed a sauce every single day crazy bernie he's crazy is a bed bug but you know he doesn't quit crazy bernie i tell you i got to hand it to for thirty sold out to the devil so here's a shock for you donald trump is genuinely concerned about bernie sanders especially his nomination by the democrats in two thousand and twenty the democratic national

committee sometimes referred to as the d.n.c. is again working its magic in its quest to destroy crazy bernie saunders for the more traditional but not very bright sleepy joe biden here we go again but this time please show a little more anger and indignation when you get trump has good reason to be concerned back in two thousand and sixteen twelve percent of bernie sanders supporters turned against hillary clinton and they ended up voting for donald trump donald trump wouldn't be sitting in the oval office without them and new polls show that history could repeat itself twenty six percent of bernie sanders supporters would not vote for elizabeth warren in the final election despite the fact that she has similar policies to her democratic rival and this growing overlap between trump and burning supporters seems to be a growing phenomena i'm seventy eight and have been waiting for bernie oh my life if it's not burning my vote goes to trump out of pure spite now i can believe that

i have some trump voting friends who always said that if trump wasn't running they'd vote for bonus and as easily they have a lot of voter overlap even another democratic candidate in the race brought it up it just kind of turns you against the system in general and then you're more likely to want to vote for this which could lead to somebody like her you could lead to something like we've been finding out of people here in new york have noticed this trend i'm sure a lot of people are for. with our current dysfunctional government people are fed up with their traditional politics over the last twenty thirty years just think because he's an outsider and he's against the system and he was like the year he was treated very badly during the two thousand and sixteen election politics in the united states is taking an interesting turn seems that now a days voters are less concerned about what you stand for and what you represent as a candidate but rather about how loudly you speak out against an establishment with many detractors. r t new york. asteroid mining is

set to become the next frontier in the aerospace market as countries like the united states japan and china invest millions of dollars in the search for rock minerals and precious metals and now it seems germany is joining the mission to reach the previously untapped resources and several years ago the united states became one of the first nations to begin encouraging private companies to invest in space mining and if successful it could shock the markets back on earth for gold silver and platinum a small but wealthy state of looks and books for potential interest in the extraterrestrial project investing twenty eight million dollars in a u.s. firm and berlin is now rolling back some of its legislation to attract companies to fund explorations we heard from the founder of one mining corporation who says the sky is not the limit. when you talk that kind of this late jeremy aren't luxembourg . and want to know what it is but that's not stopping one germany's protectorate interest is not things that it's made in because obviously stationing is an urgent

market so our main competition undercut and younger still like he senses planted explosives where the only meeting known as the twenty teams but they were moving into the east and has been to mock says each of them and since then speaks thing flew over europe. and quote exactly the minute time to definite certainty vantage of the next to be. basque economic potential asteroids despite the high blocks and bugs revealed that it's lost thirty million dollars investing in the development of space mining so far the director of a risk analysis group told us that there are other non-financial dangers as well. space lightning is a very important topic but ownership is going to be a big big topic to understand who owns these minerals that they're going to lie in and also if something goes wrong about a space space debris how will that affect the international order and who will be responsible for such mess it's true that space debris is

a major major concern for all countries involved in outer space with germany if they say to their companies you know we give you sort of rights or we listen your liabilities if something happens in our space that affects other satellites of other countries then logic doesn't really apply there would be no sustainable. united states is being accused of manipulating travel procedures in order to hit the russians participation in the united nations the claim comes from the russian foreign ministry off to washington refused to give a visa to the head of a russian delegation on disarmament the russian scientific expert was due to attend a briefing on the use of chemical weapons in syria united nations says it's looking into the issue ultimately the culture of the story. the reason behind such a harsh statement coming from russia's foreign ministry is the fact that they had a fresh as defense ministry research institute mutely park lansky was denied a u.s. visa now he was supposed to travel to new york and there at ten and

a un security council session he was due to brief the council on russia's account of as a suspected poison gas attack in syria now the ministry added that the us authorities were obviously as seeking not to allow objective information about what happened in syria to be heard at the un and as it turns out such situations are becoming quite common now the. opposite follows quite a similar a visa denial to the had of the russian delegation of a un desire moment commission in march at the ministry now believes that the us site repeatedly tries to. prevent true information from spreading by preventing a prominent chemical expert from going to new york the us government was clearly trying to prevent objective information on the incident from being told from the un tribune after groundlessly putting the blame for it on the syrian authorities

washington doesn't want the international community to understand that last year's american aggression against syria was carried out under a february to predict the attack on the city of duma which is located very close to the capital damascus took place in april twenty eighth seen and a right after that a u.k. u.s. and france launched more than one hundred missiles against what they say were syrian chemical weapons facilities and now last month inspectors from the organization for the prosecution of chemical weapons are said that a toxic chemical that was used in the attack was a likely chlorine syria rejects all of these findings and the russian military also said that it has found no trace of chemical weapons used when they inspected parts of the city and at the same time the u.s. has been blaming repeatedly the syrian government for being behind the attack now r.t. has requested an official comment from the u.s. state department on this developing story but we haven't heard any response as of

yet. the twenty was a record year for global military spending hitting a high is not seen since the end of the cold war stockholm international peace research institute found that the united states and china responsible for half of the one point eight trillion dollars spent last year on the expanders list washington and beijing are followed by saudi arabia india and from those three states make up about ten percent of the cash used to develop armies make weapons and other military equipment russia sits outside of the top five and even cut spending by three point five percent while the u.s. and china both increase their funding by about five percent the first time washington boosted spending since twenty ten talk to ninety one from the institutions that conducted the study shared his concerns. u.s. has lots of interests around the world you see it in europe see it in asia pacific some parts of americas and even africa in the way that us has this global military

presence whereas china look to china u.s. looking to improve its capabilities through better weapons high quality weapons more weapons it's more of a race between china and the us and the child is looking to a certain size a regional and global news and challenges the u.s. close here in things we're going to an interesting period where we will be seeing major increases in some of the major because to a policy in the world very much a concern for us that the world is reaching a new record high and if you say ok that's it from moscow newsroom for now thanks for choosing r.t. international to update you i'll be back with more in just under half about to see that.