headlines in r.t.d. ukrainian president's office says that move to a prisoner exchange between moscow and kiev is in the. classified documents reveal that 20 years ago the us knew in the news you would use terror to try and stop east timor from becoming independent but failed to act and the frenchman is to appeal a court decision that overturns a pesticide ban in his own town accusing the french government of double standards we ask locals what they think. i think the government isn't doing its job they are the 1st to see that there should be no pesticides but they do nothing we briefly in the past sites we did during testing the amount of pesticides with ground was

alarmingly high. there good morning you're watching r.t. international will start this hour with breaking news to you because the ukrainian president's office says that the process of implementing a prisoner exchange between moscow and kiev is underway but not complete a few hours ago he crane's attorney general posted a facebook post on facebook sorry that the exchange was actually happening although there is no official statement or confirmation from the russian side as yet so let's get more details from you goes dan if he joins us again the studio. this story's moved on hasn't it since we last spoke now the ukrainian president's office has said yes the process is underway well indeed well this is a very sensitive story both for russia and for ukraine so most details that we have right now they exist in the realm of. speculation reports even rumors and the only

concrete thing that we have to work with is that post or even rather every post by ukraine's attorney general what it does it is soon is that some ukrainian sailors and 4 other people could be on the way home from russia to ukraine now those 4 people mentioned by name in that post most of them were jailed in russia on terrorism charges and one of them got prison time for illegal possession of firearms and ammunition this is pretty much all the details we know so far we don't even have the official figure as to how many ukrainians russia is ready to give up i mean if you want an estimate to provide an estimate it could be right now it looks like it could be up to 20 people the 4 people mentioned in that post by name and up to $24.00 ukrainian sailors who jailed in russia when it comes to the russians in ukraine according to the information that he has they have not crossed

the border between russia and ukraine just yet ok with regards to those people then ukrainians you mentioned sale is there is the resumption they are the sailors that being held over the years into the strike back in november yeah absolutely is that incident of those sailors just a reminder as to what happened back then last year in november on the 25th of november some ukrainian military vessels entered the coach straight it's a straight right off the coast of the crimean peninsula and of course russia says crimea is part of its territory ukraine disagrees so those vessels the nord warnings by the russian navy so the russian ships had to intervene and to intercept those ukrainian vessels there was a rough interception as well because one of the russian ships rammed a ukrainian vessel and the russian sailors opened live fire to stop the ukrainian ships i think 3 ukrainian sail. injured last year in that incident light injuries

and they received all needed medical help as soon as they got on land since then they stayed they they stayed in captivity they were they were prisons they were prison as i should say and so since then ukraine has been calling on russia to release those sailors now in the wake in ukraine russian journalist carol he was released from pretrial detention again the people linking the yes indeed because both could be quite positive developments for relations between russia and ukraine right now we have this prisoner swap that is under way something that the 2 countries have been working on and on a very for a very very long time and just this week just a couple of days ago russian journalist the head of the ukrainian branch of the russian news agency ria novosti he released from prison after spending there more

than 400 days without any sentence he's accused of treason by ukraine but he's not been found guilty of anything and russia has been adamant that this person is innocent until proven guilty he's just been doing his job like you or me do and that he should not wait for a verdict he should not await a verdict in captivity in prison and so this week the ukrainian court released him on bail ok all right well we'll keep across this story throughout the day thank you for that was legal she's done affair with the latest. now newly declassified documents to reveal the u.s. knew months in advance that indian easier would try and disrupt east timor's independence vote held 20 years ago but washington refused to act instead pushing for closer military ties with you carter any prank or is more details. one of the youngest nations on this planet will celebrate 20 years of independence now at the

end of august east timor is remembering the referendum which made it possible among those on the guest list as america's assistant secretary of state but let's put that aside for a moment and dave there's lots to commemorate because the price that east timorese paid before and after the vote to be free of indonesian rule is immense or probably there's no proper word for it so many lives were lost. with this with. you susan this is due to the. blues. this was just. using.

this brings me to the reason why i mention the top u.s. diplomat all those declassified u.s. security papers so many times they've led to red faces at some very uncomfortable moments in august 29th one release revealed american officials were perfectly aware of what the end unease in military was up to the cia notes said their methods were to kill you drive out or intimidate into silence independence activists and took out the general population into acceptance often leads to more on the. conscious control at the pentagon was at the time very keen to keep up with indonesia there's

another document which shows a us admiral referring to the head of the indonesian army as a friend digging a bit further into the past has led us to more awkwardness or even ugliness how about this on the part of australian diplomats in the seventy's an embassy memo pointed at daily torturing raping and exit puting the captured population on the island of to more yes speck then that was also on the hands of indonesian troops the ugly part is this handwritten remark by an aussie diplomat it says sounds like fun another dark page in indonesian history was when the government got rid of hundreds of communist sympathizers throughout the sixty's guess who helped put together the lists of alleged communists the us embassy here's how one of its staff recalls that support it really was a big help to the army they probably killed

a lot of people and i probably have a lot of blood on my hands but that's not all bad there's a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment so again there's hardly any doubt the americans knew exactly what the rulers in charge in jakarta were like and so time magazine found no better words to describe their rise to power than the west's best news for years in asia so this friday do watch out for any redness on the face of the assistant secretary of state or perhaps you'll need some very powerful optics well i think unfortunately most countries including the us back in the 1990 s. and early 2000 would be guilty of engaging and political alliances for a geo political aspirations and for things other than preserving the rights of other people of course a stake. armaments 1st priority should be to its own civilians but unfortunately we don't see that in many countries now that being said what we're talking about in

east timor in indonesia since the us had interests with the indonesian government and the military and were actions were taken alliances made and even violence allowed to preserve an interest to preserve an interest of the administration but it is true that countries all governments should absolutely make sure that the 1st priority is the maintenance of their people their own economy before they go into to preserve their interest in another place even if it's under the false guise of human rights. 10 us democratic 2020 hopefuls have qualified to participate in the party's upcoming debates in september another dozen hopefuls are still in the race for the party's presidential nomination but fail to meet the strict criteria for taking part in that round of televised june well among those failing to qualify for the debates is hawaii representative here that's a surprise though to some as she was the most searched candidate following the 2

previous debates she has the process by which candidates are selected for the main stage the whole process really lacks transparency. people deserve having that transparency because ultimately it's the people who will decide who are democratic nominee will be and ultimately who our next president commander in chief will be and when you see that lack of transparency it creates. a lack of faith and trust in the process a lot easier. to just time the d.n.c. chooses who to give a platform to. it's primetime television if you want to be anybody in the democratic party you better make sure you get on the stage at the presidential debates so what do you need to do to make it 2 things 1st get over 130000 unique donations to get at least 2 percent in a national poll but here's where it gets tricky not every poll is the same and if the democratic national committee doesn't like you they can reject the poll results

that show things in your favor now tulsa gabbert has met the donations threshold he's got over 2 percent 126 different national polls however the democratic national committee says that doesn't count they have their certified list sure it's important of that information it's being provided but let's take a quick look at some of the polls that were rejected politico the economist reuters if these widely respected outlets and news agencies aren't credible in america then who is polling in the united states there is a club. a network of close associates and friends and they frown upon those polls that are either new or are now members of the club or the association so i would certainly speculate the has something to do with it it is a partisan organization the democratic national committee so any poll say that may have

a tradition of leaning republican or not considered to be in the mainstream of democratic artists and ship you know would be would be ruled out even the polls deemed credible by the democratic party have a margin of error of between 2 and 6 percent and when the criteria for being in the debates is only 2 percent a margin of error like that is a pretty big deal so tell us again could have between 0 and 7 percent support among american voters now keep in mind there are over 200000000 people who are registered to. oh in the united states of america so what's the difference between 0 and 14000000 well whatever it is it is apparently not important to the democratic national committee there is a margin of sampling error so if the margin of error is plus or minus 4 percent what is 2 percent in the polls if if it's 1.51 percent

that the candidate has that does get rounded up to 2 percent whereas the 1.44 percent which is meaningless one could argue the democratic national committee is a private organization we can establish our own rules but then they also have to be open to the charges by somebody like chelsea gambler who says this doesn't smell like it's fair and frankly i agree with the right of the smells that they're now the d.n.c. doesn't exactly have a reputation for impartiality and fairness leaked e-mails and 2016 show that the democratic party leaders were working pretty hard to defeat bernie sanders and make sure that it was hillary clinton who ultimately took on donald trump now after the outrage in 2016 the new democratic party chair tom perez promised to empower grassroots activists i am more committed than ever before to restoring votes is faith in the democratic process because even the perception of impartiality when

unfair advantage undermines our ability to win that is unacceptable to that end the new d.n.c. under my leadership is committed to the task of making sure that all 2020 nominating process will be unquestionably fair and transparent so as the list of candidates gets whittled down to one final nominee voters will have to decide as to whether mr perez is living up to his promise. r.t. new york. the m s n b c news channel has retracted a bombshell report on donald trump and his supposed it ties to russia it alleged the us president had russian oligarchs cosign loans for him with deutsche bank on the basis of a single unidentified source. and this single source close to your bank has told me. that the trump doll trumps loan documents there show. that he has cosigners that's how he was able to obtain those loans and that the cosigners

are russian. that would explain it seems to me every kind word donald trump has ever said about russia and vladimir putin. well the story did back. to the channel accusing it of spreading false and defamatory news he also threatened seeing legal action if the story was not retracted and s n b c host lawrence o'donnell apologize for airing the claims but insisted that he may still be true. tonight we are retracting the story we don't know whether the information is inaccurate but the fact is we do know it was ready for broadcast and for that i apologize however this isn't the 1st time the channel has gone to with a story and hasn't fully verified. russia can just shut off the electricity they have that ability now and it is like negative 50 degrees in the dakotas right now

what would happen if russia killed the power in fargo today and intelligence officials now believe with a high level of confidence that russian president vladimir putin was personally involved in a covert effort to interfere in america's presidential race the only thing we do know is that putin's enemies have a way of turning up dead and that evidence has a way of being meticulously covered up when you have a public figure in this particular case donald trump the president who is suing he has to show that the alleged defamatory statement was the product of actual malice either that the individuals knew it was wrong or they use it here's a word reckless disregard for the facts they are at the ratings basement there are baby monitors that have higher ratings than this they don't care and you soon as they're done with this lie they'll go to the next slide because

they can drive as fast as they want through the street called mendacity and this is not even journalism it's not even remotely that it's i can say what i want and if it's wrong. oh ok will give a little bit of an apple owed you and move on not even a slap on the wrist nothing brushing off he still had to kiss our frenchman says he's going to have pale after a court overturned his ban on the use of pesticides near his home time we'll have a look at the story just after the break. most people think just stand out in this business you need to be the 1st one on top of the story or the person with the loudest voice of the biggest raid in truth to stand down the news business you just need as the right questions and demand the

right answers. question. seemed wrong wrong wrong just don't all. get to shape out these days to educate and engage with equals betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart when she's to look for common ground.

a comeback now frenchman has accused the country's government of double standards after a court overturned his ban on pesticides name his time he's now appealing that decision . as a story. this tiny breton village of language has found itself at the center of controversy in the battle over the pesticides in may the local mag to quote some saw as being a bold decision to ban the use of pesticides within 150 meter cotton over the village farming unions were furious on the matter ended up in court now the man daniel coeff had his ban overturned but the debacle is now shining a light on the deep political contradictions so rounding pesticides in france well president mike corn praised his intentions for tackling phosphates a burning issue over health concerns he said the solution was not to issue

a decree that doesn't comply with the law for mag coeff that's a double standard. i don't understand what is happening in my craw and the ecology minister said that i am right and doing a good thing to protect my people but in the meantime i am facing court for a decision to keep pesticides at a distance of 150 meters i don't understand politics now it seems the decision by the court to take his ban on pesticides was illegal has also earned good residence in this usually sleepy village. shown to children with lots of fields around lung where and it's important health matter for on. especially for children we breathe the in the press the sites we did during testing the amount of best to sites with found was alarmingly high even though we eat organic and we grow some of our own food that is also organic.

but it was a bad judgment and the mayor wasn't heard i think the government isn't doing its job there the 1st you see that there should be no pesticide but they do nothing or so i honestly think it was a bad legal decision by the court. which genes are coupons says we are in a small village that is close to a farm an area we need to protect people too we never know what kind of health issues could be created by pesticides so i think the decision by the mayor was intelligent and he needed to make a decision to protect the people but now he has difficulties with the justice system the world health organization has said gleich phosphate often used to weed killer probably causes cancer well gov phosphate has hit the headlines over health concerns much corn had promised to ban the use of phosphate by 2021 that provoked an outcry by farmers in unions who said they needed an alternative mark and then pushed the ban back to the following year when the current license will

expire now across france the ban imposed by mcewan has gained traction he may have lost the 1st battling court but now around 20 other mayors have followed his lead banning the use of pesticides close to homes while farmers on the juris decry these bans as being politically motivated saying they are getting on the environmental bandwagon ahead of my oral elections. mayors are really thinking of the next election environmentalist's are wreaking havoc on our agriculture and our only factories floundering unless these mayors are outstanding scientists they are taking advantage of people's fear to make this kind of decision which is good for their image is protectors of the environment and the population but it seems the government has been backed into a corner there must be a minimum distance between residential areas and best decides brain i will advise

in the coming days forming unions and the companies that produce pesticides are sure to have something to say about that but so too does make us who believe that these things all the only way to protect people who live in their farms which use pesticides otherwise he says their health is screwed so all it even ski for artie lange go it in pretty. u.s. president donald trump says that american troops will be withdrawn from afghanistan once the deal with the taliban is reached we're going down to $8600.00 and then we'll make a determination from there as to what happens we'll make a determination but we're going down to 8600 we're bringing it down we have it very well controlled meanwhile i'm sitting in amnesty international warns that human

rights defenders are attacked and harassed by the authorities the taliban and also by islamic state reports its report states that the afghan government has repeatedly failed to investigate attacks on activists who are quote killed with impunity and service have even been told to take up arms to defend themselves human rights defenders are calling on the international community and those involved in the conflict to take action. the international community must step forward and provide of ghana stance human rights community with the support the euro gently need. letter of b.s. nice as the us show which is the blame for civilian deaths in afghanistan. the us military has been responsible for most civilians outside afghanistan over the past 18 years or so in the case of afghanistan the us military has been there for almost 2 decades now human rights of never once factored into the equation and what we see today is what we've seen in previous years many civilians being killed many human

rights activists and. the carnage goes on because old the us and the coalition's presence in the country is too much a stage at the moment for. the us representative syria's government to be generous to show genuine concern for human rights in afghanistan. you're watching. company this morning don't forget plenty of stories to you on our website you can find that as usual i don't seem to. post g 7 what is the lay of the land calls for unity to demonstrate the opposite also iran is again in the spotlight just what is trump's foreign policy in this moment.

here. bernie sanders announces a plan to save journalism and clamp down on social media platforms and donald trump is telling his followers to find an alternative to fox news we're breaking down both announcements on this edition of. welcome to politicking i'm matthew cook in for larry king this week senator bernie sanders put forward in an op ed his plan to save journalism in america and further

states that as president he would appoint law enforcement officials to clamp down on the likes of facebook and google to keep them from exercising too much control over the media industry and on wednesday donald trump shocked many by stating that his long cherished fox news channel isn't working for him anymore and he. telling his followers to look for an alternative to the conservative news channel trump 2 has long criticized the digital platforms of a bias against him and republicans lots to break down and take a look at on this episode and for that i'm joined by john i to roland award winning host of the young turks and the damage report on the young turks network and michael knowles host of the michael noll show at the daily wire and author of the book reasons to vote for democrats a comprehensive guide they join me in studio welcome guys thanks for having me so let's talk about this bernie sanders bed to begin with he wants to reform journal

did you guys read it i guess it's a little bit longer than your book it isn't involved it's infinitely longer than my book but i did read it and as is often the case with bernie i actually think he frequently identifies the real problems identifies correct problems decreasing wages problems with immigration problems with in this case big tech coming in and clamping down on journalism. i am all for taking down big tech i am all for breaking them up and reducing their power their interest they control the flow of information around the internet obviously conservatives talk about this a lot because there have been high profile incidents where conservatives have been targeted some of my own videos have been taken down on various platforms. and i think this affects the left as well and i think it affects everyone in the middle nobody wants a few companies to control the flow of information where i disagree with bernie is on his solution which is to give the government more taxing power to go in take money from these companies and then give it to some government sponsored news organizations i don't want the government to control my news or back news

organizations any more than i want big tech to have control over it well done let's get your overview of the bernie sanders up and then we'll get into some of the points you just say so i think for anyone who hasn't seen it hasn't read it yet he does identify big tactic he talks about facebook he talks about google and i'm not comfortable at all with companies having that much influence economic influence over creators the ability to determine whether or not they can pay their rent but also just access to the news in the 1st place at this point whether you're on the left or the right or wherever you pretty much have to use these platforms and that's not necessarily best for american journalism but he also identifies large corporations and wealthy individuals who are buying up media outlets around the country owning more and more. you know they've changed the rules in terms of how many different outlets you can own in a particular area and all of this is happening at the same time that more and more communities are losing their small newspapers or more independent local news as well something like 1400 communities in the past 2 years of lost a newspaper thousands of.