it's midday here in moscow making headlines right now then the u.s. continues its strong and to iran rhetoric now accusing to run of attacking saudi oil facility despite who's the rebel saying they did it around the accusations as a lie washington stance on iran will soften even after in the week just gone or kish u.s. national security adviser john bolton was fired by donald trump. pulp fiction the russian government described a c.n.n. report about the cia withdrawing a high level spy from moscow. this

is art international on sunday the 15th of october low for moscow with me kevin owen it's the weekly roundup of the big stories approach over the last 7 days and 1st one happening right now this weekend continuing into it the u.s. secretary of state might pompei as accused iran now of launching a quote unprecedented assault on the world's energy supply saying that to rand is behind those attacks on saudi arabian oil production the last day or so saran denies any involvement in the attack calling the u.s. accusations a lie here's the exact wording from the u.s. we call on all motions to publicly and unequivocally condemn iran's attacks the united states will work with our partners and allies to ensure that energy markets remain well supplied and iran is held accountable for its aggression. such accusations as well as blind in inappropriate comments in the diplomatic context are in comprehensible and meaningless in international relations even hostility has borders but the us seems to reach that it looks like the maximum pressure policy

has failed and has now become the maxim y. or filing of saudi arabia has not been hard as a result of fires in 2 major state run facilities eyewitnesses shared a video on social media of a huge blaze were gunshots can apparently be heard in the background. the rebels claimed responsibility for the point nearly a dozen drones to attack that saudi or processing facility and a major oil field they said the strikes were in response to the saudi led war in yemen and demand an end to riyadh's 4 year long intervention in the country backed by the us washington's also previously charged with lending support to the who thinks i would professor of political science at the university it's around believes these latest accusations from the us are most likely baseless. how long my current has a very long history of making accusations without providing any actual evidence they who deserve already claimed responsibility for these attacks and although the scale of these attacks are on precedented we have to remember that the who tees

have launched drone attacks deep inside saudi arabia for months now so i think there is no surprise there the us has accused iran of sending weaponry to the who tease but we also have to remember that yemen has been under a very severe military blockade by the saudis with the help actually of the americans for over 4 years now making it very difficult to even send food lead to loan weaponry so i think he's just trying to come up with excuses to charge iran of crimes that iran has actually not committed so the vivid dance around rhetoric from the u.s. continues even after one of her own as most outspoken critics national security adviser john bolton was fired by president trump on tuesday it was one of the big headlines of the week from claimed he disagreed with both mom several key foreign policy issues there's no word on who will be the next national security adviser as john bolton he was well known for his aggressive hawkish approach to foreign policy

he backed scrapping the iran nuclear deal as well as supporting the idea of regime change in turan he also bucked the u.s. intervention in syria i was staunchly against easing pressure on north korea than hawkins takes a closer look at bolton's track record. scandals resignations and dismissals are part and parcel of trump's presidency a few policy disagreements a swift tweet from the presidents and another administration official bites the dust it was clear from the outset that trump and his national security advisor would have their disagreements i'm the one that tempers him but that's ok i have different sides i mean i have john bolton and i have other people that are a little more dovish than him and ultimately i make that decision we can speculate on which exact what will lead to bolton's exit the failed talks on afghanistan the question of rush hour or perhaps iran but it seems the animosity lasted until his final day in office i offered to resign last night and president trump said let's

talk about it tomorrow i informed john bolton last night that his services are no longer needed at the white house i disagreed strongly with many of his suggestions as did others in the administration views himself as a skilled dealmaker who talked tough where needed for bolton but wasn't enough he needed to walk the walk and actively consistently show strength on all fronts the middle east russia north korea latin america you name it he held out on compromising stance on sanctions military action and regime change. bolton was one of the key advocates of toppling the madeira government using any means necessary all options on the table ready to go this troika of tyranny this triangle of chairs stretching from havana to caracas to managua is the cause of immense human suffering this is a time for action. trump showed he was willing to meet to negotiate with

even the greatest perceived u.s. adversities even if it meant just a symbolic photo op the right intentions seems to be their bet it will make it clear that they won't i don't like sanctions because. in this country i think they want to make peace i think it's time for bolton though this was unacceptable so it could be a long and unproductive meeting or it could be a short non productive meeting we have very much in mind the libyan model from 20032004 while bolton boiled that north korea had violated u.n. sanctions offer a missile test and may trump downplayed the incident saying he wasn't spooked north korea fired off some small weapons which disturbed some of my people and others but not me. taking on iran was perhaps bolton's priority number one within a month of his appointment in april 28th seen the u.s.

had pulled out of the iran nuclear deal and advocate of preemptive strikes he pushed for military action against iran after a u.s. drone was brought down and as ever his thinly veiled threats centered around regime change we hope that these new measures directed at the arabian dictatorship will compel the government to re-evaluate its pursuit of terror at the expense of its people well i think he is on the verge of making a mistake i think his advisors are pushing him in the wrong direction ironically just as bolton prepared to depart speculation has been rife on possible talks between trump and the rein in president rouhani it would have thought that possible after so much hostile rhetoric perhaps the final straw was trump's plans of wind down the longest war in u.s. history including hosting talks with taliban leaders at camp david it's speculated that bolton this was in comprehensible it seems that with or without bolton's

presence u.s. foreign policy may have more surprises in store during trump's 1st. world talk which is quick to focus or the come late to the program even though the u.s. shutting down the broken broken piece deals that the taliban still wants to get the negotiating table. t. found out in the week it exclusive interview with the negotiating team when they came into moscow will bring you that in the 2nd half of the program but later. the russian government described to c.n.n. reporters pulp fiction after news channel ed claims about the cia withdrawing a high level spy from moscow c.n.n. reported that a u.s. spy inside the russian government was successfully returned to america back in 27 saying over concerns about the way that donald trump handled classified information but both the white house and the syria a say that story is incorrect saskia taylor's been delving deeper. secret missions exfiltration of spies top level intelligence it sounds like the makings of

a thriller and in a way it is because this is an elaborate tale recently had by c.n.n. multiple trump administration officials tell me that these are officials with direct knowledge that in a previously undisclosed to secret mission in 2017 the u.s. successfully extracted from russia one of its highest level sources covert sources inside the russian government the c.n.n. report claims a man at the highest level of the kremlin was feeding theeye information for over a decade that he was so ensconced within the kremlin wall so friendly with and trusted by president putin's inner circle but he even managed to photograph documents on the russian leaders desk u.s. intelligence officials had already expressed concerns about the safety of this by other russian assets given the length of their cooperation with the u.s. this according to a former senior intelligence official the report is peppered with vague mentions of

secret sources mysterious interviews and skips a bit on the facts facts make a thriller indeed the c.n.n. report doesn't even given in playing of the identity of the informant but the russian media was willing to give it a chance and landed on one smiling cough it's been reported that he previously worked at the russian embassy in washington before becoming up to stay counselor at the presidential administration not really the pinnacle of influence which is true that smiling cough worked in the president's administration but several years ago he was fired his position wasn't that of a top official all the discussion in the u.s. media about someone urgently extracting someone and saving someone it cetera it is part of as you know a sort of pope fiction genre but c.n.n. probably felt it had a bombshell report on its hands it found yet another. unverified crum to suggest it was the russians not the american public who lacked

a trump and then showing that washington had thick fast fully outwitted moscow by sneaking a legit spy out but what could make this revelation more delicious how about trump also being shown to be an unreliable slipped president now that would be called a person directly involved in these discussions said that the removal of the russian was driven in part by concerns that president trump in his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and that that could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy or so just to clarify the cia gave up its most important source on the off chance that trump might spill the beans a source that's been cultivated over 10 years in the country is readily says it's almost impossible to infiltrate i could even buy into that if the cia gave me something to what quits i mean they aren't exactly trump's cheerleaders their response that must have come as a bitter blow at c.n.n. h.q.

misguided speculation that the president's handling of our nation's most sensitive intelligence which he has access to each and every day driven alleged exfiltration operation is inaccurate i love a good story but anonymous sources classified information which is impossible to verify trump is incapable of dealing with the discreet demands of office and washington being a step ahead of everyone well it just fits all too neatly next away from the news feed of this weekend wind of the clock way back the mystery of what happens in a group of soviet hikers in the ural mountains but 1959 is still puzzling minds today i know you too can explore the various theories surrounding what's called the law of pass incident. to go launch by artie's video agency ruptly.

you want. well this special allows you to follow the hikers on their fated 10 day trek you can explore what the group did each day through photos or maps and also what they wrote is all chronicled you'll also discover more about the unexplained injuries on the bodies and the various theories as to what exactly happened to them but it's all about interaction too you can put yourself in the shoes of one of those team members as they walk along that route and then vote on your preferred version of what actually happened to them after weighing up the evidence that we present to you.

kiran exactly 14 minutes past the still to come the beloved british cartoon character a fireman sam is father brigade mascot for not being inclusive enough just one of the stories after this break. you know world big part of the law and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that made stream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door on the bad shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle

for the troops the time is now we're watching closely watching the hawks. so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy. let it be an arms race in this spear in dramatic development only and going to resist i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical time to sit down and. again this is our weekly news review continues and this was begin the week the afghan taliban is urging donald trump to return to the negotiating table in an

exclusive interview with see they were here in moscow as part of regular talks with russian officials this week donald trump shut down the year long peace process with a militant group that could have seen an end to almost 2 decades of the u.s. war in afghanistan the taliban negotiators here were supposed to then go to the united states before signing an agreement the deal was to include american withdrawal of troops in exchange for a commitment from the militants not to shelter terrorists drug justified enter negotiations so they can islamist attack in the afghan capital that resulted in the death of an american soldier in fact it was a suicide car bombing that left 10 dead and injured dozens more r.t. asked the taliban direct how they expected trump to negotiate with them when they're killing his troops. the next day when mr parker canceled this sort of. negotiation he had mr buffett with his father is that he says he admitted that he had a good $1000.00 well so if big kill thousands of us why we cannot get one out of there

were 2 other daughters imposed on us. american soldiers there and i want to stop it's not him it for the soldiers are going to need in washington they are never there was a lot of us but still we. proposed and we are very keen to bring peace and i want some to the question but unfortunately i need to which we reached some sort of fidelity when it was considered by the american side cites if the if the american side is not really a negotiation and did not want peace on the day it will so all that we would be compared to defend ourselves i would never to do this 500 years. i don't know that there. is a behind that we can ask them what happened but we are still committed to the leadership issues we see that i would stand and i would probably see from this time the commitment of the scientists that there's no solution for of one conflict

except because she shouldn't and accept the peace on the table so we have all revitalized we hope that mr tung read his. announcement in he come back to where we were and we just the sight of the doubt after the fact if you're going to go there go now to a story in from the u.k. there a cartoon fireman no less has been criticized for failing to keep up with modern equality standards the classic children's t.v. character has been axed from his job then as a mascot for local brigade after bosses they said he could discourage women from joining. his friends need him more than ever. the function of the rescue team managed to save the day fireman sam from ponce pan the 1st aired in 1971 imation of firefighters in a small welsh village since then has been widely used to promote fire safety and

services across the u.k. but now it seems as numbers up at least in some parts as your explained. generations of kids may have grown up with him but legendary children's t.v. show character fireman sam needs to get with the times that's according to the lincolnshire fire and rescue service for years he was their mascot helping to recruit new fina fighters bots now lincolnshire fire and rescue service say that fineman sound is outdated and non-inclusive and he's putting off potential female recruit firefighters nationally and residents locally have raised some concerns that firemen some doesn't reflect the fire service today in terms of both the job itself and our workforce it's important to us that our open days and community events don't think anyone feel excluded and therefore we took

this decision lincolnshire as chief fire officer. fired fireman sam has been getting roasted for it really does a great job you don't as a one writing lives as a wind away that's not yours it's not acting like you should do is to far yourself and it is a leaf i'm a sahm alone this isn't the 1st time that fireman sam has been in hot water many argue that while the show is politically correct and features plenty of female characters it should be renamed to firefighter. no i think you got it right i think it's just somebody taking it to consider and stickery really and i think come quite happy with what it is he is the epitome of straight. to my mind. may not be terribly appealing to people who want to be. firemen however if you're to be a farmer you should want to know. why didn't you just stick to the basics and

enjoy and get back to the basics so we might have a nicer place to live. very very happy to have him renamed firefighters and 1st to then become a non gender specific person. but why not some sort of gender specific name that's true. yes. yes exactly exactly they could be put in here because no. just do. it was just a children's character taking things too far as that music and another british cartoon icon peppa pig was recently been rated by none other then the london fire brigade whose head is by the way a woman for featuring an episode where mommy pig pretended to be a fire man and not a fire fighter mummy pig is dressed as a fireman in a well you just like. i'm going to the mummy's fire engine practice

come on peppa pig we've not been firemen for 30 years you have a huge influence on kids and using out of date stereotypical gender specific wording prevents young girls from becoming firefighters join our fire fighting sexism campaign women make up just 5.2 percent of firefighters in england and with that in mind lincolnshire fire and rescue service have come up with 3 original new characters to help attract more diverse recruits their anthropomorphise sized fire extinguishers freddy filberts and penelope. well from an embattled coach from the small screen to one on the silver screen next release hollywood's latest movie is facing a backlash it's been accused of glorifying violence.

well the joker starring joaquin phoenix documents the early is the villain from the batman franchise it shows him as a loner who descends into madness it's not yet on public release but a screening at the venice film festival got people hard giving online with many saying it encourages viewers to sympathize with problematic themes. i don't want to have sympathy for a man best known for his robbery murder and arguably rape shoved down my throat for 2 hours it was not that long ago when a socially isolated described chilled white man who felt wronged by society quite literally dressed up as a joker and shot up a movie theater in colorado joke of a film where you're supposed to sympathize with a mediocre white man radicalising to do range violence will no doubt be appealing to the wrong audience for the worst reasons millions of children will see the

upcoming film joker to laugh at a clown millions of children will be taught that crime violence and mayhem the stuff of jokes one will howl with take responsibility for promoting a culture of crime we spoke to a filmmaker who believes that censorship should not be a last resort here. the problem with criticizing a film before it comes out for what it's supposed to say is that we're starting to as a lot of people like to do in this country self censor art and creative expressions of art and i have a big issue with pure is simply because it's really difficult to comment on something that you've not seen and if you're already saying that something is going to be the way you think it's going to be and you don't want to see it then we have a problem we have a problem that we have in this country with the polarization at a political level at

a cultural level we don't want to see what we think is going to be different from what we think about what we support i don't think that video games or movies will encourage people to to commit acts of violence i think the issue is at the source of education of many things that are going on in this country when it comes to the mass shootings and role of violence i think entertainment if something is an expression of something that is happening in this society that we need to deal with and it's a reminder as there is a lot of issues that are not dealt with and i feel that a lot of people like to put those issues under the carpet instead of dealing with them head on. with the u.s. budget deficit expected to hit a trillion dollars next year questions are being raised about how american taxpayer money is being spent and a new report by a kentucky senator resulted to those calls similar more bizarre examples of government spending.

that's the way some a big world news stories panned out this last 7 days as reported here from r.t. this sunday the 15th of september 1 of when it was happening i was well the don't call. saying thanks for watching have

a great rest of this weekend. join me every thursday on the alec simon show and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you then. resists is a sticker from the water bottle phone in the stomach of a fish the brand is part of the coca-cola company which sells millions of bottles of soda every day the idea was that let's tell consumers there are the bad was there the litter bugs are throwing this away industry should be blamed for all this waste the company has long promised to reuse the plastic.

and may let. the on my end stay on your owns at a special projects funded. online your best bet is the end of it for the team but for now the mountains of waste only grow higher. on may 3rd of 2003 the ambassador of switzerland to turkey on delivers a letter from iran to the united states. in that letter the iranians essentially offer negotiations to open up the nuclear program for full transparency. the proposal came in i happened to see it's because a copy was also given to a member of congress that i worked for at the time. he sent it over to the white

house and called rove. call rove called back he said that he found the proposal intriguing he wanted to know if it was genuine were a promise to put it in front of the president i would call karl rove a dear friend. i've seen made a far sighted courage put america on a war footing. and protect us against a brutal enemy in a dangerous conflict that will shape this new century no formal response was given to the iranians. i'm grateful to have been witness to history. and the argument was that whatever could come out of a negotiation with the iranians. even more could be achieved by simply removing the regime in iraq. in a way to sum up the arguments however a principle in the bush administration said that we simply do not talk to evil. and as tony zinni said former central command commander if you like the rock you'll

love the wrong that is a pin to 14 year 3 to $4.00 trillion dollar invasion at the end of which the world western asia will look not much different than it does right now it'll still be in turmoil and still be in chaos and 70 plus 1000000 iranians will hate our living. in the pentagon and i want to see your new secretary defense the ideas that wolfowitz shared with me he and secretary cheney in 911000 packaged retooling our i don't want to know why dallas briefed people like presidents america needs a new strategy of force a regime change. so there's this idea springs back up again in 2001. i went through the pentagon in the november of 2001 and one of the general said sure i got this memo on yes it's. going to go after 7 countries in 5 years.