france is crippled by a nationwide strike over pension reform plans with protests in the capital descending into violence. the russian foreign minister rejects germany's claims that moscow has not been cooperating with an investigation into the murder of a georgian citizen in berlin. and twitter faces fresh censorship accusations after changes to its terms of service leads to fears of shadow banking .

are broadcasting live direct from our studios in moscow this is where our team international and sean thomas certainly got tagged with us. right france has been paralyzed by its biggest strike in years with this thursday workers protesting in mass against the government's plans to overhaul the pension system transport networks have been brought to a standstill with schools and hospitals badly affected as well and instructions have been held up right across the country one of the largest trade unions in the france says 1500000 people marched in support of the protests while the interior ministry estimates 800000 took part to show dubinsky has been following events for us in pairs. this is to propose changes by the french government the pension system even fronts the idea is that they will see a model come a number of different systems around food you 2 different systems into a universal system but people say that i will have a massive impact on net pensions because it will mean that pensions perhaps could.

be lower in the future or in fact that they might have to work even longer and that has caused a huge fury here in frogs hair plasterer public but i can tell you that the crimes go all the way back more than a close to god do nor which is where this process was originally due to start off with what was coming for many hours is turned to huge tensions with clashes between the police and the protest as you might be able to hear some of those plus going off behind us that's tear gas that's being thrown into the protesters the taxes have set light to several parts of the streets around me including some of the electric scooters they've been bringing items to put on to the fire we saw a van. on fire and they got tear gas really coming quite close to us and you might get a sense of it just down that you can see there more tear gas. into the protesters trying move people away from the area so that point crews can get on with

a job which is to try and put out that fire i get you get a sense of some of the damage that's being caused hit by shell to hit has been smashed that's something we see quite regularly in the protests another fire taking place across the street actually as they're not just that big fire with a big plume of smoke but of course hey it really looks like in the last sort of 10 to 15 minutes or hell it has broken loose they've also been tensions elsewhere in fronts not just here tensions in places like no other cities across from reality is that people here are angry figures coming in from the prefecture and from the police when the course fronts say that more than 450000 people have taken part in this strike today not just transport workers but teaches students health workers plumbers a fire fighters and even the police people are adamant that they want to have.

voices heard and it seems like today they've come out to the streets to make sure that's happening among the other protests around france a giant effigy supposedly of president. was out on display in the southern city of protestors there were seen hitting it with sticks as it dangled from a tree the strike action there also saw some sporadic violence as demonstrators clashed with police i've been speaking to some of those who took part of. it but this is not a strike by railway employees only but a national strike all the employees who don't want to have their pensions counted and don't want to work more while earning less than $3.00 that i'm 28 years old i've been working for 10 years and as things are it's clear to me i won't be able to retire it will be impossible to survive until then nobody cares about our working conditions at all. while we're doing is good very good is imposing their will present we want to live and work and earn

a decent living the same goes for retirees who should get decent pensions because this affects us all we are working you have to work for the unemployed and the pension. and we work poor we want to fight against. russia has flatly rejected germany's claims that it has not been cooperating with an investigation into the murder of a georgian national in berlin in august russian foreign minister sergei lavrov told r.t. on thursday that it appears moscow will again be blamed for a crime it was not involved in with the story his searches. relations between moscow and bettina now going drastically downhill germany's unexpected decision to expel 2 russian embassy staffers on wednesday has left more scope fuming angela merkel complained russia didn't do enough to have ceased tame the investigation into the murder of a georgia national back in august and now barely says there is real and sufficient

indication that russia was behind it i asked russia's foreign minister sergey lavrov for his response in the city is going over russia and germany have special channels set up to tackle issues such as violations of the law we should use them they said we did not cooperate enough this is groundless some countries today recalled the tragedy of m.h. 17 my dutch counterpart said we didn't do enough then we supplied them with all the necessary information with data from our radars and so on we gave them everything where all the satellite images to us promised nobody answered that we asked them what kind of cooperation they want from us they responded by saying you have to confess you did it that would be corporative if germany wants to follow suit nothing good will come of it but that's not a good way to deal with anyone and with russia in particular isn't him 100 was a 40 year old georgia and citizen of chetan origin he was targeted in

a berlin park on his way to a mosque with eyewitnesses saying he was shot in the head by a man on a bicycle his murder was then dubbed by the media as scree paul 2.0 and the victim labeled as a kremlin opponent but who was the victim a right hand men to terrorists during the 2nd chechen war his role was to lead extremist groups in the caucasus and recruit spies and hunger shrill is reported paramilitary career continued into 2012 when he is said to have assisted at georgian operation against his former comrades considered a terrorist by the russian i thought. says he was also listed as a potential is the miss rat for some time in germany to now various media outlets have published their own conclusions into his death the evidence includes 4 to comparisons and killing parton's of a man who had been hiding from interpol and russia and the reporters suggesting the

wanted murderer was then hard by moscow chechnya to do it again the federal investigation in germany is just the beginning now until merkel says she hopes russia will help the german investigators but it seems no matter who was behind it the embassy expulsion indicates that the verdict has in fact already been given. power to reporting from europe. terms of service says it will now be able to put limits on content raising fears the social media platform could apply so-called shadow bands that effectively means suppressing publicly posted content without the users knowledge that their posts are visible to followers it is an accusation twitter has faced before dark his ego is dumb of comments could become the norm from next year. twitter is coming out of the shadows remember all these media figures accusing the social platform of

sneakily hiding their posts from their followers feeds what big brother hides from us what is referred to as shadow banding maybe even more pernicious if you're on the left maybe you're ok with this but if you're not on the left or even if you are and you revere the 1st amendment you should be concerned that's actually been well substantiated vice news which is not a right wing outlet says that this is happening on our own team basis to a lot of folks on the right side of the aisle but almost never people on the left side of the aisle do not know our island people very least that's what i think is that you've got to be balanced house leader kevin mccarthy wrote our chairman a letter and said hey this is going on and we think your committee should investigate it and how the twitter boss made a surprise an innocent face saying that oh no no no they're definitely not going behind anyone's backs to quietly hide their opinions twitter undertook no behavior

to selectively censor conservative republicans or conservative voices on your platform correct correct well apparently all those assurances were just a big pile of nonsense now for those of you not to tech savvy i'm talking about a thing called shadow banning to the shadow band user everything looks just fine they can log into their account follow calm and like even post tweets but crucially their posts are simply not shown in other people's feeds even if they are subscribed to the user twitter had been adamantly denying that it does this until it slipped this one small change into their constitution we may also remove who refused to distribute any content on the services limit distribution a visit. realty of any content on the service suspended terminate users and reclaim

usernames without mobility to you it's a case where just a couple of words make all the difference the part about limiting tweet visibility was not in the previous edition of the document here it is nothing of the sort there and one can only wonder why twitter has decided to come clean all of a sudden perhaps because after all the outcry from the users wronged by the platform that simply made no sense in denying it anymore or and maybe because the twitter stuff had previously outright confessed to shadow banning already on hidden camera one. shadow. than someone you know. what you should. there's even a lawsuit against twitter accusing it of discriminating against conservative voices by your employer it's shadow banning tactic but now that it's in the terms of

service some users will just have to accept that they are talking to themselves it's not so much that twitter or facebook or any other social media platform have influence what they have is the power to promote certain people's opinion and d. promote tell of the people's influence on twitter that is the critical thing and what we need to do is have a fair platform we need to have a free and open discourse and we need to allow everybody to have a similar right to say what they've got to say i don't agree with absolutely everything that he said on twitter not even the conservative stuff that we're talking about but actually it shouldn't be for these big tech companies to decide our discourse our discussion our debate in our own country that is manifestly unfair and it's not a business. decision actually it's a public utility and that's a critical point. next week's general election in britain seems to be the

next to russia link scandal on the horizon the opposition labor party leader has been accused by the daily telegraph newspaper of helping to spread russian disinformation that is after he exposed the leaked documents on u.s. u.k. trade talks but it also comes just months after the very same paper published the story apparently based on the leak of the very same documents as artie's mccarran comment. it's crunch time ahead of the u.k.'s general election meaning it's now or never to smear anyone and everyone in red in other words link them to russia this week it's mostly comrade jeremy corbett as we can see from this headline bounce off the corp and produced a leaked cache of documents part of which he says reveals how pm boris johnson put the n.h.s. up for sale during trade talks with the us q damage control from mr prime minister the n.h.s. is not for sale and under no circumstances will this government any conservative

government do anything to put the n.h.s. up for negotiation in trade talks or problems and if you know that those documents represent meetings that took place between a british minister and officials in the usa i think it's time they gave us the shorts that they will not sell off our n.h.s. that they will not sell off our public services as part of a trade deal with the us and i just garage sales aside it's the least dossier that's grabbing attention if not from the russians when i could corbin's documents have possibly come from corbin calls it nonsense but among the pack of those demanding the labor party come clean it seems the daily telegraph knows better independent researchers said the documents carried the specter of foreign influence as they had been published online using methods that directly mirror an earlier russian descent from asian campaign the daily telegraph draws that conclusion from

a social media a little exposure that works with nato's atlantica council's think tank guaranteed impartiality then all maybe the guy is the telegraph are looking for answers in all the wrong places it seems the outlet got its hands on a strikingly similar dossier let's take a closer look here's an excerpt from the dossier corbin what there was much talk which printed do you commission is the bad guys it is easier to change your regulation before it's finalized ok again that was from the leak obtained by the opposition leader and this from the dossier published by the telegraph 4 months ago see the difference. british negotiators said washington had repeatedly painted the e.u. commission as the bad guys american official said it was easier to change a regulation before it is finalized there was much talk which painted the u. commission as the bad guys it is easier to change your regulation before it's finalized well maybe we should ask the authors of the july report who then

a source was that they have a new russian friends who might have provided the documents also here's a tip keep a close eye on the online comments section some of it's really worth a look like this one posted more than 2 weeks ago with links to the very scandalous documents at the center of it all available for anyone and everyone to enjoy however it would seem that the people most concerned about the origins of the dossier pop in to be those at the telegraph the u.s. u.k. trade talk minutes found their way on to the internet the cabinet office to investigate and if not do you think they should be i'm. not the answer to that. international olympic committee has thrown its weight behind claims of anti-doping tampering in moscow laboratory prompting a response from russia that story and much more are going to.

join me every thursday on the alex simon short and i'll be speaking to guest of the world of politics sport i'm showbusiness i'll see you then.

resumed on the mammoth cross continental energy project between russia and germany that is after attempts by washington to the rail nord stream to fell flat however the u.s. is continuing to threaten sanctions on the gas pipeline. i don't know what the final outcome will be on north stream to but i'm doubtful of our ability to stop it in its tracks given how far it has gone we do have some time there is a deliberative process about what our options are if we clearly come to the conclusion that diplomacy has not achieved our goal and sanctions are among them

the federal government must defend itself against the threat of sanctions if the sanctions are to hamper the operation of the pipeline it is necessary to think about countermeasures the way we shape our energy policy is not america's concern the pipeline is planned to go under the baltic sea with the aim of supplying europe with russian gas reaction of the pipeline has been mixed up from the very beginning the u.s. as well as some eastern european countries have been opposed to labeling the project as a political instrument to undermine the continent's energy independence energy expert at the free university of berlin don felt says some fear the pipeline will increase germany's clout. the pressure is high because it's nauseating to makes jaron ears us up in europe it's 110. $1000000000.00 annually in between it's more interesting to consumers i don't

really get in a position to be a gossip to sell gas to all over the best of europe to all over south of europe and central europe and. the united states always fall into the in all. their own economic interest as it comes in though to secure american. company interests worldwide and also american interests in the energy fields. of the stars of the hit netflix series that marcus wagner mara has blamed the elites back in his native brazil for creating a political monster he spoke exclusively to r.t. spanish channel host and former ecuadorian president rafael correa. limited i mean how could the people of great brazil choose such a primitive person as polson r o s e as an elegant i would this is a good question

a lot of well see to punish haps the fact is that when. you don't even think even you have no answer even a book. but during the government of lula and deal we lived in a certain isolated world the country has reached a new level 30000000 people have moved out of poverty airports are full of people like never before more black students are attending universities we lived in a certain isolated world. is a magician he cheve a reconciliation between social classes which was unlikely to ever happen in brazil told the bankers don't worry everything will be fine the only thing i want is to get people out of poverty you will not lose your positions and your income yes and for some time despite high prices for war materials everything went well but then the economy collapsed and humans did not possess the same ability or charisma as ruler and then the elite which temporarily agreed to this agreement said that's it

that's enough what it is. and i even think that the same elite which had no other choice but to support while so narrow is now beginning to realize what kind of monster they've created and is now trying to distance itself from a stance on the newspapers wrote that lula was a thief and insulted they do the same with culture figures here that for example i have a lot of lawsuits with journalists because i did not know that i will sue them they say that i use the law to promote culture because i have leftist views and support leftist ideology and i filed lawsuits against the media but what happened to move is a real mess. the head of the international olympic committee has a back to the findings of

a world anti-doping agency panel over alleged tampered it results in the moscow laboratory database russia has strongly denied the allegations after performing its own technical investigation artie's medina culture nova picks up the story for us. group of russian technical experts have conducted their own investigation and rejected claims that moscow manipulated athletes test results in its laborious tree database they claim that moscow has transferred all the information required to wada and never tempered with the results of the probe now it turned out that the database could have been altered by those who had admin access to the system and according to the experts those people would be the program developer and his team who actually back in 2015 fled to the united staes right as the doping scandal ask the latest russian experts say that they were the ones who tempered because they had admin rights russian experts have found that the developer of the limbs of the

most mr make it you of and his colleague mr. how did ministries access to the system as a result of the research the russian side is determines the database used to the most has been changed from time to time and after mr roach. and so believe ski fled to the us the database had been in fact run via the internet from los angeles until june 26th seen the situation changed in 2016 when it was revealed that such manipulations took place the russian agency was guarded and 2016 within you had of the department appointed but a problem seemingly still exist there are actually 2 copies of the database one that was given to wada in 2017 by an unknown whistleblower and the other one provided by the russian side in general this year and the group of experts now believe that it is essentially wrong to compare these 2 copies because of their

different origins while the 29000 copy was produced following all the necessary technical requirements the other came from unknown digital front here after possibly being tampered with and that is backed by avid and found during the investigation conducted by the experts. a russian led criminal investigation has found a mechanism of deliberate tampering with a doping test results deeply integrated into the lymph system so what do we have now well despite numerous offer is coming from russia to create a united and independent investigation team into this matter what and has been either avoiding or even rejecting these attempts russian experts to explain why they think this happened in this case we think that during his probe what is intelligence investigations department tried by all means not to undermine trust in the information provided by the whistleblower and the conclusions made by mr

mclaren and now a final decision on the case will be made on december the 9th in paris russia could now face a 4 year ban from hosting major sports competitions and clean athletes made to compete under a new trial flack does a female black swan is the top the hour desire to trash. thinking of getting a new puppy once we got her she was saying no it's still trapped in this tiny little wired people who need a crate with him he will stir freaking out and she won't want to spray him anywhere

near and thousands of breeding dogs are caged in inhumane conditions on puppies i mean 67 years you know they've been locked up in a cage outside you see no protection from the weather the heat you know the cold air the rain the snow the founder nothing they have no protection. because you. know it's 2 kids. across the u.s. crude puppy mills are supported by dog shows and still most of the puppies are coming from this large scale factory farming kind of operation it's hard being stuck at stores even joined a good businesses are involved but can't get them sent up there has been a shocking amount of organized opposition to efforts to increase the standards of care for dogs bred and commercial breeding facilities most of that opposition is coming from huge agricultural groups and industries that have nothing to do with

dogs don't buy dogs on a hearty. welcome to alex aventura we're required by fair city's on with their cat to the neo in the aftermath of the spanish elections is there any hope of a breakthrough to reconcile independence ambition of all their bellies pro. with the determination of the final state to make no further confessions we report from barcelona interviews with some of those driving a grassroots 2 month for political change but 1st all metallics a few tweets e-mails and messages on our catalan influence. the guardian says talking about the fuss the 1st serious in catalonia if sense that the program be

found emotional inspirational it talking to the wives of 2 of the imprisoned cattle and leaders and more i was impressed with the interview of liz castro the the american in barcelona she liked the description of liz's the lafayette to flee of the cattle and revolution that we have that of a sponsor on the spanish government particularly on the issue of the terms of imprisonment of their catalan leaders b. is a reminder of what was sanchez had to say in the washington post of a top of the 14th in the social and democratic state of law compliance means full compliance this has been a traditional process for full garden teasin transpired and see the government of spain will walk in the coming days towards public order and protecting our democratic laws as that's always done but david mcdonald begs to differ he says the european union needs to help put pressure on the spanish government that will be picking up that issue with that will that craig money later in this program and

then bear for a right she says this should be followed very interesting diplomacy is the solution was not a cup of tea peace and development is what everyone wants so diplomacy and dialogue is the solution one violence is not a cup of tea of coffee and therefore is what she will show from kenya and africa no over the tasks. in the 1st of our program for the catalan crisis we focused on the wives of the independence campaigners sentenced to long periods of imprisonment these prisoners have become the rallying point of the catalogue movement in our 2nd week sport with a catalan minister whether the confrontation between catalonia and spain and maybe move from the streets to unlike in this program we examine how the movement for catalan independence is developed from the grassroots upwards and to explore with an interested international observer had the standoff between the spanish state and catalonia.