powerful blast and gunfire reported outside a major u.s. outpost in afghanistan the very same. donald trump paid a surprise visit to less than 2 weeks ago news comes as a damning report is released shedding light on how top american officials have been routinely distorting facts and figures on the war in afghanistan in an attempt to convince the public the drawn out war is winnable. elsewhere the french government reveals more details of controversial pension reforms that have sparked mass strikes. us president says that he looks forward to more dialogue with russia after meeting with foreign minister sergey lavrov at the white house visit however to get more speculation about supposed. links something.

might as well. as against russian diplomats. with the athletes and for our criminal liability. either thanks for joining us this. suicide attacker has detonated a car bomb outside. one of the main u.s. military outpost in afghanistan comes not long after trump surprise thanksgiving visit to that same base local media reports say the powerful blast at a medical facility close to the main gate at least 2 people were killed and 70 injured according to local sources a shootout quickly followed it's been reported 3 attackers remain at large 3 others have been killed and another captured a local t.v. channel says the taliban has claimed responsibility. for american president visited

. base in late november things giving speaking to military personnel that don't trump strucken up big time. help with the devotion everyone. has given here tonight america is winning again we are winning like we have not won in a long time and you know what we're respected like we haven't been respected in a long time america is winning again and america is respected again and respected at the highest level donald trump was saying that he was winning that most american presidents since the american invaded afghanistan says that they are winning but they are not winning in fact because the taliban is controlling half of afghanistan and after 18 years of war with afghanistan and trying to force the taliban from afghanistan the united states has come to the conclusion that they have to negotiate and we negotiate with the taliban the same force that 18 years ago the

invaded afghanistan was the taliban from the country because they were harboring terrorism and they were harboring some of below them what the american government says it says because they're taliban are weak that's why they keep sending terrorists every day but the real the real truth is that the taliban are the real forces unfortunately in afghanistan and you have to count on them in order to secure afghanistan. well sighs all of this in articles being published in the u.s. prestige telling years of deliberate decision from mission by top american officials who've been putting on a brave face despite knowing the truth about the afghan conflict. hundreds of thousands dead trillions of dollars lost generations traumatized but you know what nothing good comes easy nothing in afghanistan we helped liberate an oppressed people. and we will continue helping them secure their country rebuild

their society and educate all their children boys and girls. all that i set to defeat al qaeda and deny it a chance to rebuild is within reach and we're doing a tremendous job. and as you know a big part of the job is isis certainly the biggest and al qaeda and we. we've got them down very low numbers you didn't need to be nostradamus or clairvoyant to know that someone was telling bull it's just logical fallacy you can't keep fighting the same guys for 20 years and claim the joule winning but then appearances must be kept up it's important that everyone thinks you're winning right up to the moment you admit you lost why well it's obvious no one has the remotest clue we were trying to do here we didn't have the focus notion of what we were

undertaking there is a fundamental gap of understanding of the front end of the stated objectives. in the military and the lack of understanding of the resources necessary and we'd never have known if it hadn't been thousands of secret and classified documents on afghanistan stuff from the white house from the pentagon the un and the various n.g.o.s well we would have known it's pretty damn obvious that the war is going terribly but who says mouth and all that it is worth considering what the president did deficient said and what they actually believed when i called our troops in action i did so with complete confidence in their courage and skill and tonight. thanks to them. we are winning the war on terror. and. today we lack metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror are we capturing killing or deterring

a dissuading more terrorists every day than the mage asses on the radical clerics are recruiting training and deploying against us does the us need to fashion a broad integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists the us is putting relatively little effort into a long range plan but we are putting a great deal of effort into trying to stop terrorists the cost benefit ratio is against us see when you're in your 2nd term and you started a really messy war that you just realized you can't hope to win there only so many ways to save your own but here's a list of words you should use courage democracy kids schools and hospitals and for the people that don't buy your baloney get a hope in there as well thanks to the courage of these military and civilian personnel a nation that was once a safe haven for al qaeda is now a young democracy where boys and girls are going to school new roads and hospitals are being built and people are looking to the future with new hope also poor in

money into huge infrastructure projects to obligate money that was appropriated to so we could spend it through building infrastructure in ways that have again instant could never sustain or even the use in some cases if you're a nato country taxpayer i honestly don't believe you can comprehend how much of your money was poured into this adventure you 1st need to understand the sheer degree of incompetence that these leaked documents show imagine for example someone's putting together a crew for a bank heist they invite a bunch of people give them a time and place and tell no one what their role is no plan so everyone shows up thinking that. everyone outs knows what to do and things go as you would expect now is the time to save your own heidi let's add a few more words difficult days human rights confidence success

we will reward good governance work to reduce corruption and support the rights of all afghans men and women alike. there will be difficult days ahead but i am absolutely confident we will succeed you just cannot put those amounts of money into a very fragile state in society and not have if you corruption you just can't a legacy of mass corrupt trip that's putting it lightly what else did you expect the guys on the ground nay saw disaster they were ported it back to washington washington with its countless departments didn't have the courage to stand up and say they screwed up so they put up appearances everyone was doing what made them look best rather than what worked best interesting enough many of the documents were published with the name lessons learned perhaps an effort to extract something

anything of value from this unmitigated disaster but you know as it has got a star not long ago and after seeing what i saw there i can tell you all asleep i can guarantee you that while they may have learned their lessons they sure as heck are putting them to use. the french government is pushing ahead with its controversial pension reforms despite huge public hostility resulting in mass protests and strikes earlier today the prime minister formally presented his plans on to charlotte the risk of reports from powers. perhaps one of the most controversial elements that was announced today is the fact that the retirement age will increase by 2 years it will go up to 64 while the legal age will remain at 62 if french workers won't to receive a full pension they will have to work those extra 2 years now let's break down some

of the detail of how this is going to work the government said today this was added phillipe the prime minister that those who were born before 1975 will not be impacted by these changes at all if you were born after 975 in your mid career at the moment they what you'll find is around 70 percent of your pension will be based on the system at 30 percent or you system and that those who turn 18 in 2022 they will be integrated for the 1st time fully into the new system this is a system whereby the 42 current pensions in france will be amalgamated into one universal payment the prime minister said some of the big winners as a result of this would be women who for the 1st time would receive 100 percent compensation for the time that their own maternity leave would also points towards their pension from their very 1st child while the 3rd child and he said there would be a guarantee of a 1000 euros a month in pension in retirement for those who had worked a full career let's have

a listen to what else it would fully pacha say. we may disagree on some points but the government's ambition for universal amity is now bishan for social justice there is no hidden agenda we're not looking to penny pinch we don't want to hurt anyone on the contrary we want to protect approach seem power of workers and the purchasing power of pension already we're getting some reactions from the unions who seem to be very unhappy with what's been announced by the french prime minister one union seed you know this is the union that is the major union for the s.n.c. . to say that they are now calling for reinforcement of the strike which is now in its 7th day here we've also heard from police unions who move allies in before that speech by the prime minister this morning saying that they want to halt and not mobilization as a result the suggestion is the unions don't feel that the government is listening

to them and hasn't gone far enough they're all going to look this is the people will have to work longer and they may receive less pension in the future people all viewers about this. last week when there was a national strike some 806000 people took to the streets to let the government know that they didn't want their pensions messed with. 339000 they already knew strikes on thursday of this week and of tuesday or next week it seems that this announcement by the detail of these pension reforms will mean hasn't the anger the anger that we've seen spilling out into the streets particularly in the protests last week where there were tensions in clashes between the police and the protesters it looks like this strike is fall from. the crowd from the professor of economics. france's problem a systemic crisis. i think because of that it's actually

a physical process of the strike caused by the rules that the master treaty to prevent the government running this kind of deficit it needs to do for a well functioning economy this is a little crazy a notion built into the mastery that government should act like a household and try to save money for a rainy dies when you try that at the national level it's simply files all it does is reduce income because there is the exit of the individual little you can see if you spend less than you earn to do will save money but the aggregate level you'll spending is somebody else's income so the attempt of the entire society to save money which is built into mastery actually reduces j.t. the end least of this sort of this is a manifestation of the fagor of the script of the european union particularly the euro. the issue of wealth inequality in the u.k. is in focus again after a recent report by parliament revealed the number of food banks in the countries greater even than the number of mcdonald's restaurants. i may love the slogan of the world's most famous fast food chain but it seems in the u.k.

many can't afford to love it focused so there are now more food banks in this country than branches of mcdonald's sun given the fast food chain can be found on pretty much every corner that's an awful lot of food banks for too many people it's becoming harder and harder to keep their heads above water we can't shy away from the changes that would make the real difference to and the need for food banks going hungry and one of the world's richest countries seems almost unbelievable but data shows more people than relying on food handouts one antipoverty trust distributed a rack or number of food parcels this year up 23 percent from 20 teen even more concerning for many is that always hoff of those parcels went to children and out of we are all the pieces behind the figure of the millions buying the numbers in the stories behind the statistics and for many families christmas he was gracious

when there are 2 places who walk and people are spending longer with the electricity on to hear and wave their horn but i think for me. utilize the resources that we have to support people experiencing poor people ultimately we do it all use government. to do this for us it's crucial to the mean independent and if political show that we can hit with the challenges that people experience in court to face the u.k. is living through an unprecedented time of political division this week as general election is being billed as the vote of the generation it's not surprising then that the issue has been seized upon by politicians on the campaign trail and a final bid to swing the vote on approved everybody who gets involved with bringing food banks mcclure from the people should be dependent on them in the world 6 who just contrary it is a scandal that people are going hungry who does a basic human right. but this is just part of a wider page of spiraling inequality in the country the full extent of which was

exposed by a recent report to break it down the you taste 5 richest families are now more wealthy than the poorest $13000000.00 a 5th of the british population lives in poverty with one and a half 1000000 of those designated destitute meaning they can't even afford basic essential zz and while that happens the richest one percent continues to accumulate the same wealth as 80 percent of the population says huge huge gap between rich and the vast majority of the country is dangerous well from the hands of so few people demonstrate just how broken the economic system is this country has become an equal greater levels of inequality she's been for the tory launch this terrible levels of poverty the government says it's not holding back on welfare and programs like free school meals so the disadvantaged but as the wealth gap continues to widen it's

little wonder frustrations are growing moving forward to the whole of the drug. culture of. our young reverberated on the streets the wild strongest economies in which the 5 richest families have a combined while for a quick comment to bahrain's annual g.d.p. and yet one in which so many are forced to get out their begging bowls just to put food on the plates. however government are committed to diminish that at the forefront of their main to making way for. the easier for people who are experiencing hardship in this country and really explain why use our economy. jobs that are actually here sustainable then my feet is that we would see the growth that call it all to the united nations says it's found no ties between iran and september's drone attacks on saudi oil facilities

more or less story after this break. when the ballots came in 2008 although there's a lot of money printing going on people said well where's the inflation the government says there's no inflation and then a lot of people say well actually health care and education are skyrocketing in value you don't count and that's why you're misreading inflation and this has been going on for years. suggests. we found it we found the missing inflation. to. put themselves on the line to get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president. want to be. the 2 going to be

this is what the 3 of them all can't be good. interested always in the water. bucket russian delegation headed by the foreign minister sergei lavrov visited washington on tuesday much to the retirement of democrats the u.s. president however seemed quite happy about the visit just had a very good meeting with foreign minister sergey lavrov and representatives of russia discussed many items including trade iran north korea i mean if treaty nuclear arms control and election meddling look forward to continuing the dog loek in the near future russia's foreign minister also held talks with the u.s.

secretary of state of the issue of alleged. lection meddling was raised but the meeting wasn't all about us russia disagreements this is not easy because don if explains from the outset it became clear how much room for improvement there is in the relations between russia and the united states one of the cases election meddling the secretary of state might bump a way has been very adamant that any interference is unacceptable by a foreign power to which russia's foreign minister sergey lavrov stressed that all such accusations still exist in the realm of speculation but we put it you suggested simply to read the mulla report we did and in it there is no proof of any collusion. also has repeatedly said that russia is ready to release full transcripts as to what was said by the russians and by the members of the trump team. we suggested to our colleagues that in order to dispel all the basis

suspicions let us publish this close channel of correspondence starting from october 26th until november 27th teen so that everything would become very clear to people unfortunately the current administration refused to do so now the bone of contention between russia and the united states is the i.m.f. or rather the absence of the deal now and has again said that the countries could use the start treaty that had been signed back in 2010 but my pump a.o.l. has made it clear what the united states don't like about that deal it was at a time when the weapon systems the threats were very different than they are today too so we believe not only do the conversations need to be broadened to include the chinese communist party as year that the russian president spoke again about russia's preparedness right now to agree on its extension to alleviate tensions in the global community we are prepared to do that even today but it wasn't all negative about syria afghanistan north korea all those political crises see russia

and the united states working together. and both countries it seemed did their best both ministers at least did their best to try and move that train forward as much as they could. of u.s. democrats the meeting between russia and america's top diplomats was one more reason to suspect secret links between trump and moscow trump is meeting with russia's foreign minister in the oval office again i'm very serious invited in allies knocked out last time they laughed about troops firing of komi today they can celebrate the success of russian propaganda reagan wouldn't recognize this g.o.p. trample over often compare our meeting in private this afternoon what conspiracy are they can have today congress or congress seems to have been captured by a desire to destroy us russian relations used to splurge and shoot adam schiff describes normal by a literal contacts between countries in particular the reception of the foreign minister of one country by the president of another country as

a triumph of russian diplomacy well he might as well throw doping accusations against russian diplomats following the case with the athletes and call for our criminal liability to me position is just absurd it also was sitting down with don trump in the oval office twitter users found plenty to amuse them from the joint photograph that.

u.n. says it found nothing to link iran to the september drone attacks that targeted saudi . oil plants in saudi arabia the facilities belong to saudi aramco that's a company run by the saudi government the un is still investigating at this time it is unable to independently corroborate the cruise missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles used in these attacks are over reining in origin. after the attack washington and its allies were quick to point the finger at iran imposing sanctions on the country which included iran's central bank called the measure is the quote highest ever imposed on the country however iran denied involvement and shortly after the rebels claimed responsibility but that didn't seem to convince the u.s. and its allies. not the attack did not originate from yemen the attack was launched from the north and was unquestionably sponsored by iran we know precisely who conducted these attacks was

a right i didn't hear anybody in the region who doubted that person. there is no evidence that the attacks came from yemen. emerging information indicates that responsibility lies with iran we need to deter iran from its maligned behavior. professor of politics at the university of tehran and miranda believes the compromise will be impossible after the u.s. betrayed the 2015 euclidian this fight the fact that they have tens of military bases and that they've given the saudis or they've sold saudis the saudis hundreds of billions of dollars of weapons they could not detect this attack and they still don't know where that came from the iranians will not sacrifice anything what the americans want from iran is for it to give up its sovereignty to give up its independence and that is not something that the iranians are willing to do the iranians have already compromised and they've given concessions in order to reach

the nuclear deal. and the americans under obama and especially under trump have betrayed the international community and of course the iranians buy time by not providing by the agreement and under obama and by tearing the agreement under so since the united states is a unreliable country and it cannot be trusted the only way for some sort of compromise is for the united states to return to the nuclear deal and to implement it is only then that we can talk about improved relations between the 2 countries. ok with that with updates for you in half an hour's time see them.

and there was only johnson. and i just got out of prison for. 41 years. i'm 73 years old now i got arrested for tomorrow for something to. fill in on like this everything was taken out of. my work in the hospital i think it was. meant to snow man that looks a little bit like me. about. homicide want to come. now.

we're tough in the. doing that so you're going. to go. to the moon on a friday trying to frighten. us no good some ground to. impeachment mania has dives drawn on both sides of the political divide the i.g. report clearly demonstrates the f.b.i. abused its powers when targeting trump world the judiciary committee is hell bent on impeachment articles ideological obsession to name again.

this is boom bust broadcasting around the world and covering all aspects of our global economy in the 21st century i'm vins one number one job or in washington here's what we have straight ahead. this is more than a triumph for organized labor it's a triumph for workers everywhere across america but the real question is the new

you is will the new u.s. embassy actually be a better deal than nafta we're going to break it down in a way that you won't see anywhere else plus as trade tensions and political turmoil have taken their toll on economic growth worries continue to pile up hillary ford which of the british american business association lends its a hand to break down britain's economic woes and what lies in store for the euro zone and banks across the e.u. are laying off employees as other banks are mungy to try to keep up with the proliferation of online banking so what is the future look like in the banking sector r t correspondent i'll just read and public citizen bartlett naylor will break it down for us so much to get to on this very busy day so let's get started. and we begin with the u.s. in ca because as we told you monday the new north american trade deal between the u.s. and mexico and canada has been agreed to by democrats in congress and that was the final hurdle for the trump administration to get passed.