powerful blast and gunfire reported outside a major u.s. outpost in afghanistan the very same ground based on a surprise visit to less than 2 weeks ago. news comes as a damning report released shedding light on how top american officials are being routinely distorting facts figures on the war in afghanistan and to vince the public the drawn out war is winnable. in other news the french government reveals more details on controversial pension reforms that have sparked mass strong. in the u.s. president says he looks forward to more dialogue with russia after meeting with foreign minister sergei lavrov at the white house visit however triggered more speculation about supposed secrets from moscow links something.

against russian diplomats. with the athletes and for our criminal liability. this is r.t. and. a suicide attack has detonated a car bomb outside one of the main u.s. military outposts in afghanistan the attack comes not long after surprise thanksgiving visit to that same base local media reports say that the powerful blasted a medical facility close to the base is main gate at least 2 people were killed more than 70 injured according to local sources shootout quickly followed being reported 3 of the attackers remain at large 3 others have been killed and another captured local t.v. channel says the taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack. u.s.

president visited that air base in late november thanksgiving speaking to the military personnel that from struck up big time. with the help in 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 bin laden 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. alongside all of this an article has been published in the u.s. press detail in years of deliberate this information by top american officials who have been putting on a brave face despite knowing the truth about the afghan war. 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 that your 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 grew lines 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 the deficient said and what they actually believed when i called our troops in action i did so with complete confidence. 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 them addresses 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 we would 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 rule 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 corruption that's putting it lightly what else did you expect the guys on the ground nay sought disaster they were ported it back to washington washington with its countless departments that now 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 have got a star not long ago and after seeing what i saw there i can tell you honestly i can guarantee you that while they may have learned their lessons they sure as heck are putting them to use. 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 while the devinsky reports from paris. 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 or tool if you're born after 975 in your mid career at the moment the more you'll find is around 70 percent of your pension will be based on the system and 30 percent of the new 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 have 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 so that 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 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. . the railway workers here in france say that they are now calling for a reinforcement of the strike which is now in its 7th day here in france we've also heard from police unions who a mover lising 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 has listened

to them and hasn't gone far enough they're all going to know all of this is that people will have to work longer and they may receive less pension in the future people off viewers about this so. 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 on cheaters day still stood at 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 what these pension reforms will mean housings quell 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 funded professor of economics on page 2 i'm told does. this problem a systemic crisis. i think because it's actually

a physical process of the state caused by the rules that the master treaty to prevent the government running the scale of deficit it needs to do for a well functioning economy this is all a crazy notion built into the mastery that government should act like a household and try to save money for rainy days but when you try that at the national level it simply fails all it does is reduce income because there is the average individual little you can spend less than you earn to do for save money but the aggregate level of your spending is somebody else's sink so the attempt by the entire society to save money which is built into mastery actually reduces g.d.p. and least at this sort of thing i would guess this is a manifestation of the founder of the scripps structure of the european union particularly the year at. capitol hill has erupted into bits or arguments as democrats and republicans pick over the findings of the report into the justification of the russia collusion probe the so-called horowitz report was released on monday while the democrats and much of the media are claiming vindication the republicans have been quick to seize on the irregularities of the

f.b.i.'s investigation i remember reading all of these headlines. lawful investigation with a few regular. everything's ok low level people kind of got off track. if that's what you get out of this report you clearly didn't read it. comes from the killer morgan news in new york or is kelly welcome lindsey graham sounding quite upset there with the media to bring us more on the developments in congress place. well the way this in report from inspector general horowitz's being interpreted seems to go down pretty solidly along party lines the democrats say the report is basically thoroughly debunking the claim by donald trump that there seems to be a politically motivated spying effort waged against him this is how democrats have

responded to the report from inspector general horowitz the i g's report conclusively refutes these claims this was not a politically motivated investigation there is no deep snow in the republicans have a very different interpretation of the report this is the republicans response to the same document would you like trump hate trump don't care about trump you look at this is more than a few irregularities because if this becomes a few irregularities in america then god help us all now one of the main concerns raised by republicans has been that the infamous salacious steel da cia was used to obtain pfizer warrants in order to wiretap members of the trump campaign even after it appears that the f.b.i.

understood that the. that the steel dossier was simply not credible even after the f.b.i. was aware that the source that had been used to provide christopher steele with the information for the report was not credible they continued to use the the steel dossier in order to obtain warrants and in fact the f.b.i. actually called the the source truthful and cooperative in an effort to get these warrants this is what horowitz said about f.b.i. errors in the process of investigating the trump campaign. we found him as we outlined here are deeply concerned that so many basic and fundamental errors were made by 3 separate hand-picked investigative teams on one of the most sensitive f.b.i. investigations and after the matter had been briefed to the highest levels within the f.b.i. now the report also seems to indicate that cia director under obama john brennan may have misled the u.s.

public when he claimed that the steel dossier was not being used in order to obtain warrants it was not being treated as credible by the intel agencies the f.b.i. seems to be taking a pretty solid hit with this report revealing some misconduct in errors on their part now james komi the fired f.b.i. director and mccabe have both responded to today's hearings on twitter this is what they have said do you feel vindicated tonight that this report concludes that you did the right thing. you know as i said i've known all along that we did the right thing not just me but the group of people that i worked with at the f.b.i. the f.b.i. fulfilled his mission protecting the american people and pulled in the u.s. constitution. however what they seem to be saying about how they've been vindicated and how the f.b.i. did nothing wrong doesn't seem to match what's being said by inspector general horowitz take

a listen. james comey said this week to your report vindicates him is that a fair system of your report. you know i think the activities we found here don't and vindicate anybody who touched this. it seems like the horowitz report seems to fit a pattern of many reports that have been released on capitol hill in recent months that were expected to bring clarity to points of division and it seems just like these previous reports the interpretation of the report is in the eye of the beholder with republicans seeing one thing and democrats seeing another as with most chaotic and i'm open a correspondent with that update live from new york. the issue of wealth inequality in the united kingdom is in focus again after a recent report by parliament revealed the number of food banks in the country is greater even than the number of mcdonald's restaurants that saskia taylor has more

. 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 figures show 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 in one of the world's richest countries seems almost unbelievable but data shows more people than as are 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 the always hot of these parcels went to children of we're all to pieces by the figure in the brain 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 theocracy you want to hear their horn but i think for me the utilize the resources that we have to support people experiencing poor people automatically. use government. to do this for us it's crucial to the mean independent and political show that we can hit with the challenges that people experience in court to the u.k. is living through an unprecedented time of political division this week is general election is being billed as the vote of the generation and 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 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 wide uptake of spiraling inequality in the country the full extent of which was exposed by a recent report to break it down the u.k.'s 5 richest families are now more wealthy than the poorest $13000000.00 a 5th of the british population lives in poverty with one in the hall for 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 you huge gap between rich and the vast majority of the country is dangerous thanks to veil friends of friends 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 a tory launch on 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 job nothing. challenge your knowledge of your own revolving of machinery the wild strongest economies in which the 5 richest families have a combined while for equipment to bahrain's annual g.d.p. and yet one in which so many are forced to get out the begging bowls just to put food on the plates. how about government are committed to diminish that at the forefront of their main to making way for. easier for people who are experiencing hardship in this country i'm really afraid of all the boys are calling me and jobs that are actually sustainable leach then my feet is that we would see that rather cool it all to. a russian

delegation headed by foreign minister sergei lavrov visited washington on tuesday much to the irritation of democrats the u.s. president though seemed quite happy with 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 n f treaty nuclear arms control and election meddling look forward to continuing our dialogue in the near future. the version foreign minister also how talks with the u.s. secretary of state might pump a of the issue of alleged election meddling was race but meeting wasn't all about us russia disagreements as it is done of 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 pump 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 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 in until november 27th 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 might bump a has made it clear what the united states don't like about that deal it was at

a time when the weapon systems 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 with 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. 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 invited in allies knocked out

last time they laughed about trump's firing of komi today they can celebrate the success of russian propaganda reagan wouldn't recognize this g.o.p. . meeting in private this afternoon what conspiracy are they can have today congress congress seems to have been captured by a desire to destroy u.s. russia relations used to splurge and adam schiff describes normal by a literal context between countries in particular the reception of the foreign minister or 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 called for our criminal liability to me is just absurd. and the oval office 20 years has found plenty to amuse them from the joint photo.

the u.n. says it's found nothing to link it round to the september drone attacks which targeted to all plants in saudi arabia the facilities belong to saudi aramco a company run by the saudi government the un is still investigating the case. at this time it is unable to independently cooperate the cruise missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles used in these attacks are over rainy in origin after the attack washington its allies were quick to point the finger at iran imposing sanctions on

the country that included iran's central bank donald trump called the measures the highest ever imposed on any country but around denied involvement and shortly after yemen sooth the rebels claimed responsibility 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 rod i didn't hear anybody in the region who doubted that for a single month 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 malign behavior. professor of politics at the university of tehran randi believes that compromise will be impossible after the u.s. betrayed the 2015 euclidian. this fight the fact that they have tens of military bases 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 by 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. international don't forget to check out more on a website. this is going on the ground from london ahead.