god. it. was. a powerful blast and gunfire reported outside a major u.s. outpost in afghanistan the very same base that donald trump paid a visit to less than 2 weeks ago. the 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 and an attempt to convince the public that the drawn out war is winnable. after former f.b.i. chief hailed the harwich reported from russia collusion as vindication inspector general horowitz himself debunks their interpretation saying it's quite the opposite. so many basic and fundamental errors were made by 3 separate him picked investigative teams and one of the most sensitive f.b.i.

investigation. french government reveals more details on controversial pension reforms that have sparked mass strikes. from moscow where it's just past 2 in the morning you're watching international welcome to the program. now a suicide attacker has detonated a car bomb outside the background base one of the main u.s. military outposts in afghanistan and the attack comes not long after trump surprise thanksgiving visit to the same base local media reports say the powerful blast hit a medical facility close to the bases main gate at least 2 people were killed and more than 70 injured according to local sources a shootout quickly followed and it's being reported 3 of the attackers remain at large 3 others have been killed and another captured a local t.v. channel says the taliban. and has claimed responsibility for the attack the

american president visited the air base in late november thanksgiving speaking to military personnel where trump struck an upbeat tone. 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

invaded afghanistan was the taliban from the country because they were harboring terrorism and they were harboring osama bin laden what the american government says it says because the taliban are weak that's why they keep sending the 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 alongside all this in article has been published in the u.s. press detailing years to liberate dissin from nation by top american officials who had 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. will get 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 jewel 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're 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 over 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 and 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 the more crecy 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 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 be a legacy of mass corruption that's putting it lightly what else the jew expects the guys on the ground they sought disaster they were ported it back to washington washington with its countless the patents 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 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 resulting in mass protests and strikes today the prime minister formally presented his plans challenged penske 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 a good phillipe the prime minister that those who were born before 1975 will not be impacted by these changes or tool 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 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 we may disagree on some points but the government's ambition for university is now bishan for social justice there is no hidden agenda we're not looking to penny pinch we don't want any one man the country we want to protect the post seem power of workers and the purchasing power of pension well 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. . that's the way we work is to 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 the government is listening to

them and hasn't gone far enough they're all given to all of this is that people will have to work longer and they may receive less pension in the future job people all of us about this so if you assume fact that 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 that pensions messed. up think oh we still stood at 339000 and now already calls with strikes on tuesday of this week and of tuesday on next week it seems that this announcement by the government detail of what these pension reforms will mean hasn't squirreled 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 protest is it looks like this strike is fall from. my comics professor steve came told us rules make france's problem a systemic crisis i think because it's actually a fiscal process at the state cools 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 crazier notion built into mastery that government should act like a household and try to save money for running dies when you try that it is at the national level it's simply files all it does is reduce income because there is the end of the individual little you can spend less than you will save money if you have a good level your spending is somebody else's income should be a temple of the entire society to save money which is bills of the ministry actually reduces g.d.p. and leads to this sort of so i would guess this is a manifestation of the saudi or the script of the european unity. capitol hill has erupted into bitter arguments says democrats and republicans pick of the findings report into the justification of the russia collusion probe the so-called horowitz report was released on monday and while the democrats and much of the media claiming vindication the republicans have been quick to seize on the

irregularities of the f.b.i.'s investigation. what happened here is the system failed people at the highest level of our government took the law in their own hands the report from the inspector general that looked into the investigations of the trump campaign in 2016 has been received on capitol hill differently by different parties democrats seem to see the report as disproving the allegations put forward by donald trump the allegations claiming that there was a politically motivated spying effort against him this is democrats the i g.'s report conclusively refutes these claims this was not a politically motivated investigation there is no deep state republicans however have a very different interpretation of the report 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. a point of contention has been how the f.b.i. handled the salacious steel dossier now this is a da ca that made allegations against u.s. president donald trump regarding russia and the f.b.i. deemed it not to be credible they looked into the source who gave this information to christopher steele and determined that it was not really a credible allegation but that didn't stop them for applying for pfizer warrants in order to wiretap members of the trump campaign on the basis of this down cia the f.b.i. even described the source as being truthful and cooperative when trying to obtain the warrants this is what inspector general horowitz had to say about the errors of the f.b.i. we found and 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. and other reports seems to also indicate that former cia director john brennan may have misled the public when he testified about the role of the steel dossier in obtaining warrants and carrying out the investigation furthermore mccabe and combing f.b.i. officials have argued that they somehow are vindicated by this report they say it shows that the f.b.i. did nothing wrong and that trump's allegations are simply not correct this is the response from fired f.b.i. director james comey and andrew mccabe do you feel vindicated tonight that this report concludes that you did the right thing. you know as i said i've known all 'd 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 this 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 james comey said this week. the your report vindicates him is that affairs going to be. you know i think the activities we found here don't and vindicate anybody who touched this although horowitz report seems to join many recent reports in washington d.c. that were expected to clarify points of disagreement between trump and his opponents and just like many of these other reports while it was expected to shed some light and bring some clarity to the issue it's simply up for interpretation with trump's supporters seeing the report one way and trump's critics and the democratic party seeing it very differently now the u.s. has announced yet another round of sanctions against iran we'll have that story i'm off to this short break.

each simulating civilization will be able to run using a tiny fraction of its resources. hundreds of thousands millions of runs through all of human history almost all. beings with our kinds of experiences down to simulated ones rather than none simulated ones and conditional that there are good we should think we are probably one of the simulated ones. in a world of big part of the new lot and conspiracy it's time to wake up to be deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop slamming the door. and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the

truth the time is now we're watching closely watching the hawks. in the. united states has unveiled a new round of sanctions against iran for its alleged all being of militant groups in syria and yemen secretary of state might pump a made the announcement on wednesday. i'd like to turn to the stomach republic of iran as long as it's maligned behavior continues so will our campaign of maximum pressure today i'm announcing designation of 3 iranian transportation companies that helped iran import items for its weapons of mass destruction programs well the firms targeted by the sanctions include wrongs biggest shipping company along with a subsidiary based in china the nation's flagship carrier mohan there is also on

the list. washington has already imposed numerous sanctions on iran accusing it of pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program but members of congress have have questioned the entire strategy the goal is to limit their nuclear weapons capability and iran is now advancing their nuclear weapons capability their much farther they're much closer to having a nuclear bomb than they were under the deal ministration want to talk about the mashing pressure campaign and all the ways it's hurting their economy and everything but i'm just holding you to your stated strategy to your stated strategy and on all 3 points the administration's strategy is failing the administration is worse off we are worse off we are less safe than we were under the j.c. . and in other news this hour science and business don't just intersect an eagle musk's office moscow's state university has hosted a key forum for young talent they get how the 2 spheres interact don't quarter paid

a visit. it's a glance into russia's future for the country's top university moscow state a place where the scientific achievements of young people are put on display for the world to see this year's innovation in practice congress has a large exhibition on how to improve education and job training is going to be everything from v.r. devices to agricultural technology so let's go take a step inside and find out what russia's brightest minds have to offer. this low solution for little or nothing to the teacher who can afford to be free of the cold cold feet. when you know what's really and it will lose oh it

was whoa whoa whoa you know that's what you think yeah i know those things look we've got. this is a little over till it's time for the fool the sun was low and oh. oh i see the file. so how does this thing work yes this is what. it was my room at work so you wouldn't see. you were saying no to it you. know what.

the course no tech conference would be complete without. talking robot let's see what he has to say. who will be. here you need to get. your concern through with seems like a very good robot order marty this. one a reminder of our top story this hour the united states has unveiled a new round of sanctions against iran for its alleged all being of militant groups in syria and yemen secretary of state my pump made the announcement wednesday. and washington has already imposed numerous sanctions on iran accusing it of pursuing covert nuclear weapons program but it's members of congress have questioned the entire strategy. the goal is to limit their nuclear weapons capability and iran is now advancing their nuclear weapons capability there much farther they're much closer to having a nuclear bomb than they were under the deal ministration want to talk about the

mashing pressure campaign and all the ways it's hurting their economy and everything but i'm just holding you to your stated strategy to your stated strategy and on all 3 points the administration strategy is failing the administration is worse off we are worse off we are less safe than we were under the j c p o a. to get a bit of analysis on this we can access live to joshua landis he's professor of middle eastern studies at the university of oklahoma josh thanks for joining us live the congressman we just heard that said the maximum pressure campaign against iran has not achieved its goals goals what's your view. yeah i think he's absolutely right i mean we see this with the enrichment of uranium in iran we see this with the escalation. of shooting taking ships. hurting the oil supply it isn't tell ping the united states and iran has said over and over again that if if your iran is not able to export oil from the persian gulf it's not going

to let other countries export oil so it's going to escalate and that's why the united states is sending more troops the gulf and taking more measures to try to. put pressure on iran but that strategy is only going to make iran strike back so we see no evidence of tit for tat retaliation in the postie the latest sanctions let's talk about the main compass aviation and shipping how close is iran to a total blockade. well it's becoming increasingly hard difficult for iran to export anything and we've seen the demonstrations i think the u.s. administration wants to double down it is there are many people in washington who are quite guilty about the debt of demonstrations they believe that they have iran on the ropes and that they need to exert you know increase the pressure as they say in order to try to if not bring about regime change to punish iran and to

see a radically drive it to the wall well that the these latest rounds of sanctions just show washington has accused iran of shipping almost to mid since in yemen and syria quite serious allegations but what kind of evidence of they've got to back that up . well they say they've been following ships that are going to yemen and they've they've tried to stop iran from deliver any kind of oil to syria so this is this is an ongoing campaign to try to push iran out of the middle east in order to keep it in a pro-american orbit. we've talked a little bit but you were to give me your sense of how iran might react if pushed too far you said you know they've they've already threatened to restrict shipping in the persian gulf how do you see the u.s. acting next if they have any next steps you think they're going to change tactics or continue with even more sanctions. well this gets to i think you are continue

with more sanctions the escalation on a military front is i don't think it's a go for now president trump is very anxious about the elections that are coming up in a year's time he wants the economy to keep on humming right up until election day he is you know he's tweaked the economy here in the united states with tax incentives and so forth if there is a tit for tat escalation militarily in the gulf that's going to drive oil prices up and it could throw the international community into a recession that's one thing he does not want so so what we've seen so far suggests that president trump and his administration is going to continue with sanctions but they're going to do everything they can short of escalating militarily i'm glad you brought up the election there because you're a presser of middle eastern studies and how do you think trump's policy in the

middle east is currently polling with the american public and how is a wrong playing into that into his election strategy. well president trump said that he was going to get the united states out of the middle east and stop these stupid wars now and he hasn't stopped the stupid wars he did at least theoretically pretend to cole americans out of syria and iraq are half as heard way but he thought better of that and has kept troops in syria you know the americans i think today are fed up with the middle east they don't understand the situation the middle east well they tend to believe many at least his supporters believe that he is trying to get americans out of the middle east and even though that that's not borne out by the facts because we have more troops in the middle east today we've got more troops in afghanistan and we haven't gotten out of syria so this is you

know the legacy of trump is really that he has continued to do what president obama has done and has not pulled out of the middle east but i think the real you know the real interest of americans is going to be on the economy just to allow this professor of middle eastern studies at the university of oklahoma thank you for your insights pleasure well that is your update for now i'm not a lot could not be part came with the rest of the team to take you through more news from around the world in about 30 minutes time we'll see if that. and we don't know what facebook's aims are in fact facebook doesn't know what its aims are because it's going to be the sum total of all the people who are working on these algorithms a whistleblower someone who used to work for facebook came forward last year and said i was one of the news curators at facebook

a bunch of us used to sit around every day and we used to remove stories from the news feed that were too conservative and now and then we inject a story that we saw it was really cool. facebook founder mark zuckerberg says he's committed to giving everyone a voice he's from responding to an allegation that facebook edits conservative views out of its trending topics they can suppress certain types of results based on what they think you should be seeing based on what your followers are presenting now a new report claims that according to a former facebook employee the social media mega company sometimes ignores what is actually trending among its 1000000000 users if the story originated from a conservative news source or if it's a topic causing buzz among conservatives. facebook costly manipulates or users they do it by the thing.