headline news the wealthiest us presidential candidate multi-billionaire michael bloomberg admits his 2020 campaign used prison labor. ballet dancers in paris join the chorus of anger at pension reforms that could see their retirement age from 40 to 64. while several western countries endure an opioid addiction epidemic in africa scrambles to get enough of the medication to meet patients basic needs. either good to have you with us this thursday december 26th on brain r.t. in moscow with the world news 1st for you then u.s.

democratic presidential candidate multi-billionaire michael bloomberg admits that his campaign has used prison labor there employed by a firm the run call centers from a private u.s. prison for women to drum up support for his 2020 election run. about this when the reporter called us which as soon as we discovered which friend a subcontractor had done this we immediately ended our relationship with the company and the people who hired them imagine being so rich you have people who have people who have prisoners to do stuff for you. being so rich you don't even bother to check what you are spending millions of dollars on. rita reading we sad indeed when we learn a vendor of a vendor of a vendor use prison labor we did know about it and we never would have allowed it we don't believe in this practice and we immediately stop working with pro com and the people who hired them so how do you do it pay someone to pay someone to tell

them mike bloomberg is a big spender he was last to do in the presidential race and he has already outspent all the other democratic candidates on campaign advertising i mean the guy has so much money he doesn't seem to have the time to check what he spent a good dog but there's credit michael bloomberg did promise america work just to. get it. for president. right america more jobs even if you don't particularly want them what makes it much much worse is that many of the prisons in the states a private run for profit and there are laws that force people to work so if you are in a jail and you are told to work you have to well you'll be punished sometimes they pay you as much as $20.00 a month that's right $20.00

a month now here's the irony mike bloomberg billionaire one of the richest people in america was essentially paying for what is a slave labor to cool people apparently tell them that easy good guy wait the bloomberg is he was paying someone to pay someone to tell everyone what a good guy he is trump says he wants to run the nation like he's running is business god help us. everybody says stuff that comes back to bite them but when billionaires do it it's generally an order of magnitude. it get. it's worse the further you dig when he launched his campaign his media bloomberg news sent out a letter to thousands of its journalists pledging to uphold its principle of not investigating its own this is the sort of person mike is mike bloomberg started as a middle class kid to work his way through college and built a business from

a single room to a global entity creating tens of thousands of good paying jobs along the way there he couldn't he probably shouldn't but he didn't let me continue he became richer year after year he made really a selling bank is ludicrously priced tried gadgets the same bankers who through under greed set off the 2008 financial crash depriving tens of millions of people of those of life's savings and jobs. michael bloomberg for president investigative journalist dave lindorff believes that despite bloomberg vast wealth he doesn't think he measured up as a strong democratic candidate. it really shouldn't be acceptable for anybody liberal or conservative to use prison labor it's forced labor bloomberg said is a multibillionaire he's worth like $54000000000.00 he's made his money by you know

not paying attention to things like that. he's not concerned about the little guy and which i guess becomes you know if you're if you're supposedly a democrat you're concerned about the little guy and it's enormous a packer see it a big problem because i think it's going to hurt him a lot i don't know where people get the idea that bloomberg is the great savior for democrats in the race in the race against trump he has almost no poll support all he has is money. billionaires have not traditionally done that well running for office it's. you know you got to have money to run for president but when you have that much money i think that most people are pretty suspicious of your motives in running for office. of the west the wild enjoy an opioid addiction crisis many african nations are left struggling to get

enough medication to relieve the pain of the patients. i do. not even able to take.

well pain management. human rights. people in pain in the country and that is not the human rights. crisis that has featured in far fewer headlines. in international attention is the non-medical use of the painkiller tramadol particularly now for gun. control is a substance of growing concern particularly in north central and west africa closer regions of africa now account for 87 percent of pharmacies procured sees worldwide

and not the recent rises jew almost entirely to trafficking. or the numbers are pretty stark the international narcotics control board says the majority of morphine used is consumed by just 17 percent of the world's population who live in the western part of the world the same time african and asian countries can only satisfy a tiny fraction of their medical opioid need political analyst out of sandra bruno says at the end of the day it's all about money. her most companies are businesses big businesses with many salaries to pay they need and a lot of them are listed in the stock market. in other words they have shareholders they have to take care of so because these western companies focused on the expensive medicines they've reduced the ability and demand for the natural he

wants that's why the subject of morphine again is such a not just controversial it's unusual it's something that people don't talk about very much it's sad to say it's cynical but lives stick a 2nd seat to profits and earnings and the thing that the entire capitalist system contributes to that it's always a matter especially since in the last 25 years. stock market performance has taken precedence over everything else. the holiday season hasn't stopped a protest movement in hong kong after weeks of relative calm there have been violent clashes again with police seemed the demonstrators have also found another way to let out their frustration against beijing by taking to the virtual street to the popular video game.

i don't blame you for not having the guts to throw the true bombs to the police in reality but in the game there are guns and rocket launchers and you don't have the guts to kill those may 1 game of. these cockroach said the deer returning to g.t.a. 5 to be to the fire only burn brighter and again are we ready. with the national strike in france over proposed pension reforms heading into its

4th week a dance troupe in paris has found a rather creative way to show their disdain. and finding out. an impromptu public moment by valerie the parents floating across the steps they may not like they don't sing on the small stepping out to line. and perhaps the most beautiful protest that paris seen at this step but they don't see is what actually striking behind them they had that is the bread culture in danger and now the latest signal. to report by the french government that respects chile i was but i haven't seen it that's to check it. out. i'm not something that they would lose i just need to look at the scheme which see what time it graced 60

feet to the point last of us all to what the girls have shown you with swan lake is 15 years of sacrifice the 2nd it's nearly word every day every morning i could see and there is a limit to how long it's possible to remain alive if you want to continue to see pretty dancers on stage you can't go along of one till they're 64 so it's not impossible and destroyed it's now in tickets we get it shipped from someone i don't think according to prophecy in the pitch advice it's just by borrowing and the system is being sustainable this is the only way to like i mentioned that is. not still. forms of debt and it will. until it reaches the next is nothing and still while the focus may be off fronts right. now time of crisis is a problem some of them like to slow to find but it's the baby blue chip gray she continues to retype pension systems across the world just raining on the white

house as a result of the country's see the been slowly raising that a time or warning of soaring up pension checks and it's the problem is that the demographics have changed in 1946 when the system was invented and you had people paying for one pensioner and today you've got 1.7 people later when the pensioner circles that is completely unsustainable so it needs to be rethought and i basically i think you've got all these demonstrations of people saying yes but not yet you know not now i don't want to be the 1st welsh to to have a worse situation so it's clear that he was right. as. more money to retire on well not save us according to process independent pension advice it is to see a lot the situation is that perhaps it is the clintons government this is gestating its own fight that showed that the overall cost of france's cage system has in fact

stabilized even with d.c. and that huge deficit government to this be warning that that could just be a blip shrinking down to 5000000000 you rates by 2030 and so this is i'm as a representative for the public government one of its 1st measures role was to suppress the tax on where. my course is called by the french the president of the rich but if you tax bill you know so you must not forget to add an exchange controls in order to occur for tax evasion because there is a lot of the leniency with stex evasion in this country but a very very few people trench people want this new feudal american style dystopia that is the very program of president for can be. i don't want them to absolutely new days of strike action have already been announced that france has this standoff between unions and the government is to new inc in the meantime parties and

performers are determined to sink in the bait to scare away that what. have i. done says helping one teacher in gonna get his students to study harder historias here on r.t. on friday. you know. what we've got is now cause. i'd love to die is because it makes me happy this is a story from guyana about people who just love to jokes my name is stuck to see. mr jackson. sr i'm joined by yes i leaking a little quote i'm a trainee teacher.

in russia i get to trim fred of course if. he wants to bring dunce into every classroom in the world. i. am. still to come while australia was hit by disastrous wildfires the prime minister defends an industry blamed by many for the environmental disaster it's all next story when we come back.

stacie are continuing our south american tour and as you can see behind me we are in rio de janeiro so beautiful so much going on this is a country in transition. one who will ever argue that there are worthy of the victims it's also important to also distinguish the fact that whenever we have a crime. genocide and other cases of genocide. that we're talking about issues confronting it acknowledging it and injustice and reparations for it are important it is important to crimes wherever they happen but it shouldn't be.

in this particular case of the. deadly forest fires in the australian state of new south wales have been raging for almost 2 months now with firefighters facing extreme conditions against them to a record heat wave with temperatures predicted to stay in the high thirty's to 40 celsius over the weekend and into early next week nearly 50000 square kilometers of land nationwide in australia over the past few months 9 people have lost their lives and more than 150 homes have been destroyed smoke from the blanketed the country's largest city sydney pollution crossed the critical mach sometimes 11

times higher than the life threatening threshold. on friday environmental activists gathered outside the residence of australia's prime minister calling for stronger action to fight climate change protesters blocked central streets in sydney demanding that australia at the clare a climate emergency here's how the prime minister explained the situation. a strategy is taking action on climate change what we want to is engaged in reckless and job destroying an economy crunching targets which is being seeking to be postured to us at the moment graeme sawyer from the australian association for environmental education believes the government's putting industry 1st. we've always had flaws but we've never had flaws like that and part of the issue is really bad environmental policy over a long period of time which is allowed the country to get out of the shipe i think the big reason why they're defending the coal industry is because the coal industry

over many many years is bored so very close to government and a lot of money supporting governments got a little lobbyist and stuff working with governments on these issues. the real issue i think is that they get a significant amount of revenue from the coal industry jobs in the coal industry not that significant when you look at the industries across the whole economy it seems to be an excuse to me i mean they're not showing any great signs of caring about the environment so i think there's a lot of people in this country who are being given a big wake up call by the fires and the really big issue is going to be how bad it is when the end of march. u.s. sanctions the doping scandal surrounding russian athletes and britain's exit from the e.u. just a few of the topics that we've been discussing with the russian economic development minister in a year and round up which we're showing throughout the day here on r.t. . what we believe in that the problems within you that are threats and chain that are very long term in the church so we see more confidence not only in trade here

but it can happen in many other areas what i would like to attract your attention to is the problem of the extra territorial sanctions coming from the united states and it's you know a big problem for the ward as a whole it's being named as a problem not only from all saved but already from the european save my view is that the clean athletes should be able to be present on the global audience because it will be fair for them. just or for you to see it in the cheery alexina which is a very good story you know or a view of you know cereal which lasts forever.

britain hasn't left the gear opinion yet and with things dragging on for so long some of decided to take matters into their own hands and split from brussels themselves at least in the grocery department. most of morrison's to see if these taste any better tried brussels sprouts. this problems have the right to their own identity they are from yorkshire so there . i'm self identifying as a yorkshire sprouts in solidarity even the one from lancashire bit one with you in

a sprout. your shirt sprouts taste really nice if they're cute in the salty tears of remain or use. many of our customers are interesting knowing where the food comes from lincolnshire sprouts are called lincolnshire sprouts because they're from lincolnshire yorkshire sprouts are called yorkshire browns because they're from yorkshire many of our customers like to know them. other less than a week left of 2019 that's wrap up this hour with a look at the gate just gone with polly boycott and r t u k s online series in case you missed it. as i see why mine is guide to the year that was january got brazil off on the right wing tracked when this guy nationalist

. naro was sworn in as president of south america's largest nation a hostile takeover was launched at the start of 2019 in venezuela when this guy one guy go challenge the far right see all the elected mr. surprise surprise quite don't have the backing of the u.s. and its allies planned benevolent regime change didn't work out in cities across france the yellow vest movement continue to bash things out every weekend demanding that the french president emmanuel build them an economically rosy future instead march toward a brutal acts of terror and take place in new zealand when a psycho right wing not broke into a mosque in. lifestream the manager of tens of innocent civilians on face moving into april wiki leaks editor julian assange toft out of london's ecuadorian

embassy and arrested by british police in was going to be. all evictions the world was shocked when paris is not true don cathedral the home of the hunchback from that disney film fell victim to a fire that store its roof by collapse and this moment was probably peak 2019 a comedian with no political experience and literally had played the role of an ordinary man who accidentally becomes president was elected president of ukraine 2019 brought us an escalating us china trade war donald trump employees. of chinese that exports and washington especially blacklisted one away the chinese target giant slash major threats to aapl the gulf was getting tense too for a chair. change in may to iran announced that it would stop complying with thoughts of the 2015. deal i'm going to start enriching you radium again while in

indiana and then run for mayor d one a 2nd time as prime minister by a landslide in india's general election in june the orange one touched down in london by the phone 7 7 royal treatment just 3 days later after 3 years of failing to deliver bragg's its u.k. prime minister to resign may officially threw in the towel and all traces of civility she now sees the process the poisoned chalice of brags that someone else. citizens of hong kong started hitting the streets in precedented numbers angered by a chinese extradition law and that's the last then the summer news lol was interrupted by news of the death of a famous bananas and establishment sleazeball jeffrey at the guy with secrets about everyone had been awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges but he was mysteriously found data in his jail cell in new york triggering conspiracy theories go to the

whole. now that's most to 29000 cuts right good news for the 247 on live streaming and grab one of our apps the next update from moscow in just over half an hour say that. you know world of big partisan movies lot and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig 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 on the bath 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 for watching closely watching the hawks. same hammer i can use to smash someone's head is the same hammer i can use to build them a home but that's

a human choosing what to do with that that's me expressing my values for the tool and that's what we need to do with artificial intelligence as well. as of today there are good tennis and bad evidence the bad news in yemen the united states deems to be a threat the looked at those award in syria the cia and the us military were engaged in covert actions really throughout the world. where they were assassinating populist leaders they were backing up right away military windows funding an army of death squads there's no posts anymore because there's always a small cult of people who are really close. to profit.

and. max geyser this is the kaiser report max and stacey are continuing our south american tour as you can see behind me we are in korea de janeiro mike so beautiful so much going on this is a country in transition i think stacey well that of course is sugarloaf back there behind you one of the most famous scenes of rio de janeiro we are here just as slap those tariffs on brazil for a legend really manipulating their currency but just like argentina of course they aren't manipulating their currency they're having a hard time maintaining the value of their currency not as bad as argentina here of

course but of course but also narrow their new president you know he's been in office for a year he's a huge family of trump so the word on the street is how much he was humiliated by trump tweeting this out without informing him 1st yeah he was totally in shock with those tariffs that were applied and that's the world of trumps of also don is to get with the program i also want to say like when we arrived at the airport here in rio de janeiro it like 3 in the afternoon i was surprised that we route literally the only 2 in the immigration line quite a few behind us had you know gone through the international transfer line but nevertheless it was much quieter than i thought it would be i expected like boomtown this is a southern hemisphere for their summer our winter up north i thought it would be more people here more tourists and something that i wasn't sure what that was about but it was quite shocking yeah i was shocked to learn that actually in rio de janeiro it's not really a big boom the touristy place and that would be.