to fight for the middle for the troops the time is now watching closely watching the hawks. hundreds of thousands of people. in protest against proposed changes to pension rights the reforms. stage after president presented them to his cabinet on friday. also ahead describe the torture of experimental the u.k.'s national health service is under attack in the 1st of its kind legal challenge for prescribing a life changing drug to 3rd gender a leading claimant explain why this latest case is unique. to an experimental treatment can be and. if we.

know the outcomes the side effects of what's going to happen to them. in the push for diversity investment. will help companies. if they have an all white board of directors. coming in every hour of the day this is our international from the team and myself alone welcome. mass protests once again are gripping fronts over a controversial pension reform plans marking the shutdown of infrastructure in decades earlier on friday president among the proposed changes to his cabinet or to

charlotte to been reports from paris. hard cool section of the society are continuing to come out to the streets to take part in these protests let's just take a look at the procession here in paris and you'll get a sense of how full the streets are with those who wanted to come out again today the 51st day of the strike the 7th day of nationwide action to show how unhappy they are about those controversial pension reforms being put through by the french government that pension reform law has been presented to the council of ministers it will not be passed on to the national assembly where it's due to be debated in february and we know who that the strike is why they have received some concessions they haven't been able to achieve what they set out to which was the government to abandon that reform altogether so what have they achieved so far the government has decided to take out all references to raising the pension age to the age of $64.00

they would do to add 2 years on to the pension age before you could receive pool pension and the government is also relinquished and said that certain sectors certain professions will continue to have a special conditions special conditions reality is the. law hasn't changed dramatically from what the government sent out to do so in some respects you could say the protestors haven't really got their way the other thing to say about this is of course that this started as a rolling strike action carried out by public transport workers in the 1st few weeks particularly here in paris public transport was paralyzed across the city with issues nationwide as well so what we're seeing now is continuing smaller strike action that looks like it's being more directed a mood targeted on the reality is what people know that this pension reform is likely to sail through the national assembly go to the senate and also be approved they want to make sure the government is aware how unhappy they are now the

government for its part. edward phillipe the prime minister has been talking about why this pension reform is so important the aim of this reform is to overhaul the system so it becomes much fairer more solid and more adapted to the transformations of the working world of tomorrow the construction of the universal pension system corresponds to the will of the vast majority of french people work is on the street disagree with that they say no it won't it means we'll work for longer i will have to work harder and perhaps we'll end up with less money in our pockets at the end the government says anybody who works a full career which is some 40 odd years will receive a minimum pension of a 1000 euros a month many people say that is not a lot to live on and while people know that that pension reform has been passed and presented to the council of ministers on friday they want to make sure that the government is aware that they are not happy and they will continue to show their oni's and their defiance against this new law.

moving on the u.k.'s national health service is facing a 1st of its kind legal battle over prescribing children as young as 9 puberty blockers on cross sex hormone drugs and one claimant is 23 year old kira bell who was previously treated by the gender identity development service now she regrets making irreversible changes and said no child should go through a she sees it the experimental torture she did shoddy edwards daschle has more. 23 year old care about went through gender reassignment as a teenager but years later she decided to reverse the transition while she lived to regret her treatment she also stopped the clinic putting others through what she did she's leading a landmark case against the tavistock and portman n.h.s. trusts the u.k.'s only gender identity service that deals with patients under 18 years old often without parental consent care of herself as a teenager and says youngsters aren't given proper information on the process and

the drugs to take them through the transition i do not believe the children and young people can consent to the use of powerful and experimental hormone drugs like i did i believe that the current affirmative system put in place by the tavistock is inadequate as it doesn't allow for exploration of the gender dysphoria feelings nor does it seeks to find the underlying cause of this condition and care it joins a mother of a 15 year old autistic girl who is on the waiting list for the treatment at the service much of the concern of her mother i have deep concerns that the current clinical approach a gender identity development service means that my daughter will be subjected to an experimental treatment path that is not adequately regulated when no one understands the risks and therefore canada ensure informed consent is obtained almost half of children treated at the clinic are prescribed hormone blockers that help people this gives children the time to consider whether they truly want to make a transition to the opposite sex but the drug interferes with natural hormone production

it's this step that this legal battle is all about and came into calling for an urgent reassessment of the procedure what is challenged is the current and continuing practice of the defendant to prescribe puberty suppressing hormone blockers and then subsequently crossed sex hormones to children under the age of 18 and it's not just former patients and relatives that are worried medical professionals have also voiced concerns even accusing the specialist clinic for charles gentle children of suppressing negative results while undertaking experimental treatment on adolescent. it's what i found using some unpublished data i discovered from the tavistock clinic is that after 12 months on t.v. blockers are there were some quite pronounced negatives. it's believed the girls so girls became had their gender dysphoria increase and some of their psychological problems increased and indeed there is even less slightly increased

but statistically significant increase in their thoughts about suicide so these are all quite negative findings but these are not being published by the tavistock clinics here in london say 3000 percent more patients than they did 10 years ago among girls it's up more than 5000 percent with referrals that's a record high it suggests cases of the transition will rise to that there is no data to reflect the number 4 who may opt to return to their biological sex we reached out to the tavistock and portman n.h.s. trust for comment our clinical interventions are laid out internationally set service specifications and h s england monitors our service very closely the series has a high level of reporting satisfaction and was rated good by the care quality commission but while there is no doubt that this service helps young people who feel the stress in their own bodies the full impact of making decisions about their gender at such young ages may not truly be clear to much later in the lives of former psychiatric nurse susan evans who worked at the development service and was

the original lead claimant in the case told r.t. the drugs being used aren't licensed in the u.k. for use gender identity medicine. the reason this is a sort of unique case is because it's never been taken in you know so with sort of looking at whether asking young children. to consent to an experimental treatment can be and in full consent if we also don't know the outcome of the full side effects of what's going to happen to them you know it's not in fulton terms of the medical outcomes you know even the experts don't know the full picture yet we need more research but drugs as a prescribed here in the u.k. are an experimental drug because they're what we call off license so they were developed for very young children who had a thing called treat cowshed shiva today which is when they develop too far into

puberty as children but in your area gender identity medicine. these drugs are not licensed for that. a knife or a story stirring up the business world this friday investment by goldman sachs say's it's going to have stop helping start up companies who lack diversity in their boardrooms go public in europe and the united states. we realize that this is a small step but it's a step in the direction of saying you know what we think this is right we think it's the right advice and won a position also because of our network to help our clients if they need help placing women on boards and so this is an example our saying how can we do something that we think you know is right now move the market that these political correctness culture may just kill me just have the best people possible on the board no matter what the race or gender i'm tired of people get in positions of

power just so things can be diversified. this is dangerous foolish and moronic goldman sachs' tokenism is unproductive for diversity no one should attain a position of power based on an arbitrary characteristic positions of power need to be based on performance having token women minorities on boards to meet quotas isn't diversity the better solution is to get more women minorities into college and graduate m.b.a. schools so they can filter into those positions on their merit. well diversity is the word across a wide range of social speakers at the moment with particular criticism aimed at the oscars the butter's in the u.k. for locking representation awards ceremonies the debate has also hit tech giant google whose hiring practices have been slammed for feeling to better accommodate

minorities. let's think a little deeper into this story i'm very happy to say joining us live is a look at us luke is legal editor at spike magazine talking to us from london this hour do you see this announcement as a genuine effort to give minorities a bigger platform in the corporate world. well it's a mad announcement you know goldman sachs have made this announcement a time when you know they are part of a major bidding process to be part of the saudi arabian oil conglomerate. i don't think that board is going to be particularly diverse and for their business reasons they've actually excluded this policy from all of asia because they know that most chinese japanese most companies across asia will not have diverse boards so it's a completely hypocritical and qualified decision they've taken against to against just europe and the us and i think it's completely empty moral grandstanding you

know this is a time when women are thankfully more upbeat remote any time before in history you know women are really asserting themselves on the page of history without goldman sachs's help you know they outperform boys young girls outperform boys in the sciences at school they're taking up more they're getting into more of our university places they're getting into the workplace quicker. and actually there are certain themselves in these companies in a way which is completely independent of the kind of gesturing that goldman sachs are engaging in so i think it's completely hypocritical completely banal completely pointless and i think that actually it's deeply patronising to the women who do. to make their way up through these companies and on to these boards independently inevitably goldman sachs's announcement will now mean the allegations of tokenism will simply go up you know the idea will be that you can't get you can't be taken public if you don't have a woman on your board so anyone now from these companies any woman who receives

a place on that board based on merit will be forced to believe that it's merely because the company wants to go public i think it's wrong one of the words you use there was pointless official quotas haven't worked in places like nor with the netherlands whereas in australia in fact where there is no legal quarters they've been reached and even surpassed it begs the question is that a grassroots cultural change is not the only way to get through diversity. but of course that grassroots changes been under way in most european countries for the last 100 years it's been an organic social process and women are becoming more and more equal and in many spheres of life overtaking men as i said previously but also it's important to recognize that this has nothing to do with the performance of companies you know there were some people arguing that this announcement 2 actually was merely a reflection that the having a diverse board makes a company more effective but goldman sachs themselves in the course of last year analyzed $4000.00 i.p.o.'s to try and understand what makes taking

a company public successful and of course the factors that lead to its success are things like the age of the valuation of the company the sector that they're entering into all of these are complex factors that play into the possibility of success with an so this is just goldman sachs not doing their job properly and attempting instead to morally grandstand over an area where frankly they have no voice and shouldn't have a voice just briefly another aspect do you think it is a strategy to perhaps in a way divert attention from sex many recent scandals or are we looking too deep into the. i don't think i think what we are seeing is the emergence of capitalism you know the idea that companies can effectively whitewash all the activity they do in the world as long as they encourage this very narrow picture of morality where everything you do is fine as long as you encourage women to be on the boards of major companies you know the real problems facing women in the world today are not

the fact that most of them can't go into the board of multinational companies it's more to do with the lack of reasonable childcare is more to do with the difficulties they face in the workplace based on their. having to have children eventually some of them and it's based on there are still real material fact is there holding women back but for the vast vast majority of women those problems are not solved by the kind of announcements goldman sachs are making ok i think they should probably stick to just making sure companies succeed rather than trying to intervene in a political world where they have no role always good to have you the program gets lost legal editor at spike magazine. russia became the hot topic of the continuing democrat impeachment trial against donald trump on wednesday head of the house dems out of a shift mention the party all important word in his opening speech alter choice. russian intelligence services russian expansionism russian forces and their proxies

russia kremlin russia's president vladimir putin the russian military agency it's we can fight russia over there are the russians through russian efforts thanks to vladimir putin when the president said hey russia if you're listening. they were listening that's the russian story. while the cameras by the way were focused on the senate floor due to a bomb and filming sketch artist since that capture the atmosphere in the chamber some of the pictures showed members having trouble staying involved in the process stretching their legs doodling and even sleeping senators also face the 12 hour no phone policy while stopped at their desks we spoke to journalist and political commentator charged with murder he say's that even the strongest supporters of trump's impeachment are bored with the anti russia all right if. the democrats already has 100 percent of their energy and their time into trying to remove a duly elected president from office their biggest hoax russia so completely flat

and even their strongest that we're everything they've been to the president. even their strongest supporters the people who most want to believe that the president will be removed from office which he absolutely will not even they've grown bored with this narrative and when they start reading up russia again. it's just so sad you can't help but laugh and laugh and laugh people who see 57 times at last count referred to russia or putin is the impeachment proceedings i don't know they trying to tie up the loose ends of this narrative are they just trying to connect all these threads that they everything that sort of thrown at the wall to the exist to the expense of millions upon millions of taxpayer money every day that didn't stick to waste of everyone's time. the whistleblower who expose the extensive u.s. surveillance programs around the globe edward snowden has given an interview to the former president of ecuador ralph feel corrina washington is seeking to charge

snowden with espionage and theft of government property while the former government contractor i said he would leak that information again not being willing to face trial if he could tell the truth. i mean these in the beginning many media outlets were supportive of us on yourself nowadays we can say that the mainstream media has changed its tune they should be defending access to information the freedom of the press not just for americans but for everyone else why are they now against you both because while the government in the united states currently has not tried to put journalists in prison on a massive scale they have in a few exceptional circumstances. they have thought well. how can we get the media to support our narrative how can we get them to support our perspectives and i think this is what people miss against the distinction between the more reality and the legality of the thing sometimes the only moral

decision that individual happens is to break the law and the question is not what is this disclosure of legal or illegal the question was and the question is is the information that they provide and true or false is the information they provided useful society to society harmful to society the question is would you rather not know what's really going on there already i mean how do you feel about the fact that back home you can be charged under a law that could land you the death penalty this is why i said there is no fair trial that's provided on the espionage act and despite the craziness of this law i have argued to the united states government i have said i will return and volunteer myself for trial on a single condition which is that i get to tell the jury why i did what i did and the government has refused instead they sent me back a letter signed by the attorney general that says well we promise not to torture

you when we see the failures in the system it is incumbent on us to do something about even in small small ways you know people make this big question for me because of course i have so many critics i have so many supporters who are hero or traitor or hero or traitor which one are you and i say i'm neither i'm a citizen there are no heroes i'm just an ordinary person who did something unusual or do i think you're a hero if you did something really brave but no no this isn't here we have on we will you and i think this is better when we say things like you know i'm not a hero. i'm saying that in the context of there are no heroes there are only horowitz choices that are just a fish i'd like to ask you would you do it all over again i would definitely do it again. i have to say it's unexpected because i have paid a real price i can't return home when i'm in a country that's not one not of my choosing. but i'm actually.

more satisfied and more connected in the work that i did today the work that i did before the thing that i'm most proud of. and the thing that gives me the. confidence to say that i would do it again. is that when somebody asked me what do you do about it i have my answer. and this is the thing that i think all young people need to hear when we're living in a truly historic time where everything is changing. what someone else you wouldn't going to do about it the answer is everything that i can. belizeans protested on friday in the iraqi capital calling for the u.s. to end its military presence in the country the demonstration labeled the 1000000 mom march will settle by an iraqi shia cleric whoever washington is playing down

the rallies highlighting his friendship with the country instead they like what we're doing here we like them and we've got it very good relationship the mission is much wanted by the iraqi military in both we believe most iraqis we have said that we're not interested in talking about withdrawal because we don't think we should withdraw our any conversation that the iraqis want to have with us about the united states in iraq we believe should in must cover the entire gamut of our relationship. well the tense situation in the region has escalated since the u.s. killing of iran's top general and senior iraqi militia leader in a drone strike near baghdad international airport at the beginning of january following the assassinations or rock passed the resolution to expel foreign troops from that country but still needs to be ratified by the prime minister the u.s. president has rejected the move and warned sanctions would be imposed if it goes

ahead with the military experts. let's cross live now to mohamed plights mommas a beirut based journalist speaking to us this hour from. mohamed donald trump said that iraq likes what the u.s. military is doing where you are how does that compare to the feeling on iraqi streets at the moment. we have seen these mass protests covered most of baghdad today. as a sign of. a public referendum to support the political decision from the parliament in order to expel all foreign forces especially the u.s. forces following the that happened earlier this month near baghdad airport

were the u.s. under the cover of the international coalition to fight isis. assassinated one of the main and the main heads of the popular forces. hundreds alongside commander general cost some money of the iranian revolutionary guard. the u.s. is trying to avoid. the. this political official political. popular decision to expel its forces from iraq by saying such as. my. sector of safed has said that this is not an official decision by the parliament considering that there are some members of department who have refused the explosion of the u.s.

forces as well as. the u.s. delegate to syria james jeffrey has also today. this decision is not an official one as well. since the u.s. administration only deals with the with the iraqi government thus the u.s. is trying to avoid. to take responsibility of. of their action. and i have the same time they are trying to avoid this mass anger against what they have done but the question remains though does it not why is the us allowed to violate the sovereignty of a nation assassinated general of another country and just leave its forces there are all invited. well that's basically a usual thing by any us administration they have violated this of the

not only of iraq but several states here in west asia such as pakistan such as yemen of syria over and over again in the past few years they have also. violated the savor knitty of libya in order to conduct strikes on syria they have used their military bases in the gulf region to conduct also strikes in violation of international laws. in iraq and other areas here because the us is basically in control of international organizations we have seen in 2003 what they have done in iraq in violation to international law and against the will of the un security council when they have invaded iraq and they have wrecked havoc and spread destruction and chaos

all over the country which is still suffering from that invasion until today ok the thoughts. of beirut based journalist speaking to us from baghdad thank you. if you'd like to get stuck into any of those stories do check out our facebook page leave a comment throw us a like or 2 whatever you're feeling. this is a story about what happens auster a stray bullet kills a young girl in the street. what happens to her family and daughters in florida you know my other daughter is buried in a cemetery meaning this is with your head what happens to the community the public was screaming for a scapegoat the police needed a scapegoat so why not choose

a 19 year old black kid with a criminal record who better to pin this on than him and what happens in court. shocked shocked as far. as. we don't know just for. the end of this trial unfortunately you. will still not know she'll just. in the united states presidential candidates debate the future of the u.s. and the world. max kaiser and stacy her but dig into the burning questions of this election cycle one self big every week. tax student debt trade was corporate money universal basic income and more catch up with what's front running

this sunday exclusively on r.t. . does the president thank you very much for speaking to this difficult time for your country difficult period which is what my 1st question is about your recent absence joining the tall volcano eruption and people have been worried there has been widespread concern about that absence and about your health are you still feat to be president. you know. we stood up believe media specially developed. and the u.s. . before they made the announcement they did it did not go on. earlier then i went on to. win a game but last night i went directly again good.