for you today right here on the news or where you know as we always like to say we do believe. by golly it's time to do news again. wednesday lunchtime the 1st of july and the headlines today decided rush's next chapter it's the final day then of voting on changes to the constitution coming up we look at what's being offered and we'll bring you reaction throughout the day. and think that it's needed because the current constitution is out of date i think it is nonsense according to all legal logical and ethical norms. with all of that. in other news there's intense scrutiny for germany's huge meat processing industry after a major break among staff at the biggest plant there a shot of big working and living conditions for the mainly low paid migrant stuff.

an hour teaser the new 7 r. t. channels are pulled off a lot which claims the network is controlled by someone on the blacklist even though yeah actually heads up a different use agency 6 as we explain. why they're good afternoon my name is kevin owen here in moscow just turn to pm now this is r.t. international and it is news from russia that's dominating our coverage this hour it is the final day of week of voting that's been taking place across russia on proposed changes to the country's constitution while many of already had their say by voting online president has declared today a national holiday to allow voters who haven't yet done so the chance to cast their ballot. and it's a package of more than $140.00 amendments all told many adding social and legal and

economic guarantees to the constitution a couple to pinpoint one ensuring the minimum wage won't be lower than the cost of living vitally important lot of people another one to securing an annual adjustment to maintain the value of pensions and allowances there could also be tougher requirements for civil servants such as banning key officials from having foreign citizenship or bank accounts abroad and controversy there are some proposals that are controversial for instance marriage will be classified soley as a union between a man and a woman only god is mentioned and referenced the constitution will still define russia though as a secular state that said we come to that a bit later there are also some political changes proposed as well chiefly concerning presidential term limits now at the moment a president can serve 2 consecutive terms take some time out and maybe come back then later for more but if the constitutional reforms go through then presidential 10 years will be limited to 2 terms in total and the most contentious amendment is

the so-called zeroing out of reset their of blood near putin's term so far lowering and then the possibility to run for another 2 terms if indeed he even wants to across today's voting in reaction next sask a tailor. this whole 13 process has been pretty unconventional and not actually started with way back on the 25th of june and is only wrapping up today almost a week later the culprit is of course 20 twentieth's and to me it's kotowicz 19 and so that staggering was done in order to prevent people from dissenting on mass to the polling stations i don't think we can underestimate of course the psychological toll that coronavirus has taken 2 months people have been told stay at home it's safe that if you go outside it's dangerous not to be then that what people who were hesitant about censuring out into the streets to cost the food so authorities here in russia really did everything that they could and wanted to give people options

such everyone could participate but in a way that they felt comfortable and in a way that they felt safe so alternatives included voting from home or in a number of cities voting online but if you still want to do the old fashioned way of searching in the polling stations it was all about safety so mosques to clubs disposable pans social distancing a limit on the number of people in a polling station at any one time and not show up in walking around the city a lot and join the beautiful weather if the pos week and i can say that people have been strictly it's harrowing to the rules i've seen sadly long queues with people kathy separated already must gloved up ready to be elected a lot in this proposed sort of a momentous sundered 40 plus in the russian people been reacting to it taking to exam of the day is going to be a yes a simple yes or a simple no to low thing isn't it possible i would like to say that i think that is wide consensus in russia that that reform is necessary but i will say it causes

have been very difficult to gauge popular reaction precisely because of this all or nothing 13 scheme so russians are being ostracized to put food or against an entire package of amendments there are 147 of them that's an astonishing number it's a pretty simple question do you approve. the moral and it's a simple answer it's just so nice and the house understands the natural law is in tunnel to liberation what do you do if you really bought 145 of them but you really dislike 2 of them that's a canard i think the defining moment will come in the booth when the photo shows up he weighs this all up and he decides what's most important to me what to do i want to prioritize in the future of this country in terms of the political establishment has been vocal opposition from the communist party they say that this will only stop to strengthen president putin's power they also do take issue with the mention of god saying that lenin will probably be tunning in his grave they have people to

go out and vote but to vote no whilst another political party has actually just such people not to vote at all to boycott but let's now hear from the people themselves and what they've been telling us i think that it's needed because the current constitution is out of date it is a modern time and even the view of life is new. why have i come here to vote because i'm a citizen of russia and green with all of them men minds i am not ok with them and went about 0 out the presidential term i absolutely do not agree with. i became familiar with all of the amendments in the constitution the amendment that's the most important for me is the prevalence of russian law over international the head of the central election commission of says something about voting being like a meal deals you either take everything or you do not take it at all and i already do not like one dish in this meal deal so i will not take everything else i think it is nonsense according to all legal logical and ethical norms i love my country

and in sync everything that has been done is right i am going with pleasure to vote ever recommend everyone to do the same so as to be expected with the political issues a bit of a mixed bag it will be the results which will give us a definitive answer on how people really do. feel about these proposed changes yes so when we go to know we just saw a lady there from kaliningrad the russian exclave so many times i was 11 time zones voted here in this area rome moscow is going to go on for another 8 hours or so will we know tonight then or tomorrow the final result well that's right so here in moscow polling stations close at 8 pm it's unlikely that we're going to hit any official announcement or results until thought stay morning as you said russia is a false territory 11 time zones around 800000 polling stations 110000000 adage votes says so even if 5060 percent of those people decide to participate that's

still tens of millions of votes that need to be kathy counted in the meantime now as we finish the narrowing rather we near the finishing line of this maurice 10 week up to the popular vote we can take a look at some of the more and most office snapshots that we've seen of how people have been helping that stay in the future of the constitution. luged with the new schedule just a blue. blue. blue. blue . blue. blue blue. blue. blue. blue blue blue blue. blue.

blue blue blue blue and could. you please if you lose lose lose lose lose lose lose lose lose lose lose lose. well we'll know more or less by tomorrow morning what the outcome is we'll keep you posted of course now meantime allegations of ballot stuffing and other voting violations have been circulating widely online all are being investigated

a fair few have been debunked is fake already the electoral commission saying though that out of all the inquiries they've received only about 2 percent so far are actual possible offenses case in point 2 electoral commission members allegedly suspended in st petersburg after video emerged of 2 women stuffing a ballot box there is to be investigated though that box is no sealed no longer used for voting and investigations under way elsewhere to 2 journalists claim they managed to vote twice both in person and online that made headlines few days ago others who also tried said though their efforts failed police investigating the journalists over administrative offenses has been turned voting twice of course is considered fraud and punishable with a fine the commission says only one vote will be recorded in both cases members of the election commission where it's a police will be subjected to disciplinary action the votes of citizens will be counted but only once we talk to the cochairman of the team that drafted these

amendments now he says that just like many other countries around the world are doing right now russia's foundation laws need updating for modern times. hume was to mean the world is changing right now so fast and so our constitutional laws human rights and liberties are constantly expanding and evolving as well as the mechanisms for their protection many european countries france for example went through serious constitutional reforms in the last decade italy had several attempts to amend its constitution as well. and even the constitution of the u.s. is changing rapidly and substantially every single country chooses its constitutional model and the moderation rules for itself look how many un member states there are more than $100.00 but how many of them actually have full sovereignty in the sense the russian people understand it and many of them are really capable of carrying out internal or external policy independently based on

the interests of their own paypal how many indeed we are introducing new restrictions on presidential term limits according to the new amendment the highest official will be able to serve no more than 2 terms overall and now look for example at germany is there any restriction for the chancellor who is the key figure in the german political system no there are no such restrictions now let's take a look at great britain the position of prime minister the leader of the ruling party are there any restrictions on how many times one can be elected to preside over a government and essentially the executive of the country there are no such restrictions if there are new politicians to come and they will surely come to the federal parliament to the government and eventually to the presidency those politicians must share basic principles and so from this perspective this amendment is a guarantee that all of the achievements of the last 20 years want to be cancelled and the perception of the people is that this amendment is an additional guarantee

for some it's even the most important one that when a new president will come history won't be rewritten crimea won't be returned and no other decisions will be made that won't comply with people's expectations this is really very important. so as we've heard the long list of proposed changes in the package is being voted on but just one element has got much of the foreign media fired up. russia's parliament basically paving the way for vladimir putin to potentially stay on as russian president he's the longest serving russian leader since joseph stalin but a lot of the putin wants to stay in power even longer addressing lawmakers afterwards hooten said he backed the amendment allowing him to seek another term in office. in russia analyst and author martin mccauley always a welcome guest on this program other nice to see you so yeah it goes without any surprise at all that the focus was on what the foreign media is seeing is maybe

want to she want to solve in for another 2 terms of this years and said either which way but why are they focusing are either on the many many many other issues here the social messages getting much of mention or attempts to ensure a more transparent government system for instance that it was interested in a bit of it. yeah those are mentioned in some of the more serious papers that if you are the popular press you hit you hit the obvious ones who do the most bizarre politics that makes headlines everyone understands that but if you go into the details of constitutional law people get bored so therefore they don't want to know about that the average person doesn't want to know about that but if you look at these these changes apparently there are 231. it's their 1st essentially native or unique russian constitution because if you go back to the 1st constitution $106.00 which the duma passed it looked towards the west specially

france for inspiration if you look at the soviet institutions constitutions the 1361 stalin part 2 it could have been read but you could read it as a western constitution you look at the years in one year was heavily influenced by american and french thinking with this constitution this is the 1st one in russian history which concentrates thinking about russia and this is russia centered and therefore it has a truly russian constitution so if the if it gets the go ahead it will set russia on a new course. that's good news for russia what was the rest the world to think about than. they will see russia is trying to get shot off from the outside world because one of the important clauses will be that russian law takes precedence over international law. at present that means in the future that no international court using international law can actually improve its will on russia russia cuba russia

will say no we don't agree with that follow our constitution in fact and knows that judgment less a very important statement and a very important move because it places russia above international law and the outside world cannot interfere cannot impose its will on russia and what i remember is caught your eye story what other amendments caught your eye that aside the other no bonds was the fact that a russian official to be president you have to be 25 years to live 25 years in russia which means that in the future that if there is a. chaos or both who becomes the next president no new russian in exile can come back. and become president an order that an official cannot a dual nationality nor can he have a foreign bank account but of course you can get round i said you know live

followed by because beginning with a wife or none of the men in the family but that's important you may not have foreign residency or form citizenship that means that he's the whole into russia and cannot if you like and leave russia if he finds things difficult ok well we'll know what somebody by tomorrow morning early on i guess march mcauliffe and offer russia our list thanks make the time to be with us give us your thoughts thank you very much.

you can't be both with the yeah you like. someone else chose something seemed wrong but we're all just all. get to shape out just to educate and gauge equals betrayal. when so many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground.

so it is making headlines day the lockdowns been extended at a german meat factory and the surrounding town all for a huge number of workers came down with covert infections have been smaller i breaks in similar types of workplaces too and it's got unions and officials concerned over safety conditions for stuff as peter all of us reports next. germany was quite rightly praised for how it handled the initial wave of coronavirus now although it's dealing with something but hops a little more tricky isolated localized spikes of covert 19 we're on our way to a meat processing plant in the city of good to slow which has been the epicenter of one of those outbreaks over $1500.00 workers tested positive at this facility the factory is currently closed down with the workforce in quarantine since corona was confirmed a lockdown that was imposed on the local area last week has been extended by

a further 7 days and the federal government's in its calling on people to be page says it's not a hard situation for many people the restrictions cause a burden in the chancel thanks all people who take the situation with patients and follow the necessary restrictions they are all helping now to prevent the virus from spreading the reason for the extension of this local lockdown is 100 cases of corona in the last week detected in people that have no connection whatsoever with this meat factory the working and living conditions of staff at the other 2 are have been brought under the microscope low paid workers from eastern europe often living in cramped conditions where social distancing is nigh on impossible being seen as the unfortunate catalyst for the spike people living in this area on top either workers were forced to continue in these conditions during a pandemic. management should have been more careful these are people who came here

to work they should have been tested before they were hired but when the virus was already in the factory and you don't know who has it then you cannot stop it. we have guest workers from romania and sometimes they live 10 people in the same apartment they were. as for nothing and that's the problem here they're blaming the meat factory but the virus is still everywhere one of the reasons could be that people are working there in close proximity without maintaining the necessary save distance officials in berlin and local governments say this is the responsibility of business owners. the company must have civil liability through behavior where people obviously do not abide by rules corp took an entire region hostage it is currently being about you waited very carefully whether and against which rules the company has violated and where it can be held liable for those tasked with looking

after workers rights of buying the german government saying they're willing to open a dialogue on improving conditions they accuse perlin of being all talk no action they have already been enough in nonsense and promises who heard it all before but nothing ever happens the company operating this plant have refused all requests for comment when it comes to working conditions they cite but this isn't the only coded spike in germany right now.

but this type of localized outbreak has been noticeably absent from germany's blue chip manufacturing the auto industry is back to. work with the correct precautions being taken in a normal working week 30000 pigs are slaughtered here every day and while low paid staff living in poor quality tauzin may allow for cheap 1st in schnitzel it also provides coronavirus with the optimum conditions to spread peter all over r.t. . germany. now it seems we're in the news our t.v. has in latvia will no longer be able to watch our programmes we've been pulled off air there along with 6 other multi-lingual channels by the country's media council saying the networks controlled by a broadcaster currently on the e.u.

sanctions but it's a big but the devil's in the detail because the person in question they're talking about one mr dmitri because of the of actually heads up a separate russian news agency not ours is our senior correspondent we're going to of explaining the confusion. what you see here may look like news to you but others perhaps those that don't like the color green were made of soft stuff those working in latvian intelligence agencies all government this is horrible the evidence we have obtained is very strong and we call on the regulators of all other e.u. member states to follow our example and ban r.t. in the territory such programs have no place in latvia or elsewhere in the e.u. personally i've looked all over fairbairns watched r.t. arabic with subtitles tried r.t. spanish i even checked behind the teles and know nothing just cables the very evidence that latvia has the literally made up and didn't try very hard perhaps it

was just before the end of the working day that everyone iching to go home see there's a number of news agencies and russia hauled but i see a civil order which translates to english as russian today and this organization is led by a thurlow who's on european sanctions list this organization by the way has nothing to do with r t that's been our name for more than a decade we're at sea and there i see a subordinate even our names are in different languages but the latvian special agent or official is other than easily scared apparently a lazy thing given that consider of his subject to sanctions throughout the year you the national electronic media council will inform media regulators in other e.u. countries of the decision taken and considers that a similar ban on distribution would be acceptable throughout the e.u.

blew i'm sorry that was mean we just put last we had intelligence agencies on red alert agents running around their headquarters waving their arms and complaining loudly about our t. scaring them again but it really is funny even the fellow who in the sanctions list . seems to think so this decision is an indicator of the level of stupidity and ignorance of the latvian or storage fees blinded virus a phobia we laughed at this announcement the last you know authorities got into a simple mess but seriously speaking the reason for the ban they have stated does not have any legal basis therefore latvia should immediately return the broadcast of r.t. and apologize to our colleagues to be honest it isn't hurting our feelings that they should be worried about you can censor things not in the modern world people will always find a way to find what they're looking for what they should be worried about is undermining the very foundations of the european union no country can join the e.u.

without guaranteed freedom of expression as a basic human right fine if latvia which seems to have a thing for trying to silence media have been able to come up with a good excuse to ban see a solid reason to violate a founding principle of the european union but they didn't they came up with a laughable excuse and even then managed to get it wrong then look stupid in front of their own allies the burning of our to channels and violence freedom of the press the wants of citizens to media pluralism and is a clear case of censorship the member council's decision be lifted immediately at the end of the day if latvian special services and authorities are of this incompetent capable of confusing 2 different media organizations and everyone who leads them and in the process undermine the entire european union well there's

really nothing to be afraid of little latvia flexing its muscles trying to lead the european union on our merry dance of censorship and media repression has dropped the store and on it. on feet they may have been counting on the fact that nobody would notice this rather gigantic elephant in the corner of the room but they have named the wrong guy so i think it will now be a laughingstock the european union claims to be the bystander all free speech free expression democracy and all of the and yet just goes to show that it's all lipstick when the 'd when the lipsticks rubbed off it's a rather plain our face underneath. well figure trolls who back cannot see a single key post will not but that's the way things look in from russia so far this wednesday the 1st of july as this huge country heads into the final hours of

a big vote on its future constitution reporting from moscow is kevin 0 in thanking you for watching and wishing you a great day. time after time corporations repeat the same mantra sustainability it's very important to accelerate the transition to sustainable transport sustainability space for man to be more equitable and sustainable well. they claim their production is completely hama's the distant because they have. got it done because. it does not the present companies want us to feel good about buying products while the damage is being done far away this is something else this must keep going to mean and i mean what. this is the moves you missed me didn't even and i'm stunned seemed to be based on an undisclosed who is going to.

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